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United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
was the first country to manufacture
nuclear weapon A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
s and is the only country to have used them in
combat Combat (French for ''fight'') is a purposeful violent conflict meant to physically harm or kill the opposition. Combat may be armed (using weapons) or unarmed ( not using weapons). Combat is sometimes resorted to as a method of self-defense, or ...
, with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
. Before and during the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...
, it conducted 1,054 nuclear tests, and tested many long-range
nuclear weapons delivery Nuclear weapons delivery is the technology and systems used to place a nuclear weapon at the position of detonation, on or near its target. Several methods have been developed to carry out this task. ''Strategic'' nuclear weapons are used primari ...
systems. Between 1940 and 1996, the
U.S. Federal Government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a f ...
spent at least US$ in present-day terms on nuclear weapons, including platforms development (aircraft, rockets and facilities), command and control, maintenance,
waste Waste (or wastes) are unwanted or unusable materials. Waste is any substance discarded after primary use, or is worthless, defective and of no use. A by-product, by contrast is a joint product of relatively minor economic value. A waste pr ...
management and administrative costs. It is estimated that the United States produced more than 70,000 nuclear warheads since 1945, more than all other nuclear weapon states combined. Until November 1962, the vast majority of U.S.
nuclear test Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine nuclear weapons' effectiveness, Nuclear weapon yield, yield, and explosive capability. Testing nuclear weapons offers practical information about how the weapons function, how detona ...
s were above ground. After the acceptance of the
Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty The Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) is the abbreviated name of the 1963 Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water, which prohibited all test detonations of nuclear weapons except for those conducted ...
, all testing was relegated underground, in order to prevent the dispersion of
nuclear fallout Nuclear fallout is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and the shock wave has passed. It commonly refers to the radioac ...
. By 1998, at least US$759 million had been paid to the Marshall Islanders in compensation for their exposure to U.S. nuclear testing. – updated regularly By March 2021 over US$2.5 billion in compensation had been paid to U.S. citizens exposed to nuclear hazards as a result of the U.S. nuclear weapons program. In 2019, the U.S. and Russia possessed a comparable number of nuclear warheads; together, these two nations possess more than 90% of the world's nuclear weapons stockpile. As of 2020, the United States had a stockpile of 3,750 active and inactive nuclear warheads plus approximately 2,000 warheads retired and awaiting dismantlement. Of the stockpiled warheads, the U.S. stated in its March 2019
New START New START ( Russian abbrev.: СНВ-III, ''SNV-III'' from ''сокращение стратегических наступательных вооружений'' "reduction of strategic offensive arms") is a nuclear arms reduction treaty betwee ...
declaration that 1,365 were deployed on 656
ICBM An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more thermonuclear warheads). Conventional, chemical, and biological weapons ...
s,
SLBM A submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) is a ballistic missile capable of being launched from submarines. Modern variants usually deliver multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), each of which carries a nuclear warhea ...
s, and
strategic bomber A strategic bomber is a medium- to long-range Penetrator (aircraft), penetration bomber aircraft designed to drop large amounts of air-to-ground weaponry onto a distant target for the purposes of debilitating the enemy's capacity to wage war. Unl ...
s.Fact Sheet: Nuclear Weapons: Who Has What at a Glance
Arms Control Association (updated: July 2019).


Development history


Manhattan Project

The United States first began developing nuclear weapons during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
under the order of
President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university * President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...
Franklin Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
in 1939, motivated by the fear that they were engaged in a race with
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
to develop such a weapon. After a slow start under the direction of the
National Bureau of Standards The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...
, at the urging of British scientists and American administrators, the program was put under the
Office of Scientific Research and Development The Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) was an agency of the United States federal government created to coordinate scientific research for military purposes during World War II. Arrangements were made for its creation during May 1 ...
, and in 1942 it was officially transferred under the auspices of the
United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, ...
and became known as the
Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...
, an American, British and Canadian joint venture. Under the direction of
General A general officer is an officer of high rank in the armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry. In some usages the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colonel."general, adj. and n.". O ...
Leslie Groves Lieutenant General Leslie Richard Groves Jr. (17 August 1896 – 13 July 1970) was a United States Army Corps of Engineers officer who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and directed the Manhattan Project, a top secret research project ...
, over thirty different sites were constructed for the research, production, and testing of components related to bomb-making. These included the
Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...
at
Los Alamos, New Mexico Los Alamos is an census-designated place in Los Alamos County, New Mexico, United States, that is recognized as the development and creation place of the atomic bomb—the primary objective of the Manhattan Project by Los Alamos National Labo ...
, under the direction of physicist Robert Oppenheimer, the Hanford
plutonium Plutonium is a radioactive chemical element with the symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exh ...
production facility in
Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
, and the
Y-12 National Security Complex The Y-12 National Security Complex is a United States Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration facility located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It was built as part of the Manhattan P ...
in
Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 36th-largest by ...
. By investing heavily in breeding plutonium in early
nuclear reactor A nuclear reactor is a device used to initiate and control a fission nuclear chain reaction or nuclear fusion reactions. Nuclear reactors are used at nuclear power plants for electricity generation and in nuclear marine propulsion. Heat fr ...
s and in the electromagnetic and gaseous diffusion enrichment processes for the production of
uranium-235 Uranium-235 (235U or U-235) is an isotope of uranium making up about 0.72% of natural uranium. Unlike the predominant isotope uranium-238, it is fissile, i.e., it can sustain a nuclear chain reaction. It is the only fissile isotope that exi ...
, the United States was able to develop three usable weapons by mid-1945. The
Trinity test Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. It was conducted by the United States Army at 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project. The test was conducted in the Jornada del Muerto desert abo ...
was a plutonium implosion-design weapon tested on 16 July 1945, with around a 20
kiloton TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. The is a unit of energy defined by that convention to be , which is the approximate energy released in the detonation of a ...
yield. Faced with a planned invasion of the Japanese home islands scheduled to begin on 1 November 1945 and with Japan not surrendering, President Harry S. Truman ordered the atomic raids on Japan. On 6 August 1945, the U.S. detonated a uranium- gun design bomb,
Little Boy "Little Boy" was the type of atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 during World War II, making it the first nuclear weapon used in warfare. The bomb was dropped by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress ''Enola Gay'' p ...
, over the Japanese city of
Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui ...
with an energy of about 15 kilotons of TNT, killing approximately 70,000 people, among them 20,000 Japanese
combatant Combatant is the legal status of an individual who has the right to engage in hostilities during an armed conflict. The legal definition of "combatant" is found at article 43(2) of Additional Protocol I (AP1) to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. It ...
s and 20,000 Korean slave laborers, and destroying nearly 50,000 buildings (including the 2nd General Army and Fifth Division
headquarters Headquarters (commonly referred to as HQ) denotes the location where most, if not all, of the important functions of an organization are coordinated. In the United States, the corporate headquarters represents the entity at the center or the to ...
). Three days later, on 9 August, the U.S. attacked
Nagasaki is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. It became the sole port used for trade with the Portuguese and Dutch during the 16th through 19th centuries. The Hidden Christian Sites in the ...
using a plutonium implosion-design bomb,
Fat Man "Fat Man" (also known as Mark III) is the codename for the type of nuclear bomb the United States detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. It was the second of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare, the fir ...
, with the explosion equivalent to about 20 kilotons of TNT, destroying 60% of the city and killing approximately 35,000 people, among them 23,200–28,200 Japanese munitions workers, 2,000 Korean slave laborers, and 150 Japanese combatants. On 1 January 1947, the
Atomic Energy Act of 1946 The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (McMahon Act) determined how the United States would control and manage the nuclear technology it had jointly developed with its World War II allies, the United Kingdom and Canada. Most significantly, the Act ru ...
(known as the McMahon Act) took effect, and the Manhattan Project was officially turned over to the
United States Atomic Energy Commission The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by U.S. Congress to foster and control the peacetime development of atomic science and technology. President ...
(AEC). On 15 August 1947, the Manhattan Project was abolished.


