Challenges of Verification: Smaller States and Arms Control by Heinz Gaertner

Author:Heinz Gaertner [Gaertner, Heinz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Arms Control, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780429713972
Google: TbuZDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 51787290
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

54. According to a 1988 law, the U.S. agency that designs and makes nuclear arms must try to develop ways to ensure the reliability of the weapons without explosive testing. The aim of the law is to develop solutions to weapons problems without recourse to nuclear explosions. The U.S. Energy Department is directed to pursue a series of activities, known as the Nuclear Test-Ban Readiness Program, to prepare the U.S. arsenal for the possibility that a future East-West accord would limit or prohibit such explosive testing. Although these steps are designed to insure the reliability of the testing arsenal in the absence of explosive testing, the law does not address the main rationale for most nuclear testing, which is to develop new designs to modernize the nation's arsenal. Critics charge that even proven warhead designs cannot be remanufactured or replicated. Material batches are never the same; some materials become unavailable; equivalent materials are never exactly equivalent; "improved" parts often have new failure modes (William J. Broad, "Under Little-Noticed New Provision U.S. Must Find Options to Atom Tests," The New York Times, October 10, 1988).

55. The New York Times, September 30, 1988.

56. Verification Technology Information Centre of London, Report, February 1988, in The Arms Control Reporter (1988), p. 608.B.156-608.B.157.

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