nuclear-news

This venture is dangerous in more ways than one: companies running U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories, including Sandia Corp. (a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin) and Bechtel National among others, were found to have committed egregious safety violations and inadequate training that encouraged workers to circumvent proper procedures. Despite such infractions, the wheels of the military-industrial complex continue to turn. Companies with safety lapses are still considered top contenders to oversee future projects, thus benefiting from the Trump administration’s trillion-dollar decision to revamp the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

One country’s nuclear force improvements will naturally propel others into motion:Russia this spring announced its own exorbitant nuclear force modernization project as a counter to U.S. nuclear buildup, China recently scaled its nuclear simulations in an effort to develop next-generation nuclear weapons,  while France and the United Kingdom are spearheading plans to renew their nuclear submarines despite cost concerns. In the UK, proponents argue that it is necessary to bolster nuclear capabilities in the face of an “uncertain security environment,” although it is also uncertain how the government will shore up funds for a possible £2.9 billion gap to complete the project—the lionshare of which will go to four private contractors:  AWE Management, BAE Systems, Babcock International, and Rolls Royce (better known for their luxury cars, the company supplies engines for military assets, including the UK’s nuclear submarines). 

…… A quick study of nuclear weapons testing overtime reveal a disturbing pattern: from the heart of the Saharan Desert to the rugged terrain in Kazakhstan, tests were primarily conducted in former colonies or territories of nuclear weapon states, where the land and livelihood of people were neglected for a greater national cause. Today, some former test sites are facing health hazards and environmental catastrophe. Recent declassified information divulged that French nuclear testing in Polynesia caused significant radioactive fallout in the region, which was not publicly disclosed for almost four decades. And in the Marshall Islands, where the United States detonated more than a hundred tests in a span of 15 years, rising tides due to climate change are threatening to flood nuclear waste sites and former testing grounds. To date, nuclear weapon states have yet to fully compensate victims and address this growing environmental damage. All the while, they are allocating big budgets for their nuclear arsenals to protect vital national interests. 

Ironically, as nuclear weapon states pursue upgrades to their arsenal, they also insist that countries like North Korea and Iran abandon plans to develop nuclear weapons. The double-standard traps the world in a situation that increase tension and competition between nuclear haves and have-nots.

As world leaders continue to wield nuclear weapons as part of their geopolitical power plays, we should resist automatically accepting the trope that nuclear weapons are custodians of global security. A more holistic discussion would acknowledge the many players in the nuclear weapons enterprise, some bound to reap enormous benefits, while others fated to lose without recompense. What would a conversation about nuclear weapons look like if we demanded recognition for those harmed by its production process? Or if we closely scrutinized government spending on these bombs when the world already has thousands—14,000 spread among nine countries, to be precise—pointed at one another? While it seems unrealistic to envision a world free of nuclear weapons, the alternative is to tolerate a broken system that favors the military-industrial complex and exploits communities in exchange for a sense of protection. And if we collectively decide that we can live with this system, and that we are comfortable using fear as our ultimate savior, we must ask ourselves what sort of a society we are now “protecting.”