Nuclear chain reaction

“ If we renounce nuclear weapons, we open the door to aggression. If we fail to develop clean explosives, we expose people to disaster from radioactive fallout in any serious military conflict. To our way of thinking these are weighty arguments in favor of continued experimentation and development of nuclear weapons. ”

“ It has now been two decades since the introduction of thermonuclear fusion weapons into the military inventories of the great powers, and more than a decade since the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union ceased to test nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. Today our understanding of the technology of thermonuclear weapons seems highly advanced, but our knowledge of the physical and biological consequences of nuclear war is continuously evolving. ”

“ For the bulk of the world's population, internal and external radiation doses of natural origin amount to less than one-tenth rad annually. Thus nuclear testing to date does not appear to pose a severe radiation threat in global terms. But a nuclear war releasing 10 or 100 times the total yield of all previous weapons tests could pose a far greater worldwide threat. ”

“ If such a reactor operates for half a year and then explodes and releases its radioactive content into the atmosphere, its radioactivity will be comparable to that of a hydrogen bomb. In one important respect such an accident would be worse than a hydrogen explosion. The nuclear explosive lifts most of its radioactive products to a high altitude and the poisonous activity gets dispersed and diluted before it descends. The activity from a reactor on the other hand will remain close to the ground and might endanger the lives of the people in an area of hundreds of square miles. ”

“ The radioactive cloud released from a reactor accident may be more dangerous than a nuclear explosion. Such a cloud will not stop at national boundaries. Some proper form of international responsibility will have to be developed.
What effect the existence of nuclear weapons will have upon the coexistence of nations is a question less understood and less explored than any other affecting our future. Most people turn away from it with a feeling of terror. ”

“ This can, for obvious reasons, lead to serious instability in the overall system—most interesting systems cannot withstand the unbounded increase of any of their parameters without serious negative consequences. The basic engineering principles underlying the creation of nuclear weapons exploit this feature of positive feedback mechanisms: the destructive output of nuclear weapons results from the energy released during the fission of certain isotopes of (in most cases) uranium or plutonium. ”

“ If our decisions and our actions are too slow, can we live with the consequences? Are we prepared to live in a world where dozens of countries have the capability and key ingredients to make nuclear weapons? In such a world, I believe that the dangers we already have today would be greatly multiplied, and there would be a much higher probability that nuclear weapons will be used somewhere in the world. ”

“ We are unequivocally in favour of strengthening the regime of non-proliferation. The present international legal principles allow us to develop technologies to manufacture nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes. And many countries with all good reasons want to create their own nuclear energy as a basis for their energy independence. But we also understand that these technologies can be quickly transformed into nuclear weapons. ”

“ Fanatics who don’t value their lives are not deterred by, and accidents are not deterred by, the threat of nuclear retaliation.
We’re at the edge of a dangerous new period of nuclear challenges that cannot be met with a Cold War posture or a Cold War nuclear theory. These changes have come in a little more than 15 years and threaten not just the United States and our former adversaries, particularly Russia, but our allies and the world. ”

“ And along with the Russians, we're on our way to destroying the missiles and the bombers that carry 9,000 nuclear warheads. We've come so far so fast in this post-cold-war world that it's easy to take the decline of the nuclear threat for granted. ”

“ But all that humankind has achieved to date, all that we are seeking to accomplish, and human existence itself can be undone in an instant--in the catastrophe of a nuclear war.
Thus one of the central objectives of my Administration has been to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons to those nations which do not have them, and their further development by the existing nuclear powers-- notably the Soviet Union and the United States. ”

“ No instrument, not even a weapon, is evil in itself. Everything depends on the way in which it is used.
Public opinion has all but persuaded itself that nuclear weapons will be used not for a military objective but to terrorize and kill the greatest number of people. This is technically feasible. In fact, it does not even require the atomic bomb. For the last hundred years this possibility has been with us. Bacteriological warfare may cause widespread destruction. Yet no one has resorted to this horrible way of making war. ”

“ The problem of nuclear poisoning of the planet can only be solved by educating the people on earth about the nuclear facts of life.
The people of the Soviet Union, the United States and all other countries can be made aware of the nuclear peril —
When the people of this earth know the facts, they will not want to live poised on the brink of nuclear annihilation!
("Mankind must put an end to war to war will put an end to mankind." John F. Kennedy.) ”

“ Plans for other nuclear-powered desalting projects around the world are being discussed by the United States government, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the governments of many other nations. ”

“ We’re clearly at a tipping point with regard to the both the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the production of weapons-usable nuclear material. And both are important. Terrorists are seeking nuclear materials and weapons as the list of potential suppliers expands. ”

“ Thus, the possibility of a serious increase in ultraviolet radiation has been added to widespread radioactive fallout as a fearsome consequence of the large-scale use of nuclear weapons. And it is likely that we must reckon with still other complex and subtle processes, global in scope, which could seriously threaten the health of distant populations in the event of an all-out nuclear war. ”

“ If we find—and others also find—that clean weapons are the most desirable, the total strontium contamination is not likely to become more than perhaps two to four times the present value. We believe that all reasons—respect for human life, military considerations and simple sanity—lead to one conclusion. In the development of nuclear explosives we must endeavor to make them clean. But the real reason for this does not lie in the small contamination due to tests. The real reason is that war could turn contamination into a danger to countless people. ”

