Abstract
Who's an anti-nuclear alarmist now?
In his November/December 2001 column titled “Some Things Never Change,” William Arkin disparagingly refers to “ambulance chasers in the anti-nuclear community … warning of the vulnerability of nuclear reactors.” Coming from such an intelligent man, this is an extraordinary statement.
Do President George W. Bush, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) qualify as anti-nuclear alarmists? After September 11, the National Guard and the Coast Guard were patrolling outside nuclear power plants, and F-16s were escorting small planes away from FAA-imposed no-fly zones above the reactors.
The IAEA has warned that “little can be done to shield a nuclear facility from a direct hit by an airliner.” Hungary has installed surface-to-air missiles for the defense of the Paks nuclear power station. France has likewise positioned surface-to-air missiles at La Hague, site of Europe's largest nuclear fuel reprocessing plant.
Perhaps the alarmist Bush administration should also consider stationing rockets to protect the 40,000 tons of spent reactor fuel stored in pools of water at almost all U.S. commercial reactor sites. These pools were designed to serve only as interim storage, and some are housed in corrugated facilities or buildings with metal roofs. These structures are not even capable of withstanding a small plane crash, let alone a hijacked airliner.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has officially conceded that a catastrophic fire–similar to the one at the Chernobyl reactor in 1986–at the nuclear waste storage facility in Orange County, North Carolina, could result in the release of 100 percent of its radioactive contents into the air. In such a disaster, the geographic area that would have to be evacuated would be the size of the entire state of North Carolina.
Some things have changed: Putting surface-to-air missiles on the roof and the National Guard in the parking lot have exposed the lie that nuclear power is “safe” and “clean.” We have built mountains of eternally poisonous radioactive waste, just to boil water to make electricity. Now the bill for this insanity has come due.
New Bloomfield, Missouri
“First use” policy is terror, too
On September 11, that unforgettable day, more than 5,000 noncom-batants were killed, hundreds were injured, and survivors, witnesses, and many others suffered incalculable psychic damage.
Many blocks in downtown New York were destroyed; the physical damage is expected to exceed $50 billion. From the president on down, virtually all Americans, as well as others across the globe, condemned the attack on the World Trade Center as an act of intolerable barbarism.
Can we imagine an act that would exceed these numbers? Yes, a single nuclear bomb–dropped on a populated area, where the fatalities would be almost entirely noncombatants, like those in the World Trade Center towers–would result in a hundred or a thousand times as many casualties.
Yet the United States has not seen fit to forswear the first use of nuclear weapons. The United States retains the right to be the first to escalate from conventional warfare to nuclear war. But how would a deliberate first strike with a nuclear bomb differ from the attacks of September 11, other than in its scale of death and destruction?
What are the possible uses of the U.S. nuclear arsenal? Foremost, of course, is to retaliate against another's first use, assuming that the government can be absolutely sure who is behind the attack. The knowledge that the United States would retaliate in kind serves well to deter any government from launching a first strike.
Beyond that, there is nothing that could justify such an act of barbarism. Not even as a response to the use of biological or chemical weapons–which would be answering one act of terror with a far greater one. Nor as a last resort, if the United States judged that using a nuclear weapon was the only way to prevail in what was considered a “just” war.
Keeping open the option of first use is thought by some to deter others from engaging in an attack using non-nuclear weapons–but that seems unlikely, given the 56 years that have passed without the United States resorting to nukes, a period that includes the Korean, Vietnam, and Gulf wars.
In truth, the United States is extremely unlikely to be the first to go nuclear. So what would be gained by forswearing first use?
It would remove any thoughts in military and executive planning about first use as an option, and it would virtually eliminate the chance of an unintended launch. Beyond that, if retaliation, or second strike, was seen as the only use for nuclear weapons, it would soon become clear that the United States has far too many nuclear weapons, that too many defense dollars are spent on them, and that it is unnecessary to spend anything on new kinds of weapons–which the United States is now doing!
The greatest benefit might be the conclusion of a treaty by the “nuclear haves,” stating that they all consider first use a prima facie crime against humanity, and branding the chief executive of any country that initiated nuclear war a war criminal punishable by the World Court. If the penalties for breaking the treaty were defined, it would tie the hands of the other nuclear haves as much as those of the United States. And the world would be safer as a result.
We must finally recognize first use as the most extreme act of terror.
Aiken, South Carolina
The clock: Closer to midnight?
I have often thought about the Doomsday Clock in the past several weeks. At many events in the past I have used it as an important symbol. I'm not certain where the hands of the clock should be pointing at this particular time–it seems to me it ought to be about one minute to midnight, or closer. In any case, I feel that an announcement from your organization is sorely needed.
If there is a silver lining to be found in the ominous clouds, it is that people have been given more information about the nuclear, biological, and chemical threats around the world than we could have gotten out through years of public awareness campaigns. People are talking more than ever about the future and asking how we got into this mess.
I thank you for your work because it has given me some sound argument to back up the emotional side of outreach. I need all the tools I can get right now. If you update the clock, let me know.
Warren, Rhode Island
… or about right?
Fifty years ago, the Bulletin was a sensible (if not reassuring) voice with the hands of the clock set at five minutes to disaster.
Thanks to the Internet, I find it is still sensible (if a little too reassuring). Thanks for being so.
Paris, France
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Update
In “Buried in the Backyard,” Jonathan Tucker described the 1993 discovery of buried chemical munitions in Spring Valley, a posh Washington, D.C., neighborhood (September/October 2001 Bulletin). The area had been used during World War I to test chemical weapons. After the war, the military filled in a number of contaminated pits and trenches and abandoned the site. According to Tucker, Spring Valley is only one of dozens of sites in the United States and abroad where the military dumped or abandoned chemical weapons.
On September 6, shortly after the Bulletin went to press, Panama announced that live chemical munitions had been found buried on San Jose Island, a popular ecotourism destination located some 40 miles from Panama City. Canada, Britain, and the United States tested chemical weapons on the island during World War II. Among the weapons found were four 500-1,000-pound phosgene bombs. Panama immediately declared a state of alert and evacuated the island.
Panama was aided in its investigation by the Ottawa Citizen, which last March published a report about the Canadian military's participation in mustard and phosgene tests. Reporters visited the island and mapped the locations of several unex-ploded weapons.
A team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which administers the Chemical Weapons Convention, subsequently discovered additional weapons, including mustard gas bombs, chemical rockets, and other toxic munitions. Panama has asked the three countries that conducted the tests to fulfill their treaty obligation–to clean up leftover bombs and lingering contamination. So far, however, the countries have not complied (November 10, Ottawa Citizen).