During the Cold War

The American atomic stockpile was small and grew slowly in the immediate aftermath of World War II, and the size of that stockpile was a closely guarded secret. However, there were forces that pushed the United States towards greatly increasing the size of the stockpile. Some of these were international in origin and focused on the increasing tensions of the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...
, including the loss of China, the Soviet Union becoming an atomic power, and the onset of the
Korean War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Korean War , partof = the Cold War and the Korean conflict , image = Korean War Montage 2.png , image_size = 300px , caption = Clockwise from top:{ ...
. And some of the forces were domestic – both the Truman administration and the
Eisenhower administration Dwight D. Eisenhower's tenure as the 34th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1953, and ended on January 20, 1961. Eisenhower, a Republican from Kansas, took office following a landslide victory ...
wanted to rein in military spending and avoid budget deficits and inflation. It was the perception that nuclear weapons gave more "
bang for the buck "Bang for the buck" is an idiom meaning the worth of one's money or exertion. The phrase originated from the slang usage of the words "bang" which means "excitement" and "buck" which means "money". Variations of the term include "bang for your buc ...
" and thus were the most cost-efficient way to respond to the security threat the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
represented. As a result, beginning in 1950 the AEC embarked on a massive expansion of its production facilities, an effort that would eventually be one of the largest U.S. government construction projects ever to take place outside of wartime. And this production would soon include the far more powerful
hydrogen bomb A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...
, which the United States had decided to move forward with after an intense debate during 1949–50. as well as much smaller tactical atomic weapons for battlefield use. By 1990, the United States had produced more than 70,000 nuclear warheads, in over 65 different varieties, ranging in yield from around .01 kilotons (such as the man-portable Davy Crockett shell) to the 25 megaton B41 bomb. Between 1940 and 1996, the U.S. spent at least $ in present-day terms on nuclear weapons development. Over half was spent on building delivery mechanisms for the weapon. $ in present-day terms was spent on
nuclear waste Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons ...
management and environmental remediation.
Richland, Washington Richland () is a city in Benton County, Washington, United States. It is located in southeastern Washington at the confluence of the Yakima and the Columbia Rivers. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 60,560. Along with the nearby c ...
was the first city established to support plutonium production at the nearby
Hanford nuclear site The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex operated by the United States federal government on the Columbia River in Benton County in the U.S. state of Washington. The site has been known by many names, including SiteW ...
, to power the American nuclear weapons arsenals. It produced
plutonium Plutonium is a radioactive chemical element with the symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exh ...
for use in
cold war The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...
atomic bombs. Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. and USSR threatened with all-out nuclear attack in case of war, regardless of whether it was a conventional or a nuclear clash. U.S. nuclear doctrine called for
mutually assured destruction Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy which posits that a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by an attacker on a nuclear-armed defender with second-strike capabilities would cause the ...
(MAD), which entailed a massive nuclear attack against strategic targets and major populations centers of the Soviet Union and its allies. The term "mutual assured destruction" was coined in 1962 by American strategist Donald Brennan. MAD was implemented by deploying nuclear weapons simultaneously on three different types of weapons platforms.


