America Go For Mini-nuke

The United State`s Senate approved President George W. Bush`s request for abandoning a law that prohibits development and research of small nuclear weapons on May 20th. This will enable the U.S. to launch an effective nuclear attack on its potential enemy`s underground facilities.

The vote was passed by 51 to 43. The Senate prohibited the law in 1993 to prevent spread of international nuclear weapons.

Secretary of Defense Ronald Rumsfeld argued right before the voting, “The government will only research on nuclear weapons without any intention to develop, deploy or utilize them in the future.”

However, member of Democratic Party strongly denounced against these remarks saying, “It is hard to believe the argument. America`s effort to block other countries from producing nuclear weapons failed.”

The U.S. Defense Department requested some 15.5 million dollars to the Houses for funds for research of new bunker-buster nuclear warhead. AFP Network reported that the new bomb could penetrate 30 to 100m thick concretes, which amounts to exploding 1000 tons of TNT at the same time in theory.

This research budget is included in the 2004 defense budgets worth of 400.5 billion dollars, so the Republican would have to face the Democrats in the final decision session on May 21st to pass the bill.

So-called “Mini-nuke” is referred to nuclear weapons whose power reaches less than 5000 tons of TNT. During the Second World War, the atomic bomb dropped in Hiroshima, Japan had a power of 15,000 tons of TNT.

Mini-nukes first appeared due to its capability to target detailed marks while the U.S. signed for the CTBT under the Clinton administration. While traditional bunker-busters like B53 with 9 million tons of TNT can give the first shocks to any underground targets, new bunker-busters like B61-11 could go further underground through their layered-shocking effects.

The necessity of mini-nukes was first proposed at Nuclear Position Review (NPR) released in January, 2002. In December, it attracted public attention as the U.S. administration eliminated a law prohibiting pre-attacks against non-nuclear holding nations in its nuclear strategic report.

At that time, The Washington Post mentioned North Korea, Iran, Syria and Libya as potential targets of the U.S. attacks.

One problem of mini-nukes is that it could bring radio-active damages on the ground. A research member of Atomic Power Policy Center at Seoul National University Gang Jung-min said, “To prevent any effects on the ground, they should be exploded 200m-deep from the ground. Any current bunker-busters would not be able to penetrate that without shattering their detonators.”

Rae-Jeong Park ecopark@donga.com