COLUMN LEFT/ ALEXANDER COCKBURN : Resist the Itch for ‘Only’ 15 Nuclear Tests : The risks of pressing the 1996 deadline outweigh any benefit--except to the war-makers.

Behind all the waffle about “safety” and “reliability” lies one stark concern that inflames the lobby now urging President Bill Clinton to resume nuclear testing.

Such tests are the heartbeat of nuclear weapons research, engineering and procurement. Unless the barren wastes of Nevada heave anew with the subterranean tremors of nuclear fission, a potent industry will begin to shut down. Careers will be ruined, scientific ambitions forever stunted, profitable contracts annulled. For the research scientists at Livermore in California, Los Alamos and Albuquerque in New Mexico, a test (immediate cost, $30 million to $60 million) is the validation of a career bent over calculator and drafting board.

The last U.S. nuclear test to irradiate Nevada’s bedrock took place on Sept. 23, 1992, being No. 965 in the series that began in Alamogordo, N.M., in 1945.

This year’s appropriation for the nuclear weapons research, design and development budget of the Department of Energy was $1.9 billion. The Clinton budget for the 1994 fiscal year asks for $1.8 billion. But long-term, those scientists, engineers, corporate executives and working folk will be able to go on paying their bills we’re made to feel inferior to only if Clinton decides, sometime before the end of June, that nuclear testing is part of the politics of meaning.

Last year, Congress passed a nine-month moratorium on nuclear testing, to end on July 1. Should Clinton recommend a resumption, Congress has 90 working days to consider the issue. If, during this period, no joint House/Senate resolution disapproves the resumption, then the Administration can push ahead with nuclear tests.

It seems that Clinton wants to “compromise.” That is, he may urge Congress to approve the five tests per calendar year available under moratorium legislation until all testing has to cease after Sept. 30, 1996.

Having vacillated on a decision, Clinton has already missed the chance to get a 1993 test series started. So the number of tests available till the supposed 1996 shut-off are down to 15. Hence the allure of “compromise.” Why begrudge scientists and their corporate and military co-sponsors just 15 little bangs before that September, 1996, closure?

It doesn’t take a very vivid imagination to figure out what will happen in the fall of 1996--a presidential election season--as the fatal hour of midnight, Sept. 30, draws nigh. New threats will be discovered, new rationales devised, new laws rushed through Congress to permit testing.

At present, only considerations of safety can prompt renewal of testing. If another nation detonates a test device, then the United States can test its stock for reliability. Safety means making sure the warhead doesn’t go off before you launch it. Reliability means making sure that launch is followed by a satisfactory explosion.

The safety rationale for nuclear testing has been hokum, suitable only for talk shows and press briefings. The only way to make a nuclear warhead safe is to decommission it, and even then, succeeding generations are left to deal with the nuclear garbage. The 748 underground tests conducted by the United States and Britain in Nevada have produced wastes that have reached, or will reach, the human environment, leached out through ground water or vented through fissures or test cavities.

The British are rabid for resumption, and their ambassador in Washington, Sir Robin Renwick, displayed the speciousness of the “safety” rationale to full effect last August when (arguing against the test ban) he proclaimed that “We cannot exclude the need to modernize our warheads, if only because incorporation of new safety devices involves us in new warhead design.”

There are sound arguments against renewed nuclear testing. It will be a kick in the teeth for the cause of nuclear non-proliferation; other nations, such as France or China or Russia, also may resume.

Clinton may decide to sustain the ban. Or he may come out for “low-threshold testing” (of less than 1 kiloton), just as he’s seemingly keen on low-intensity logging in owl sanctuaries. At the moment, a majority in the Senate opposes resumption; the situation in the House is less clear.

The choice is simple enough. If you want to halt the arms race and get U.S. brainpower and dollars out of the nuclear war business, maintain the ban on testing and convert the research labs to other mandates. The existing world inventory of 48,000 warheads (according to the Washington-based Center for Defense Information) will gradually dwindle, thus genuinely augmenting safety. Resume nuclear testing and the whole mad cycle rolls on.