I have posted a number of blog entries about nuclear weapons held by different countries including estimates of how many each has. The problem with these estimates is that the exact number of nuclear warheads possessed by each nuclear power is a closely held military secret. Nonetheless, I will try to present a good estimate of global totals in this post.
We have come to the last major subject in the concern about nuclear energy. Nuclear waste may be the end of our list but the big problem is that some of it does not end for millions of years. Waste is generated at every stage of nuclear energy as well as nuclear weapons production. There are high level nuclear wastes that will kill with direct exposure and lower level wastes that may lead to poisoning and cancer.
I have covered some of the problems with nuclear weapons, uranium mining and uranium processing in previous posts. Today I am going to briefly list some of the major problems with nuclear reactors used for power generation. This list is not meant to be exhaustive but if there were no other problems with nuclear power, these alone would be enough to justify shutting it down.
Once uranium is mined, it has to be transported and refined for use in nuclear weapons or reactors. As with mining, there are major problems involved in such activities.
I have covered uranium mining in previous posts and mentioned some of the protests and resistance actions against it. In this post, I am going to recap some of the issues with uranium mining.
I have done a whole series of posts on nuclear weapons but I have neglected one type that I mentioned in a recent post; the neutron bomb. One of the problems that I covered in that post was that nuclear weapons are so incredibly destructive that they destroy infrastructure in cities such as factories and equipment that might be useful to the attacker. The neutron bomb was dreamed up to help deal with this problem.
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.
The primary use of nuclear bombs is as weapons. They are compact and extremely powerful. However, conventional explosives find use in civilian applications such as excavations for mining and construction. Early in the history of nuclear explosives, the suggestion was made that they might have use for such peaceful purposes.
In 2008, right after the election of Barack Obama as President of the U.S., the Russian President Medvedev announced that the Russian Federation would deploy new sort-range missiles on their western border as a counter to the announced intention of the U.S. to place anti-ballistic missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic on the Russian border.
Following the use of atomic bombs on Japan, the U.S. was soon joined by other nations in developing and testing nuclear weapons. Over five hundred nuclear devices were exploded in atmospheric and ground tests in the decade after the end of World War II. The world became concerned about the health effects of the fallout from all the tests. The Prime minister of India called for the elimination of all nuclear weapons worldwide in 1953.
During the early 1980s, the United States and the Soviet Union entered into a series of talks about strategic arms reduction. Although the U.S. President Reagan had repeatedly accused the Soviets of violating the terms of the SALT II treaty, he was still willing to propose a reduction in all warheads at Geneva in 1982. The discussions that followed were originally referred to as SALT III but ultimately came to be called the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks or START I.