Post–Cold War

After the 1989 end of the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...
and the 1991 dissolution of the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
, the U.S. nuclear program was heavily curtailed, halting its program of nuclear testing, ceasing its production of new nuclear weapons, and reducing its stockpile by half by the mid-1990s under President
Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again ...
. Many former nuclear facilities were shut down, and their sites became targets of extensive environmental remediation. Efforts were redirected from weapons production to
stockpile stewardship Stockpile stewardship refers to the United States program of reliability testing and maintenance of its nuclear weapons without the use of nuclear testing. Because no new nuclear weapons have been developed by the United States since 1992, even ...
, attempting to predict the behavior of aging weapons without using full-scale nuclear testing. Increased funding was also put into anti-
nuclear proliferation Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons, fissionable material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information to nations not recognized as " Nuclear Weapon States" by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Wea ...
programs, such as helping the states of the former Soviet Union to eliminate their former nuclear sites and to assist Russia in their efforts to inventory and secure their inherited nuclear stockpile. By February 2006, over $1.2 billion had been paid under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 to U.S. citizens exposed to nuclear hazards as a result of the U.S. nuclear weapons program, and by 1998 at least $759 million had been paid to the Marshall Islanders in compensation for their exposure to U.S. nuclear testing, and over $15 million was paid to the
Japanese government The Government of Japan consists of legislative, executive and judiciary branches and is based on popular sovereignty. The Government runs under the framework established by the Constitution of Japan, adopted in 1947. It is a unitary state, ...
following the exposure of its citizens and food supply to
nuclear fallout Nuclear fallout is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and the shock wave has passed. It commonly refers to the radioac ...
from the 1954 "Bravo" test. In 1998, the country spent an estimated total of $35.1 billion on its nuclear weapons and weapons-related programs. In the 2013 book '' Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters'' (Oxford),
Kate Brown Katherine Brown (born June 21, 1960) is an American politician and attorney serving as the 38th governor of Oregon since 2015. A member of the Democratic Party, she served three terms as the state representative from the 13th district of the ...
explores the health of affected citizens in the United States, and the "slow-motion disasters" that still threaten the environments where the plants are located. According to Brown, the plants at Hanford, over a period of four decades, released millions of curies of radioactive isotopes into the surrounding environment. Brown says that most of this
radioactive contamination Radioactive contamination, also called radiological pollution, is the deposition of, or presence of radioactive substances on surfaces or within solids, liquids, or gases (including the human body), where their presence is unintended or undesirab ...
over the years at Hanford were part of normal operations, but unforeseen accidents did occur and plant management kept this secret, as the pollution continued unabated. Even today, as pollution threats to health and the environment persist, the government keeps knowledge about the associated risks from the public. During the presidency of George W. Bush, and especially after the 11 September
terrorist Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
attacks of 2001, rumors circulated in major news sources that the U.S. was considering designing new nuclear weapons ( "bunker-busting nukes") and resuming nuclear testing for reasons of stockpile stewardship. Republicans argued that small nuclear weapons appear more likely to be used than large nuclear weapons, and thus small nuclear weapons pose a more credible threat that has more of a deterrent effect against hostile behavior. Democrats counterargued that allowing the weapons could trigger an arms race. In 2003, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to repeal the 1993 Spratt- Furse ban on the development of small nuclear weapons. This change was part of the 2004 fiscal year defense authorization. The Bush administration wanted the repeal so that they could develop weapons to address the threat from North Korea. "Low-yield weapons" (those with one-third the force of the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945) were permitted to be developed. The Bush Administration was unsuccessful in its goal to develop a guided low-yield nuclear weapon, however, in 2010 proceeding President Barack Obama began funding and development to what would become the B61-12, a smart guided low-yield nuclear bomb developed off of the B61 “dumb bomb”. Statements by the U.S. government in 2004 indicated that they planned to decrease the arsenal to around 5,500 total warheads by 2012. Much of that reduction was already accomplished by January 2008. According to the Pentagon's June 2019 Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, "Integration of nuclear weapons employment with conventional and special operations forces is essential to the success of any mission or operation."


Nuclear weapons testing

Between 16 July 1945 and 23 September 1992, the United States maintained a program of vigorous
nuclear testing Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine nuclear weapons' effectiveness, yield, and explosive capability. Testing nuclear weapons offers practical information about how the weapons function, how detonations are affected by ...
, with the exception of a moratorium between November 1958 and September 1961. By official count, a total of 1,054 nuclear tests and two nuclear attacks were conducted, with over 100 of them taking place at sites in the
Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the conti ...
, over 900 of them at the
Nevada Test Site The Nevada National Security Site (N2S2 or NNSS), known as the Nevada Test Site (NTS) until 2010, is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about 65 miles (105 km) northwest of the ...
, and ten on miscellaneous sites in the United States (
Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U ...
,
Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the ...
,
Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
, and
New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque, New Mexico, Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Albuquerque metropolitan area, Tiguex , Offi ...
). Until November 1962, the vast majority of the U.S. tests were atmospheric (that is, above-ground); after the acceptance of the Partial Test Ban Treaty all testing was relegated underground, in order to prevent the dispersion of
nuclear fallout Nuclear fallout is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and the shock wave has passed. It commonly refers to the radioac ...
. The U.S. program of atmospheric nuclear testing exposed a number of the population to the hazards of fallout. Estimating exact numbers, and the exact consequences, of people exposed has been medically very difficult, with the exception of the high exposures of Marshall Islanders and Japanese fishers in the case of the
Castle Bravo Castle Bravo was the first in a series of high-yield thermonuclear weapon design tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, as part of '' Operation Castle''. Detonated on March 1, 1954, the device was the most powerful ...
incident in 1954. A number of groups of U.S. citizens—especially farmers and inhabitants of cities downwind of the Nevada Test Site and U.S. military workers at various tests—have sued for compensation and recognition of their exposure, many successfully. The passage of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 allowed for a systematic filing of compensation claims in relation to testing as well as those employed at nuclear weapons facilities. By June 2009 over $1.4 billion total has been given in compensation, with over $660 million going to " downwinders". A few notable U.S. nuclear tests include: *
Trinity test Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. It was conducted by the United States Army at 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project. The test was conducted in the Jornada del Muerto desert abo ...
on 16 July 1945, was the world's first test of a nuclear weapon (yield of around 20 kt). *
Operation Crossroads Operation Crossroads was a pair of nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll in mid-1946. They were the first nuclear weapon tests since Trinity in July 1945, and the first detonations of nuclear devices since the ...
series in July 1946, was the first postwar test series and one of the largest military operations in U.S. history. *
Operation Greenhouse Operation Greenhouse was the fifth American nuclear test series, the second conducted in 1951 and the first to test principles that would lead to developing thermonuclear weapons (''hydrogen bombs''). Conducted at the new Pacific Proving Gro ...
shots of May 1951 included the first
boosted fission weapon A boosted fission weapon usually refers to a type of nuclear bomb that uses a small amount of fusion fuel to increase the rate, and thus yield, of a fission reaction. The neutrons released by the fusion reactions add to the neutrons released ...
test ("Item") and a scientific test that proved the feasibility of thermonuclear weapons ("George"). *
Ivy Mike Ivy Mike was the codename given to the first full-scale test of a thermonuclear device, in which part of the explosive yield comes from nuclear fusion. Ivy Mike was detonated on November 1, 1952, by the United States on the island of Elugelab ...
shot of 1 November 1952, was the first full test of a
Teller-Ulam design A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...
"staged" hydrogen bomb, with a yield of 10 megatons. It was not a deployable weapon, however—with its full
cryogenic In physics, cryogenics is the production and behaviour of materials at very low temperatures. The 13th IIR International Congress of Refrigeration (held in Washington DC in 1971) endorsed a universal definition of “cryogenics” and “cr ...
equipment it weighed some 82 tons. *
Castle Bravo Castle Bravo was the first in a series of high-yield thermonuclear weapon design tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, as part of '' Operation Castle''. Detonated on March 1, 1954, the device was the most powerful ...
shot of 1 March 1954, was the first test of a deployable (solid fuel) thermonuclear weapon, and also (accidentally) the largest weapon ever tested by the United States (15 megatons). It was also the single largest U.S. radiological accident in connection with nuclear testing. The unanticipated yield, and a change in the weather, resulted in nuclear fallout spreading eastward onto the inhabited
Rongelap Rongelap Atoll ( Marshallese: , ) is a coral atoll of 61 islands (or motus) in the Pacific Ocean, and forms a legislative district of the Ralik Chain of the Marshall Islands. Its total land area is . It encloses a lagoon with an area of . ...
and
Rongerik Rongerik Atoll or Rongdrik Atoll ( Marshallese: , ) is a coral atoll of 17 islands in the Pacific Ocean, and is located in the Ralik Chain of the Marshall Islands, approximately east of Bikini Atoll. Its total land area is only , but it encloses ...
atolls, which were soon evacuated. Many of the Marshall Islanders have since suffered from
birth defects A birth defect, also known as a congenital disorder, is an abnormal condition that is present at birth regardless of its cause. Birth defects may result in disabilities that may be physical, intellectual, or developmental. The disabilities can ...
and have received some compensation from the federal government. A Japanese fishing boat, ''
Daigo Fukuryū Maru was a Japanese tuna fishing boat with a crew of 23 men which was contaminated by nuclear fallout from the United States Castle Bravo thermonuclear weapon test at Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954. The crew suffered acute radiation syndrome (A ...
'', also came into contact with the fallout, which caused many of the crew to grow ill; one eventually died. * Shot Argus I of Operation Argus, on 27 August 1958, was the first detonation of a nuclear weapon in outer space when a 1.7-kiloton warhead was detonated at an altitude of during a series of high altitude nuclear explosions. * Shot Frigate Bird of Operation Dominic I and II, Operation Dominic I on 6 May 1962, was the only U.S. test of an operational submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) with a live nuclear warhead (yield of 600 kilotons), at Kiritimati, Christmas Island. In general, missile systems were tested without live warheads and warheads were tested separately for safety concerns. In the early 1960s, however, there mounted technical questions about how the systems would behave under combat conditions (when they were "mated", in military parlance), and this test was meant to dispel these concerns. However, the warhead had to be somewhat modified before its use, and the missile was a Submarine-launched ballistic missile, SLBM (and not an Intercontinental ballistic missile, ICBM), so by itself it did not satisfy all concerns. * Shot Sedan (nuclear test), Sedan of Operation Storax on 6 July 1962 (yield of 104 kilotons), was an attempt to show the feasibility of using nuclear weapons for "civilian" and "peaceful" purposes as part of Operation Plowshare. In this instance, a diameter deep Subsidence crater, crater was created at the Nevada Test Site. A summary table of each of the American operational series may be found at United States' nuclear test series.


