US National Academy of Sciences Report Caveats on Nuclear Bucker Busting Bombs -- Bush Administration Indifferent. (May 16, 2005)

      On April 28 the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released it report Effects of Nuclear Earth-Penetrator and Other Weapons (2005). In its fiscal 2003 Defense Authorization Act, the US Congress directed the Pentagon to request the study to examine the health and environmental effects of the bombs.

The 150 page report concludes with nine "most important conclusions" which leave little wiggle room. Nuclear bunker busters are a none starter.

According to The Washington Post, "On Capitol Hill yesterday [April 28], Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld [in defending the administration's request for $US8.5 million to peruse the development of nuclear bunker busters]  faced incredulity from at least one senator on why the administration is pursuing the weapons.

"'It is beyond me as to why you're proceeding with this program when the laws of physics won't allow a missile to be driven deeply enough to retain the fallout, which will spew in hundreds of millions of cubic feet if it's at 100 kilotons," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in a subcommittee hearing of the Appropriations Committee.

"Rumsfeld replied that 70 countries are pursuing 'activities underground' using technology that allows them to burrow into solid rock the length of a basketball court in a single day.

"'At the present time, we don't have a capability of dealing with that. We can't go in there and get at things in solid rock underground,' he said. 'The only thing we have is very large, very dirty, big nuclear weapons. So . . . do we want to have nothing and only a large, dirty nuclear weapon, or would we rather have something in between?'"

If Mr Rumsfeld read the NAS' report he certainly took little notice of its conclusions. Quite apart from any other considerations, if the administration of US President George W Bush wants to look creditable when countering the perceived ambitions for nuclear weaponry of nations such as North Korea and Iran, to pursue the development of earth penetrating nuclear weapons with the potential of killing or maiming a million people as "collateral damage" is hardly reassuring, particularly when what Time's Joe Klein refers to as the "Precambrian Right" is so influential within the corridors of US power.

The US National Academy of Sciences