Bunker buster bust

JUST DAYS before the monthlong conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty began in New York last week, the National Research Council issued a damning report on the Bush administration's proposal for a new nuclear weapon that would dive deep into foes' buried bunkers while sparing the lives of civilians aboveground. The council said such a weapon could not go deep enough underground to eliminate fallout or other lethal effects on the surface. Civilian deaths could range from a few hundred to a million, depending on the size of the weapon, the weather, and the proximity of a densely populated city.

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In the Pentagon, such bombs are known as ''robust nuclear earth penetrators," or ''bunker busters." Despite past refusals by Congress to fund research on them, the Defense Department is again asking for $8 million. The new report by the Research Council, an arm of the National Academies, should stiffen Congress's resolve to say no.

There is interest in such weapons because countries increasingly are protecting their command centers and weapons arsenals by locating them deep in mines or bunkers. Proponents of bunker busters have hoped that weapons designers could produce bombs that could penetrate deep into rock or reinforced concrete before unleashing their nuclear charge. The idea has been that this would limit the risk to civilians and American forces arriving on the scene and would not bring down the opprobrium of the world on the United States for once again using nuclear weapons.

But the report concludes that, while many deeply buried targets are beyond the reach of conventional weapons and could be destroyed by nuclear weapons, the nuke bunker busters could not go so deep that their effects would be contained underground. It said that if a nuclear weapon were used against an enemy's buried chemical weapons supply, civilian deaths from the bunker buster would be ''much greater" than civilian deaths from the dispersal of the chemical agents. The report also said that intelligence and targeting would have to be extremely accurate for the weapons to destroy the enemies' buried facilities. Given the recent performance of US intelligence agencies, that is a tall order.

Even if the Research Council had found that the concept of containable damage were valid, it would be a mistake to develop bunker busters. They are meant to be first-use nuclear weapons, not deterrents, increasing the possibility that the 60-year nuclear cease-fire would be breached. And any testing would violate the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

At a time when the United States should be the leader in ridding the world of such weapons, Congress should once again tell the Pentagon to give up its dream of surgically destroying enemy bunkers.