Debate on a comprehensive nuclear weapons test ban: Pro

AUG 01, 1983

A critic on the inside says that a treaty is vital to world security, that it is technically feasible, and that the nuclear weapons laboratories should end their opposition to the idea

DOI: 10.1063/1.2915795

Hugh E. DeWitt

The 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty prohibits nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, the oceans and space. Nevertheless, nuclear tests continue at an alarming rate—almost one explosion per week somewhere in the world—although now the testing is largely underground.

This article is only available in PDF format

References

1. This September 1978 statement by Roger Batzel is quoted in the abstract of J. K. Landauer, National Security and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory report number UCRL‐52911(SRD), 29 February 1980. The abstract has been declassified; the report is classified as Secret Restricted Data.
2. G. T. Seaborg, Kennedy, Khruschev, and the Test Ban, U. Calif. P., Berkeley (1981).
3. Science 201, 1105 ( 22 September 1978).
4. Interview with Harold Agnew, Los Alamos Science, volume 2, number 2 (Summer/Fall 1981).
5. Widely reported in national newspapers on 20 July 1982. Implications of this announcement are discussed at length in The Defense Monitor, volume XI, number 8, Center for Defense Information, Washington, D.C. (1982).
6. Excerpts from General Hoover’s testimony given in Public Interest Report, Federation of American Scientists, Washington, D.C. (October 1982), page 8.
7. See, for example, the San Francisco Chronicle, 10 August 1982.
8. L. Sykes, J. Evernden, Sci. Am., October 1982, page 47.
9. Letter from Michael May to Gerald E. Marsh, 17 December 1982.
10. Aviation Week and Space Technology, 23 February 1981.
11. Aviation Week and Space Technology, 20 September 1982.
12. See Herbert York’s article, PHYSICS TODAY, March 1983, page 24.
13. Quoted in The New York Times, 8 March 1983, page 13.
14. Unpublished notes from the office of Thomas C. Bache Jr., Geophysical Sciences Division, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, January 1983.
15. J. K. Landauer, UCRL‐52911(SRD), see reference 1.
16. J. K. Landauer, National Security and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory report number UCRL‐84848, August 1980 (unclassified).

More about the authors

Hugh E. DeWitt, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.