America’s nuclear gamble: The dangerous push to resume atmospheric testing

“The United States may need to restart explosive nuclear weapons testing,” declared Robert Peters, research fellow for nuclear deterrence and missile defense at The Heritage Foundation, the right-wing organization close to the Trump administration, in a lengthy report last month.  Issued on January 15, it was titled: “America Must Prepare to Test Nuclear Weapons.”

Peters stated that “the President may order the above-ground testing of a nuclear weapon….And while the United States leaving the [Nuclear] Test Ban Treaty may not be optimal and may indeed have negative downstream effects, doing so may be necessary to stave off further adversary escalation.”

There has not been a nuclear weapon tested above-ground in the United States since 1962, Peters said. That was a year before the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963 was signed by the U.S., Soviet Union and United Kingdom. It prohibits nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, underwater or in outer space. It allowed underground tests as long as they didn’t result in “radioactive debris to be present outside the territorial limits of the state under whose jurisdiction or control” the test was conducted.

“Resuming atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons would be disastrous,” says Joseph Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project. He cited the “lessons learned from above-ground nuclear weapons testing—the radioactive fall-out that harmed many people, especially infants and children.”

Testimony by a co-founder of the Radiation and Public Health Project, the late Dr. Ernest Sternglass, a physicist, before the then Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, was instrumental in President John F. Kennedy signing the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963. 

As President Kennedy said in a 1963 national address: “This treaty can be a step towards freeing the world from the fears and dangers of radioactive fallout.” He said that “over the years the number and the yield of weapons tested have rapidly increased and so have the radioactive hazards from such testing. Continued unrestricted testing by the nuclear powers, joined in time by other nations which may be less adept in limiting pollution, will increasingly contaminate the air that all of us must breathe.” Kennedy spoke of “children and grandchildren with cancer in their bones, with leukemia in their blood, or with poison in their lungs” as a result.

The Heritage Foundation’s 900-page publication “Project 2025” is the “governing agenda” for the Trump administration, writes Susan Caskie, executive editor of the magazine The Week, in its current issue. “Many of its authors and contributors,” she noted, are now members of the administration, some appointed to “even Cabinet posts.” 

“Project 2025’s stance on nuclear testing: A dangerous step back” was the title of an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists this past September. It was written by Tom Armbruster, former U.S. ambassador to the Marshall Islands and earlier the U.S. Embassy in Moscow’s nuclear affairs officer. He wrote: “On page 431, Project 2025 calls for the United States to ‘Reject ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and indicate a willingness to conduct nuclear tests in response to adversary nuclear developments if necessary. This will require that the National Nuclear Security Administration be directed to move to immediate test readiness…’”

Armbruster said, “We should be negotiating further cuts in the world’s nuclear arsenals, a prohibition of weapons in outer space, and cleanup of the ‘legacy’ test sites around the world. It would help if Russia were a responsible partner in denuclearization but sadly that is not the case. We could be working together to find ways to mend the planet, rather than inflict further damage that will last for thousands of years.”

Peters, in his report, said: “There are two major reasons why the United States may want to restart nuclear testing in the coming years. First, it may be technically correct that the United States does not need to test its current arsenal, but the United States is building new warheads as part of the nuclear modernization effort.^”

^“It may, in fact, be necessary to test these new systems to ensure that they work as designed,” he went on. “Modelling and simulation may be sufficient to assess the viability and characteristics of these new warheads—but that is not a proven proposition. Moreover, the purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter one’s adversaries from carrying out breathtaking acts of aggression. In that sense, even if nuclear explosive testing is not necessary to convince American policymakers that next-generation nuclear systems work, it may be necessary to convince America’s adversaries that its nuclear arsenal is credible.” (original italics)

“Second and more importantly,” said Peters, “a nuclear explosive test may be necessary to demonstrate resolve. In recent years, autocrats have increasingly leveraged nuclear coercion or nuclear threats in an attempt to intimidate the West or secure geopolitical concessions.”

Peters also said: “While the United States signed and ratified the treaty under President Kennnedy—and has adhered to its requirements for over six decades—the treaty allows a state to withdraw with three months notification if it deems it in its national interests to do so.”

It was also in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that Robert Alvarez, former senior policy advisor to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy and now senior policy advisor at the Institute for Policy Studies, and Mangano, wrote an article in 2021 on radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons tests and the “baby tooth” study. 

“How many nuclear weapons can be detonated in support of weapons development or during a war before imperiling humans from radioactive fallout?” it began. “To find the answer, independent scientists and citizens turned to baby teeth. Lots and lots of baby teeth. Why baby teeth?….The most commonly measured isotope in these tissues—strontium 90—is absorbed as if were calcium. This isotope lodges in human bone tissue for many years and was the principal contaminant of concern in fallout investigations…”

They wrote about how “the St. Louis Committee for Nuclear Information and scientists at Washington University, beginning in December 1958, began assembling the most significant collection of human samples in the atmospheric bomb test era.” Donated were 320,000 baby teeth. 

“While St. Louis remained the center of the program, activists in other states contributed teeth as well. Teeth were prepared for strontium 90 lab testing by volunteers, who sent them to Harold Rosenthal, a chemist at Washington University.” 

Found, said an article in 2023 in the Journal of Social Determinants of Health and Health Services, was a 63-fold increase in strontium-90 in baby teeth from children born in the years after large-scale nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere started in 1950, then dropping in half in the five years after the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963 took effect. “This saved many lives,” comments Mangano. It was written by Dr. Timothy Mousseau, biology professor at the University of South Carolina, Dr. Michael Ketterer, professor emeritus of chemistry and biology at North Arizona University, Kelli S. Gaus, then studying for a Masters in Public Health in Applied Epidemiology, and Mangano. It was titled “Strontium 90 in Baby Teeth as a Basis for Eliminating U.S. Cancer Deaths From Nuclear Weapons Fallout.” 

Are we, if there is a return to atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, to go back to the years of radioactive fallout—and the resulting health impacts? And, as Kennedy stated, “children and grandchildren with cancer in their bones, with leukemia in their blood, or with poison in their lungs.”