In total, about 30 countries have sought nuclear weapons, and ten are known to have succeeded. Of these ten, South Africans the only one that subsequently dismantled that program. The countries with successful, on-going nuclear weapons programs are Britain, France, China, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, and the United States.
In addition, Iran is suspected of actively seeking nuclear weapons. Libya, previously suspected of pursuing a nuclear weapons program, acknowledged and began dismantling that program in December 2003. Iraq’s nuclear weapons program is now ended. The security situation facing South Korea and Taiwan continues to raise concerns that they may decide to seek nuclear weapons in the future. Algeria sometimes raises concern because of domestic unrest and the nature of its civil nuclear facilities.
Suspcions also exist that Syria had intentions to produce nuclear weapons, but no nuclear weapons program had been identified. In September 6, 2007 Israeli jets bombed an installation in Al Kibar, Syria. The site was quickly covered by new construction but analysis suggested that the destroyed building may have been a Yongbyon style nuclear reactor.
1. There are at least 23,000 nuclear weapons in existence: sufficient to wipe out the entire human population of the planet many times over.
2. Of the 23,000 nuclear weapons in existence around 2,500 are on High Alert. This means they are ready to be launched at a moment’s notice.
3. The missiles delivering nuclear weapons to their target travel at faster than 1000 miles in 4 minutes.
4. The only way our armed forces have of knowing if a nuclear attack is in progress is through an electronic early warning system. This system, like all electronic systems, is subject to malfunction.
5. When the electronic warning system signals that a nuclear attack is in progress the military chiefs of staff have a matter of minutes to decide if the warning is true or false.
6. If the chiefs of staff instruct the Prime Minister/President that an attack is in progress he has a matter of minutes to decide if this information is reliable and to press the button launching a retaliatory strike.
7. Central London would be utterly destroyed by a single megaton bomb.
8. One such bomb would, due to the blast alone, cause 98% deaths from Westminster to the City of London and from Lambeth to Marylebone.
9. A modelled attack on Detroit (when the population was 1.32 million) predicted that a single 1 megaton bomb exploded above the city would cause up to 630,000 deaths and injuries from blast alone. 83% of the population would be immediately killed or injured. Many of the remaining population would die or suffer terribly from the effects of radioactive fallout.
10. One 5 megaton nuclear bomb has as much explosive power as all the explosives used in the second world war.
11. If a nuclear power station or nuclear waste disposal site were the target of a nuclear attack it has been estimated that the resulting contamination would cover an area nearly 3 times that of Wales.
12. Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki referred to the pain and suffering as ‘indescribable’ and ‘hell on earth’. Eventually some survivors of Hiroshima arrived in hospital elsewhere. Such was their degree of suffering that when a nurse entered the ward they screamed for her to kill them.
13. There have been various crises since 1945 when the world came within a hair’s breadth of nuclear war. Our luck will run out. The system is held primed at all times.
14. In one crisis a single man saved the world from destruction. If Stanislav Petrov, in 1983, had told his Russian superiors that his electronic monitors were signalling a massive nuclear attack from the US, there would have been a global nuclear war. He did not tell them and the signals turned out to have been due to a malfunction.
15. A nuclear war would cause a blanket of particles in the atmosphere that would blot out the sun’s rays and result in the death of the vegetation on which life depends. This would be in addition to the death of people, animals, and plants caused by the explosive power, the radiation and the shockwaves.
16. Each of the weapons carried on the UK Trident submarine is 7 times more destructive than the Hiroshima bomb which killed 140,000. The UK Trident submarine carries 16 Trident missiles. Each missile can contain 3 No. 100 kiloton weapons. A single submarine is designed to carry over 300 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb.
17. The nuclear weapons on a single Trident submarine can destroy over 40 million people (extrapolating from Hiroshima).
18. The UK nuclear arsenal alone has the destructive power to destroy over 80% of the 195 capital cities of the world.
19. We in the UK have 4 Trident submarines; our ally, the US, has 14.
20. Trident renewal will cost the taxpayer 97 thousand million pounds yet it is totally useless in opposing any real existing threat.
The NPT prohibits nuclear weapon states from transferring nuclear weapons to, or assisting NNWS in the development of nuclear weapons. At the same time, NNWS are legally required not to receive, manufacture, or acquire nuclear weapons, and to place all their peaceful use nuclear materials and facilities under IAEA safeguards.
Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said it had released 560 tonnes of groundwater pumped from 12 wells located upstream from the damaged reactors. The water had been temporarily stored in a tank so it could undergo safety checks before being released, the firm added.
The buildup of toxic water is the most urgent problem facing workers at the plant, almost two years after the environment ministry said 300 tonnes of contaminated groundwater from Fukushima Daiichi was seeping into the ocean every day.
Radiation Dispersion throughout the Pacific
Russia has supplied weapons to the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, despite Assad’s long record of human rights abuses and his ruthless war against his own people. Putin has also allied himself with Tehran at a time when the United States and its allies are attempting to halt Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon. Russia has also been cozying up to traditional U.S. allies like Germany as energy and business ties have strengthened in recent years.
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