Donald Trump’s command for the United States to resume nuclear weapons testing will not include explosive tests, for now, according to Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
Wright, whose agency oversees the National Nuclear Security Administration, told Fox News that the Trump administration is not planning to perform nuclear explosions “right now.”
“I think the tests we’re talking about right now are system tests,” he told The Sunday Briefing. “These are not nuclear explosions. These are what we call noncritical explosions. So you’re testing all the other parts of a nuclear weapon.”
Last week, the president ordered the Pentagon to “start testing our Nuclear Weapons” — a process he said would begin “immediately,” ending a 33-year-old moratorium on U.S. nuclear testing and inviting a global arms race among the world’s nuclear powers.
Trump doubled down on his order in an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, which was taped before Wright’s interview. “If we have them, we have to test them, otherwise you don’t really know how they’re gonna work,” Trump told Norah O’Donnell.
The president’s announcement on his Truth Social account fueled confusion and alarm among nuclear scientists and experts, who warned that his “reckless” and vague instructions could risk triggering the first major build up of warheads among world powers in decades.
Trump did not include any details about the tests, but the announcement appeared designed to boost U.S. development in a race against modernized nuclear weapons delivery systems from Russia and China.
World powers possess more than 12,000 nuclear warheads, according to the Federation of American Scientists. The United States and Russia possess roughly 87 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons inventory and 83 percent of warheads available for military use.
The last confirmed nuclear test by the United States was in 1992 under then-President George H.W. Bush. China has reportedly not tested a nuclear weapon since 1996, and Russia’s most recent tests involved delivery systems, not actual detonation of a nuclear device; Trump’s announcement followed news that Russia had successfully tested its nuclear-capable weapons system.
But reigniting long-dormant nuclear weapons testing isn’t as simple as flipping a switch — and a single test could take months, or years, and require congressional approval.
The United States does have a facility for underground nuclear weapons tests: the Energy Department’s Nevada Test Site, roughly 65 miles north of Las Vegas, where the government last tested a nuclear warhead in 1992.
Experts estimate resuming tests at that facility or others could cost at least $100 million.
Most nuclear weapons testing was banned under the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, except for underground tests. Underground tests weren’t banned until the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which was signed by the world’s atomic powers in 1996.
But the treaty was never ratified in the United States; it was rejected by the Senate in 1999, leaving it effectively unenforced. Russia rescinded its ratification of the treaty in 2023, pointing to the United States’ failure to do so.
North Korea is believed to be the only country to have openly tested a nuclear weapon in this century, in 2017.
Before Trump’s announcement, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists had set the Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds to midnight, “the closest it has ever been to catastrophe.”
“Any actual move to return to explosive testing would set off a cascade with the other nuclear-armed states likely to follow,” according to Bulletin president Alexandra Bell.
“No one would benefit from that more than China, as they are currently building up their nuclear forces, but lack the extensive testing data that the United States possesses,” she said in a statement to The Independent.
But another key safeguard against a global arms race between two major nuclear powers is set to expire in February.
The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty has sought to limit the United States and Russia to no more than 1,550 deployed warheads on no more than 700 operational launchers, but no talks appear to be underway on another agreement.
A failure to renew an agreement “risks the first major buildup of deployed U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear weapons in more than 35 years,” according to Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.