US Nuclear Weapons Testing To Resume For First Time in Over 30 Years (bbc.com) 207
New submitter hadleyburg writes: President Trump has directed the Department of War to restart nuclear weapons testing. The directive appears to be a counter measure to rival nations catching up with the US. The last US nuclear test was an underground test, on September 23, 1992, in Nevada.
Ah yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobel prize candidate cheeto claims to be the most peaceful president and wants to set up nukes.
Re:Ah yes (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ah yes (Score:5, Informative)
Ukraine handed over its nukes after the fall of the soviet union. So peaceful there.
They also received assurances from both the US and Russia about economic and security support in exchange for giving up the weapons. Those assurances did not age well.
Fuck off, rutroll (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Ah yes (Score:2)
âoeTaken overâ - meaning actually got a democratically elected government, instead of a Russian stooge government.
Re: Ah yes (Score:4, Insightful)
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Are you suggesting we give them up?
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Yes at a matter of fact. They don't act as a deterrent to enemies and they are unlikely to win any wars. Plus if a nuke is used against the US, nuking the rest of the world into oblivion in retaliation seems self-defeating at best.
Re:Ah yes (Score:5, Insightful)
By letting Ukraine fall to Russia that is exactly the message that is being sent. "Get your own nukes or a stronger country will invade and the rest of world will not stop in to stop it"
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It's also exactly why Putin's nuclear sabre rattles and the excuse that Russia is threatened by NATO as completely empty rhetoric.
There is not a world where NATO attacks or invades Russia unprovoked and Russia knows that. The idea they need Ukraine as a buffer is stupid but notice they didn't invade Latvia or Estonia who share a border and are feeling pretty good about getting into NATO.
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No, they aren't bluffing. Detection methods are too well honed; you can't fake a test nuke (nor can you hide one). They've exploded nukes, no question. You can look up the exact dates and times they've done so.
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Actually in any conflict the deeply dug-in artillery that the North has had on the border since the Armistice is the single biggest factor securing peace on the peninsula, they could flatten Seoul in a matter of minutes. Imagine the effect on the worlds' stock markets if LG, Hyundai, Kia, Samsung, etc. were decapitated simultaneously, that's likely the real reason why the US and SK have never invaded the North.
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The leading Iranian mullahs have issued fatwas against creating WMD in general and nukes in particular. Apparently Shi'a Islam is very much opposed to the killing of innocents, and there is really almost no other use for nukes than to destroy population centers.
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Maybe compare how the Untied States treat Middle Eastern countries who don't have nukes to the one country there which does.
I remember a rumor in the Reagan years that Israel had planted one of its nuclear weapons in an office building in central DC and threatened to set it off if the US didn't give it more money and weapons. It probably wasn't true, but it would explain why our congresscritters are so nauseatingly submissive to Israel's every whim.
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By letting Ukraine fall to Russia that is exactly the message that is being sent. "Get your own nukes or a stronger country will invade and the rest of world will not stop in to stop it"
Muammar Gaddafi could tell you that. Except he was sodomized and murdered by NATO. So could Saddam Hussein, but he was hung. North Korea learned the lesson, apparently Iran didn't.
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Neither Iraq 1 or 2 were NATO operations. NATO members sure and they did some training and but not NATO actions.
North Korea is friendly with China and USSR/Russia so they have had access to capabilities Libya never really had access to and Gaddafi was probably smart enough to know pursuing nuclear enrichment is a good way to get an even larger target on your back.
Iran hasn't had them not for lack of trying though and nobody who supported withdrawing from JCPOA should have anything to say about proliferatio
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Neither Iraq 1 or 2 were NATO operations.
What does that have to do with anything? If Hussein really had "weapons of mass destruction" he would still be alive.
Gaddafi was probably smart enough to know pursuing nuclear enrichment is a good way to get an even larger target on your back.
He was dumb enough to agree to end his nuclear weapons development regardless of how likely it was to succeed. And he almost certainly would still be alive if he had them.
Iran hasn't had them not for lack of trying though
Iran has repeatedly agreed not to develop nuclear weapons. It got bombed anyway. Your original comment was this:
"Get your own nukes or a stronger country will invade and the rest of world will not stop in to stop it"
My point was that was obvious before Ukraine and will be no more obvious regardless of the outcome of the war in
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Have to do with anything? You brought up that NATO had anything to do with deposing Hussein and that's not true, that was the US coalition which several prominent NATO members specifically didn't enjoin. Maybe we can call that splitting hairs but NATO gets enough shit we don't need to ascribe things they didn't do.
