Abstract
Can nuclear disarmament reduce the risks of nuclear war sufficiently to be acceptable to most people in a world in which use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes continue to flourish? My short answer is: perhaps. The nuclear materials needed for making nuclear weapons are automatically produced, or used as fuel, or both, in all types of fission reactors, whether for military or for peaceful purposes. Plants for producing the low-enrichment uranium used as fuel in most of the world’s nuclear power plants can quickly be modified to make highly-enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. Successful development of economical thermonuclear power will provide the technological means for producing nuclear weapon materials at low cost. The reason is that the relevant thermonuclear reactions yield copious quantities of neutrons that could be captured in ordinary uranium to produce plutonium. Furthermore the non-nuclear materials and equipment needed to make nuclear weapons are accessible world-wide.
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Notes
David Albright, ‘World Inventories of Plutonium’, Princeton University Center for Energy and Environmental Studies Report no. 195 (rev. 1) (June 1987) pp. 19, 21, 24 and 99.
Ibid., p. 35.
Frank von Hippel, David Albright, and Barbara Levi, ‘U.S. and Soviet Stockpiles of Fissile Materials’, Princeton University Center for Energy and Environmental Studies Report no. 168 (1986).
Thomas B. Cochran, William M. Arkin, Robert S. Norris, and Milton M. Hoenig, Nuclear Weapons Databook, Vol. 2: U.S. Nuclear Warhead Production (Cambridge, Mass., 1987) p. 62. (World inventory of tritium was taken to be roughly twice that of the United States.)
A. De Volpi, ‘Fissile Materials and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation’, Annual Review of Nuclear Particle Science, vol. 36 (1986) 87.
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© 1989 Unione Scienzati per il Disarmo Convegno Internazionale
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Taylor, T.B. (1989). Nuclear Disarmament and Peaceful Nuclear Technology — Can We Have Both?. In: Schaerf, C., Reid, B.H., Carlton, D. (eds) New Technologies and the Arms Race. Studies in Disarmament and Conflicts. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10615-8_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10615-8_11
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