COLLINA: My reaction to the India/Pakistan tests was I think similar to the CIA's reaction which was surprise. You know I didn't expect these test, the intelligence agencies didn't expect these tests, no one expected them. So it was a great surprise and a concern that the situation would get rapidly worse if testing continued. But I think actually what we say was the first, even though the CTBT, test ban treaty, was not in force, we saw one of the first benefits of the treaty, which is that it restrained both nations from continued testing because there is already a norm in place against nuclear testing. Both nations saw this, restrained their testing, and that was the first, if you will, confidence building measure that dampened the tensions there.

INTERVIEWER: How is the CTBT related to these tests?

COLLINA: The relation between the CTBT and the India/Pakistan tests is that the soon we can get the treaty into force, the better our ability to reduce the tensions in South Asia. Again, as soon as those test happened, both nations quickly moved to restrain themselves and declared moratoria on their tests. This happens in a context of a global norm against testing embodied by the CTBT so in a sense, the CTBT has proven its worth here. And if we can get it into force, all the more will India and Pakistan will be restrained from ever testing again.

INTERVIEWER: And other nations too?

COLLINA: Sure, the value of the test ban at this point is keeping the declared nuclear powers from testing, and keeping any nations who are thinking about getting into the nuclear club from testing. And so getting this treaty in force only increases that norm, that international ban.

INTERVIEWER: Can you explain what the Stockpile Stewardship is and what is it purpose?

COLLINA: I think that the stockpile Stewardship Program was created to replace nuclear testing in a sense that without nuclear testing the U.S. can still needs to maintain it's stockpile and to maintain the weapons it will have in the future. To understand the program we need to understand that the program is created not only to maintain the weapons but to keep the designers at the lab, to keep the weapons scientists at the lab. So in a sense you have a program that is not only seeking to maintain the arsenal but to excite and maintain the designers and scientists at the laboratories.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think the Stockpile Stewardship is capable to maintain the safety and the reliability of the stockpile?

COLLINA: The Stockpile Stewardship is definitely capable of maintaining the US arsenal. If anything it is overkill. It's way more than we need. And some people say that as a result it should be opposed because it is excessive. In my view, I agree, it is way more than we need, but it's gonna get the job done and that is the important thing.

INTERVIEWER: How does it get the job done?

COLLINA: Well the important thing we want to do with the Stockpile Stewardship program is to monitor the US arsenal over time. And the Stockpile Stewardship Program evaluates the weapons, it takes them apart, it looks at them, inspects them, breaks them down, and then puts them back together again, and gives them a clean bill of health or not, and if not then the Stockpile Stewardship program needs to assess whether any problems with these weapons are significant and what to do about it. The simple approach is that you replace the part if you find a problem with it, and these are the things that are definitely within the capability of the program.

INTERVIEWER: Can computer simulations adequately determine how age effects nuclear weapons, or can we simply replace older weapons?

COLLINA: Opponents of the CTBT like to point to reliability and aging problems as a reason to continue testing. The important thing here to distinguish between a weapon is that it has different parts. There are nuclear components made of plutonium and uranium and there are non-nuclear components. The non-nuclear components can be fully tested the same way as we did in the old days without nuclear explosions so aging or test ban is sort of irrelevant for the non-nuclear components.

As for the nuclear components these are the things we can not explosively test anymore. But they also happen to be the most robust components of the weapon. There are no aging problems of the past that have shown to be a significant problem. Now we don't know how long they'll last, that's true, but we certainly know they will last a good ten, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years. So the question becomes, once we find an aging problem what should be done about it. If you are unsure, then you can make a new part. Or use a part that exists that's a spare.

INTERVIEWER: Can you comment on the computer technology that is being used in the Stockpile Stewardship program?

COLLINA: There is a lot of money and a lot of time being spent on computer technology for Stockpile Stewardship. And most of this is to model the types of tests that were done in the past that we can't do any more. And a lot of this is trying to predict certain types of aging changes or problems that might be found with weapons over time. And this is all fine to do, it's all very expensive, but the real question is if your approach is to - if you find a problem that you're not sure how to assess, rather than spend a huge amounts of time assessing it, if you can go replace the part or use a part that's in reserve, then it kind of reduces the need to do a computer simulation and assessment. So, it's nice to have, but it's not clear that it's essential.

