By the end of this week, the Senate will vote on whether to fund research for a new nuclear bomb advocated by the Bush administration: the nuclear bunker buster. The current weapon that the administration intends to research would produce an explosion 70 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. At a time like this, moving forward with new nuclear weapons would be a foreign policy blunder and a waste of money.

The nuclear bunker buster, otherwise termed the 'Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator,' has been one of the cornerstones of a nuclear weapons policy that is taking us away from a sane arms control policy. The administration has also advocated repealing a ten-year old ban on the production of 'low-yield' nuclear weapons and spending $25 million to accelerate a possible return to nuclear testing.

Presidential candidate Senator John Kerry (D-MA) recently declared that President Bush is 'poised to set off a new nuclear arms race by building bunker-busting tactical nuclear weapons. I don't want a world with more usable nuclear weapons.'

Administration officials claim that a bunker buster could penetrate deep into the ground, targeting underground compartments or bunkers that might contain chemical or biological weapons. The nuclear bunker buster, however, is more trouble than it is worth.

First, using a nuclear weapon to destroy biological or chemical agents is risky business because if you miss the consequences could be enormous. Without enough intelligence on a bunker's exact location and size, a nuclear weapon could fail to incinerate the agent, but explode close enough to release the chemical or biological weapons. Far from eliminating them, the bunker buster could thus scatter biological and chemical weapons into the atmosphere, exposing humans miles away from the site to the weapons, causing many casualties.

Second, scientists have concluded that a nuclear bunker buster cannot penetrate deep enough into the ground to contain all of the radiation from the explosion. According to nuclear physicist Sidney Drell, even a relatively small 1-kiloton nuclear explosion 50 feet below the ground would eject 1 million cubic feet of radioactive debris from a crater the size of ground zero at the World Trade Center. There are other, safer non-nuclear ways of handling weapons caches including utilizing precision conventional bombs to close off a bunker's entrances and communications until U.S. forces secure them.

Third, moving ahead with the bunker buster makes us less secure not more. Think of it: as we continue pointing our fingers at Iraq and North Korea over their weapons or research programs, we promote this bunker buster as a 'usable' war-fighting weapon against non-nuclear countries. This is contradictory and dangerous foreign policy, as it provides other states an even greater incentive to pursue weapons programs in order to deter a U.S. attack. Not to mention that utilizing weapons against non-nuclear states undermines US pledges under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) not to do so, thereby hurting efforts to curb weapons production.

It is ironic that as the administration is fending off accusations of misleading the public on weapons in Iraq it is promoting nuclear weapons right at home. This administration has initiated a nuclear policy shift in the wrong direction. If the United States chooses to pursue these weapons, other nations may follow in our footsteps. Our Senators should oppose researching the nuclear bunker buster by voting for amendments in the energy and water appropriations bill S 1424 that would cut the $15 million set aside for it along with other amendments blocking new nuclear weapons development.

Rebecca Zimmerman is a Program Associate with 20/20 Vision, an environmental and disarmament advocacy organization.

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