Energy secretary reveals how US nuclear tests will work
Energy Secretary Chris Wright revealed the U.S. will not be testing nuclear explosions, putting to rest questions over whether the Trump administration would reverse a decades-old taboo.Testing will instead involve...
By Fox News · Fox News
Energy Secretary Chris Wright revealed the U.S. will not be testing nuclear explosions, putting to rest questions over whether the Trump administration would reverse a decades-old taboo. Testing will instead involve "the other parts of a nuclear weapon," Wright told Fox News’ "The Sunday Briefing." "I think the tests we’re talking about right now are systems tests," he explained. "These are not nuclear explosions. These are what we call noncritical explosions." His comments came after President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would reignite "nuclear testing" because other nations were doing so. The president made the announcement on the way to a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping . WITH A NUCLEAR BACKDROP, TRUMP EASES TENSIONS WITH XI BUT MERELY RETURNS TO THE STATUS QUO He didn’t specify whether he meant explosives, which haven’t been tested by the U.S. since 1992, or the weapons that carry them. The only nation to conduct a detonation test in the last 25 years is North Korea in September 2017. The president said he’d directed the Pentagon — which is responsible for testing nuclear-capable vehicles — to resume testing. The Energy Department would have jurisdiction over testing explosives. TRUMP BREAKS 33-YEAR NUCLEAR TESTING SILENCE AS WORLD BRACES FOR DANGEROUS NEW ARMS RACE "We’ve halted it years — many years — ago," Trump said last week. "But with others doing testing, I think it is appropriate that we do also." Asked on Friday to clarify whether the U.S. would begin "detonating nuclear weapons for testing," the president responded, "I’m saying that we’re going to test nuclear weapons like other countries do." Trump claimed in a CBS "60 Minutes" interview over the weekend that U.S. adversaries were secretly testing nuclear weapons. "Russia’s testing nuclear weapons, and China’s testing them, too," he said. "You just don’t know about it." China is rapidly expanding its nuclear silo and is expected to have nearly 1,000 warheads by 2030, according to Pentag…