The nuclear sword of Damocles

In large numbers, nuclear bombs are possibly geocidal. But even one is genocidal.

Perhaps physicists designing nuclear weapons and teachers of nuclear physics and engineering ought to rethink their profession. Sir Joseph Rotblat, 1995 Nobel Laureate in Peace, accused scientists of driving the nuclear arms race and using science to the detriment of mankind.

Is it also ethical to prepare students to manufacture nuclear weapons? There’s no point in controlling “nuclear proliferation” and freezing weapons development when one finds thousands of dissertations on issues of nuclear physics and engineering in the stacks of university libraries.

It would never be moral or acceptable for only one or two countries to be armed with the terminating power of the nuclear bomb. Iran has as much right to a nuclear bomb as Israel, France or the United States. The only option remaining is to convince all countries to do away with their nuclear industries and nuclear weapons.

It is obscene that the United States is probably designing and producing “smaller” nuclear weapons - a policy that, in time, will guarantee the use of nuclear weapons. The Europeans, including the Russians and Chinese, will also build their own small nukes. And with the American monopoly over, the small bombs will find their way into the fields of battle or into the hands of fanatics.

Tadatoshi Akiba, the mayor of Hiroshima, is probably right: Americans worship the bomb. That’s why General John Dailey, director of the National Air and Space Museum, is proud of Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the bomb over Hiroshima. “We are displaying it,” he says, “in all of its glory as a magnificent technological achievement”.

Despite such sentiment, Americans must understand that living with the bomb and possible annihilation for more than six decades is enough! And now in the aftermath of 9-11, Muslim fanatics are searching for these weapons. If they can steal or buy a nuke, it is certain they will detonate it in the United States or Israel.

We should know the nuclear bomb is neither a battlefield weapon nor an object of worship. Using this technology for electricity is a dangerous delusion. Nuclear power plants never cease poisoning people and nature. The wastes of these factories will be hazardous for hundreds and thousands of years.

Rotblat was concerned that advances in science or unrestricted scientific research could possibly lead to the wholesale destruction of mankind. He suggested a Hippocratic-like oath for scientists, promising not to subvert science. He also thought that states ought to impose restrictions on biological and physics research.

If the teachers abandon the bomb perhaps politicians will follow.