Scuttlebutt: Nuclear Power, Nuclear Waste

     Usually when I write about nuclear issues I am focused on the staggering cost of nuclear power.  Businesses in the De-commissioning, Remediation, and Storage industries throw around numbers in the hundreds of millions like they are merely everyday expenses, which, unfortunately, they are.

     Lately I have become more concerned about the possibility of nuclear war.  Not that I am starting to dig my bunker, but there are alarming numbers concerning attitudes about the use of nuclear bombs.

     Following World War Two the world was aghast at the level of destruction and subsequent radiation poisoning of hundreds of thousands of Japanese.  The size of the blasts shook human consciousness.  Nothing like that had ever been seen on Earth.  It led nations to conceive of The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in 1968, the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963 and In 1996, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, prohibiting “any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion.”.  Even Ronald Reagan, who surrounded himself with Cold War hawks like Cap Weinberger, hoped to totally ban nuclear weapons worldwide.

     No such talk seems to exists these days with world leaders.  I suppose that is largely 

due to the fact that there is virtually no one left who was around for the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Somehow time has eroded acceptance of the idea that nuclear war can never be won. Once a nuclear exchange begins, who is going to stop it?

     Instead nuclear weapons are proliferating worldwide.  Testing of delivery systems in nuclear-armed North Korea that can reach South Korea and Japan may well inspire South Korea and Japan to acquire their own nuclear capacity.  Or do they expect the U.S. to nuke North Korea if they attack Japan with nuclear weapons?  The trouble in my mind is that we probably would.  And what would that lead to?

      Each U.S. administration since Clinton has been trying to prevent North Korea from weaponizing nuclear energy, but all have failed.  In 2000, at the end of the Clinton administration, Pyongyang had no nuclear arms. In 2008, at the end of the Bush administration, it had four to six. In 2016, at the end of the Obama administration, it had roughly 25. In 2020, at the end of the Trump administration, it had about 45 and perhaps as many as 60.  I guess the love letter didn't work either.

     After decades of slowly backing away from nuclear weapons, The United Kingdom is re-engaging in nuclear build-up.  While increasing their nuclear stockpile they are also about to spend $35 billion on four new nuclear subs, which, interestingly, will be capable of also firing American nukes.

     Few foreign policy experts outside of government believe that Iran will be stopped from getting their own nuclear weapons.  Perhaps in preparation of this, Britain has subtly (those English) threatened Iran.  Their latest policy is to not abide by the Non-Proliferation Treaty for non-signatory countries, of which Iran is one of four (Israel, Pakistan, and India are the others).

     The Israelis, of course, are even more adamant.  A recent survey showed that 60% of Israelis would support a first strike on Iran if they felt threatened by a nuclear armed Iran.  Even with a reminder of likely Iranian retaliation, approval for a strike was higher (45 percent) than disapproval (38 percent). 

     The U.S. Is just as bad. A recent Stanford study laid out this scenario:  An American decision to attack Iran by land could yield 20,000 deaths among American soldiers or we could nuke Iran and kill 2 MILLION Iranian non-combatants.  I gulp to read that 60% of Americans would use the nuke.  Mind you, this scenario did not involve Iran attacking U.S. territory.

     Indeed, a recent NY Times article by Daniel Ellsberg reveals that military planners were preparing a nuclear strike on China in 1958 if they didn't stop bombing Quemoy Island (which they did).

     I doubt few of any of these people that support using nukes know what they are talking about.  Little Boy was the nickname for the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.  It was a 15 kiloton explosion that shocked the world.  The B83 nukes we have today are 1.2 megatons, making them 80 times more powerful than Little Boy.  The now retired B53 was 9 megatons.  The Russians once built the Tsar Bomba at 50 megatons!  Russian currently has 700 bombs targeted toward us at 800 kilotons each.  The “atomic” bombs used in WWII are now used as a sort of fuse for today's thermonuclear warheads.

     The US government is planning to spend $1.5 - 2 trillion over the next 30 years (depending on which items are included) to rebuild our arsenal.  In 2015 former Secretary of Defense William Perry said, “Far from continuing the nuclear disarmament that has been underway for the last two decades, we are starting a new nuclear arms race.”

     You have probably never heard of the National Nuclear Security Administration.  It is a semi-autonomous agency within the U.S. Department of Energy responsible for enhancing national security through the military application of nuclear science.  They spend hundreds of billions of your tax dollars.  Their contract mismanagement has repeatedly landed them on the Government Accountability Office’s “high risk” list, yet since the end of the Obama administration, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) weapon-activity spending has grown by roughly 70 percent.  Further obscuring their spending, recent legislation has transfers much authority over the NNSA budget from the DOE to the Pentagon, an agency that has never passed an audit.

     While the world is busy enriching uranium for their bombs and spreading nuclear weapons technology, in the last quarter century, there have been some 20 seizures of stolen, weapons-usable nuclear material, and at least two terrorist groups have made significant efforts to acquire nuclear bombs.

     U.S. policy under all administrations are big on nuclear disarmament for adversary countries, but not so much for our allies or ourselves.  It is preposterous for anyone to believe that we have the moral authority to tell other countries that having nuclear weapons is bad when we insist on being the biggest nuclear power on earth.

     I'm afraid there will be little change in U.S. policy as long as corporations are making billions of dollars arming us for a war that can never be.

Hiroshima: Image by Alice Cheung from Pixabay