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There are over 3,700 metric tons of plutonium and highly-enriched uranium in global stockpiles, according to a recent report by the Institute for Science and International Security.
The tragedy still unfolding in the southern United States has elicited an outpouring of support from Cuba to Kuwait. It has stirred fears of global oil shocks and of their economic consequences. Hurricane Katrina has also had an immediate, profound impact on the image of the U.S. in the world. In the global press, it has prompted a debate on the seeming fragility of the world’s only superpower.
This is a summary of what we know about Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan’s decades-long involvement in the illegal transfer of nuclear materials and technologies.
The complete extent of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan’s decades-long involvement in the illegal transfer of nuclear materials is not known. The details are submerged in Khan’s work. As more information is released from those who have questioned Khan and his network partners, a more complete image of the nuclear black market will emerge. This chronology summarizes what we now know.
Officials have groped for references to atomic bombs to describe the destruction that Hurricane Katrina brought to the southeast United States. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour said, “I can only imagine that this is what Hiroshima looked like 60 years ago.” But Hiroshima was much worse. The bombing killed 140,000 people either immediately or within the year and destroyed or damaged 70,000 of the 76,000 buildings in the city. Experts have warned for years of the real danger of a Hiroshima-size terrorist attack on an American city but, like the known risk to New Orleans, the government response has been woefully inadequate. Now is the time to shore up the nuclear security dams and levees that can prevent this ultimate disaster. (Read More)
Decades later, the debate rages on. Should the atomic bomb have been dropped on innocent civilians? Did the devastation of Hiroshima and, sixty years ago today, of Nagasaki save American lives? Robert L. Gallucci, Dean of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, says no, he would not have used the bomb on cities. "Our targets should be military forces and leadership… President Truman should have looked for targets that were primarily military or genuine war industry… It is unlikely that Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be so described." On the other hand, Thomas Donnelly, Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, sees the decision to drop the bomb as necessary for the sake of saving lives. "The use of atomic weapons did not bring a world without war, but it did bring an end to the most lethal conflict in human history … I hope I would have made the same decision to shorten the agony that was WWII in the Pacific."
In a fascinating article, the July issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists asks eight experts and historians to weigh in on the question: "Would you have dropped the bomb?" We provide highlights of two essays on each side – supporting the decision and arguing against it. (Read More)
Sixty-six years ago this month, Albert Einstein sent an urgent letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. “It may become possible,” he warned, “to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.” The military consequences were obvious. “This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable -- though much less certain -- that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory.” Worse, the Nazis might already be hard at work on just such a project, “I understand that Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium from the Czechoslovakian mines, which she has taken over.” (Read More)