Delivery systems

The original Little Boy and Fat Man weapons, developed by the United States during the
Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...
, were relatively large (Fat Man had a diameter of ) and heavy (around 5 tons each) and required specially modified bomber planes to be adapted for their bombing missions against Japan. Each modified bomber could only carry one such weapon and only within a limited range. After these initial weapons were developed, a considerable amount of money and research was conducted towards the goal of standardizing nuclear warheads so that they did not require highly specialized experts to assemble them before use, as in the case with the Idiosyncrasy, idiosyncratic wartime devices, and miniaturization of the warheads for use in more variable delivery systems. Through the aid of brainpower acquired through Operation Paperclip at the tail end of the European theater of
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, the United States was able to embark on an ambitious program in rocketry. One of the first products of this was the development of rockets capable of holding nuclear warheads. The MGR-1 Honest John was the first such weapon, developed in 1953 as a surface-to-surface missile with a maximum range. Because of their limited range, their potential use was heavily constrained (they could not, for example, threaten Moscow with an immediate strike). Development of long-range bombers, such as the B-29 Superfortress during World War II, was continued during the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...
period. In 1946, the Convair B-36 Peacemaker became the first purpose-built nuclear bomber; it served with the USAF until 1959. The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress was able by the mid-1950s to carry a wide arsenal of nuclear bombs, each with different capabilities and potential use situations. Starting in 1946, the U.S. based its initial deterrence force on the Strategic Air Command, which, by the late 1950s, maintained a number of nuclear-armed bombers in the sky at all times, prepared to receive orders to attack the USSR whenever needed. This system was, however, tremendously expensive, both in terms of natural and human resources, and raised the possibility of an accidental nuclear war. During the 1950s and 1960s, elaborate computerized early warning systems such as Defense Support Program were developed to detect incoming Soviet attacks and to coordinate response strategies. During this same period, intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) systems were developed that could deliver a nuclear payload across vast distances, allowing the U.S. to house nuclear forces capable of hitting the Soviet Union in the Midwestern United States, American Midwest. Shorter-range weapons, including small tactical weapons, were fielded in Europe as well, including nuclear artillery and man-portable Special Atomic Demolition Munition. The development of submarine-launched ballistic missile systems allowed for hidden nuclear submarines to covertly launch missiles at distant targets as well, making it virtually impossible for the Soviet Union to successfully launch a Pre-emptive nuclear strike, first strike attack against the United States without receiving a deadly response. Improvements in warhead miniaturization in the 1970s and 1980s allowed for the development of MIRVs—missiles which could carry multiple warheads, each of which could be separately targeted. The question of whether these missiles should be based on constantly rotating train tracks (to avoid being easily targeted by opposing Soviet missiles) or based in heavily fortified silos (to possibly withstand a Soviet attack) was a major political controversy in the 1980s (eventually the silo deployment method was chosen). Multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle, MIRVed systems enabled the U.S. to render Soviet missile defenses economically unfeasible, as each offensive missile would require between three and ten defensive missiles to counter. Additional developments in weapons delivery included cruise missile systems, which allowed a plane to fire a long-distance, low-flying nuclear-armed missile towards a target from a relatively comfortable distance. The current delivery systems of the U.S. make virtually any part of the Earth's surface within the reach of its nuclear arsenal. Though its land-based missile systems have a maximum range of (less than worldwide), its submarine-based forces extend its reach from a coastline inland. Additionally, Aerial refueling, in-flight refueling of long-range bombers and the use of aircraft carriers extends the possible range virtually indefinitely.


