TEN FACTS ABOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS

TEN FACTS ABOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS 

“Nuclear weapons are clearly inhumane ... it is inevitable that the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will be repeated - somewhere, sometime - in an unforgivable affront to humanity itself.” - NUCLEAR WEAPONS Takashi Hiraoka, 1995

1. There are still some 26,000 nuclear warheads in the world, enough to destroy civilization many times over and destroy most life on earth.Nuclear weapons make humans an endangered species. 


2. More than 95% of all nuclear weapons are in the arsenals of the US and Russia. 


3. The average nuclear weapon in the US arsenal is approximately eight times more powerful than the nuclear bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, immediately killing some 90,000 people. 


4. There are currently nine countries with nuclear weapons (US, Russia, UK, France, China,Israel , India, Pakistan and North Korea).


5. The 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty, ratified by nearly every country in the world, requires the nuclear weapons states to engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament. 


6. The United States unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 in order to pursue missile defenses and space weaponization.US withdrawal from the treaty has caused both Russia and China to improve their offensive nuclear capabilities. 


7. There are up to 2,000,000 kilograms of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) in global stockpiles, and it takes just 15-24 kilograms for a nuclear weapon.There are 28 countries with at least one bomb’s worth of HEU and 12 countries with at least 20 bombs’ worth.  


8. Plutonium created in nuclear power reactors is another source of bomb material.It takes as little as three to five kilograms of plutonium to create a nuclear weapon.There are now some 500,000 kilograms of separated plutonium in global stockpiles.Plutonium stocks continue to increase due to civilian ‘spent’ fuel reprocessing. 


9. The 2001 US Nuclear Posture Review provides for developing contingency plans for nuclear weapons 
use against seven countries: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea, Russia and China.

10. The Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) between the US and Russia requires the two countries to reduce their deployed strategic warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 by December 31,2012.On the following day the treaty terminates, and each side can redeploy as many nuclear warheads as it chooses.Many of the nuclear warheads taken off deployed status are not being dismantled, but rather placed in storage, where they might be stolen by criminal or terrorist groups. 

What is a nuclear weapon? See my earlier post .