The most serious threat to the world is the ultimate catastrophe of nuclear war.
Nuclear industry spokesmen deny any connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. One cliche used to prove there is no connection is the oft-repeated statement that "nuclear power plants cannot explode like a nuclear bomb". Such statements hide the fundamental connections between nuclear weapons and nuclear power.
The Historical Connection
The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. - Albert Einstein
When the secret of the atom was unlocked in Western Europe in the late thirties, it was carried to Britain, the United States and Canada by scientists escaping from the tyranny of the Hitler regime. They shared a common fear that Hitler would gain the secret from scientists who remained in Western Europe and use it for destructive purposes.
A group of these scientists prevailed upon Albert Einstein to write to President Roosevelt and draw this possibility to his attention. Einstein reluctantly did so in August, 1939. He said (roughly): "Nuclear power is here. War is inevitable. It is for the President to decide what scientists should do about it."
In 1942, Roosevelt established the Manhattan Project with one single objective: to construct an atomic bomb as soon as humanly possible.
The Manhattan Project was the largest secret operation in history. It involved elements of the military, government, industry and academia. At its height it employed over 600,000 people. Part of its uranium supply came from Canada. The project produced four crude atomic bombs. The first was tested on the deserts of New Mexico on July 16, 1945. The second was dropped on Hiroshima on August 8 and, three days later, the third devastated Nagasaki. This was the birth of nuclear technology.
The conscience of the world was deeply disturbed by this unprecedented misuse of science. Nowhere were the guilt feelings more pronounced than among those scientists who had produced the bomb: they began to search for peaceful and constructive uses for atomic power.
David Lileanthal, first Chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, later wrote that hopes for a peaceful atom were "inflated", saying: "The basic cause I think was a conviction, and one that I shared fully and tried to inculcate in others, that somehow or other the discovery that had produced so terrible a weapon simply had to have an important peaceful use... We were grimly determined to prove that this discovery was not just a weapon."
The government of Saskatchewan supported this view. In 1946, it published a pamphlet entitled Atomic Future, which extolled the promise of the 'peaceful atom'.
One of the factors which pushed the world towards the development of atomic power for peaceful purposes, therefore, was the attempt to wipe the horrible consequences of its military use from the conscience of mankind.
The second factor was more perverse. The fourth atomic bomb which had been produced by the Manhattan Project became the first bomb of the western world's nuclear arsenal. Nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them rapidly became the foundation of U.S. defense policy.
However, it was not long before Russia also had the atomic - then the hydrogen - bomb. This presented a serious threat to America's world dominance. Atomic scientists advised President Eisenhower to tell the public the exact nature of atomic dangers. However, Eisenhower was reluctant to frighten the public. Instead he chose to make a speech emphasizing non-weapons issues. In his 'Atoms for Peace' speech to the United Nations General Assembly in 1953, he offered to turn over to the U.N. America's peacetime nuclear industry. What he did not say was that there was no such thing. It was only after Eisenhower's infamous speech that serious efforts were made to create such a peacetime industry.
The Corporate Connection
Since that time many billions of taxpayers' dollars have been used to develop what is still an incomplete and imperfect nuclear industry, which has benefitted from every type of subsidy known to governments.
It is important to note that the companies which produce the components for nuclear powerplants also produce parts for nuclear bombs. Without this heavily -subsidized connection, the nuclear power industry could never have survived.
Had the nuclear power industry been exposed to the marketplace without these huge subsidies, it could never have survived. However, there is another reason for its survival: the companies which produce the components for nuclear power plants also produce parts for nuclear bombs. For example, the two largest power plant companies are General Electric and Westinghouse. They rank fourth and fifteenth as suppliers of U.S. defense contracts.
This industry, built through government subsidy, military procurement and huge profit-taking by the corporate sector is still primarily a weapons industry. Over 90 percent of the uranium used in the United States is used for the production of nuclear weapons. Under the current Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT 11), the U.S. will be building 4,500 new strategic weapons: 4.9 weapons every day.
The nuclear industry, therefore, has but two products - nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants.
The Plutonium Connection
The key connection between power and weapons production is plutonium, a by-product of power plant operation, and the essential ingredient for nuclear weapons. The frightening significance of this connection is seen in the massive rate at which power plants produce it. A 1,000 megawatt nuclear power reactor produces 250 kilograms of plutonium each year. This is enough for over 20 nuclear weapons.
Just as the military use of nuclear technology spawned the so called 'peaceful use', since that time the operation of nuclear power plants has been directly responsible for the proliferation of nuclear weapons throughout the world. There are now at least fifteen non-nuclear weapon countries that could produce bombs at short notice if they chose to do so.
Every single one of these non-nuclear weapon states received their bomb-making capability from civilian technology and materials. India, which exploded a bomb in 1974, is the classic example of how peace time technology can create bomb-making capability. It is widely believed that both South Africa arid Israel already have the bomb West Germany, Japan, Belgium, and Italy have reprocessing facilities and enough separable plutonium to make thirty to sixty nuclear weapons each. Argentina, Taiwan, Pakistan, South Korea and Iran also have reprocessing facilities but smaller quantities of plutonium. This proliferation of nuclear weapons capability is a result of the dispersion of nuclear power plant technology. It is unrealistic and irresponsible to continue to suggest that there is any safeguard system which will prevent nuclear power plants from being used to produce weapons.
A technology is now available for building a simple and quick reprocessing plant, capable of producing enough plutonium for one nuclear weapon per week. This can be built from readily available construction materials in only four to six months. There is serious speculation that Pakistan already has such a facility. The Canadian CANDU reactor is ideally suited to this function.
Nuclear power plants also proliferate weapons through the loss of plutonium and enriched uranium from operating plants. The U.S. General Accounting Office estimates that over 3,600 kilograms of weapons-grade material cannot be accounted for in the U.S. This is enough for 300 bombs. At least 150 kilograms of this is known to have found its way to Israel. A black market in plutonium is now operating: the going price is $20,000-plus per kilogram!
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI estimates that when 35 nations have the bomb, a nuclear war will be inevitable. The world is half-way past that terrible threshold, primarily because of the growth of the nuclear power industry.
Conclusion
Historically, the 'peaceful use' of the atom was created to justify military ends. Subsequently the two ends have been promoted, regulated and produced by the same corporate and government bodies. Experience since that time tells us that it is the by-product of the 'peaceful use' - plutonium - which is the major contributor to the proliferation of nuclear weaponry throughout the troubled world.
The dream of the peaceful atom has disappeared. The dream of electricity too cheap to meter has disappeared. Instead, people have the nightmare of a technology which traces its origins and owes its existence to weapons and war.
This was the second in a series of pamphlets produced by the research committee of the Regina Group for a Non-Nuclear Society. This pamphlet was written and published in 1981 by Bill Harding and designed by Gary Robins, with artwork by Kathi Kokotailo.