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Nuclear Weapons |
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| There are currently nine nations which hold operational nuclear warheads (United States, Russia, France, China, United Kingdom, Israel, Pakistan, India, North Korea), and the United States also loans them out to Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey, through a NATO-approved 'Nuclear Sharing' scheme. Many people believe that this policy violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which prohibits the transfer of nuclear weapons. There are currently 22,600 warheads globally, 21,600 of which are owned by the United States and Russia. |
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The United States and Russia have been vocal, and quite proud, about many high-profile Nuclear weapons treaties over the past few years, which they say are designed to get the numbers of those horrendous weapons down. This has not happened, because within the fine print of those deals, are terms which allow both aministrations to de-classify some weapons away from being nuclear, amongst other ways of fudging the numbers. And even still, their arsenals appear to remain at sizes which are not required by the general public, and which only serve to create wealth within the military industry. Taking the American and Russian example, other smaller nuclear powers - like India, Pakistan and the UK - have not stopped trying to build up their numbers too. |
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BlatantWorld.com opinion on the release of the 'Status of World Nuclear Forces 2010' report, from the Federation of American Scientists (FAS): The size of Russia's arsenal has dropped by 1,000 warheads, from a total of 13,000 last year, but this drop is slightly deceiving when you consider that it's 'operational warheads' total only dropped by 68. The United States is going in the opposite direction, with 200 new warheads added to it's total of 9,400 last year. Otherwise, there does not appear to be any other changes, apart from the third obvious one; the United Kingdom have also grown their arsenal, by 40 warheads, to 225 in total. It appears that western powers are moving away from any form of a speedy disarmament. |
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What Is Nuclear Sharing?>
Deployment Of Nuclear Weapons In The World>
Previous Nuclear Powers> |
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| Depleted Uranium (DU) is a by-product which is produced when we make fuel for nuclear power reactors, and also when we make nuclear bombs. There is no safe way to dispose of this waste product, so we generally store it underwater or underground in containers, which are generally not made to last millions of years, the amount of time DU may take to loose it's radioactivity. Western forces have also dropped a whole lot of DU over Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans, in DU bombs, some of which may contain reprocessed spent nuclear reactor fuel, the most dangerous DU to humans. |
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| The latest figures from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global cooperation body for nuclear power producers, tells us that around 13-14% of the World's energy was produced by nuclear plants during 2009, continuing the slight downward trend on production of nuclear power, when taken as a % of total energy production. In total 28 nations produce nuclear energy, and 16 have plants under construction. |
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| Sibel Edmonds became famous for being an FBI whistleblower who had the 'State Secret Privilege' invoked against her, in an attempt to keep her quiet. She had uncovered evidence that pointed to the US security services being aware of 911, before it happened, aswell as an illegal international nuclear weapons black market, involving Turkey, South Africa, Israel, Pakistan and the United States, amongst others. |
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| Einstein published the E=mc² equation in 1905, but it wasn't until 1935 - with the Nazi's getting more powerful and with war imminent in Europe - that it became critical to the military. This equation tells us how energy is created but even Einstein himself didn't believe that it could be harnessed in such a way as to create a super-bomb, due to the scientific complexities, but his belief changed just before World War II and he was instrumental in getting the project moving which would unleash the first atomic bomb on humans, something he publicly regretted until his death. |
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| The Deputy Director of the Uranium Medical Research Centre (UMRC) gives us an insight into what depleted uranium (DU) weapons actually represent. They are basically nuclear weapons, under a different guise, currently being used to dump excess western nuclear waste on Iraq and Afghanistan, and they impact mostly on civilians. |
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| TEDtalk - The face of nuclear terror has changed since the Cold War, but disaster-medicine expert Irwin Redlener reminds us the threat is still real. He looks at some of history's farcical countermeasures and offers practical advice on how to survive an attack. |
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| The use of nuclear weapons in a new war would mean the end of humanity. This was candidly foreseen by scientist Albert Einstein who was able to measure their destructive capability to generate millions of degrees of heat, which would vaporize everything within a wide radius of action... |
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