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oard the ctbt would mean a lot in this context rhodes singles out australian diplomat richard butler and his canberra commission for special praise the fact is that in spite of nuclear proliferation there have been hundreds of nations which have found it prudent not to develop nuclear weapons for various reasons not the least of which is their expense according to rhodes it costs the us 50 billion dollars just to maintain its current stockpile of weapons so there is hope in the end though only political will strong leadership and international cooperation can rid the world of these terrible weapons at some point owning a nuclear weapon needs to become a crime it is absolutely necessary to stop regarding these weapons as partisan parochial concerns which can be leveraged to score political points in elections to underscore this point rhodes recounts a fascinating idea put forth by the scottish writer gil elliot in his book twentieth century book of the dead elliot talks about the international efforts to prevent and cure infectious disease and believes that war should similarly be treated as an international anathema that is to be abolished efforts to eradicate disease through public health campaigns crossed boundaries and saw even countries who were otherwise very hostile towards each other mutually cooperating this was because disease was not seen as some other country s problem but as a common threat because of their sheer destructive power nuclear weapons similarly pose a common threat to all of humanity rhodes says that only when nuclear weapons are similarly and completely depoliticized to the extent that infectious diseases are only when the world sees them not as instruments of aggression and patriotism owned by specific nations but as a common scourge that threatens all of humanity irrespective of our political leanings and differences only then will we all work together to abolish them posted in uncategorized leave a comment shattering the nuclear sword august 15 2010 every man woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of damocles hanging by the slenderest of threads capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness the weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us john f kennedy speech to the un september 1961 countdown to zero is one of the best accounts of the dangers of nuclear weapons for the layman that i have recently seen the film which opened last week takes a comprehensive yet succinct look at the risks posed by nuclear weapons and is set against the backdrop of john f kennedy s speech to the united nations in which he quoted the words cited above jfk talked about a sword of damocles hanging on our head that is secured by a flimsy thread as the film emphasizes the most important operative words in kennedy s speech are accident miscalculation or madness which can all cut the thread holding the sword to illustrate how this could happen the film showcases interviews with leading arms control experts and policy personnel including former cia agent valerie plame harvard professor matthew bunn nuclear terrorism expert graham allison wmd expert joseph cirincione and world leaders like mikhail gorbachev and tony blair the fact is that no matter how responsible the leaders of countries with nuclear weapons may be and how well protected the weapons may seem the extremely complex nature of the system always increases the chances of miscalculation accident or madness the film gives concerning examples for instance a few years ago nuclear weapons instead of regular ones were loaded on a plane in north dakota and flown almost halfway around the country without anyone noticing it the cuban missile crisis is of course well known lesser known are the palomares incident and half a dozen others when nuclear weapons were accidentally dropped from mid air fortunately none detonated but the danger is pervasive and the film also recounts some chilling events the most heart stopping is an incident in 1995 recounted by cirincione when the russians mistook the flight of an experimental rocket from norway for a nuclear launch the codes were ready everyone in the russian hierarchy was convinced and all that remained to launch a nuclear strike against the us was president yeltsin s approval thankfully for the world yeltsin was not drunk and he did not trust the officials judgment enough leading to a narrow brush with catastrophe the problem is that the complex protocols embedded in the use of nuclear weapons allow much opportunity for misunderstandings and accidents and very little time for response and corrective action even a president would have typically no more than a few minutes to make a decision thus increasing the possibility of triggering armageddon the simplest and most ludicrous of causes can set off false alarms in one case the setting off of a nuclear alert was the result of a malfunction in a single computer chip costing less than a dollar one of the most jaw dropping instances i remember was from richard rhodes s book zbigniew brzezinski jimmy carter s national security advisor was woken up in the middle of the night and told that there were 1500 soviet nuclear missiles headed for the us as brzezinski was contemplating what to do next the caller called back and said that the number of missiles had been upgraded to 15000 hearing this brzezinski just sat on his bed there would be no point in alerting anyone of course it turned out to be computer malfunction apart from such misunderstandings the other reason why nuclear weapons pose such a great danger is of course because they may fall into the hands of terrorists and deterrence does not apply to such stateless actors al qaeda has been trying to get their hands on nukes for years what makes the situation worse is the relatively easy accessibility of enriched uranium in the former soviet union after the cold war ended many nuclear facilities in the former soviet republics found themselves orphaned severed from central control with their workers out of a job while many of the facilities were later secured with us cooperation many others were ludicrously insecure with barely a padlock preventing access to nuclear material in the words of a former soviet official potatoes were guarded better selling a few grams of uranium to potential buyers would allow impecunious laid off workers from these facilities to make a lucrative buck the film documents that there have been literally dozens of instances when former nuclear workers have been caught trying to smuggle a few grams of nuclear material across borders in russia and central asia in addition countries like iran north korea and pakistan are happy to trade nuclear related technology to wannabe buyers this nuclear material is notoriously hard to detect as the film says smuggling a few kilograms of enriched uranium by shielding it in a lead pipe is child s play this is mainly because the relatively weak radiation from uranium can be almost completely shielded by lead but also because this uranium could be hidden in any one of a whopping 100 000 shipping containers entering the us every single day finding a few kilos of u 235 in a heavily shielded lead casing in one of these countless containers is an unimaginably difficult problem to solve set the detectors on high and one would not detect the low intensity radiation set it on low and one would detect almost everything else including fruits papers and wood which emit comparable