Energy secretary: US weapons tests won't involve nuclear explosions

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Sunday that the weapons testing that President Trump ordered last week will not include nuclear explosions.

“I think the tests we’re talking about right now are system tests. These are not nuclear explosions. These are what we call noncritical explosions,” Wright said on Fox News’s “The Sunday Briefing.”

“So you’re testing all the other parts of a nuclear weapon to make sure they deliver the appropriate geometry, and they set up the nuclear explosion,” Wright, whose agency oversees testing, continued.

Trump last week said on social media he directed the Defense Department to begin testing U.S. nuclear weapons “on an equal basis,” sparking confusion about the nature of the weapons tests.

Asked for clarification by reporters later that day, Trump did not make clear whether he was calling for the U.S. to restart explosive nuclear weapons testing or ordering new testing of weapons systems that could deliver a nuclear weapon, which is more routine.

North Korea is the only country that has carried out nuclear testing since the 1990s. Russia has been conducting nuclear-capable weapons tests, which does not include setting off actual nuclear bombs. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been testing missiles capable of having nuclear warheads as recently as this week.

Wright, on Sunday, shot down a question on whether the testing is “something where people who live in the Nevada desert should expect to see a mushroom cloud at some point.”

“No, no worries about that,” he responded. “No worries about that.”

As the U.S. works to modernize its nuclear stockpile, Wright said officials will be testing the new systems, not the existing stockpile.

“The testing that we’ll be doing is on new systems. And again, these will be non-nuclear explosions. These are just developing these sophisticated systems so that our replacement nuclear weapons are even better than the ones they were before. They’re reliable in all circumstances, under all conditions, and they deliver the performance they were designed for,” he said.

Source: The Hill