Minister Of Energy Says US Is Not Planning To Explode Nuclear Power Currently

JAKARTA - The nuclear weapons test ordered by United States President Donald Trump will not involve a nuclear explosion at this time, Energy Minister Chris Wright said on Sunday.

"I think the trial we're talking about right now is a system trial," Wright said in an interview with Fox News.

"This is not a nuclear explosion. This is what we call a non-critical explosion," he said.

The test involved all other parts of the nuclear weapons to ensure it was functioning and could trigger a nuclear explosion, Wright said, whose agency is responsible for piloting US nuclear weapons.

Trials will be put on a new system to help ensure replacement nuclear weapons are better than the previous ones, Wright said at Fox News' "The Sunday Briefing".

Earlier, ahead of a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, Thursday, President Trump said he ordered the US military to immediately restart the nuclear weapons test process after being suspended for 33 years, a move that appeared to be a message to nuclear, Chinese and Russian competing countries.

He reiterated his comments on Friday, but did not answer directly when asked if it would include underground nuclear tests such as those common during the Cold War.

The United States tested nuclear explosions in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Wright said, and gathered detailed information and measurements of the explosion.

"With our science and computing power, we can very accurately simulate what will happen in the nuclear explosion," Wright said.

"Now we simulate what conditions cause it, and when we change the bomb design, what will it produce?" he said.