Command and control

Command and control procedures in case of nuclear war were given by the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) until 2003, when this was superseded by Operations Plan 8044. Since
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, the President of the United States has had sole authority to launch U.S. nuclear weapons, whether as a Pre-emptive nuclear strike, first strike or second strike, nuclear retaliation. This arrangement was seen as necessary during the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...
to present a credible nuclear deterrent; if an attack was detected, the United States would have only minutes to launch a counterstrike before its nuclear capability was severely damaged, or national leaders killed. If the President has been killed, command authority follows the United States presidential line of succession, presidential line of succession. Changes to this policy have been proposed, but currently the only way to countermand such an order before the strike was launched would be for the Vice President and the majority of the Cabinet to relieve the President under Section 4 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Regardless of whether the United States is actually under attack by a nuclear-capable adversary, the President alone has the authority to order nuclear strikes. The President and the United States Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Defense form the National Command Authority (United States), National Command Authority, but the Secretary of Defense has no authority to refuse or disobey such an order. The President's decision must be transmitted to the National Military Command Center, which will then issue the coded orders to nuclear-capable forces. The President can give a nuclear launch order using their nuclear briefcase (nicknamed the nuclear football), or can use command centers such as the White House Situation Room. The command would be carried out by a Nuclear and Missile Operations Officer (a member of a missile combat crew, also called a "missileer") at a missile launch control center. A two-man rule applies to the launch of missiles, meaning that two officers must turn keys simultaneously (far enough apart that this cannot be done by one person). When Attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, President Reagan was shot in 1981, there was confusion about where the "nuclear football" was, and who was in charge. In 1975, a launch crew member, Harold Hering, was dismissed from the Air Force for asking how he could know whether the order to launch his missiles came from a sane president. It has been claimed that the system is not foolproof. Starting with President Eisenhower, authority to launch a full-scale nuclear attack has been delegated to theater commanders and other specific commanders if they believe it is warranted by circumstances, and are out of communication with the president or the president had been incapacitated.Stone, Oliver and Kuznick, Peter "The Untold History of the United States" (Gallery Books, 2012), pages 286–87 For example, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, on 24 October 1962, General Thomas Power, commander of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), took the country to DEFCON 2, the very precipice of full-scale nuclear war, launching the SAC bombers of the US with nuclear weapons ready to strike. Moreover, some of these commanders subdelegated to lower commanders the authority to launch nuclear weapons under similar circumstance. In fact, the nuclear weapons were not placed under locks until decades later, so pilots or individual submarine commanders had the power, but not the authority, to launch nuclear weapons entirely on their own.


Accidents

The United States nuclear program since its inception has experienced accidents of varying forms, ranging from single-casualty research experiments (such as that of Louis Slotin during the
Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...
), to the
nuclear fallout Nuclear fallout is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and the shock wave has passed. It commonly refers to the radioac ...
dispersion of the Castle Bravo shot in 1954, to accidents such as crashes of aircraft carrying nuclear weapons, the dropping of nuclear weapons from aircraft, losses of nuclear submarines, and explosions of nuclear-armed missiles (Broken Arrow (nuclear), broken arrows). How close any of these accidents came to being major nuclear disasters is a matter of technical and scholarly debate and interpretation. Weapons accidentally dropped by the United States include incidents off the coast of British Columbia (1950) (see 1950 British Columbia B-36 crash), near Atlantic City, New Jersey (1957); Savannah, Georgia (1958) (see Tybee Bomb); Goldsboro, North Carolina (1961) (see 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash); off the coast of Okinawa (1965); in the sea near Palomares, Almería, Palomares, Spain (1966, see 1966 Palomares B-52 crash); and near Thule Air Base, Greenland (1968) (see 1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash). In some of these cases (such as the 1966 Palomares case), the explosive system of the fission weapon discharged, but did not trigger a nuclear chain reaction (safety features prevent this from easily happening), but did disperse hazardous nuclear materials across wide areas, necessitating expensive cleanup endeavors. Several US nuclear weapons, partial weapons, or weapons components are thought to be lost and unrecovered, primarily in aircraft accidents. The 1980 Damascus Titan missile explosion in Damascus, Arkansas, threw a warhead from its silo but did not release any radiation. The nuclear testing program resulted in a number of cases of fallout dispersion onto populated areas. The most significant of these was the
Castle Bravo Castle Bravo was the first in a series of high-yield thermonuclear weapon design tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, as part of '' Operation Castle''. Detonated on March 1, 1954, the device was the most powerful ...
test, which spread radioactive ash over an area of over , including a number of populated islands. The populations of the islands were evacuated but not before suffering radiation burns. They would later suffer Effects of nuclear explosions on human health, long-term effects, such as birth defects and increased cancer risk. There are ongoing concerns around deterioration of the nuclear waste site on Runit Island and a potential radioactive contamination, radioactive spill. There were also instances during the nuclear testing program in which soldiers were exposed to overly high levels of radiation, which grew into a major scandal in the 1970s and 1980s, as many soldiers later suffered from what were claimed to be diseases caused by their exposures. Many of the former nuclear facilities produced significant environmental damages during their years of activity, and since the 1990s have been Superfund sites of cleanup and environmental remediation. Hanford is currently the most Radioactive contamination, contaminated nuclear site in the United States and is the focus of the nation's largest Environmental remediation, environmental cleanup. Radioactive materials are known to be leaking from Hanford into the environment. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 allows for U.S. citizens exposed to radiation or other health risks through the U.S. nuclear program to file for compensation and damages.


