The United States conducted a subcritical nuclear test on Tuesday, the first since September 2021, a government agency said, in an apparent effort to bolster deterrence against countries such as China and Russia.
The experiment, the third under the administration of President Joe Biden, was carried out in Nevada to collect "essential data" regarding the country's nuclear warheads, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Although China and Russia, as well as Iran and North Korea, continue to expand their nuclear capabilities, the test is likely to trigger criticism as running counter to disarmament hopes in places such as Hiroshima, a Japanese city that was devastated by a U.S. atomic bomb during World War II.
The NNSA, an arm of the U.S. Energy Department, said in a statement issued Thursday that it "relies on subcritical experiments to collect valuable information to support the safety, security, reliability and effectiveness of America's nuclear warheads, without the use of nuclear explosive testing."
It said the experiment was executed Tuesday evening in the Principal Underground Laboratory for Subcritical Experimentation facility at the Nevada National Security Site.
The United States suspended underground nuclear tests in 1992 and began subcritical nuclear tests five years later.
As subcritical nuclear tests do not result in a nuclear explosion, the United States has asserted that they are not prohibited under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which the country has signed but not ratified.
The NNSA also said the latest test, which brought the total number of U.S. subcritical tests to 34, did not form a self-sustaining, supercritical chain reaction and was therefore consistent with the country's self-imposed moratorium on nuclear testing in place since 1992.
Tuesday's test was the first in the "Nimble series," carried out with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the NNSA said, adding it will continue the new cycle of experiments also with support from Los Alamos National Laboratory.
"We plan to increase the frequency of these subcritical experiments so we can continue to gather important data on nuclear weapons materials, with no technical need for a return to underground nuclear explosive testing," Marvin Adams, deputy administrator for the agency's defense programs, said in the statement.
Three rounds of subcritical nuclear tests were conducted under the administration of Biden's predecessor Donald Trump and four rounds under the Barack Obama administration.
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