Each March 1, Marshallese across the globe mark Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day. They remember those who suffered and seek justice for the victims of the 67 U.S. nuclear weapon tests at Bikini Atolls in Marshall Islands (1946-1958).
The United States conducted its largest nuclear detonation ever on that date in 1954. Castle BravoTest, a 15-megaton thermal bomb 1,000 times more potent than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. The Bravo shot caused great suffering in the Marshall Islands, and spread radioactive fallout. around the world.
Sixty-eight year later, the United States eight other nationsContinue to spend extraordinary sums — over $72 billion total in 2020 — on maintaining, expanding and modernizingTheir nuclear arsenals. The number of nuclear weapons in the world has fallen dramatically since a Cold War peakMore than 70,000 people, the U.S. and Russia currently hold 90 percent of the approximately 12,700 remaining nuclear weapons.
With the Russian invasion of Ukraine and NATO forces deployed to the alliance’s eastern flank, concerns over nuclear risks rise to the fore. Matt Korda, senior research associate with the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information ProjectAccording to Korda, the conflict is still well below the nuclear threshold at the moment. “While many systems deployed to Ukraine are dual-capable — meaning that they can launch both conventional and nuclear weapons — there is no indication that nuclear weapons or nuclear custodial units have been deployed along with them,” Korda says.
He warns that as in all wars, there are still high risks of miscommunications and irrationality. Truthout, “it’s incumbent on all sides to ensure that there is no danger of nuclear escalation.”
Even though the U.S. presidents pay lip service to “a world without nuclear weapons,” the U.S. currently has an estimated total inventoryThere are just over 5,400 nuclear weapons available, with a range of 0.3 kilotons to 1.2 Megatons. A warhead equipped with a yieldA kiloton is the equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT. One megaton is equal to 1,000,000 tons of TNT.
A nuclear weapon’s yield dictates what type of target a particular weapon can threaten. The highest yielding warhead in the U.S. arsenal, the B83-1The strategic gravity bomb was a 1.2-megaton bomb, which is 80 times more destructive than the bomb that decimated Hiroshima. By contrast, the lowest-yield warhead in the U.S. stockpile is the B61-3, a 0.3-kiloton bomb with an adjustable yield that can be “dialed-up” to 170 kilotons.
Other U.S. nuke warheads range in size from 5 to 455 Kilotons. Compared to this, the bombs that were destroyed Hiroshima NagasakiThey were approximately 15 and 21 kilogramons, respectively.
Although today’s warheads have a lower yield that those tested decades ago for their destructive potential, most are still much more destructive than the original. bombs droppedJapan in 1945. Warheads with lower yields pose their own dangers unique risks, in particular because they may be considered to be “more useable.” A president may be reluctant to use a bomb 80 times more destructive than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, but perhaps less so for a 2 or 3-kiloton bomb.
Currently, the U.S. currently has approximately 1,740 warheads deployedThe website is available for launch at any time. Nuclear Information Project. These warheads make up the U.S.’s nuclear triad — the three means of delivering nuclear weapons: by land (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles or ICBMs), air (dropped or fired from aircraft or bombers) and sea (fired from submarines).
Nuclear Weapons in Europe
Susi Snyder, a financial industry coordinator with the International Campaign to Abolish Nu Weapons (ICAN), specializes on untangling. complex webPublic, private, corporate, and institutional firms and institutions bankroll nuclear weapons. Snyder, an American who lives in the Netherlands, sees nuclear weapons as more than a financial beast to be defeated. neighbor.
Snyder points out that six U.S. military bases have B61 gravity-bombs. five NATO countries(Belgium and Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Turkey, and Turkey). The current estimated 100 B61-3 series and -4 series have adjustable yield options of 0.3 kilotons up to 170 kilotons, 50 kilotons, respectively. They can be delivered by multiple NATO aircraft or F-15s and F-16s.
Four B61 variants will be replaced by the B61-12, currently in production production. The B61-12, which will be completed in a variable yield guided nuclear gravity bomb, will be the world’s first. Designed to be more accurate, two of its four settings will be “low-yield” (0.3 and 1.5 kiloton), with options to dial-up to 10 and 50 kilotons. It will be available on seven types of aircraft, including: F-35A Lightning IIThe new $200 billion B-21Stealth bomber
Snyder says the term “low-yield” is misleading because even the lowest yield nuclear weapon is tremendously destructive. Snyder co-authored a 2014 book. report which considered the humanitarian consequences of a 12-kiloton nuclear weapon being detonated at Europe’s largest port facility in Rotterdam.
