The United States will postpone a subcritical nuclear experiment at an underground test site in Nevada from the initially scheduled date of Wednesday due to a technical issue, the Energy Department said Tuesday.
The department did not disclose detailed reasons for the postponement and said it has yet to decide when the test will be conducted.
A technical issue has occurred during preparations for the test and it is expected to take some days to fix the problem, an official said.
The tests differ from traditional nuclear weapons tests in that they do not reach criticality or sustain a nuclear chain reaction.
The test, the 17th of its kind, will be part of the so-called Oboe series of relatively small-scale subcritical nuclear experiments.