Greenpeace Briefing on CTBT Negotiations
China and Peaceful Nuclear Explosions
19th June 1996

1. China originally insisted that a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) permit Peaceful Nuclear Explosions (PNEs). All other countries in the Geneva negotiations for a CTBT opposed China's position, because allowing PNEs in a CTBT would create a major loophole in the treaty. A PNE program can be used to develop nuclear weapons, e.g. India describes its only nuclear test as a PNE.

On 6 June 1996, China modified its position on PNEs and proposed that it would accept a zero-yield CTBT but ONLY IF the other negotiating parties accepted that PNEs would be specially examined in the review of the treaty.

Already, some countries are voicing objections to China's latest proposal. On 13 June, both Canada and Japan criticized China's new position. To allow even a specific mention of PNEs in the review could provide countries with an excuse to pursue PNE research and development programs during the next ten years. Such PNE programs could serve as cover for nuclear weapons development programs. The record of the U.S. and Soviet Union demonstrates that PNEs are an unnecessary and dangerous technology. It is obvious that there is no room in a truly comprehensive test ban treaty for PNEs.

2. China says that as a developing country it cannot afford to rule out any opportunity to make use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Three ideas for PNEs have emerged from China so far: deflecting asteroids from hitting the earth with nuclear missiles, generating electricity in underground cavities with a series of nuclear explosions and creating a canal for diverting waters from Tibetan mountains to irrigate the Taklimakan desert in northwest China. All projects are rather fantastic, and the latter two promise much radioactive contamination (as well as unknown environmental consequences from such a major environmental engineering project).

A significant reason for China's attraction to PNEs seemingly comes from quiet urgings by weapons scientists in Russia and the United States. Unable to pursue PNEs in their countries due to environmental and cost reasons, reportedly Russian PNE experts have been providing advice and encouragement to their Chinese colleagues. Similarly, many of the U.S. Energy Department scientists involved in recent weapons laboratory-to-laboratory exchanges with China reportedly worked on the U.S. PNE program, Project Plowshare.

PNEs and the U.S.: The U.S. began investigating non-military uses of nuclear explosives in 1957, when the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) established "Project Plowshare". The name was derived from a passage in the Old Testament: "And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more". In total, 27 PNEs were conducted between 1961 and 1973. The Plowshare program itself officially came to an end in 1977.

Excavation projects were considered to be the most important application of the technology. In 1961, the AEC entered into an agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to investigate nuclear excavation for the construction of a new sea-level canal through the Central American Isthmus. The project was abandoned in 1970 and the Atlantic-Pacific Interoceanic Canal Commission concluded that the effects of nuclear excavations on the water saturated rock at the Isthmus were unknown.

Between 1965 and 1976 the U.S. Government entered into agreements with private companies to undertake in-depth feasibility studies on specific projects such as excavations, oil exploration and underground gas storage. Many other uses for PNEs were suggested but did not reach the feasibility study stage for lack of industrial sponsorship.

In the mid 1970s, the U.S. teamed up with two non-nuclear weapons states, Thailand and Egypt, to carry out preliminary feasibility studies into nuclear excavations. The Kra Canal project in Thailand proposed to link the Gulf of Thailand with the Andaman Sea using 139 explosives ranging from 100 to 1000kt. This project was scrapped because the Thai Government was uncertain whether the nuclear option was practical "in the light of current world perspectives".

Another proposal to channel Mediterranean Sea water 54 79 km into the Qattara Depression in Egypt and use the difference in elevation to generate hydro-electric power, called for the use of at least 181 explosives in the 150 500kt range or 439 explosives of 140kt. Signing of the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty (PNET), between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in 1976, placed a 150kt ceiling on these detonations and the proposal went no further.

The Plowshare program was terminated in 1977 due to waning industrial interest and mounting public concern about the environmental consequences of PNEs. The largest excavation experiment, the so-called Sedan test of 1962 at the Nevada Test Site, displaced 12 million tons of earth, and the fallout from the test drifted beyond Nevada and over Utah. Every effort was made during project Plowshare to assess the costs associated with commercial use of PNEs -- but public objections to the use of PNEs because of possible radiation releases and contamination added new and unknown dimensions to cost estimates.

PNEs and the Soviet Union: The Soviet Union conducted 124 PNEs between 1965 and 1988 in various parts of the Soviet Union. PNEs were conducted for seismic sounding, increasing oil and gas production, creating underground reservoirs, shutting down oil gushers, digging a canal, building dams and water reservoirs, crushing ore deposits, burying biologically hazardous industrial waste, and stopping gas escaping from a coal mine.

The PNE program caused radioactive contamination around the Soviet Union and even exterior to its borders. The largest experiment, called "1004" with an estimated yield of 125kt, was detonated in a river and produced two lakes. Radioactive debris from the large "1004" experiment and another, the Pechora-Kova canal experiment, was detected in northern Europe and elsewhere.

Although the Soviet PNE program ended in 1988, Soviet and now Russian weapons scientists continue to advocate the use of PNEs for civilian purposes. Soviet weapons scientists feel they perfected PNE technology by solving two key problems for PNEs devices: making a thin device so that bore holes can be smaller and so less expensive to drill and creating a device that can withstand great pressures and temperatures without a large and expensive exterior cooling apparatus. In 1991-1992, a Russian company Chetek with connections to Russian nuclear weapons laboratories proposed that dozens of PNEs be used for the destruction of nuclear and hazardous wastes: however, the project did not receive any government support, no commercial financial backing could be found for the proposal, and a market demand did not materialize.

3. PNEs and Nuclear Weapons Development: The main objection to allowing PNEs in a CTBT is the problem they pose for two main goals of a CTBT: stopping nuclear weapons development and hindering proliferation. PNEs can be part of a nuclear weapons research and development program. For example, a PNE for an excavation could use a nuclear device that is a nuclear weapons design being developed or perfected. At minimum, such a PNE would verify that a nuclear weapons design worked. Also, a PNE research and development program can double as a nuclear weapons development program even if a PNE never takes place. If China, Lybia, Pakistan, North Korea, or Iran pursued a PNE research program during the next ten years on the excuse the PNE question will come up at the CTBT review, they could gain valuable information about nuclear weapons design and performance.

China has tried to address the verification problem by offering to allow international monitoring and verification with prior approval of the treaty organization. But, clearly, if China (or another country) pursued a PNE program on the scale of the U.S. or the Soviet Union, it would involve enough people, tests, monitoring, research and development, etc., to provide critical expertise and information for developing or perfecting nuclear weapons.

Sources: Eric Arnett, "Nuclear Club Gets Clubbier," The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/June 1996; Nuclear Notebook, "Known Nuclear Tests Worldwide," The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/June 1996; John Horgan, "'Peaceful' Nuclear Explosions," Scientific American, June 1996; David Fairhall, "Nuclear Blasts to Irrigate Desert," Guardian (UK), 15 May 1996; "Experts Propose Nuclear Blasts To Dig Underground Canal," KYODO, (Tokyo), 20 April 1996; Boris Golubov, "Push-Button Earthquakes," Atom Declassified: Second Collection, IPPNW, Moscow, 1996; Jozef Goldblat and David Cox, eds., Nuclear Weapon Tests: Prohibition or Limitation, (SIPRI: Oxford University Press, 1988).

For more information contact:

Greenpeace International
phone. 31 20 523 6222.
Fax. 31 20 523 6200.
Keizergracht 176
1016 DW Amsterdam

Simon Carroll, Adviser Nuclear and Disarmament Unit in Geneva:
phone. 41 21 728 5225.