nuclear-news

We teeter on the edge of the nuclear abyss

Nuclear disaster http://www.khaleejtimes.com/kt-letter-display.asp?xfile=data/letters/2012/October/letters_October87.xml&section=letters Farouk Araie, Johannesburg / 20 October 2012 Robert Christy, who died recently at the age of 96, was the man who helped make the Nagasaki bomb. On July 16 1945, a prototype of his creation was tested at Alamogordo in New Mexico. It was a nuclear device with a force of 21,000 tones 
of TNT.

Today, nuclear powers use their weapons as an instrument of foreign policy. We are teetering precariously on the edge of nuclear abyss. A fact that is unknown to the world till this day is that The Cuban missile crisis could have sparked a nuclear war without the knowledge of former US president Kennedy, and Soviet ex-premier Nikita Kruschev.

Russia and America possess most of the world’s nuclear weapons. In today’s world, there are not many chances of a full-scale world war, but if the superpowers play a risky game, it is only a matter of time before a crisis will arise. If neither side is willing to comprise and the bluffs will be called followed by the destruction of civilisation.

There are approximately 1,440,000 kilogrammes of highly enriched Uranium in the world today. But as little as 25kgs are needed to create a nuclear bomb.

A nuclear war between the US and Russia could result in lowering temperatures to those of the last Ice age 18,000 years ago, leading to the extinction of most or all complex life on the planet.

October 20, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general