Republican President George H.W. Bush announced a unilateral moratorium on full-scale nuclear testing in 1992. Other countries soon followed, and since this century began, none except the pariah North Korea has tested nuclear weapons. The ban has meant that states with nuclear weapons have had to depend on other ways to ensure that their bombs are safe and effective.

In the United States, this work has unfolded on a firm scientific basis, depending on careful experimentation and, importantly, on modeling and simulations that have driven progress on high-speed computing in this country for the past 30 years. At the same time, the moratorium has meant that no country can surge ahead with new weapon designs — not established nuclear states such as China and Russia, nor developing nuclear states such as Pakistan and India. The nuclear brakes are on.

Now, Donald Trump’s allies are threatening to undo these achievements with a return to explosive nuclear testing. Their notorious Project 2025 calls for the United States to “Reject ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and indicate a willingness to conduct nuclear tests in response to adversary nuclear developments if necessary.”

This is a bad idea, for three reasons.

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