INTERVIEWER: Is there more money spent on this than there should be? How is this related to nuclear tests? Is it more expensive?

COLLINA: Oh, this is way more expensive than a nuclear test. If we were doing this by a dollar by dollar basis, nuclear testing is the cheaper way to go. But that's not the standard to measure, what we are trying to measure here is the security costs internationally and security benefit, and it's certainly worth the cost for the United States to ban nuclear testing and to seek other nations to do the same because of the security benefit we are buying through other nations not developing more sophisticated nuclear weapons that will be more of a threat to us.

The association I like to make here is that we hear a lot about Ballistic Missile threats from other nations and Ballistic Missile Defense as a response. If we are really worried about this, the test ban plays very well in this context because nuclear tests are just the kind of thing you want to use to get smaller, lighter, more powerful weapons on ballistic missiles and shoot them over here. So if the American public or the American Congress or Senate concerned about Ballistic Missile treats, the test ban is priority number one.

INTERVIEWER: Can you reduce the costs of stockpile stewardship while still keeping is safe, and if so, would that still be more expensive that nuclear testing?

COLLINA: Certainly if you wanted to reduce the cost of Stockpile Stewardship program you could and still maintain a very reliable nuclear arsenal because like I said, - One could certainly reduce the cost of the Stockpile Stewardship program and still have a very capable program to maintain the U.S. arsenal because a large part of the Stewardship program is aimed at keeping scientists at the laboratories. So for example, multibillion dollar facilities like the National Munition Facility at Livermore Lab is really more important to excite scientists and keep them at the lab than maintain nuclear weapons per say.

So if you pare this whole program down to evaluating the stockpile, assessing parts for aging problems, and replacing parts that you have concern about versus continued assessment to see if you can keep the part in the arsenal or keeping the scientists on the team, then you could save a lot of money.

INTERVIEWER: The senate seems to be holding CTBT hostage. Can you comment on that?

COLLINA: I think we're in an unfortunate deadlock in the Senate where ideologically, missile defense and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty are seen in different opposing camps. And that's unfortunate because it doesn't have to be that way at all. They can work together. To the extent that one sees a threat from ballistic missiles to our security and the requirement for missile defense to respond to that threat, one should also see the value of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in reducing the Ballistic Missile Treat.

I say that because if a nation wants to develop and build sophisticated weapons, for example, thermonuclear weapons, small enough to put on a ballistic missile, nuclear testing would be very important to that effort, these are really, who wants to go after the ballistic missile threat, the test ban should be on their agenda.

INTERVIEWER: Can other nations get around the CTBT?

COLLINA: One should not be concerned that once the test ban treaty is in force with the verification system in place, the nations will be able to conduct candescent tests of enough number and yield to be able to anyway to surpass U.S. sophistication in nuclear weapons. It certainly is not a credible scenario. It's one thing to say a nation could slip one small yield by the international system. That may be, but for a nation to mount a series of nuclear tests of high yield to develop the types of weapons or greater sophistication the US has is simply not credible.

INTERVIEWER: Do you have faith in the IMS?

COLLINA: Yes, I do. The International Monitoring System will play the role it has to play which is to deter nations from cheating under the CTBT. It's not a perfect system, it's not going to capture a 100 percent of activities, but it doesn't need to it's a deterrent. Like anything else, and any nation who is considering cheating under the treaty will know that the chances of being caught are quite great and the benefit of their violation would be quite small because in order to achieve cheating, they would do only small a number of tests and very low yield tests, and those aren't the kind of tests that are going to take their program dramatically different from where it may be.

INTERVIEWER: When nuclear tests are conducted, what impact do they have on the environment?

COLLINA: Environmental issues in terms of nuclear testing were mainly associated with atmospheric testing. When tests were done in the atmosphere. There were clear environmental problems with that. When nuclear testing went under ground a lot of the public concern about nuclear testing went away because it wasn't so clear what the environmental effects were. For sure, every underground test creates a radioactive waste dump underground which is certainly unnecessary to create, we don't need to test so why do this?

From our perspective, the ultimate environmental problem with nuclear testing is the possibility of increasing the risk of nuclear war which is of course the ultimate environmental nightmare. From our perspective the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by signaling a departure away from nuclear weapons and sort of de-prioritizing nuclear weapons internationally, reduces the likelihood of nuclear war, so from our perspective, it's a great environmental policy.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think we should share our technology with other nations to ensure the safely of their stockpile to ensure our safety?