If Hussein had *nukes* in '91 or '03 yes he might be alive but if he was trying uranium enrichment that would have been actual pretense for war instead of the made up one, there was a reason they
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Re: Ah yes (Score:3)
Why would âoeSoviet nukesâ get returned to Russia? Russia was only one Soviet republic, just like Ukraine was, or are you saying g that everyone was equal except some were more equal than others?
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They handed over missiles that they didn't have launch codes for, and the triggers had all been removed before the Soviet troops left anyway. So essentially they handed over nuclear waste.
This is absurd. These were Uranium bombs. PALs and associated safeguards are only designed to keep end users from doing something they shouldn't and prevent uncommanded detonation. Ukraine easily had the skills and resources to detonate them if they wanted to.
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That makes the assumption there'd be a Ukraine at all.
It would have upped the pressure for Russia to take Ukraine before they got the nukes working.
Maybe Russia was too much a mess to do it by that time, maybe not.
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At least it lead to an election. Under the USSR, you'd have no say what-so-ever WRT to the people controlling you.
Re:Ah yes (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ah yes (Score:5, Informative)
It would have upped the pressure for Russia to take Ukraine before they got the nukes working.
The nukes were already working, when Ukraine got independent in 1992. They were the old Soviet nukes which happened to be located on Ukrainian territory. In the Budapest agreement, Ukraine voluntarily transferred their nukes to Russia in exchange for Russian warranty to respect Ukrainian autonomy, which President Putin broke in 2014, when he occupied Crimea and staged an uprising in Eastern Ukraine.
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But "historical claims" are bullshit. In Germany, we have the joke "Germany in the borders of 1244! SSC Napoli is the next German Soccer champion!". Do you think, Lithuania will claim Belarus? Do you dream of a common border between Poland and Türkiye? What if Egypt is ruled again from Baghdad, and the Mongols rule in China? Upstate New York gets returned to the Iroquois?
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The reality is nuclear weapons are such a terrible, destructive weapon that they bring peace. The Cuban Missile Crisis hammered that home to the world.
The lesson of world history where nukes are concerned is best explained by survivorship bias.
Re:Ah yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Donald incited insurrection, pardoned violent assaults on 140 police then fired agents for bringing attackers to justice
Biden doesn't have a clue who he pardoned nor fired, but his list includes many of the same types.
Nope. He did not incite insurrection, did not pardon insurrectionists, did not pardon people making assaults on police officers, and he did not fire prosecutors for prosecuting people who broke the law.
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Do they though? In an age of guerilla warfare, they don't seem to even enter the calculus. Russia continues to raise the spectre of nuclear weapons in their war against Ukraine, but that certainly isn't going to deter the Ukrainians. After they are wiped out by nuclear blasts then yes, that would end it for them. But it certainly would be a pyrrhic victory for Putin.
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The reality is nuclear weapons are such a terrible, destructive weapon that they bring peace. The Cuban Missile Crisis hammered that home to the world.
I think that is a misreading of history. The Cuban Missile Crisis was sparked by the Soviet Union placing nuclear armed missiles in Cuba. The United States was unwilling to accept that. The Soviets had miscalculated our response. Kennedy needed to convince them that we were prepared to go to war over those missiles. Both sides understood the Cuban missiles were in a use them or lose them position in a war. If the United States attacked to try to destroy the missiles they would be launched on warning. Kenned
Re: Ah yes (Score:2)
The problem is that Ukraine couldnâ(TM)t maintain nuclear weapons anyway. Giving them up was partly done because having a bunch of aging nuclear weapons hanging around in unguarded, unmaintained facilities is a terrible plan, and because guarding and maintaining facilities is expensive.
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Illegal (Score:2)
The hague will be waiting for Putin and Trump.
Does anyone know how? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if the people who know how didn't move on over the last few decades, surely they would have been fired some time in the last few months as part of the overall effort to weaken the US economy, health, and defenses.
Is there anyone left who knows how to do the job? Can they be hired back, after the Epstein shutdown is over?
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I have a file folder stashed somewhere in my old work notes with the details. If my memory serves me correctly, it's labeled HOWTO: FOGBANK.