Deliberate attacks on weapons facilities

In 1972, three hijackers Southern Airways Flight 49, took control of a domestic passenger flight along the east coast of the U.S. and threatened to crash the plane into a U.S. nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The plane got as close as 8,000 feet above the site before the hijackers' demands were met. Various acts of civil disobedience since 1980 by the peace group Plowshares have shown how nuclear weapons facilities can be penetrated, and the group's actions represent extraordinary breaches of security at nuclear weapons plants in the United States. The National Nuclear Security Administration has acknowledged the seriousness of the 2012 Plowshares action. Non-proliferation policy experts have questioned "the use of private contractors to provide security at facilities that manufacture and store the government's most dangerous military material". Nuclear weapons materials on the black market are a global concern,Jay Davis
After A Nuclear 9/11
''The Washington Post'', 25 March 2008.
and there is concern about the possible detonation of a small, crude nuclear weapon by a terrorist group, militant group in a major city, with significant loss of life and property.Orde Kittrie
Averting Catastrophe: Why the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty is Losing its Deterrence Capacity and How to Restore It
22 May 2007, p. 338.
Nicholas D. Kristof

''The New York Times'', 10 March 2004.
Stuxnet is a computer worm discovered in June 2010 that is believed to have been created by the United States and Israel to attack Iran's nuclear fuel enrichment facilities.


Development agencies

The initial U.S. nuclear program was run by the
National Bureau of Standards The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...
starting in 1939 under the edict of
President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university * President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Its primary purpose was to delegate research and dispense funds. In 1940 the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) was established, coordinating work under the Committee on Uranium among its other wartime efforts. In June 1941, the
Office of Scientific Research and Development The Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) was an agency of the United States federal government created to coordinate scientific research for military purposes during World War II. Arrangements were made for its creation during May 1 ...
(OSRD) was established, with the NDRC as one of its subordinate agencies, which enlarged and renamed the Uranium Committee as the S-1 Uranium Committee, Section on Uranium. In 1941, NDRC research was placed under direct control of Vannevar Bush as the OSRD S-1 Section, which attempted to increase the pace of weapons research. In June 1942, the United States Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took over the project to develop atomic weapons, while the OSRD retained responsibility for scientific research. This was the beginning of the
Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...
, run as the Manhattan Engineering District (MED), an agency under military control that was in charge of developing the first atomic weapons. After
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, the MED maintained control over the U.S. arsenal and production facilities and coordinated the
Operation Crossroads Operation Crossroads was a pair of nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll in mid-1946. They were the first nuclear weapon tests since Trinity in July 1945, and the first detonations of nuclear devices since the ...
tests. In 1946 after a long and protracted debate, the
Atomic Energy Act of 1946 The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (McMahon Act) determined how the United States would control and manage the nuclear technology it had jointly developed with its World War II allies, the United Kingdom and Canada. Most significantly, the Act ru ...
was passed, creating the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) as a civilian agency that would be in charge of the production of nuclear weapons and research facilities, funded through Congress, with oversight provided by the United States Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. The AEC was given vast powers of control over secrecy, research, and money, and could seize lands with suspected uranium deposits. Along with its duties towards the production and regulation of nuclear weapons, it was also in charge of stimulating development and regulating civilian nuclear power. The full transference of activities was finalized in January 1947. In 1975, following the "energy crisis" of the early 1970s and public and congressional discontent with the AEC (in part because of the impossibility to be both a producer and a regulator), it was disassembled into component parts as the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), which assumed most of the AEC's former production, coordination, and research roles, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which assumed its civilian regulation activities. ERDA was short-lived, however, and in 1977 the U.S. nuclear weapons activities were reorganized under the United States Department of Energy, Department of Energy, which maintains such responsibilities through the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. Some functions were taken over or shared by the United States Department of Homeland Security, Department of Homeland Security in 2002. The already-built weapons themselves are in the control of the United States Strategic Command, Strategic Command, which is part of the United States Department of Defense, Department of Defense. In general, these agencies served to coordinate research and build sites. They generally operated their sites through contractors, however, both private and public (for example, Union Carbide, a private company, ran Oak Ridge National Laboratory for many decades; the University of California, a public educational institution, has run the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore laboratories since their inception, and will jointly manage Los Alamos with the private company Bechtel as of its next contract). Funding was received both through these agencies directly, but also from additional outside agencies, such as the Department of Defense. Each branch of the military also maintained its own nuclear-related research agencies (generally related to delivery systems).


Weapons production complex

This table is not comprehensive, as numerous facilities throughout the United States have contributed to its nuclear weapons program. It includes the major sites related to the U.S. weapons program (past and present), their basic site functions, and their current status of activity. Not listed are the many bases and facilities at which nuclear weapons have been deployed. In addition to deploying weapons on its own soil, during the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...
, the United States also stationed nuclear weapons in 27 foreign countries and territories, including Okinawa (which was United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands, US-controlled until 1971,) Japan (during the occupation immediately following World War II), Greenland, Germany, Taiwan, and French Morocco then Morocco, independent Morocco.