“ In western Europe and North America, which today have almost 75 per cent of current world capacity, nuclear provides about one-third of the energy that was forecast for it 10 years ago. Apart from Fance, Japan, the USSR, and several other East European countries that have decided to continue with their nuclear programmes, ordering, construction, and licensing prospects for new reactors in many other countries look poor. ”

“ For this reason it is most important that we should be able to use nuclear weapons which cause the least possible contamination. In recent nuclear tests more and more attention has been paid to the development of such clean weapons, and most fortunately these efforts are well on the way toward success. ”

“ We will also ensure that these developing nations have a reliable nuclear fuel supply. In exchange, these countries would agree to use nuclear power only for civilian purposes and forego uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities that can be used to develop nuclear weapons. ”

“ We are all here at this conference with a high purpose. We must find new and better answers to the imperative of the nuclear age: how to maximize the value of nuclear power and minimize proliferation dangers. ”

“ Both the local and worldwide fallout hazards of nuclear explosions depend on a variety of interacting factors: weapon design, explosive force, altitude and latitude of detonation, time of year, and local weather conditions.
All present nuclear weapon designs require the splitting of heavy elements like uranium and plutonium. The energy released in this fission process is many millions of times greater, pound for pound, than the most energetic chemical reactions. ”

“ We reaffirmed the basic compact of the global nonproliferation regime: all nations have the right to peaceful nuclear energy; nations with nuclear weapons have the responsibility to move toward disarmament; and nations without them have the responsibility to forsake them.
The United States is meeting our responsibilities by pursuing an agreement with Russia to reduce our strategic warheads and launchers. And just as we meet our responsibilities, so must other nations, including Iran and North Korea. ”

“ If a unit charge is accelerated through a potential difference of one volt, it acquires an energy of one electron-volt. The energies required for nuclear bombardment are of the order of several million electron-volts, which can be provided by atom-smashing machines such as the cyclotron.
Even at such high energies very few of the nuclear projectiles actually find their way to a target nucleus. Most of them are slowed down by the electrons, wasting their energy in heating up the target material. Perhaps one particle out of a million will be lucky enough to induce a nuclear reaction. ”

“ And if they ever got hold of a nuclear weapon or nuclear material, we have no doubt they’d use it.
That’s why we’ve been leading a global effort to secure the world’s nuclear materials. And with summits like this, we’ve made important progress. Working with other nations, we have removed or secured enough nuclear material for more than 150 nuclear weapons—material that will now never fall into the hands of terrorists. ”

“ If we continue to spin in different directions, which we’ve done in the last two or three days, the world is about become a much more dangerous place. A united and speedy and successfully implemented response that can be built upon as we go along is much more important that a perfect response.
We must also make it clear to North Korea that there will be dire consequences if it acts to sell or to spread nuclear weapons or nuclear materials. We must make sure North Korea understand that unlike previous warnings, we really do mean this one. ”

“ Nuclear explosives have not been used in a similar way. The reason is the danger from radioactivity. Once we fully master the art of clean explosions peaceful applications will follow and another step will be made in controlling the forces of nature. ”

“ We are developing clean weapons which are effective by their blast and their heat, but which produce little radioactivity. Of course, blast and heat will do damage only near the point of detonation. Radioactivity may be carried by the winds and escape the control of man to a considerable extent.
It is clear that war is and always has been terrible. We refuse to believe that wars will always be with us but we cannot disregard the danger of war as long as the world is half free and half slave. ”

“ One is that factories are located in cities, and these factories support the war effort. The other reason is that cities are centers of transportation through which the supplies of war materials pass. By destroying these centers the flow of the war supplies can be interrupted.
Nuclear warfare is likely to be quite different from past conflicts. The great concentration of firepower which a nuclear weapon represents makes it possible to attack on enemy anywhere, at very short notice. ”

“ There is no reason why one should not use a cold target material, which is bombarded from the outside by energetic nuclear projectiles, for example protons or alpha particles. The projectiles, if they are energetic enough, can overcome the electrical repulsion of the target nuclei, and they actually can penetrate. ”

“ In politics the atomic nucleus has entered as a promise and as a menace—not as a fact on which we can build and with which we can reckon.
Some technical predictions seem safe:
Nuclear energy will not render our older power plants obsolete in the near future. But nuclear energy will make it 169 possible to maintain the pace—even the acceleration—of the industrial revolution. It will be possible to produce all the energy we need at a moderate cost. Furthermore—and this is the important point—this energy will be available at any place on the globe at a cost which is fairly uniform. ”

“ We are going to constantly fight against the threat of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Last year Russia put forward the initiative to establish international centres for the enrichment of uranium. We are open to the possibility that such centres not only be created in Russia, but also in other countries where there is a legitimate basis for using civil nuclear energy. Countries that want to develop their nuclear energy could guarantee that they will receive fuel through direct participation in these centres. ”

“ Can we avoid catastrophic nuclear terrorism and nuclear use if our world keeps producing weapons-grade, fissile material and fails to secure or get rid of the supply of such material already in existence? A fundamental question. You already know my answer, but I think it’s a beginning point.
Number two: Can the nuclear power industry around the globe expand if we have a serious nuclear incident or catastrophe in the nuclear weapons arena? ”