President Trump’s call to resume nuclear tests was muddied this week when Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the United States would not resume explosive testing, which was last conducted in the 1990s.

“I think the tests we’re talking about right now are system tests. These are not nuclear explosions. These are what we call noncritical explosions,” Wright told Fox News on Sunday.

That didn’t square with Trump’s own remarks to CBS’s “60 Minutes,” which also aired over the weekend, in which he alleged that other countries were conducting secret underground nuclear testing and said the U.S. would do the same.

“Are you saying that after more than 30 years, the United States is going to start detonating nuclear weapons for testing?” Norah O’Donnell asked Trump.

“I'm saying that we're going to test nuclear weapons like other countries do, yes,” Trump responded, naming Russia, China, North Korea and Pakistan.

There’s no public evidence that any foreign nations have conducted explosive nuclear testing since North Korea’s last known test in 2017. There have been accusations that Russia and China have carried out secret, low-yield nuclear tests, which CIA Director John Ratcliffe suggested is what Trump was referring to in his remarks.

But what Trump is proposing would appear to be full-yield tests like the hundreds carried out at the Nevada Test Site throughout the Cold War, and which only North Korea has conducted since the 1990s.

That has put a spotlight on the debate over whether the U.S. should maintain the status quo or seek to flex its nuclear........

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