ambient levels of radiation if terrorists manage to get past the most difficult step of acquiring nuclear material they can easily build a crude nuclear bomb plus paraphrasing churchill terrorists don t have to do their best they just have to do enough exploding a crude bomb in the port itself would not be what they have in mind but it would still be enough to bring about chaos and panic possibly collapsing the financial and economic system of a country so what can be done to address this life threatening problem one of the biggest truisms about nuclear weapons which separates them from other wmds is that if you don t have uranium or plutonium you cannot build these weapons period thus in theory you completely solve the problem if you secure the material programs for securing material from the former soviet republics have been instituted for years but funding has embarrassingly been a problem plus there is no accurate estimate of how much material may have been stolen after the soviet union collapses securing this material would be the first thing to do secondly countries who want to peacefully pursue atomic energy must be provided nuclear material by an international body under the strictest of safeguards but most importantly there is one almost perfect solution which there is no getting around reduce the nuclear arsenals of the world to zero nada zilch there is no doubt that the us and russia which still stock the lion s share of nukes should take the lead a point which has been belabored often to scant effect this should especially be ludicrously easy for the us which still has thousands of nukes on hair trigger alert and which has conventional forces that could easily overwhelm any other country s defenses and offenses if there is one country that does not need any nuclear weapons it s the us followed by russia the psychological impact of the us renouncing every single nuclear weapon would be hard to overestimate nixon did it with chemical and biological weapons in the 70s it would be tremendous and would offer the us an unprecedented moral authority to ask others to do the same while it may not be easy for countries like india and israel which share extensive boundaries with unstable and dangerous regimes such an act will signify huge potential this was a dream that president reagan often talked about as idealistic as it sounds it should be feasible at least for the us most refreshingly amid all the partisan bickering that we keep hearing about such an initiative has gained traction with a wide swathe of influential statesmen from both parties in a compelling document last year several former highly influential bipartisan officials like henry kissinger george schultz william perry and sam nunn called for the abolishment of nuclear weapons president obama has latched on to this dream it remains to be seen what he actually does about it as jfk said in his speech the weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us in 1986 during the very promising reykjavik meeting when reagan and gorbachev came within a hairsbreadth of getting rid of all nuclear weapons reagan told gorbachev about a dream that seems straight out of a movie he said that once the world has decided to get rid of all nuclear weapons he and gorbachev would meet again in reykjavik each holding the last nuclear missile in their hands they would both be so old that they would hardly recognize each other gorbachev would squint at reagan and say ron is that you and reagan would say mikhail and then they would both destroy the last two nuclear bombs on the planet and the whole world would have a giant party we will have the champagne ready trailer posted in uncategorized leave a comment where s edward teller when you need him june 3 2010 this just caught my eye i had thought of exactly the same thing a couple of days back the chatter began weeks ago as armchair engineers brainstormed for ways to stop the torrent of oil spilling into the gulf of mexico what about nuking the well decades ago the soviet union reportedly used nuclear blasts to successfully seal off runaway gas wells inserting a bomb deep underground and letting its fiery heat melt the surrounding rock to shut off the flow why not try it here the idea has gained fans with each failed attempt to stem the leak and each new setback on wednesday the latest rescue effort stalled when a wire saw being used to slice through the riser pipe got stuck probably the only thing we can do is create a weapon system and send it down 18 000 feet and detonate it hopefully encasing the oil matt simmons a houston energy expert and investment banker told bloomberg news on friday attributing the nuclear idea to all the best scientists or as the cnn reporter john roberts suggested last week drill a hole drop a nuke in and seal up the well this week with the failure of the top kill attempt the buzz had grown loud enough that federal officials felt compelled to respond stephanie mueller a spokeswoman for the energy department said that neither energy secretary steven chu nor anyone else was thinking about a nuclear blast under the gulf the nuclear option was not and never had been on the table federal officials said it s crazy one senior official said government and private nuclear experts agreed that using a nuclear bomb would be not only risky technically with unknown and possibly disastrous consequences from radiation but also unwise geopolitically it would violate arms treaties that the united states has signed and championed over the decades and do so at a time when president obama is pushing for global nuclear disarmament the atomic option is perhaps the wildest among a flood of ideas proposed by bloggers scientists and other creative types who have deluged government agencies and bp the company that drilled the well with phone calls and e mail messages the unified command overseeing the deepwater horizon disaster features a suggestions button on its official web site and more than 7 800 people have already responded according to the site among the suggestions lowering giant plastic pillows to the seafloor and filling them with oil dropping a huge block of concrete to squeeze off the flow and using magnetic clamps to attach pipes that would siphon off the leaking oil some have also suggested conventional explosives claiming that oil prospectors on land have used such blasts to put out fires and seal boreholes but oil engineers say that dynamite or other conventional explosives risk destroying the wellhead so that the flow could never be plugged from the top along with the kibbitzers the government has also brought in experts from around the world including scores of scientists from the los alamos national laboratory and other government labs to assist in the effort to cap the well in theory the nuclear option seems attractive because the extreme heat might create a tough seal an exploding atom bomb generates temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun and detonated underground can turn acres of porous rock into a glassy plug much like a huge stopper in a leaky bottle michael e webber a mechanical engineer at the university of texas austin wrote to dot earth a new york times blog in early may that he had surprised himself by considering what once seemed unthinkable seafloor nuclear detonation he wrote is starting to sound surprisingly feasible and appropriate much of the enthusiasm for an atomic approach is based on reports that the sovi...
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