N-tests kept ‘secret’

Press, 16 January 1986, Page 8

N-tests kept ‘secret’

NZPA-Reuter Washington The United States conducted up to 19 secret nuclear weapons tests between 1982 and 1984, according to a report released yesterday. This raises questions about the ability to detect cheating on a test ban treaty. The report by the Natural Resources Defence Council, a lobby group, is the first indication of the scope of secret underground tests by the Reagan Administration. The secret test programme has received little publicity. The council released a 1982 Government document stating that a programme

known as “Operation Anvil” called for keeping certain United States nuclear tests secret in the “national interest.” The document was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Most, if not all, United States nuclear tests were made public between 1977 and 1982, according to the Centre for Defence Information, a research group run by retired military officers. A spokesman for the Department of Energy, which tests nuclear weapons at a desert site, said some tests had been concealed for “security reasons.” He declined to comment on the council’s estimate that 12 to 19 such tests were held

between 1982 and 1984. Of the 12 to 19 unannounced tests, eight were detected by seismic stations in Sweden and the United States which monitor earthquakes and bomb tests. The rest went unrecorded, the report said. The failure to detect those tests raises a key arms control question — would it be possible to prevent cheating on a proposed comprehensive test ban treaty?

The Soviet Union has never made its atomic tests public, but official Western sources estimate it has conducted a total of 564 nuclear tests since 1945 and the United States 772.