Counter proliferation: U.S. steps up efforts to keep WMD out of enemy hands.

• Author: Kennedy, Harold
• Position: HOMELAND DEFENSE

Amid continuing concerns about terrorist attacks against the United States and its allies, the U.S. government is increasing its efforts to keep enemies from acquiring and using weapons of mass destruction.

Some of the steps that it is taking, however, are raising hackles even at home.

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency--whose job it is to develop technologies to defeat WMD, including chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons--has scheduled a controversial test this month designed to detonate a 700-ton conventional explosive at a site in Nevada. The explosion is to be part of an experiment called Divine Strake, which is intended to test new ways to destroying hardened and deeply buried targets, such as the nuclear facilities of Iran and North Korea.

North Korea claims to have acquired nuclear weapons, and Iran has embarked upon a program to develop nuclear power. It announced in April that it had been successful in enriching uranium.

Iranian leaders have said they want to use the technology for peaceful purposes. The United States and its allies, however, are convinced that Tehran is intent on producing weapons, and they are committed to preventing that from happening.

U.S. officials have said that they prefer to resolve the issue through diplomacy, but that all options--including military action--remain "on the table."

One option may be the kind of device being tested in Divine Strake, which DTRA Director James A. Tegnelia said could offer a more acceptable alternative than nuclear "bunker-busting" bombs, existing conventional munitions or ground troops.

"This is the largest single explosive we could imagine doing," Tegnelia told a recent gathering of defense writers. The blast, he said, will generate a "mushroom cloud" over nearby Las Vegas for the first time since the end of nuclear-weapons testing.

Tegnelia later issued a statement assuring Nevadans that the experiment will pose no danger to them, and that while the dust cloud may reach an altitude of 10,000 feet, it isn't likely to be visible off the test site.

Nevertheless, at least one member of Congress, Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., was not mollified. She complained that Tegnelia could not provide definitive information about whether any toxic materials would be unleashed by the explosion.

"Given the level of contamination in areas where nuclear tests were conducted, I have real concerns about the dust and other pollutants that will be released into the air as a result of this explosion," she said.

The test is part of the most recent...