Chris Wright, chief executive officer of Liberty Energy Inc. and nominee for U.S. energy secretary under President-elect Donald Trump, testifies before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee during his confirmation hearing in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 15, 2025. (Al Drago)
He didn’t specify whether he meant explosives, which haven’t been tested by the U.S. since 1992, or the weapons that carry them.
The only nation to conduct a detonation test in the last 25 years is North Korea in September 2017.
The president said he’d directed the Pentagon — which is responsible for testing nuclear-capable vehicles — to resume testing. The Energy Department would have jurisdiction over testing explosives.
TRUMP BREAKS 33-YEAR NUCLEAR TESTING SILENCE AS WORLD BRACES FOR DANGEROUS NEW ARMS RACE
"We’ve halted it years — many years — ago," Trump said last week. "But with others doing testing, I think it is appropriate that we do also."
Asked on Friday to clarify whether the U.S. would begin "detonating nuclear weapons for testing," the president responded, "I’m saying that we’re going to test nuclear weapons like other countries do."
Trump claimed in a CBS ‘60 Minutes’ interview over the weekend that U.S. adversaries were secretly testing nuclear weapons.
"Russia’s testing nuclear weapons, and China’s testing them, too," he said. "You just don’t know about it."
China is rapidly expanding its nuclear silo and is expected to have nearly 1,000 warheads by 2030, according to Pentagon assessments. But Beijing has not conducted a nuclear weapons test since 1996. Russia has not been confirmed to have tested a weapon since 1990, but last week did claim to test two delivery vehicles: an undersea torpedo known as Poseidon and a nuclear-powered cruise missile.
A mushroom cloud rises from a nuclear weapon test during Operation Tumbler-Snapper. Over two thousand Marines witnessed the event, which was conducted in 1952 at the Nevada Proving Ground. (Getty Images)
The U.S. has conducted more than two dozen such tests since the late 1990s.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
"And again, these will be nonnuclear explosions," Mr. Wright said. "These are just developing sophisticated systems so that our replacement nuclear weapons are even better than the ones they were before."
Washington is currently undergoing a three-decade, $1.7 trillion transformation effort to replace aging warheads with updated versions.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/energy-secretary-reveals-how-us-nuclear-tests-work