Israel also acquired nuclear weapons as did South Africa, which later surrendered its stockpile. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea has also tested a nuclear device. In addition, there are many countries that possess the scientific know-how, technology and fissile material that would allow them to play the nuclear card in a relatively short time.
In the US achieved a qualitative leap in the nuclear-arms race when it detonated its first thermonuclear device. A year later the USSR followed suit. The development of nuclear-weapons delivery systems -- bombers, missiles and submarines -- is another chapter of the arms race.
However, the testing of nuclear weapons and the rockets to transport them would eventually rally public opinion at least momentarily in favour of nuclear disarmament measures. Despite repeated and sometimes intense efforts to put disarmament efforts on track, the United Nations was unable to devise negotiating schemes that would bring the different parties together. Deep-rooted suspicion of the rival's motives and the absence of political will ensured a negotiating stalemate for almost two decades.
Calls for an end to nuclear tests, especially in the atmosphere, and a stop to further horizontal proliferation were instrumental in getting the endc going in Not surprisingly, the first order of business was a treaty to ban nuclear-weapons tests in the atmosphere, under water and in outer space.
The Partial Test-Ban Treaty was agreed upon rather quickly. It did not contain verification measures and it prohibited activities which the endc's three participating nuclear-weapon States -- the UK, the US and the USSR France refused to take its seat at the table -- were ready to forego.
Underground testing would continue for over 30 years. The next item on the endc's agenda was a multilateral legal agreement to prevent the further spread of nuclear weapons to other nations horizontal proliferation. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons NPT has become the cornerstone of nuclear disarmament efforts since its entry into force in By the late s, the possible spread of nuclear weapons to more countries horizontal proliferation had become a source of increasing concern.
So had the continued improvement of existing arsenals vertical proliferation and the testing of those weapons was seen as the key element of the qualitative nuclear arms race. Both horizontal proliferation and nuclear testing had found their way onto the United Nations agenda. By the mids a number of countries had decided to forego the nuclear option and agreed to a trade-off from the nuclear-weapon States in return for a legally-binding commitment to remain non-nuclear-weapon States nNWS.
It was time to sit down and negotiate a treaty. Countries in Latin America had already begun the pioneering efforts to establish a nuclear-weapon-free zone in their region, which they saw as a way to begin to achieve a nuclear-weapons-free world.
The NPT's approach was different. It rests on three pillars: horizontal non-proliferation; vertical non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament; and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The latter would enjoy the benefits of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and refrain from acquiring nuclear weapons. The former would pursue nuclear disarmament, beginning with the cessation of all nuclear tests.
By then, the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA was in place, providing all parties with an international verification system, including inspections. The IAEA would do the same for the nuclear-weapon-free zones that have been established. The NPT was done in good faith, but the non-nuclear-weapon States insisted that the situation regarding its implementation be reviewed periodically; thus the five-year conferences.
In addition, the NPT was a temporary agreement whose extension would have to be examined after 25 years. In it was extended indefinitely. After , despite some very limited bilateral agreements between the US and the USSR, the nuclear arms race continued. The Partial Test-Ban Treaty had been a hoax, since underground tests multiplied. It appeared that since nuclear tests were out of sight, they were also out of mind.
Calls for a comprehensive nuclear-weapon-test prohibition fell on deaf ears. The non-nuclear-weapon States tried to raise visibility of the nuclear disarmament issues. Still others requested an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice regarding the legality of the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons.
It is not likely that effects in excess of that indicated for pine forests would occur. Recently, there has been a focus on evaluating the possible effects of radiation on other members of an ecological system. It is not expected that effects other than those mentioned above would be of significance.
In the past there has been concern that large numbers of nuclear explosions might lead to large-scale disruption of the environment, including depletion of stratospheric ozone due to nitrogen oxides produced by the fireball, and changes in climate due to the soot and other aerosols released from burning cities.
These concerns are relevant only with the detonation of thousands of high-yield weapons. No significant environmental disruptions would be expected to occur beyond the areas directly affected by the prompt effects from one or a few nuclear explosions and the fallout that, depending on the amount of soil entrained and the fission fraction of the weapon s , can persist at dangerous levels for at least a year. In this context, there are three important questions:.
To what extent can conventional or nuclear weapons destroy such facilities or the chemical and biological agents that they contain? To what extent would a conventional or nuclear attack on such a facility result in the release of chemical and biological agents? If chemical or biological agents are released as a result of an attack, what would be the health consequences for the nearby civilian population?
The answers to the first two questions depend critically on detailed information about the facility, including its location, construction, and layout; the type and number of agent containers and their placement within the facility; and the amount and type of agent and the form in which it is stored.
This information would provide the basis for targeting, selecting weapons, and estimating how much agent might be destroyed or released. Unfortunately, detailed information of this kind is likely to be highly uncertain or unavailable for many potential targets. Existing estimates of the amount of agent that might be destroyed or dispersed in a nuclear attack are based entirely on computer models using greatly simplified assumptions.