Many more people would be exposed to radiation, in addition to the estimated 60,000 deaths within hours or days. An unprecedented disruption of transportation and services throughout Europe would follow as a trail of radioactive fallout spread across the rural “green heart” of central Holland and decimated the Netherland’s vital agricultural sector.
ICAN recently published a reportThis report describes the grave vulnerabilities of the health care system around the world after the detonation a single 100-kiloton-airburst nuclear weapon. It is a mid-range yield in several countries’ arsenals. The report includes a number of. disturbing scenariosDoctors, nurses, hospitals, and urban populations would all be rendered utterly incompetent to respond to the effects a single nuclear explosion.
A Grim Prospect
Other researchers have looked at the effects smaller nuclear explosions in urban settings. Eva Lisowski is a member of Nuclear Weapons Education Project at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also a Tokyo-based nuclear engineering and nuclear science consultant. Korean PeninsulaThe Middle East. In “Grim Prospect: Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East,” Lisowski assesses the effects of a “low-yield” uranium device detonated at ground level in a densely populated city center with modern construction and population density.
Lisowski spent a year creating modeling exercises using population and geographic information systems (GIS) software. The estimated deaths from a 1-kiloton ground-level bomb explosion ranged from 32,000 in Riyadh, 42,000 at Tel Aviv, to 137,000 in Tehran, and 353,000 at Cairo. Lisowski explains her findings in detail in this. reviewRead her full report.
She simulated the effects of heat, radiation, bomb blast, structural collapse, and flying debris on deaths. Comparing a 1-kiloton blast to the September 11 attacks, she says, “It’s even more devastation. There’s going to be buildings coming down all over the place.”
“If you detonate at surface level, then the radiation, even in the city, can really have an effect. There could be death tolls that are comparable to Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Lisowski toldTruthout. “One kiloton is a yield that we have to care about.”
Beyond Comparison
The roster of past and present nuclear weapons, it’s tempting to compare their destructive capacity with non-nuclear human-made or natural explosions, but it’s complicated. NASA scientists have responded to the January Hunga Tonga eruption of a subsea volcano. compared the power of the eruption to a 10-megaton blast, close to the size of the United States’ first thermonuclear test1952, Enewetak Atoll. However, volcanoes are not nuclear bombs so direct comparisons can be misleading.
Science and Security Board member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Steve Fetter says, “I think the best way to accurately compare the effects of nuclear weapons of various yields is to show the areas affected by various effects (blast, thermal, radiation) or over which various percentages of people would be killed or injured.”
He warned that it is difficult to draw comparisons between nuclear and natural or human-made explosions. “Most importantly, nuclear (and other human-made) explosions are likely to kill more people than a natural explosion of far greater yield because they are far more likely to occur in or near densely populated areas.”
2020: 2,750 tons ammonium nitrate explodedMore than 7,000 people sustained injuries at the port of Beirut. Over 200 people were also killed. The incident was captured by cell phones violent blastThe incident resulted in the displacement of 300,000.
Peter Goldstein is a physicist from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. studied the explosionThe surrounding environment to reconcile the varying estimates. It is possible that the blast was a few kilotons or even more. Or it could have been as little as half a kilogramon. Goldstein studied the size of the crater created by the explosion and took seismic measurements. concludedThe chemical explosion was between 0.75 and 1.4 kilotons (or less) than the 2.75 million kilotons reportedly stored at that site.
Online simulators like Simulator.net are a great way to visualize the damage that a nuclear bomb can do in certain locations. Nuke Map Outrider. Another option is to read the findings of scientists and researchers who have examined the global impacts of a “limited” nuclear war between India and Pakistan.
We can only imagine a nuclear explosion if we don’t hear the loud roar, the blinding lights, the pain of heat, the destruction of buildings, and subsequent bloody cries and terrible darkening the sky with soot and ash. hibakusha(Nuclear survivors) who have experienced it themselves JapanThe Marshall Islands, KazakhstanOr within the United States.
From Deterrence to Use
Stephen Schwartz is a senior fellow at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Regarding the utility of more powerful nuclear weapons, he notes the irony that the U.S.’s largest nuclear weapon, the B83-1The gravity bomb’s yield of 1.2 megatons is considered too destructive to be used. “In the minds of some, it would create too much devastation if used, and therefore, it would essentially be self-deterring,” Schwartz told Truthout. “We might, ourselves, decline to use it because it would destroy far more buildings and infrastructure and kill many more people than we had intended or desired.”
