THOUGHTS ABOUT THE SIGNING OF THE
COMPREHENSIVE NUCLEAR TEST BAN TREATY
Theodore B. Taylor
PO Box 662, Wellsville, NY 14895
Tel 716-593-3084; Fax 716-593-6347;
E-mail tedbtaylor@aol.com
September 24, 1996
I join in celebration by what I believe to be a majority of the
people aware of the signing today of a comprehensive nuclear test
ban treaty(CTBT) prohibiting any further tests of any nuclear
explosive devices.
This is a necessary though not sufficient step towards stopping
the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It is also a necessary but
not sufficient step towards global abolition of all nuclear
weapons.
It will make it more difficult for nations that already have
nuclear weapons to develop new ones with confidence. It will
make it more difficult for nations that do not yet have nuclear
weapons to get them. It will stop further contamination of the
environment by the radioactive substances released by nuclear
weapon tests. It will stimulate considerable extension of means
for verification of international treaties and other agreements
related to proliferation of nuclear weapons.
I also have some cautionary thoughts related to the treaty.
As I understand it, several governments, including my own, have
negotiated an exception to the complete ban on all nuclear
explosions of any size or type. The exception would allow the
production of very small thermonuclear explosions inside
facilities designed to contain them. Examples are the planned
U.S. National Ignition Facility(NIF) and the similar French
"Megajoule" facility. Use of such facilities can provide data
that can play key roles in the design of new types of nuclear
weapons. The CTBT will also allow the design, construction and
use of numerous other facilities, in a growing number of
countries, designed to investigate possibilities for Inertial
Confinement Fusion(ICF) thermonuclear explosions as a source of
power for civil purposes. Use of such facilities, and of non-
nuclear tests not prohibited by the CTBT, along with use and
extension of intimate, rapidly proliferating intimate public
knowledge of how to design pure fission, boosted fission, and
thermonuclear weapons of wide ranges of yields may make it
possible for nations to acquire any of a wide variety of
sophisticated nuclear weapons without tests that would violate
the treaty.
A speculative but technically conceivable outgrowth of the use of
the NIF and related facilities is key information about how to
design pure fusion nuclear explosives that, unlike the NIF
itself, could be practically transportable as weapons. Such
weapons would not require any plutonium or highly enriched
uranium neither of which occur naturally in significant
quantities. Development of such weapons require solution to two
main problems. The first is to create the necessary conditions
in thermonuclear fuel(deuterium and tritium or, possibly, mostly
or all deuterium and lithium, both of which are naturally
abundant) to release much more energy than the energy required to
create the explosive conditions. The other problem is to package
the energy required to create those conditions with much smaller
components than the huge lasers or particle beam accelerators
used to energize the NIF or Megajoule facilities, or other
facilities in many countries where possibilities for inertial
confinement fusion is now under intensive investigation. Efforts
to do this with magnetic fields energized by chemical explosives
continue to be investigated secretly in Russia, which pioneered
much of this work, and the United States, and perhaps other
countries.
The CTBT will not prevent the design and construction of
relatively crude but easily transportable nuclear explosives by
non-governments groups for use by terrorists, using plutonium or
highly enriched uranium stolen or diverted from military or
civilian nuclear facilities or transport vehicles, and sold or
otherwise transferred illegally.
The treaty will not prohibit any country from creating conditions
for rapid "breakout" of the treaty, leading to a resumption or
new startup of nuclear testing if it perceives a serious enough
threat to its security.
Perhaps most important, the CTBT will not deal with the lack of
commitments by the countries that now have nuclear weapons to
eliminate them and press hard for their prompt global abolition.
The signing of this treaty must not cause the relaxation or
postponement of worldwide actions to rid the world of these
terrible weapons that have moved the human capacity for
destruction clear off the human scale.
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