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United States and Russia Both have recently threatened to resume nuclear testing, alarming the international community and threatening the global norm against such tests.
experts Says these threats from the world’s two largest nuclear powers put pressure on non-proliferation efforts and threaten global peace and security.
The US President said, “Because of the testing programs of other countries, I have directed the War Department to begin testing our nuclear weapons on a similar basis.” donald trump said in a post on his Truth Social site in late October. “That process will begin immediately.”
Moscow reacted immediately.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told as mine security council If the US or any signatory to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty conducts a nuclear weapon test, “Russia would be obliged to take reciprocal measures.”
Here’s a look at what resuming nuclear testing could mean.
The treaty established a norm against nuclear testing.
Concerns about the negative effects of nuclear weapons tests increased in the 1950s when the US and the Soviet Union conducted several powerful nuclear tests in the atmosphere. As a result, a Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was negotiated that prohibited such tests but underground tests were still allowed.
New international efforts to ban all nuclear tests resulted in negotiations for a comprehensive treaty beginning in 1994, culminating in its adoption by the United Nations General Assembly in 1996.
187 states have signed the treaty and 178 have ratified it, with most experts believing that the treaty has established a norm against nuclear testing – even without formally coming into force.
For the treaty to officially take effect, 44 specific states – listed in the treaty’s annexes – must ratify it. Nine of them have not done so yet.
China, Egypt, Iran, Israel and the US signed but did not ratify it. India, North Korea and Pakistan neither signed nor ratified the treaty. Russia signed and ratified the treaty, but canceled its ratification in 2023, saying that the imbalance between its ratification and the US’s failure to do so is “unacceptable in the current international situation.”
Along with the treaty, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization was established in Vienna. It runs a global monitoring network to detect nuclear tests around the world, operating 307 monitoring stations using seismic, hydroacoustic, infrasound and radionuclide technologies.
The organization is financed primarily through assessed contributions by its member states. Its budget for 2025 is more than $139 million.
China and India will benefit from resumption of testing
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, said the resumption of U.S. nuclear tests “would open the door for states with less nuclear testing experience to conduct full-scale tests that could help them perfect smaller, lighter warhead designs.”
“This would undermine American and international security,” he said.
Joseph Rodgers, a fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said states like China or India would benefit from resuming nuclear testing.
“It makes more sense for them to test than for the US or Russia”, Rodgers said, the two states that have conducted the most nuclear tests to date.
America conducted its last nuclear test in 1992. Since 1996, only 10 nuclear tests have been conducted by three countries: India, Pakistan and North Korea. None of them have signed or ratified the treaty
The majority of nuclear tests – about 2,000 – took place before 1996, mostly by the US and the Soviet Union.
Organization creates ‘trust’
Given the uncertainty surrounding Trump’s announcement and the potential for tensions to escalate over the issue, the Test Ban Treaty Organization could play a role in resolving the situation.
Rodgers said the treaty organization is primarily scientific and should focus on providing scientific data to the international community.
But Kimball disagrees, suggesting that the organization’s executive secretary Robert Floyd could “take the initiative and bring together” officials from the US and other countries to help resolve some uncertainties, such as what type of nuclear test the US President was referring to in his statement.
Floyd told The Associated Press that in the current situation, he believes his organization’s main role is to provide “confidence to states” that they will know if a nuclear weapon detonation occurs “anywhere, at any time.”
The organization’s monitoring network successfully detected all six nuclear tests conducted by North Korea between 2006 and 2017, he said.
Not all nuclear tests produce explosions
The White House has not yet clarified what kind of tests Trump meant and which other countries he was referring to in his statement. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the new tests would not involve nuclear explosions.
The nuclear test explosions banned under the treaty are so-called supercritical tests, where fissile material is compressed to initiate a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction that produces an explosion.
These tests produce a nuclear yield – the amount of energy released, which defines the destructive power of a weapon. The treaty bans any nuclear explosion with a yield, adhering to a zero yield standard.
In contrast, the subcritical nuclear experiments to which Wright was referring produce no self-sustaining chain reaction and no explosion. Nuclear weapon states, including the US, conduct these experiments regularly without violating the treaty.
Some tests may remain unknown
Kimball says that extremely low-yield hydronuclear tests conducted underground in metal chambers “go undetected” by the organization’s monitoring systems.
“So that creates a verification gap I would say with respect to this particular type of extremely low yield explosion,” he said.
When the organization’s monitoring system was installed in the 1990s, it was designed to detect nuclear explosions of up to 1 kiloton (1,000 tons of TNT). Floyd said the system actually performed better, detecting explosions down to 1 kiloton at 500 tons of TNT.
The atomic bomb dropped by America on Hiroshima was about 15 kilotons.
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The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Outrider Foundation. AP is solely responsible for all content.
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Additional AP coverage of the nuclear landscape: https://apnews.com/projects/the-new-nuclear-landscape/