Energy Secretary Says Planned Nuclear Tests Would Not Be Explosions

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Sunday that the nuclear weapons testing President Trump ordered last week would not involve nuclear explosions, narrowing a directive that critics had read as a possible end to the United States’ decades-long moratorium on explosive tests. Wright told Fox News the tests are “system tests” and “not nuclear explosions,” describing them as noncritical explosions, according to CBS News; Al Jazeera also quoted him saying the tests under discussion are “system tests” and “not nuclear explosions.”

The clarification came after Trump gave a broader account in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes.” “We’re going to test nuclear weapons like other countries do, yes,” he said, and added, “Russia’s testing, and China’s testing, but they don’t talk about it.” CBS noted that the claim came days after the nominee to lead U.S. Strategic Command told Congress that neither China nor Russia was conducting nuclear explosive tests. Trump also named North Korea and Pakistan as countries that test.

Experts told CBS that the president probably meant subcritical tests, which do not set off a chain reaction. George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said such tests “don’t produce an explosion.” Sigfried Hecker, a former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, said the United States, Russia and China all conduct subcritical experiments, and that he did not know whether Trump meant hydronuclear tests, which use a tiny amount of explosive. Heather Williams of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said officials have said the United States has no technical need to test, and that China would likely gain the most if it did.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe took the president’s side on Monday, posting on X that Trump “is right” and citing 2019 Defense Intelligence Agency assessments of Russian and Chinese low-yield tests, CBS reported. China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, Mao Ning, said China has “abided by its commitment to suspend nuclear testing,” and a senior Pakistani security official said Pakistan “will not be the first to resume nuclear tests,” CBS reported.

The history matters to the dispute. The last U.S. explosive test was in 1992, NBC News and PBS NewsHour reported when Trump first announced the order last week, and the Energy Department has overseen testing since its creation in 1977, the Associated Press noted. Trump’s original post said he had instructed the Department of War to start testing “on an equal basis.”

Al Jazeera cited the Arms Control Association’s description of subcritical experiments as tests that use plutonium but avoid a nuclear chain reaction.

Al Jazeera and CBS both noted that the United States last conducted a nuclear explosive test in 1992, and it is still unclear exactly what the president’s plan includes.