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Re: Does anyone know how? (Score:2)
Because you need to measure what happens when it goes off. You donâ(TM)t just want to find out if big boom happens, you want to find out what the properties of that boom were and if they match your modelling. Just finding out if one nuke goes boom tells you if one nuke is in working condition. Measuring everything you can about that detonation tells you if the entire arsenal works.
Awesome! (Score:5, Funny)
I was starting to think the levels of existential dread were starting to deplete a little. You can only keep yourself amped up over an existential threat for as long as it takes for it to become the norm. It was about time we found a way to stoke those flames again.
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The total number of warheads worldwide in the 80's was around 70,000. We're currently sitting around 12,000, with most of these in the US and Russia. So please realize that those of us who were kids in the 80's, and who watched movies like The Day After [wikipedia.org] while growing up, had at least as much existential dread to deal with in elementary school back then.
Remember to put everything in perspective. There's never been a time in human history without widespread misery, and by pretty much any metric you'd much
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I always wondered how getting low and covering my head was going to save me from a nuke, probably it wasnt.
It'll protect you from debris if the building collapses.
If they make the cities and bases near me glow then I'm fucked no matter.
I was watching a PBS program about Hiroshima/Nagasaki a few months back. They interviewed a little old Japanese lady who was working as a telephone operator in the basement of a building in Hiroshima (a teenager at the time). She was one of the first people to get the message out to the rest of the country (probably via a protected underground line). She also described the horrors of what she saw when she emerged from the basement. But ... not glowing.
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Thanks to movies and hyperbolic descriptions the initial effects of nuclear weapons are vastly overestimated and their long term effects vastly underestimated. If you don't get hit by the initial flash and radiation, and you manage to find cover so the blast doesn't take you out, you stand a very good chance of surviving unharmed and be able to get away from the area of danger.
Even laying down in a ditch or similar is likely to be enough to not suffer any ill effects from the detonation itself. But then it'
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Re: Awesome! (Score:2)
The Burevestnik missile (named for a small seabird, the storm petrel*) has been described as being subsonic but able to circle the globe. The most recent confirmed test lasted about two minutes before it crashed into the ocean; five scientists were later killed during recovery operations.
* Said to be a herald of coming storms. Personally I prefer the whimsy of the Ukrainian "flamingo" but that's just me.
Fearmongering headlines for the win (Score:5, Insightful)
First, the president, per usual, doesn't really understand what he's talking about - DOD doesn't do nuclear tests, DOE does that. However, he may have just been sloppy in his language (what else is new), as he clearly related it to the "tests" of other countries, which have been tests of _weapon systems_, not warheads. The US tests weapon systems that can deliver nuclear weapons _all the time_ - even if you restrict that to nuclear-only systems like SLBMs and ICBMs. It will not have been 30 years since we tested such a system - it will have been barely over a month (the US tested 4 Trident D5LE missiles in late september).
This benefits Russia and China (Score:5, Insightful)
Testing of nuclear weapons among the major nuclear powers tapered off with the end of the Cold War and the international norm against testing creates a real disincentive to test, even in well contained, underground scenarios.
Back when testing wasn't so taboo the United States had a HUGE advantage in terms of the measurement and recording of test data. That advantage stemmed from computing advantages which have since ebbed. Normalizing live testing gives Russia and China an opportunity to catch up with that data and modeling advantage consequence free. "The US is testing, so we should too."
Trump isn't leaning into testing because Russia or China told him too -- he's just a vainglorious blowhard who likes the idea of setting off nuclear weapons -- but this nevertheless benefits American adversaries a great deal more than it benefits the United States.
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I imagine it benefits China but not Russia. I seriously doubt Russia's stockpile is in better shape than the US. The only variable is how much data Russia has gotten from assisting NK testing.
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I imagine it benefits China but not Russia. I seriously doubt Russia's stockpile is in better shape than the US.
Russia's stockpile is undoubtably in much worse shape, because the Russians have not been spending money on maintenance. But Russia has 5,549 nuclear warheads. Even if only one out of four of them successfully detonate, they're still well ahead of China's 600.
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Russia is testing nuclear delivery systems like their new "Skyfall" missile. But they're not testing warheads. Now, in fairness, Trump is very old, quite possible senile, and not terribly bright so it's entirely possible that he doesn't understand the difference between Russia testing a missile and Russia testing a bomb. But his order is making news because, as written, it's calling on the United States to resume the live-fire testing of nuclear weapons and we stopped doing that in (off the top of my hea
What does this mean? (Score:3)
Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis
The Russians and the Chinese are not firing off nukes. I hope this is about delivery vehicles and not underground nuclear detonations. Being handicapped to numerical simulation and nonproliferation treaty workarounds (e.g. NIF) hurts other countries more than it hurts the US.