Proliferation

Early on in the development of its nuclear weapons, the United States relied in part on information-sharing with both the United Kingdom and Canada, as codified in the Quebec Agreement of 1943. These three parties agreed not to share nuclear weapons information with other countries without the consent of the others, an early attempt at Nuclear proliferation, nonproliferation. After the development of the first nuclear weapons during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, though, there was much debate within the political circles and public sphere of the United States about whether or not the country should attempt to maintain a monopoly on nuclear technology, or whether it should undertake a program of information sharing with other nations (especially its former ally and likely competitor, the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
), or submit control of its weapons to some sort of international organization (such as the United Nations) who would use them to attempt to maintain world peace. Though fear of a nuclear arms race spurred many politicians and scientists to advocate some degree of international control or sharing of nuclear weapons and information, many politicians and members of the military believed that it was better in the short term to maintain high standards of nuclear secrecy and to forestall a Soviet bomb as long as possible (and they did not believe the USSR would actually submit to international controls in good faith). Since this path was chosen, the United States was, in its early days, essentially an advocate for the prevention of
nuclear proliferation Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons, fissionable material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information to nations not recognized as " Nuclear Weapon States" by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Wea ...
, though primarily for the reason of self-preservation. A few years after the USSR detonated its first weapon in 1949, though, the U.S. under President Dwight D. Eisenhower sought to encourage a program of sharing nuclear information related to civilian nuclear power and nuclear physics in general. The Atoms for Peace program, begun in 1953, was also in part political: the U.S. was better poised to commit various scarce resources, such as enriched uranium, towards this peaceful effort, and to request a similar contribution from the Soviet Union, who had far fewer resources along these lines; thus the program had a strategic justification as well, as was later revealed by internal memos. This overall goal of promoting civilian use of nuclear energy in other countries, while also preventing weapons dissemination, has been labeled by many critics as contradictory and having led to lax standards for a number of decades which allowed a number of other nations, such as China and India, to profit from dual-use technology (purchased from nations other than the U.S.). The Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction, Cooperative Threat Reduction program of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency was established after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 to aid former Soviet bloc countries in the inventory and destruction of their sites for developing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and their methods of delivering them (ICBM silos, long-range bombers, etc.). Over $4.4 billion has been spent on this endeavor to prevent purposeful or accidental proliferation of weapons from the former Soviet arsenal. After India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in 1998, President
Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again ...
imposed economic sanctions on the countries. In 1999, however, the sanctions against India were lifted; those against Pakistan were kept in place as a result of the military government that had taken over. Shortly after the September 11 attacks in 2001, President George W. Bush lifted the sanctions against Pakistan as well, in order to get the Pakistani government's help as a conduit for US and NATO forces for War in Afghanistan (2001–present), operations in Afghanistan. The U.S. government has been vocal against proliferation of such weapons in the countries of Iran and North Korea. The 2003 invasion of Iraq by the U.S. was done, in part, on indications that Weapons of mass destruction were being stockpiled (later, stockpiles of previously undeclared nerve agent and mustard gas shells were located in Iraq), and the George W. Bush administration, Bush administration said that its policies on proliferation were responsible for the Libyan Politics of Libya, government's agreement to abandon its nuclear ambitions.


Nuclear disarmament in international law

The United States is one of the five nuclear weapons states with a declared nuclear arsenal under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), of which it was an original drafter and signatory on 1 July 1968 (ratified 5 March 1970). All signatories of the NPT agreed to refrain from aiding in nuclear weapons proliferation to other states. Further under Article VI of the NPT, all signatories, including the US, agreed to negotiate in good faith to stop the nuclear arms race and to negotiate for complete elimination of nuclear weapons. "Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament." The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the preeminent judicial tribunal of international law, in its International Court of Justice advisory opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, advisory opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, issued 8 July 1996, unanimously interprets the text of Article VI as implying that:
There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2005 proposed a comprehensive ban on fissile material that would greatly limit the production of weapons of mass destruction. One hundred forty seven countries voted for this proposal but the United States voted against. The US government has also resisted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, a binding agreement for negotiations for the total elimination of nuclear weapons, supported by more than 120 nations.


International relations and nuclear weapons

In 1958, the United States Air Force had considered a plan to drop nuclear bombs on China during a confrontation over Taiwan but it was overruled, previously secret documents showed after they were declassified due to the Freedom of Information Act (United States), Freedom of Information Act in April 2008. The plan included an initial plan to drop 10–15 kiloton bombs on airfields in Amoy (now called Xiamen) in the event of a Chinese blockade against Taiwan's Offshore Islands.


Occupational illness

The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program (EEOICP) began on 31 July 2001. The program provides compensation and health benefits to Department of Energy nuclear weapons workers (employees, former employees, contractors and subcontractors) as well as compensation to certain survivors if the worker is already deceased. By 14 August 2010, the program had already identified 45,799 civilians who lost their health (including 18,942 who developed cancer) due to exposure to radiation and toxic substances while producing nuclear weapons for the United States.


Current status

The United States is one of the five recognized nuclear powers by the signatories of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). As of 2017, the US has an estimated 4,018 nuclear weapons in either deployment or storage. This figure compares to a peak of 31,225 total warheads in 1967 and 22,217 in 1989, and does not include "several thousand" warheads that have been retired and scheduled for dismantlement. The Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, is the only location in the United States where weapons from the aging nuclear arsenal can be refurbished or dismantled. In 2009 and 2010, the administration of President Obama administration, Barack Obama declared policies that would invalidate the Bush-era policy for use of nuclear weapons and its motions to develop new ones. First, in a prominent Barack Obama speech in Prague, 2009, 2009 speech, U.S. President Barack Obama outlined a goal of "a world without nuclear weapons". To that goal, U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a new START treaty on 8 April 2010, to reduce the number of active nuclear weapons from 2,200 to 1,550. That same week Obama also revised U.S. policy on the use of nuclear weapons in a Nuclear Posture Review required of all presidents, declaring for the first time that the U.S. would not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear, ''NPT''-compliant states. The policy also renounces development of any new nuclear weapons. However, within the same Nuclear Posture Review of April of 2010, there was a stated need to develop new “low yield” nuclear weapons. This resulted in the development of the B61 Mod 12. Despite President Obama’s goal of a nuclear-free world and reversal of former President Bush’s nuclear policies, his presidency cut fewer warheads from the stockpile any previous post-Cold War presidency. Following a renewal of tension after the Russo-Ukrainian War started in 2014, the Obama administration announced plans to continue to renovation of the nuclear weapon arsenal of the United States, renovate the US nuclear weapons facilities and platforms with a budgeted spend of about a trillion dollars over 30 years. Under these news plans, the US government would fund research and development of new nuclear cruise missiles.This Subsequent administrations continued with these plans. As of 2021, American nuclear forces on land consist of 400 Minuteman III ICBMs spread among 450 Missile launch facility, operational launchers. Ballistic missile submarine, Those in the seas consist of 14 nuclear-capable Ohio-class submarine, ''Ohio''-class Trident submarines, nine in the Pacific and five in the Atlantic. Nuclear capabilities in the air are provided by 60 nuclear-capable heavy bombers, 20 Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit, B-2 bombers and 40 Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, B-52s. The United States Air Force, Air Force has modernized its Minuteman III missiles to last through 2030, and a Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) is set to begin replacing them in 2029. The United States Navy, Navy has undertaken efforts to extend the operational lives of its missiles in warheads past 2020; it is also producing new Columbia-class submarine, ''Columbia''-class submarines to replace the ''Ohio'' fleet beginning 2031. The Air Force is also retiring the AGM-86 ALCM, nuclear cruise missiles of its B-52s, leaving only half nuclear-capable. It intends to procure a new Strategic bomber, long-range bomber, the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider, B-21, and Long Range Stand Off Weapon, a new long-range standoff (LRSO) cruise missile in the 2020s.


