President Donald Trump instructed the Defense Department to “immediately begin” nuclear weapons testing last week. And that directive has been sending shock waves around the West.
Details are scarce, with the Pentagon pointing KJZZ to Truth Social – adding nothing more at this time – when asking for additional information about Trump’s post he made while overseas moments before meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Prior to a moratorium imposed by Congress in 1992, the U.S. conducted more than 1,000 nuclear tests – mostly done at the Nevada Test Site – even hundreds of above-ground detonations.
“We can’t fully rule it out, that would be extremely provocative,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “No other country in the world has conducted a nuclear test explosion in this century, except for North Korea.”
Along with the Soviet Union and Great Britain, the U.S. signed the Test Ban Treaty of 1963, prohibiting any atmospheric nuclear weapons tests as well as those in outer space and underwater, excluding underground explosions.
Believing “there’s no technical or military need to resume testing,” Kimball fears Trump’s order could escalate a new arms race on the global stage against foreign foes, like Russia and China.
“I don’t think people need to fear mushroom clouds on the desert floor outside of Las Vegas,” added Kimball, “but the very notion of resuming nuclear testing, in my view, is a disrespectful slap in the face to those who in the past have suffered from radiation poisoning from nuclear testing fallouts in the Mountain West.”
Like Leslie Begay, a former Navajo uranium miner. He’s also a Vietnam veteran and cancer survivor, having a double lung transplant with 123 stitches in all, while relying on an oxygen tank since 2015.
“That was the hardest thing I ever encountered,” said Begay. “These are some of the things that people are going to go through within a few more years. They gonna be facing the thing, there’s no cure for it.”
Financial compensation for radiation exposure victims — uranium miners and downwinders — was revived this summer by Congress as part of Trump's “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