In the case of conventional attacks, experiments also have been conducted using prototype facilities, with surrogates in place of live agent. Even with all of these qualifications, certain important points can be made:. It is important to distinguish between the defeat or destruction of a chemical or biological weapons facility and the destruction of the chemical or biological agent contained within it. Facilities can be defeated or destroyed without destroying the agent inside.
For example, a nuclear EPW could crush a storage facility under meters of rock without destroying or releasing any agent. Similarly, conventional weapons could collapse surface or near-surface entrances to such a facility and thereby hinder or delay the use of agents by the enemy.
The thermal destruction of chemical or biological agents requires the deposition of large amounts of heat throughout the agent. Although existing conventional earth-penetrator weapons, such as the GBU, can penetrate and destroy shallow buried facilities, they cannot deliver enough energy to reliably and completely destroy large stockpiles of chemical or biological agent, although they may substantially degrade the agents.
Non-nuclear agent-defeat weapons now under development may ultimately prove to be more effective. However, the BLUB thermobaric bomb, if detonated within the chamber, may be able to destroy the agents. Nuclear weapons are capable of delivering the very large amounts of heat and radiation required to destroy large stocks of chemical and biological agents.
In order for this heat and radiation to be deposited throughout the agent, the nuclear weapon must be detonated in the chamber where the agent is stored. Weapons detonated several meters above, below, or to the side of storage facilities may be much less effective in destroying the agent. The manner in which the agent is stored e. Given the many unknowns, a conservative analysis must presume some release of the agent in a viable form if the facility is breached, regardless of the type of weapon used.
The amount of agent that likely would be released is extremely difficult to estimate accurately. DTRA estimates that an attack with existing conventional weapons could cause the release in respirable form of 0. The consequences of a release of agent can be estimated using computer codes that model the dispersion of agent and subsequent human exposures and health effects.
Although these models are similar in some ways to those used to estimate the consequences of nuclear fallout, the transport of chemical and biological agents is more complicated and more uncertain.
The particle size distribution of biological agents and some chemical agents may change during transport. The persistence of both chemical and biological agents depends on temperature, humidity, exposure to ultraviolet light, precipitation, and agent-surface reactions. The importance of these factors differs for each type of agent, but for most chemical and biological agents of concern, one may expect a rapid degradation in their toxicity or viability within hours to days—minutes in the case of some biological agents—following a release into the open air.
In contrast, some agents, such as anthrax spores, mustard, and lewisite, may persist for many years. Although many studies have validated and verified the fate of chemical agents during transport, few are available for biological agents, and the fate of biological agents during transport is therefore difficult to model.
In addition, the dose-response relationships are uncertain for many biological agents and often are very sensitive to the age and health status of the person exposed. Though multiple experiments using biological and chemical agent surrogates have been conducted, they provide an imperfect database.
Actual experience that might be used to validate models is limited to one release of biological agent anthrax spores at Sverdlovsk in and one release of chemical agent sarin in the Tokyo subway system in Media reports of the use of chemical agents by the Iraqi government against Kurdish villages do not provide sufficient information about agent concentrations or delivery method to be useful, and the case of the letters containing anthrax sent through the U.
Postal Service in is of limited relevance to the type of situation considered here. At the request of the committee, DTRA estimated the average number of fatalities that would result from various releases of sarin a nerve agent and anthrax at three locations in the Washington, D. In each case, releases of 1 to 10, kilograms of sarin and 1 gram to 10 kilograms of weaponized dry anthrax spores were considered, corresponding to releases of 0.
The average number of fatalities from prompt and acute effects of fallout resulting from attacks with nuclear EPWs with yields of 3 and 30 kilotons were also estimated. The population was assumed to be static and entirely in the open with no protection.
The results are shown in Figures 6. The estimated mean number of fatalities resulting from a 1, kilogram release of sarin 1 percent of a ton inventory ranges from about to 1, depending on the location of the release. For the reasons previously discussed i. For comparison, the estimated mean number of fatalities ranges from 7, to 40, for a 3 kiloton EPW, and from 30, to , for a 30 kiloton EPW, depending on the location.
Because the expected number of fatalities from a relatively low yield 3 kiloton nuclear EPW exceeds that from an extremely large 10, kilogram release of sarin, it is highly unlikely that a nuclear attack would result in smaller total collateral effects than those from a conventional attack against a facility for the storage or production of chemical agents.
In contrast, releases of as little as 0. International Commission on Radiological Protection. For example, if people received an average effective dose of 1 sievert, 5 would be expected to die from cancer as a result of this exposure. The effective dose is roughly equal to the whole-body dose for external exposure to gamma rays.
Otake and W. Junk, Y. Kundiev, P. Vitte, and B. Yamada, F. Wong, S. Fujiwara, M. Akahoshi, and G. Although the hardest and deepest targets require EPW yields of to 1, kt, other targets of interest could be destroyed with EPWs with yields of 1 to 10 kt.
The committee therefore did a parameter analysis in which the EPW yield ranged from 1 to 1, kt. The mean number of casualties over this range of EPW yields is shown in Figures 6. National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement. Institute of Medicine. Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan eds. The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, U. Government Printing Office, Washington, D. Using a risk coefficient of 0.
