by Keith Richmond
DESPITE the end of the Cold War and the peace dividend the politicians promised, the world is more at risk of a nuclear catastrophe than ever before. That is the stark warning in a new report, Nuclear Power & Nuclear Proliferation, by Frank Barnaby, a nuclear physicist and former director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, for the World Disarmament Campaign.
The report reveals that the world now has a stockpile of 27,000 nuclear weapons – 25,000 in American and Russian armouries, the rest in France, Britain, China, Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea. “The US and Russia are modernising their weapons. The UK is planning to build a new generation of nuclear submarines for its Trident system and has not ruled out modernising the warheads. Nato is still prepared for first use of its nuclear capability.”
The report says there is a risk of further proliferation with terrorist groups acquiring nuclear weapons. “Competent physicists could design a nuclear weapon using information in the public domain and any country with a civil nuclear programme and aircraft or missiles could become a nuclear weapon state.” It says there is “widespread concern” over Iran but “nuclear weapon states have no moral credibility to argue that Iran, or any other non-nuclear weapon state, has no right to acquire nuclear weapons.”
The report says there are now 439 civil nuclear reactors in 31 countries and warns “there is no agreed safe disposal route for nuclear waste, which is a serious health hazard.”
The World Disarmament Campaign was founded in 1979 by veteran peace campaigner Fenner Brockway and Nobel Peace Prize winner Philip Noel-Baker to work for the implementation of policies agreed at the 1978 special session on disarmament at the United Nations General Assembly.
It says “the need for nuclear disarmament is as great as ever” but admits that “not least because of its links to civil nuclear power, achieving disarmament will not be easy.”