The idea that such a bomb could be used in battle is theoretical, what he called an “absurd state of affairs,” noting that, “we’ve never had a nuclear war. We’ve only used nuclear weapons twice and that was against a country that did not have nuclear weapons that it could fire back at us.”
Contrary to the oft-repeated 1985 joint Soviet-U.S. statement that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” (a declaration at least nominally reaffirmed by the original five nuclear weapons states earlier this year), the U.S. is investing heavily in “more usable” lower-yield nuclear weapons like the W76-2 and B61-12, a trend Schwartz calls a “huge problem” because it marks a shift from using nuclear weapons to deter to instead using them with the intent to fight.
Schwartz claims that if the Biden administration pulls out of plans to develop the W76-2, it would send a message to the U.S. that they are less interested in preventing a nuclear war and more in fighting it.
“We, in fact, are the ones that are moving with this W76-2, with the B61-12 which isn’t deployed yet, and with other strategies to make nuclear weapons more useable,” Schwartz says.
Does he think it’s possible nuclear weapons could be used?
“Yes, that’s the whole unfortunate essence of nuclear deterrence. You are prepared to utterly annihilate the world in order to prevent the world from being annihilated.” He adds, “We can speculate all we want about this, but the reality is that we are fully prepared, as is Russia, to use nuclear weapons 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
It’s hard to destroy an Atomic Bomb
Melissa Hanham, an independent analyst and affiliate of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, sees the greatest risk of nuclear weapons being used coming from a misunderstanding, miscalculation or accident. She believes that these risks can be reduced by pursuing arms control and diplomacy. She also suggests that nuclear-armed states can reduce their stockpiles, beginning with weapons no longer required for specific missions.
Hanham points to the fact that, although there is widespread acceptance that Russia and America can reduce their nuclear stockpiles overall, the political willpower to do so remains difficult. To encourage politicians to reduce their nuclear forces, they need to have strong public support and a political incentive.
The problem of nuclear weapons is not being properly dealt with. Hanham believes we should pay more attention to the logistical, technical, and scientific challenges involved in dismantling nuclear weapons.
She says it’s time to do the hard work of taking nuclear weapons apart, particularly those deemed no longer needed. Obstacles to doing so remain large, funding for research has dwindled, and it’s difficult to capture the public’s attention.
“In my generation, it’s not cool to build nuclear weapons anymore. While no one wants to learn how to do this, you still need to be able to do it. how to take them apart. These weapons were designed … with the intent of sending the political message that they will be used, not disassembled,” Hanham told Truthout.
Disassembly requires a high level of technical knowledge as well as specialized tools and secure facilities. That technical expertise remains in older generations and isn’t trickling down, Hanham says, it’s atrophying.
“We literally have to design the tools to take them apart. You can’t just take a screwdriver and take it apart,” Hanham says. “And it’s expensive. Up front, it’s a lot of money. In the long run, maintaining that many weapons costs more.”
Today, the U.S. has around 1,720 nuclear weapons retired or waiting dismantlement and the Federation of American Scientists’ Korda says that rateRecent years have seen a slowing of this trend.
Both nuclear weapons assemblyDismantlement takes place primarily at the Pantex Plant, Amarillo, Texas. secondary activitiesIt will be held at Y-12 National Security ComplexOak Ridge, Tennessee Savannah River SiteSouth Carolina; Kansas City National SecurityMissouri Campus National Laboratories also play a central role in the U.S.’s nuclear weapons enterprise.
As society’s overall perception and understanding of nuclear weapons is diluted and fades, Hanham worries about a public that increasingly thinks of nuclear weapons as simply being much bigger and more powerful.
“Nuclear weapons are a completely different animal than an artillery rocket or conventional warhead,” she says. “Nuclear weapons are the most awful, most terrible weapon ever invented, and I do think it’s useful for humans to feel that seismic shift from what is just a large weapon to what is an existential threat to the existence of humans.”
Despite the lack of sustained opposition from the public or significant scrutiny by the mainstream media, the United States continues to invest heavily. modernizingIts nuclear weapons, both small and large, are all large. But, as Hanham says, “you can’t just nuke someone a little bit … once you start a nuclear war, it’s on.”
