The US does not plan to conduct nuclear explosions, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said, calming global concerns that the military will continue to test weapons.
“These are not nuclear explosions,” Wright told FOX News on Sunday. “This is what we call a non-critical explosion.”
The comments come days after Trump tweeted that he had ordered defense officials to “start testing our nuclear weapons” against rival powers.
But Wright, whose port agencies are accepting, said that people living in the Nevada Desert should have “no worries” about seeing a mushroom cloud.
“Americans near historic test sites like the Nevada National Security Site have no reason to worry,” Wright said. “So you test all the other parts of a nuclear weapon to make sure they provide the appropriate geometry, and they set up the nuclear explosion.”
Trump’s comments on the truth last week were interpreted by many as a sign that the US is preparing to restart full-scale explosions in the period since 1992.
In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, which was recorded Friday and aired Sunday, Trump reiterated his position.
“I said we’re going to test nuclear weapons like other countries, yes,” Trump said of a nuclear weapon for the first time in more than 30 years.
“Russia’s test, and China’s test, but they don’t talk about it,” he added.
Russia and China have not carried out such tests since 1990 and 1996 respectively.
Continuing further on the subject, Trump said: “They’re not going to come and tell you.”
“I don’t want to be the only country that doesn’t test,” he said, adding North Korea and Pakistan to the list of countries said to have tested their arsenals.
On Monday, China’s foreign ministry denied conducting nuclear tests.
As a “responsible nuclear weapons state, China has always … supported a disrespect for nuclear security to ensure a regular press conference in Beijing.
He added that China hopes that the US will “take concrete actions to protect the international nuclear refinement and maintain the nuclear regime and maintain the global strategic balance and maintain the global”.
On Thursday, Russia also denied that it had conducted nuclear tests.
“Regarding the tests of Poseidon and Burestnik, we hope that the information was expressed correctly by President Trump,” said the Kremlin’s Dmitry Peskov, told the names of the Russian weapons. “This cannot in any way be interpreted as a nuclear test.”
North Korea is the only country to have conducted a nuclear test since the 1990s – and even Pyongyang announced a moratorium in 2018.
The exact number of nuclear warheads held by each country is kept secret in each case – but Russia is thought to have a total of about 5,459 warheads while the US has about 5,177, according to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS).
The US-based ACA gave slightly higher estimates, saying America’s nuclear stockpile sits at about 5,225 warheads, while Russia has an estimated 5,580.
China is the world’s third largest nuclear power with about 600 warheads, France has 290, the United Kingdom 225, India 180, Pakistan 170, Israel 90 and North Korea 50, the FAS says.
According to the US think tank Center for Strategic Studies (CSIS), China) has begun to double its nuclear arsenal in the last five years and is expected to exceed 1,000 weapons by 2030.