Nuclear disarmament movement

In the early 1980s, the revival of the nuclear arms race triggered large Demonstration (people), protests about nuclear weapons.Lawrence S. Wittner. ''Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists'', 27 July 2009. On 12 June 1982, one million people demonstrated in New York City's Central Park against nuclear weapons and for an end to the
cold war The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...
arms race. It was the largest anti-nuclear Demonstration (people), protest and the largest political demonstration in American history.Jonathan Schell
The Spirit of June 12
''The Nation'', 2 July 2007.
International Day of Nuclear Disarmament protests were held on 20 June 1983 at 50 sites across the United States.1,400 Anti-nuclear protesters arrested
''Miami Herald'', 21 June 1983.
There were many Nevada Desert Experience protests and peace camps at the
Nevada Test Site The Nevada National Security Site (N2S2 or NNSS), known as the Nevada Test Site (NTS) until 2010, is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about 65 miles (105 km) northwest of the ...
during the 1980s and 1990s.Robert Lindsey
438 Protesters are Arrested at Nevada Nuclear Test Site
''New York Times'', 6 February 1987.

''New York Times'', 20 April 1992.
There have also been protests by anti-nuclear groups at the Y-12 National Security Complex#Current status, Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant,Stop the Bombs! April 2010 Action Event at Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Complex
the Idaho National Laboratory,Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free (2003)
Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free
Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository proposal,Sierra Club. (undated)
Deadly Nuclear Waste Transport
/ref> the Hanford Site, the
Nevada Test Site The Nevada National Security Site (N2S2 or NNSS), known as the Nevada Test Site (NTS) until 2010, is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about 65 miles (105 km) northwest of the ...
,22 Arrested in Nuclear Protest
''New York Times'', 10 August 1989.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
''The TriValley Herald'', 11 August 2003.
and transportation of nuclear waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory.Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety (undated)

/ref> On 1 May 2005, 40,000 anti-nuclear/anti-war protesters marched past the United Nations in New York, 60 years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.Lance Murdoch
Pictures: New York MayDay anti-nuke/war march
, IndyMedia, 2 May 2005.
"Anti-Nuke Protests in New York"
Fox News, 2 May 2005.
This was the largest anti-nuclear rally in the U.S. for several decades. In May 2010, some 25,000 people, including members of peace organizations and 1945 atomic bomb survivors, marched from downtown New York to the United Nations headquarters, calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons.A-bomb survivors join 25,000-strong anti-nuclear march through New York
''Mainichi Daily News'', 4 May 2010.
Some scientists and engineers have opposed nuclear weapons, including Paul M. Doty, Hermann Joseph Muller, Linus Pauling, Eugene Rabinowitch, M.V. Ramana and Frank N. von Hippel. In recent years, many elder statesmen have also advocated nuclear disarmament. Sam Nunn, William J. Perry, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and George Shultz—have called upon governments to embrace the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, and in various op-ed columns have proposed an ambitious program of urgent steps to that end. The four have created the Nuclear Security Project to advance this agenda. Organizations such as Global Zero (campaign), Global Zero, an international non-partisan group of 300 world leaders dedicated to achieving nuclear disarmament, have also been established.


United States strategic nuclear weapons arsenal

New START Treaty Aggregate Numbers of Strategic Offensive Arms, 1 March 2019 Notes: * Each heavy bomber is counted as one warhead (The
New START New START ( Russian abbrev.: СНВ-III, ''SNV-III'' from ''сокращение стратегических наступательных вооружений'' "reduction of strategic offensive arms") is a nuclear arms reduction treaty betwee ...
Treaty) * The nuclear weapon delivery capability has been removed from Rockwell B-1 Lancer, B-1 heavy bombers.


See also

* Anti-nuclear movement in the United States * Global Security Institute * History of nuclear weapons * International Day against Nuclear Tests * List of nuclear weapons tests * National Security Strategy (United States) * Nuclear terrorism * Nuclear-free zone * U.S. nuclear weapons in Japan * United States Strategic Command * ''''


Notes


References


Notes 2

Sources * Biello, David. "A Need for New Warheads?" Scientific American, November 2007 * Hacker, Barton C. ''Elements of Controversy: The Atomic Energy Commission and Radiation Safety in Nuclear Weapons Testing, 1947–1974.'' Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994. * Hansen, Chuck. ''U.S. Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History.'' Arlington, TX: Aerofax, 1988. * Schwartz, Stephen I. ''Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons.'' Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1998
50 Facts About U.S. Nuclear Weapons , Brookings Institution
* Weart, Spencer R. ''Nuclear Fear: A History of Images.'' Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985. * Woolf, Amy F
U.S. ''Strategic Nuclear Forces: Background, Developments, and Issues.''
Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 8 August 2017. * Young, Ken and Schilling, Warner R. ''Super Bomb: Organizational Conflict and the Development of the Hydrogen Bomb'' (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2019).


Further reading


"Presidency in the Nuclear Age"
conference and forum at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, JFK Library, Boston, 12 October 2009. Four panels: "The Race to Build the Bomb and the Decision to Use It", "Cuban Missile Crisis and the First Nuclear Test Ban Treaty", "The Cold War and the Nuclear Arms Race", and "Nuclear Weapons, Terrorism, and the Presidency".


External links

* Video archive o
US Nuclear Testing
a
sonicbomb.com



NDRC's data on the US Nuclear Stockpile, 1945–2002


by the Los Alamos Study Group
New nuclear warhead design for US

Annotated bibliography of U. S. nuclear weapons programs from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues

US Test footage and veteran testimony
{{U.S. anti-nuclear Nuclear weapons of the United States, Nuclear weapons program of the United States, Cold War history of the United States United States Atomic Energy Commission United States Department of Energy