COLLINA: Two answers to that. One: one of the critiques that test ban opponents use to the CTB is that we are not going to be able to maintain our arsenal with out testing. I don't agree with that. But even if you believe it, there is an argument to be made that even if the U.S. reliability of the weapons does decline, we will be in a relative advantage to any other nation, lets say Russia, China, anyone else who does not have the kind of money to build the kind of Stewardship program that we're going have. So even if you do believe that the arsenal is going to reduce in reliability we will still be ahead of the other nations whose reliability is going to decline even more.

Having said that, then people say, well, should we share our technology with Russia? Again, most of the technology we're developing for the Stockpile Stewardship is not strictly necessary to maintain the arsenal. And so we could - they could spend a lot of money on stuff that isn't really going to help them. The most important thing for these nations to do is to evaluate their arsenal to rebuild parts as necessary, to keep track of things as they develop. And my sense is they don't need a lot of money for that, they could pretty much do these things on their own. If it's really a question of computers, that they need to do their own simulations, to me that's something that we should think about.

INTERVIEWER: Does computer simulation save us money if you take into consideration the man power needed for a nuclear test?

COLLINA: If one compares the relative costs of nuclear testing and stockpile stewardship, stockpile stewardship is by and away more expensive. We're spending about 4 billion dollars a year on stewardship and the labs weren't getting that much money in the nuclear testing days. And not that much has changed in terms, for example, test site, where nuclear tests are no longer happening but there are other activities going on there, maintenance of the test site itself, sub-critical experiments at the test site, so there are still a lot of people, a lot of activity going on at the test site. Where you have a lot more money going into is the laboratories, to build new experimental facilities, like the National Munition Facility, like the Dual Access Radioactiv- sorry.

In terms of the laboratories, there is a lot of more money going there for things like the National Munition Facility and other facilities, and these are the new parts of the laboratory program, of the Stewardship program, where the real money is associated, and these are the parts that are of questionable utility.

INTERVIEWER: What are they doing at these labs?

COLLINA: Well, you know, a lot of these facilities are to keep the scientists interested, so in sense a dual use facility. Again the National Munition Facility is a great - from the scientists perspective - is a great physics toy to do advanced physics experiments with some utility for nuclear weapons. And so, they will be running experiments trying to understand nuclear physics better as it relates to weapons, as it relates to other civilian pursuits. And trying to get these facilities to help them understand better the inner workings of a nuclear weapon. ------ The question of whether that is strictly necessary is an open question.

INTERVIEWER: Is there a sense by the UCS of the distribution of RND money of science versus production?

COLLINA: A think a case can be made that more emphasis is being put on the science than on the production side. If you take the point of view that as problems arise in the arsenal the main thing you want to do is replace that part versus use the science to assess the degree of significance of the problem. So for sure we want to make sure that we can produce new uranium components and new plutonium components to replace parts as problems arise, and if you take that perspective, there isn't as much need to go for science part of the program.

INTERVIEWER: What were you feeling when you heard about the India/Pakistan tests, where were you, and what did you do?

COLLINA: I heard about the India/Pakistan tests last may through an e-mail message is what it was, and I was you know, dumbfounded, complete surprise, I really did not think that they were willing to thumb it to the world, at least in the case of India the first one to test, that they were willing to thumb it to the world the way that they did. And were willing in a sense stand up and say, you are all telling us not to test, but we are going to do it anyway. So it was great surprise, and the first concern was that this testing really should stop and can't continue because that would lead to a great - you know, much more dangerous situation on the subcontinent, and much to their credit, they restrained their program.

INTERVIEWER: Can you put this in a very simple way. Why should we care?

COLLINA: The cold war is over. Most American citizens don't worry about nuclear war anymore. Yet the weapons are out there and the danger, to a large degree, is still there from those weapons. We need to start doing things, concrete things, treaty specific things that will reduce that risk. One of the main ways to do that is to de-legitimize nuclear weapons, to make people turn away from them, from instruments of power politically. If those weapons are not being tested, if they aren't being developed, that will turn international attention away from using these weapons as instruments of political power and reduce the risk of war. And this test ban is immanently valuable in trying to get us to stop thinking about nuclear weapons as legitimate policy tools.