nuclear-news

Our Intolerable Risk: Nuclear Weapons Threaten Us All

For 67 years we have poured money and lives into nuclear security,
only to realize that it is a very costly illusion. Nuclear weapons are
suicide weapons. There are no problems that can be solved by
indiscriminately incinerating human beings or by gradually destroying
the genetic basis of human life with fallout radiation. Taking these
warheads off their delivery systems is a first step toward greater
security for all people. Surely we humans are clever enough to be rid
of this terrible, fruitless risk.

Nuclear energy brings more problems than coal
 http://www.huntingtonnews.net/52703
 December 29, 2012 – 20:13
BY PETER G COHEN
In a 2012 Status of World Nuclear Forces report, The Federation of
American Scientists (FAS, founded in 1945 by many of the original
group of scientists who invented and built the first atomic bombs and
who later came to oppose them) estimates that 1,800 Russian and U.S.
nuclear warheads are on “high alert,” ready to strike at the push of a
button.  This, two decades after the Cold War ended. While it is
difficult to ascertain how many nuclear warheads exist in each nation
without access to classified information, based on publicly available
information, the FAS counts approximately 16,200 stockpiled nuclear
warheads, of which almost 4,000 are “operational.”

That this level of risk is holding the people of the world hostage is
intolerable. At any moment, a miscalculation, human, electrical,
mechanical, or electronic hacking could plunge us into a worldwide
nuclear holocaust. The tragic events at Fukushima have clearly
demonstrated that we cannot prevent our technology from being
overwhelmed by such natural events as an earthquake, or the fires,
floods and storms of climate change. The hacking of Iranian nuclear
systems by the Stuxnetworm within the last several years suggests that
any firewalls against unauthorized launch of missiles could be in
question.

If a small fraction (as few as 50, according to the American
Geophysical Union) of those 1,800 “high alert” warheads were to
detonate on either of our nations, Russia or the U.S., such a
detonation would cause a worldwide catastrophe. Target cities and all
their contents would be incinerated in minutes. The nuclear fireballs
and the following firestorms would lift millions of tons of
radioactive soot into the stratosphere, where it would circle the
earth, creating a nuclear winter that would catastrophically reduce
food crops and cause famine. It would disrupt the ozone layer,
allowing stronger rays to reach the surface, injuring eyesight and
increasing skin cancers. The radioactive fallout would increase
stillbirths, leukemia, cancers and other diseases wherever it settled,
on friend and foe alike. Even a relatively small exchange of nuclear
weapons would threaten life worldwide, unjustly impacting billions of
civilians in countries with no stake in any struggles between the
nuclear weapons states.

Do Russians and Americans really want to incinerate each other? These
two great nations — clever enough to reach the moon – must act to
preserve themselves and all others from the horrors of nuclear war. We
have reduced the total number of deployed weapons, yet this
intolerable risk remains. There should be no nuclear weapons ready for
rapid deployment anywhere on Earth. Now that we are fully aware of the
indiscriminate nature of these weapons and their widespread effects,
it is a massively costly Crime Against Humanity to “update and
modernize” these weapons. The people of the world must demand that all
the nuclear weapons states reduce this danger by removing the warheads
from their delivery vehicles, and allow international inspection of
their delivery systems.
The tragedy is that for some people in the nuclear-equipped nations,
this insane behavior is their way of life; they think of themselves as
patriots. The sad truth, eloquently detailed in a 2012 Center for
International Policy report, “Bombs Versus Budgets: Inside the Nuclear
Weapons Lobby,” is that Senators and Representatives, strongly
influenced by military-corporate lobbying, are demanding that the
nuclear facilities in their states and districts be preserved. The
future of life on Earth is jeopardized for the profits of military
corporations!

For 67 years we have poured money and lives into nuclear security,
only to realize that it is a very costly illusion. Nuclear weapons are
suicide weapons. There are no problems that can be solved by
indiscriminately incinerating human beings or by gradually destroying
the genetic basis of human life with fallout radiation. Taking these
warheads off their delivery systems is a first step toward greater
security for all people. Surely we humans are clever enough to be rid
of this terrible, fruitless risk.

December 31, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general