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It also sounds like a warning to Russia and China not to test first.
Sorry, which department? (Score:5, Informative)
President Trump has directed the Department of War...
I know the President and warrior-bro Hegseth like to pretend otherwise, but it's still actually called the Department of Defense. Actually changing the name would require passing a law. Wasting hundreds of millions [the-independent.com] to change the signs and letterhead doesn't count.
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Wasting hundreds of millions [the-independent.com] to change the signs and letterhead doesn't count.
That's money well spent.
Now, healthcare for the hoi polloi is a waste.
Mixed emotions (Score:2)
From a proliferation and environmental standpoint I think it is a shame... but from an engineering perspective it is necessary if we are going to continue to rely on the arsenal. The question is if it will be dick waving or fundamental engineering testing.
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From a proliferation and environmental standpoint I think it is a shame... but from an engineering perspective it is necessary if we are going to continue to rely on the arsenal. The question is if it will be dick waving or fundamental engineering testing.
Look at who's giving the directive to do the testing, that's all you need to know to figure out if it's for dick waving (no matter how small), or fundamental engineering testing.
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From a proliferation and environmental standpoint I think it is a shame... but from an engineering perspective it is necessary if we are going to continue to rely on the arsenal. The question is if it will be dick waving or fundamental engineering testing.
The arsenal is perfectly reliable as-is, and I don't need nuclear tests to prove it. It is very reliably making other nuclear powers think very hard before using a nuke because they know there's a chance that if they do so, we're all going down. Slight facetiousness aside, the only possible outcomes of testing are:
1) The nuke detonates as expected. We all get to see a cool explosion. Deterrent effect remains unchanged, but the taboo against nuclear testing in polite society is significantly weakened. If
FTFY (Score:2)
I have a suggestion for two test sites (Score:2)
The East Wing of the White House (better yet if Kim Don Un has finished his absolutely not at all tiny penis compensating ballroom by then), or Mar a Lago. Either would be great, thanks.
Sigh (Score:2)
Making sure that weapons actually work is a good idea.
But oh no OMG Trump Trump something something ...
Re:Sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
But oh no OMG Trump Trump something something ...
I understand your point about people being irrationally triggered by president Trump. But you would surely accept that it is not entirely without reason.
Making sure that weapons actually work is a good idea.
That would first be based on the assumption that nuclear weapons are morally defensible. Some think they are, but not everyone.
But I would suggest that there are other considerations.
1. If the US restarts nuclear weapons testing, that sends a signal to other nations. It was quite difficult to wind down nuclear testing at the end of last century. Are we sure that we want it all back on again?
2. Nuclear testing has a negative environmental impact - Even underground testing. We are less free-wheeling about environmental impact now than we were in the 1950s and '60s.
USA never actually stopped testing nukes (Score:2)
they just do it in other ways now. Openly blowing up big nukes doesn't advance the knowledge any longer. At best it would be a show of force. In reality it is nothing more than attention getting for the talking point alone.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
They're very old and we don't know if they still work.
Since the point of nuclear weapons is to keep them as a threat of massive retaliation, the important thing is to make sure that the opponents don't know whether they don't work.
If you ever have to use them... they failed to do their job.
Re: Good (Score:4, Informative)
No, they didn't. Russia hasn't carried out a nuclear weapons test since 1990, two years before the US stopped testing them.
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That has nothing to do with this. Things like bullets and warheads expire all the time for the US military, that's why we make replacements for them.
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Doh, you're correct. Bad assumption by me there. Never the less we are regularly refurbishing our current stock.
Plus, we would have to detonate a lot of warheads to get a proper idea on how all our old 20th century warheads are doing, particularly since from what I'm seeing there are 7 different designs for them. Each would need to be tested multiple times to get a proper idea on what the status of all of them is. Even with underground testing that's a rather concerning amount of radiation released into the
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Nobody is making replacement warheads in the US.
Just wait a few weeks for Trump's next announcement.
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Pit production at Los Alamos is about 1/year. A new facility should be ready by 2027 in Aiken, SC that can produce 30-50 pits per year.