This threshold was used only to limit the complexity of the calculation; the committee takes no position on whether a threshold exists in the dose-response relationship.
The National Command Authority and the deployers have opportunities and the responsibility to execute an attack on HDBTs in ways to minimize collateral damage by taking into account wind direction as well as yield. Lethal beta skin burns, the major cause of fatality from acute effects of fallout at Chernobyl, are not considered.
KDFOC does not consider beta burns in its analyses because burns are not considered a first-order lethality effect, like prompt and local fallout. For residual effects, it considers only whole-body gamma groundshine from fallout particles greater than 5 microns.
Beta burns from such fallout particles would not be acutely lethal except in areas where gamma radiation would already have been lethal, thus, double-counting. HPAC does not include beta-induced injuries—all casualties are derived from effects of gamma radiation. The main problem with beta injuries is that the material must come into contact with skin, and HPAC has no means to determine the orientation and skin exposure posture of the population, nor the secondary beta burns received by people touching a surface contaminated with beta particles.
Secondary beta burns are potentially a problem, but there is no way to determine casualties because the total population is not affected.
Ng, L. Anspaugh, and R. Whicker and T. Whicker, T. Kirchner, L. Anspaugh, and Y. Gordeev, I. Vasilenko, A. Lebedev, A. Bouville, N. Luckyanov, S. Simon, Y. Stepanov, S. Shinkarev, and L. Anspaugh, S. Simon, K. Likhtarev, R. Maxwell, and S. National Cancer Institute. Steven L. Kerber, J. Till, S. Simon, J. Lyon, D. Thomas, S. Preston-Martin, M. Rallison, R. Lloyd, and W.
Such values are given in J. Puskin and C. Steven A. Fetter and Frank von Hippel. Underground facilities are used extensively by many nations to conceal and protect strategic military functions and weapons' stockpiles. Because of their depth and hardened status, however, many of these strategic hard and deeply buried targets could only be put at risk by conventional or nuclear earth penetrating weapons EPW.
Recently, an engineering feasibility study, the robust nuclear earth penetrator program, was started by DOE and DOD to determine if a more effective EPW could be designed using major components of existing nuclear weapons. This activity has created some controversy about, among other things, the level of collateral damage that would ensue if such a weapon were used.
To help clarify this issue, the Congress, in P. This report provides the results of those analyses. Based on detailed numerical calculations, the report presents a series of findings comparing the effectiveness and expected collateral damage of nuclear EPW and surface nuclear weapons under a variety of conditions. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.
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Get This Book. Visit NAP. The immediate and longer-term humanitarian and environmental consequences of nuclear weapons use and testing continue to be subject to scientific scrutiny, with emerging evidence and analysis inter alia of the sex- and age-differentiated impacts of ionizing radiation on human health, [14] the long-term impacts of nuclear weapons testing on the environment, [15] including on mortality and infant mortality rates, [16] the consequences of a nuclear war on the global climate, [17] food security, [18] ocean acidification, [19] as well as evidence and analysis of regional preparedness and response measures to nuclear testing.
There is a particular need for continued and scaled-up efforts to research and understand the humanitarian and environmental consequences of nuclear weapons testing. Communities in former nuclear testing areas — including the Marshall Islands, [21] Kazakhstan, [22] Algeria [23] and the United States [24] — continue to be affected today by the impacts of ionizing radiation released from nuclear tests that occurred decades ago. Many communities report that they do not have sufficient information about their own history of exposure, the current risks of living in a radioactively contaminated area and the intergenerational risks associated with radiation exposure.
Moreover, while it has been established that women and children are disproportionally affected by ionizing radiation, little is known about the effects of ionizing radiation on reproductive health. Possible questions for further research in this area include: Why is biological sex a factor in radiation harm? Why are the biological sex differences in radiation harm greatest in young children?
Is the percentage of reproductive tissue and how it reacts to radiation a contributing factor? Evidence of the foreseeable impacts of a nuclear detonation is an integral part of a nuclear weapons risk assessment.
Although nuclear weapons have not been used in armed conflict since , there has been a disturbingly high number of close calls in which nuclear weapons were nearly used inadvertently as a result of miscalculation or error.
The conferences furthermore observed that international and regional tensions between nuclear-armed states, coupled with existing military doctrines and security policies that give a prominent role to nuclear weapons, increase the risk of nuclear weapons being used, and concluded that, given the catastrophic consequences of a nuclear weapon detonation, the risk of nuclear weapons being used is unacceptable, even if the probability of such an event were considered low.
Since the three conferences on the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons, the risk that nuclear weapons may be used has increased. While there are different ways to conceptualize nuclear risks and the sources of these risks, the increased probability of nuclear weapons being used is driven by the following interconnected developments:.
It is possible to conceptualize the increasing risk of nuclear weapons being used according to the following four risk-of-use scenarios:.
When assessing the risks arising from technological developments, it is important to consider these technologies both individually and in combination. New technologies may interrelate and depend on each other, thus affecting decision-making systems in unpredictable ways.
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