Rep. Titus trying to ward off Trump's nuclear test plans with legislation

A subsurface atomic test is shown March 23, 1955, at the Nevada Test Site near Yucca Flats. Photo by: U.S. Atomic Energy Commission via AP, file

U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., is introducing legislation today to prevent nuclear weapons testing in the United States just after President Donald Trump said testing would resume for the first time in decades.

Trump said the change in posture was due to “other countries testing programs,” naming Russia and China in a Truth Social post. However, Vice Adm. Richard Correll, Trump’s pick to lead United States Strategic Command, whose purview includes nuclear weapons, said Thursday that neither country had conducted “a nuclear explosive test."

The president told reporters that “we have test sites” in response to a question about where this testing would take place. The most recent U.S. nuclear weapons test, which was conducted underground, was performed in 1992 at what is now the Nevada National Security Site. That’s 65 miles from Las Vegas.

Titus wrote on social media this morning that Trump had put his “ego and authoritarian ambitions” ahead of Nevadans.

The announcement “not only goes against the arms control and nonproliferation treaties that the U.S. has spearheaded since the end of the Cold War, it also puts Nevadans back in the crosshairs of toxic radiation and environmental destruction,” she wrote.

The new legislation would add the prohibition into the Atomic Energy Defense Act, according to a draft version of the bill shared with the Sun. However, it would not limit “subcritical” nuclear tests, which cannot create a nuclear chain reaction.

U.S. Sen. Jacky Rosen said Thursday that the Nevada National Security Site has been conducting safe, nonexplosive experiments to “certify the reliability, the safety, the effectiveness of our nuclear stockpile” since President George H.W. Bush signed a testing moratorium in 1992.

During the era of nuclear testing, “millions of peoples and acres of land were contaminated by radiation. And my state of Nevada is still suffering the consequences,” Rosen said. “If this resumption happens, the amount of radiation exposure and destruction would be felt across the country and around the world. Make no mistake, this would be devastating and catastrophic.”