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Hopefully it's on the normal Pentagon construction schedule, which means that it will actually be ready for use by 2047.
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However uranium and plutonium have a half life. But you won't have to wait all that time for the decay to be significant, only a fraction of that time is needed because when a certain time has gone the mass of active material has become below the critical level and the wanted effect can be lost. The material it decays into can also slow down the process. You might still get a "dirty bomb" though.
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Why do people assume this means detonating nukes?
This is Trump, why do people assume this isn't just a negotiating tactic?
Re:Good (Score:4, Funny)
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That's actually pretty funny - I like it.
However, it being Trump, odds are he does mean detonating them. His mind is pretty simple.
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Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Because not every single thing he says can or should be just handwaved "oh it's just a negotiating tactic". At some point the fucking President of the United States should be able to speak clearly. Why is global diplomacy being negotiated on Truth Social posts?
We need to stop covering for his stupidity. Stop being scared of "TDS" because the people who will accuse of that will do it over anything at all and have used it to normalize absolutely dogshit and stupid things like this.
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Because not every single thing he says can or should be just handwaved "oh it's just a negotiating tactic".
AKA "sanewashing". They've been doing this for YEARS.
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Well they wanted trade wars in the way Trump said it would work; The US demands whatever we want, other countries give it to us without question because "we strong" and then they pay all that tariff money to the USA and somehow everything gets cheaper.
Trump is a very zero-sum guy, so much that it's delusional. He seemingly cannot comprehend a world where both parties in a trade negotiation come away with something they want which is exactly how global trade works. That mindset is pretty core to America a
Transactional (Score:2)
Trump is a very zero-sum guy
No, he is completely transactional and self-interested. He doesn't care whether someone else benefits if he can get what he wants in return. But he is a bully. He likes MAKING other people serve his interests. So, given the choice between offering something to get what he wants and threatening someone, he leans into threatening them.
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You're definitely not wrong and to me none of these traits are exclusive exclusive, he is able to be all those things at any time and sometimes all the time, even when they are contradictory.
This is one of those reasons Trump can't be emulated, only imitated and not convincingly as many have tried. He isn't faking this, he's a mutant of a human being.
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I didn't say it was reality but what they were presented as. Actually if you talk to a Republican they'll tell you it's both.
Also strawman, I never said "Free trade better for everyone" that's far too broad a statement than i made or would ever make but international free trade agreements tend to be win-win situations for both nation states, that's why they make them, everybody is getting something they want.
It's not all wins all the time for all people, that's childlike to think, hell we should freely ad
Re: Good (Score:3)
in order to BEGIN planning a new factory based on tarifs, I need to know, KNOW, with damn near absolute certainty, that the tariffs I need will still be in effect when my factory finally opens its doors, a decade from now. Otherwise I canâ(TM)t risk making the investment, only to lose out before I can even finish. That is part of th
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Apparently, like Rump, you believe that companies can wave a magic wand and factories and mines just appear. It really doesn't work that way. The REE mines that they think the trade war will cause to reopen here in the Untied States will take at least a decade between bringing the first equipment onto the site and any product actually coming out of the refinery. A new car factory costs hundreds of millions or more, a chip foundry billions, they will only be built if 1) the tariffs are so high and last so
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https://www.nbcnews.com/politi... [nbcnews.com] “We don’t do testing. We’ve halted it years, many years ago. But with others doing testing, I think it’s appropriate that we do also,” Trump said after his meeting with Xi.
What is your take away from that statement?
Re: Good (Score:2)
Because thatâ(TM)s literally what nuclear weapons testing means.
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They're very old and we don't know if they still work.
No they are not and yes we do.
The US doesn't just make nukes and leave them standing around in the Siberian tundra in a puddle of water while the local staff sell off anything they can find for booze money. The properties of plutonium are well understood and the simulations are very good. There's a regular schedule of maintenance, removing, reforming and re machining the pits.
Plus, just to make sure the simulations are accurate, they still do sub critica
Re:Good (Score:4, Funny)
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They'll probably do it in a place like Nevada in the middle of the desert where it will effect zero people, and any radiation is contained underground.
Knowing Trump he'll pick blue states for nuclear weapons testing, which kinda includes Nevada -- they're a little wobbly on the red/blue thing, but Trump carried it in 2024 ...
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As long as Trump are on site watching the nuke with his own eyes when it blows I wouldn't mind.
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