nuclear-news

History was made fifty years ago today, as the superpowers agreed to end all nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, water, and outer space. The treaty signed on August 5, 1963 sharply reduced the amount of dangerous nuclear fallout in the human diet, and saved thousands, perhaps millions of lives worldwide. Now we need to extend the ban to nuclear power plants to achieve the same benefits to humankind.

The test ban marked the end of a long and sometimes terrifying period of history. Just four years after the U.S. dropped the first atom bombs on Japan, the Soviet Union successfully developed its own nuclear devices, putting these unprecedented weapons of mass destruction at the core of the Cold War. The Communist goal of world domination and the determination of anti-Communists to prevent it now became entangled with a sprint to win an all-out nuclear war.

The arms race meant that the Americans and Soviets ultimately conducted 422 nuclear weapons tests that spewed nuclear isotopes into the atmosphere in an effort to stockpile staggering numbers of nuclear weapons. The eventual peak number of weapons was 26,000 for the U.S. and 37,000 for the Soviet Union. Some were hydrogen bombs, which were thousands of times more powerful than those used in Japan…………….http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/05/the-legacy-of-the-comprehensive-test-ban-treaty/