[Reader-list] News from Nature

[Sandipan Chatterjee]

Nature 423, 469 (2003);

Experts blast US decision to back nuclear bunker-busters

GEOFF BRUMFIEL


[WASHINGTON] The US Congress has voted to plough $15 million into 
developing Earth-penetrating nuclear weapons to destroy underground 
bunkers. But weapons experts have cast doubt on the scheme, arguing 
that this is an inappropriate use of nuclear technology.

The plan, which was proposed last year (see Nature 415, 945-946; 
2002), aims to develop the weapons primarily to target hidden stores 
of biological or chemical weapons. According to the author of a new 
study, however, such agents may simply be dispersed by the weapons, 
and conventional weapons are better suited to the job.

President George W. Bush's administration welcomed last week's votes 
in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. General Richard 
Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says that the radiation 
emitted by nuclear explosions could sterilize biological agents, and 
that the heat generated will destroy chemical weapons. Conventional 
weapons, he argues, are unsuitable as they are liable to spread such 
biological or chemical agents, creating a greater hazard.

But Robert Nelson, an astrophysicist and senior fellow at the Council 
on Foreign Relations, a think-tank based in New York, disagrees. In a 
paper shortly to appear in the journal Science and Global Security, 
he calculates the impact of an underground detonation of a nuclear 
device.

Nelson finds that rock or concrete surrounding a bomb would absorb 
heat and radiation, but would transmit the massive shockwave caused 
by the explosion. A nuclear device equivalent to 10,000 tonnes of 
TNT, for example, would create a crater 200 metres wide, but only 
material within 11 metres of the centre would be sterilized. Large 
amounts of material would be ejected from the centre of the blast, 
along with radioactive dust created in the explosion. Nelson suggests 
that it would be better to use conventional weapons to block the 
entrances and ventilation shafts of such bunkers until they could be 
secured by friendly forces.

Nelson admits that his analysis is basic, but argues that the results 
are clear-cut. Sidney Drell, deputy director emeritus of the Stanford 
Linear Accelerator Center in California and an architect of the US 
stockpile-stewardship programme, designed to maintain nuclear weapons 
without testing, agrees that the study is sound. He believes that the 
crater and sterilization area could be marginally larger than Nelson 
estimates, but echoes Nelson's argument that such a blast might only 
act to disperse chemical or biological agents.

Drell adds, however, that he is more concerned by the $6 million 
allocated last week by the Congress for research into another new 
type of nuclear device - low-yield nuclear weapons known as 
mini-nukes. The United States has had a self-imposed ban on such 
weapons since 1993, but last week's vote marks an end to this ruling. 
Drell is worried that the move blurs the line between nuclear and 
conventional weapons, ultimately increasing the likelihood that 
nuclear weapons will be used in anger.
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