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Return to Article: Nuclear testing may need to resume soon

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  I am writing to correct and clarify some of the statements attributed to me in "Nuclear Testing May Need to Resume Soon," which appeared on Jan. 21, 2003. I was asked to discuss my long involvement with cooperative threat reduction programs in Russia and the former Soviet Union. However, your reporter asked me nothing about the advertised interview topic and instead worked with some urgency to put words into my mouth, wrongly attributing to me both advocacy for a return to nuclear testing and the need for new nuclear weapon designs.

  First, let me state my actual views, which were not reported accurately:

  • The principal focus of the weapons laboratories is to keep the stockpile safe, secure and reliable without nuclear testing.

  • We retain confidence that our nuclear weapons today are safe, secure, and reliable. That's why the directors of the weapons laboratories are able to sign annual certification letters to that effect.

  • However, we cannot make that guarantee indefinitely. Nuclear weapons are complex, are stored and deployed under demanding conditions, and must be totally reliable. The challenge of stockpile stewardship is to quantify the risk of the aging effects that we continue to document and study. Since our last nuclear test on Sept. 22, 1992, we have lost through retirements much of the experience upon which our confidence in the nuclear stockpile was based.

  • As our testing experience fades, stockpile stewardship is in a race against time to develop the new tools that we hope can offset that loss in experience.

  • The United States has no new warhead designs in the development phase. In my personal opinion, the United States should not field a new, sophisticated nuclear weapon without testing.

  I did not say that the United States should end the nuclear testing moratorium. I did not say that stockpile stewardship isn't providing the needed tools "fast enough." I did not say that the United States needs new, sophisticated nuclear weapons. I did not say that effects testing is needed for possible earth-penetrating enhancements to existing weapons.

  I would welcome a chance to talk to one of your reporters about the challenges and achievements of the cooperative threat reduction programs, as you originally requested.

  Thank you for the opportunity to set the record straight.

  Siegfried S. Hecker Posted February 26, 2003 7:31 PM