The Bush administration is exploring the possibility of
developing a controversial new type of nuclear weapon at
laboratories managed by the University of California.
Scientists at the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratories have begun research on a “bunker-buster”
bomb that if ever used, would be able to penetrate rock and explode
below the surface.
“It would go into the earth and explode and collapse
tunnels around the bunkers,” said Brian Wilkes, a press aide
for the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Washington has set aside $15 million for feasibility studies on
the weapon, officially known as the Robust Nuclear Earth
Penetrator. Scientists assigned to the project would be paid by the
university, though UC administration would not oversee the
research.
Weapons projects “are not things the (UC Board of) Regents
would follow or the Office of the President would follow,”
said UC press aide Jeff Garberson.
The United States used bunker busters with conventional warheads
to destroy underground targets in the wars against Iraq and
Afghanistan. An existing nuclear bunker-buster, the B61-11, is not
designed to penetrate rock surfaces.
A successful version of the weapon would be capable of
destroying targets buried thousands of feet underground, said Fred
Celec, deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for nuclear
matters.
These targets, Celec said, could not be destroyed without
resorting to nuclear weapons.
“There are hard, deeply buried targets around the world
today that we cannot hold at risk with anything we have in the
inventory today or any conventional weapon we see in the inventory
in the future,” he said.
But critics of the administration’s nuclear policy say the
bomb, which could target deep bunkers storing chemical or
biological weapons, will not penetrate deep enough to contain
fallout produced in a nuclear explosion.
“It’s impossible for it to work in the way people
envision it would work,” said Stephen Young, a senior analyst
with the Union of Concerned Scientists, an organization focusing on
environmental and anti-proliferation issues.
In a report released last month, Young wrote that the B61-11,
designed to punch through earth, can only penetrate 20 feet into
frozen soil. At this depth, an explosion with a one kiloton yield
could produce one million cubic feet of fallout.
To contain fallout, a one kiloton bomb would have to explode 200
““ 300 feet underground, Young wrote.
Under current law, it is illegal to research a nuclear bomb with
a yield this low. A law passed by Congress prohibits research on
weapons with yields under five kilotons.
The B61-11 can carry a warhead with a yield as high as 340
kilotons, several times more powerful than the 15-kiloton bomb
dropped on Hiroshima during World War II.
Celec said the RNEP would produce fallout, though he said the
amount of radioactive debris from an underground explosion would be
less than if the bomb detonated on the surface.
The Bush administration’s nuclear policy generated
controversy last year when the Nuclear Posture Review, a
confidential assessment of national nuclear strategy, was leaked.
The NPR, which is not a formal policy, stated the United States
could use nuclear weapons against seven countries listed as
potential threats.
The seven nations were China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Iraq,
Libya, and Syria.
The UC has been the government’s nuclear partner for 60
years. In 1943, the UC took on the task of managing the newly built
Los Alamos lab, though the regents were not told Manhattan Project
scientists were building the first atomic bombs.
Contracts between the UC and federal government have allowed for
nuclear weapons research ever since. The most recent contract to
manage the weapons lab went into effect in January 2001.
In the wake of financial control problems at LANL, the
Department of Energy announced last week it would put the
lab’s contract up for bid in 2005.
With reports from Daily Bruin wire services.