Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 17, 1993 TAG: 9306170261
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Among the gleams in the nuclear planners' eyes is a "micro-nuke" with the explosive power of just 10 tons of TNT, an item that might be suitable for jobs like blasting Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein out of his Baghdad bunker.
A request to fund research into such small atomic weapons is in President Clinton's 1994 budget proposal for the Department of Energy.
Not surprisingly, the idea has sparked a blast from nuclear opponents.
"Nuclear zealots couldn't care less that the Cold War is over," Bill Arkin, a nuclear researcher with the environmental group Greenpeace, complained. "What is shocking, though, is that the Clinton administration tolerates, and even supports, these new programs."
Arkin described the fledgling program in a report in the July-August issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. White House and Pentagon officials acknowledged such work is under way but would not comment further.
The Lawrence Livermore Lab in California and the Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico want to press ahead with development of what the Clinton budget proposal calls a "precision, low-yield warhead."
The proposed 10-ton "micro-nuke," would pack a punch 10 times the size of the largest non-nuclear bombs dropped during the Persian Gulf War. It would be 1/500th the size of the B-61, the smallest nuclear warhead in the Pentagon inventory.
The labs also are weighing development of a "mini-nuke," with the explosive power of 100 tons of TNT, to destroy nuclear, biological and chemical warheads in flight, according to Los Alamos documents.
A third warhead - the "tiny-nuke" - would have the power of 1,000 tons of TNT and might be used against enemy ground troops.
by CNB