President Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered the U.S. Department of War to immediately start testing U.S. nuclear weapons just ahead of a meeting with President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China.
The U.S. largely stopped full-scale nuclear testing in the 1990s, with the last underground test at the Nevada Test Site in 1992.
Trump ordered the Pentagon to resume nuclear testing immediately.
“Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” the president wrote in a social media post on Wednesday. “That process will begin immediately.”
“The United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country. This was accomplished, including a complete update and renovation of existing weapons, during my First Term in office,” Trump wrote. “Because of the tremendous destructive power, I HATED to do it, but had no choice! Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years.”
Maintaining the U.S. nuclear stockpile is expected to cost nearly $1 trillion over the next decade. The Department of War’s and the Department of Energy’s plans to operate, sustain, and modernize existing nuclear forces and buy new weapons are estimated to cost $946 billion over the 2025–2034 period, or an average of about $95 billion a year, the Congressional Budget Office estimated in a report in April.
President George H.W. Bush began a unilateral testing ban in 1992. President Bill Clinton signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1996. Since then, the U.S. has conducted subcritical experiments to maintain the safety and reliability of the world’s largest nuclear stockpile, according to the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.
