It may seem obvious why the vast majority of the people on Earth are opposed to nuclear weapons. They are insanely powerful and destructive. They could vaporize big cities in a blinding flash of light and heat. That being said, there are other reasons that nuclear weapons are being opposed.
There are two major intertwined streams that are the basis of the Atomic age; nuclear power and nuclear weapons. They were born together in the early 1940s in the midst of war. Nuclear weapons helped to end World War II in the Pacific. During the Cold War, the race to build and deploy nuclear weapons on both sides of the Iron Curtain terrified the world in the 1950s.
One of the biggest security issues that the U.S. has to deal with is asymmetrical warfare. Our focus was on nation state fighting nation state in the last century but in the last few decades we have been dealing with attacks by organizations or lone individuals. This makes responding to attacks more difficult because we don’t necessarily have a readily identifiable foe in a known geographic location to counter attack.
I have been a fan of science and technology since I was a child. Many years ago I worked on projecting technological development and anticipated a lot of what has come to pass with computers and the Internet. I have always believed that science and technology could solve the problems confronting humanity if used with proper foresight and caution. Unfortunately, there are often unforeseen consequences following the adoption of a new technology.
The nuclear power industry was spawned by research that developed nuclear weapons. The U.S. government pushed the idea of the Peaceful Atom in the 1950s partly to ally the public’s fears of nuclear technology resulting from the bombing of Japan at the end of World War II. It also was seen as a way to invest more funds in nuclear research than would have been made available by Congress for weapons development.
There are some interesting parallels between the current debate on guns and the long running debate on nuclear weapons. Both debates revolve around a particular type of weapon and who should have it under what circumstances.
I have covered many topics related to radioactivity in this blog including reactors, bombs, accidents, organizations, heath effects, environmental effects and so on. During my research for these blog articles, I have come to the conclusion that it is time to end the use of nuclear reactors to generate electrical power. There are many arguments pro and con for the inclusion of nuclear generation in the mix of sources of commercial electricity.
Since the development of nuclear bombs in the 1940s, suggestions have been made for possible civilian peaceful uses of these powerful explosives. The United States explored some of these possibilities in Operation Plowshare and the Soviet Union worked on them in their Nuclear Explosives for the National Economy program.
Since the development of nuclear bombs in the 1940s, suggestions have been made for possible civilian peaceful uses of these powerful explosives. The United States explored some of these possibilities in Operation Plowshare and the Soviet Union worked on them in their Nuclear Explosives for the National Economy program.
While the United States had Operation Plowshare to explore the peaceful use of nuclear explosions, the Soviet Union also had a similar program. It was called Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy (NENE). A literal descriptive name but lacking in the resonance of Operation Plowshare.
