I don’t think there was enough skepticism because I think most of us kind of believed that Saddam Hussein was building biological, chemical, and perhaps even, nuclear weapons.
From a scientific perspective there is some indication that a nuclear war could deplete the earth’s ozone layer or, less likely, could bring on a new Ice Age – but there is no suggestion that either the created order or mankind would be destroyed in the process.
We have every interest in seeing that the military use of nuclear power will be contained.
This means that the only function of nuclear weapons, while they exist, is to deter a nuclear attack.
There’s an abiding interest by the United States, by the American people, and by anybody with his eyes set in his head, to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
For the United States to recommit itself to the obligation that we undertook in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that many other states undertook, which was to work towards disarmament and the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons, is something that manifestly serves our national security interests.
We as taxpayers have put in well over $12 to $15 billion of investment in a repository for high-level nuclear waste… if we’re ever to recoup that investment in the future… then we’re going to need some money to reopen Yucca Mountain.
Indeed, the whole human species is endangered, by nuclear weapons or by other means of wholesale destruction which further advances in science are likely to produce.
Japan learned from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the tragedy wrought by nuclear weapons must never be repeated and that humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.
I remember fear and I remember the potential of nuclear war.
Protecting Americans from nuclear terrorism rises above politics.
Goodness, I know nothing about nuclear energy.
Political pundits in Delhi and Islamabad have berated the West for its relativism and double-standards. After all why should Britain have a nuclear arsenal but not India? It is a reasonable question.
The talk about balance, nuclear balance, seems to me to be metaphysical and doesn’t seem to be real at all.
A nuclear power reactor is just a fancy way of boiling water.
Some people have said, in so many words, that I’m kind of wooly-headed in believing that the Iranians would see not having nuclear weapons as more in their security interest than not.
I started the nuclear medicine laboratory at UW Hospitals in 1959 and trained radiology residents in the field. It was 1965 before they found a trained MD (doctor) to take over my role.
Although September 11 was horrible, it didn’t threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do.
The Highway Code can’t be that difficult to understand, and yet my brain seems to treat it as a set of nuclear fission instructions in Old Japanese.
It is not viable for one country to demand a right to increase and upgrade its nuclear weapons capabilities while asking others to eliminate theirs.
Many applications of the coincidence method will therefore be found in the large field of nuclear physics, and we can say without exaggeration that the method is one of the essential tools of the modern nuclear physicist.
Nuclear weapons are intrinsically neither moral nor immoral, though they are more prone to immoral use than most weapons.
Nixon did have a secret plan, and I knew that it involved making threats of nuclear war to North Vietnam.
We must not let ourselves be swept off our feet in horror at the danger of nuclear power. Nuclear power is not infinitely dangerous. It’s just dangerous, much as coal mines, petrol repositories, fossil-fuel burning and wind turbines are dangerous.
People have criticized me for seeming to step out of my professional role to become undignifiedly political. I’d say it was belated realization that day care, good schools, health insurance, and nuclear disarmament are even more important aspects of pediatrics than measles vaccine or vitamin D.
As far as a nuclear weapons-free zone, you know, when the lion lies down with the lamb, and you don’t need a new lamb every day to satisfy the lion, then we might have this kind of transformation in the Middle East.
Long before the terrifying potential of the arms race was recognized, there was a widespread instinctive abhorrence of nuclear weapons, and a strong desire to get rid of them.
As a brand new graduate student starting in October 1956, my supervisor Michail Fischberg, a lecturer in the Department of Zoology at Oxford, suggested that I should try to make somatic cell nuclear transplantation work in the South African frog Xenopus laevis.
Engaging in diplomacy with Iran and putting an end to their nuclear weapons program was the right thing to do.
The whole nuclear-arms-control and non-proliferation policy of the nuclear powers is a fraud: The Americans could not prevent the Soviets from replicating their weaponry, and then could not object when the British did the same.
Now, as far as I know, nobody has ever put up the U.S.’s nuclear missiles on the Internet. I mean, it’s not something I’ve heard about.
So I ask the nuclear powers to abandon the out-of-date thinking of the Cold War period and take a fresh look. Above all, I appeal to them to bear in mind the long-term threat that nuclear weapons pose to humankind and to begin action towards their elimination.
The most dangerous thing Iraq could have ever had was a nuclear weapon. The nuclear weapon Iraq was trying to build was not deliverable by bomb or ballistic missile. It was a large, bulky device that they hoped to bury and set off to let the world know they had a nuclear weapon. They never achieved that.
The Arabs are ready to accept a strong Israel with nuclear arms – all it has to do is open the gates of its fortress and make peace.
When you look at other countries that are developing the capabilities and the technology to deploy missiles of very significant destructive capability with nuclear, chemical, or biological warheads, then the MAD dogma makes even less sense.
The JCPOA can perhaps delay Iran’s nuclear weapons program for a few years. Conversely, it has virtually guaranteed that Iran will have the freedom to build an arsenal of nuclear weapons at the end of the commitment.
There isn’t a single American city, in my estimation, that has sufficient plans for a nuclear terrorist event.
We are convinced that the only way to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue is through negotiations.
Tom Petty was one of my guitar students; I knew Duane, and Stephen and I had a band. When he left, Bernie Leadon moved to Gainesville. His father was a nuclear physicist who was sent to the University of Florida to start their nuclear research facility, so he and I became friends.
Nuclear weapons are infinitely less important in our foreign policy than they were in the days of the Cold War. I don’t think we need nuclear weapons any longer.
China’s ability to deliver nuclear warheads on American cities is expanding.
Peace is the one condition of survival in this nuclear age.
We must not allow the Iranian regime to use the nation’s vast energy resource as a financial pipeline for its nuclear ambitions.
Nuclear tests poison the environment – and they also poison the political climate. They breed mistrust, isolation and fear.
We’re not building a nuclear reactor here. We’re not drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean with no plan in case something goes wrong. This is making music, this is melodious air and people can hear what goes into it.
Research and development activities to support Yucca are permitted. This will ensure that we keep Congress in the driver’s seat for nuclear waste policy.
I think it has other roots, has to do, in part, with a general anxiety in contemporary life… nuclear bombs, inequality of possibility and chance, inequality of goods allotted to us, a kind of general racist, unjust attitude that is pervasive.
In addition to deep divisions on issues such as trade, climate change, Middle East peace and nuclear weapons, Trump’s attacks on leaders such as Trudeau and Merkel and disrespect for NATO and other institutions are prompting a reassessment by allied governments and publics.
I grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, which is my hometown. In Los Alamos is, for people who don’t know, a nuclear lab that built the atomic bomb. The only reason the town exists is to make nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction, and that’s still happening there.
Iran is not about building nuclear weapons. We don’t wanna build nuclear weapons. We don’t believe that nuclear weapons bring security to anybody, certainly not to us.
Hopefully, nations will refuse to accept a situation in which nuclear accidents actually do occur, and, if at all possible, they will do something to correct a system which makes them likely.
I’m prepared to continue doing what we need to do to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
A world free of nuclear weapons will be safer and more prosperous.
In terms of weapons, the best disarmament tool so far is nuclear energy. We have been taking down the Russian warheads, turning it into electricity. 10 percent of American electricity comes from decommissioned warheads.
Everybody has to chip in, I think, and see how we can have a functioning system of collective security where we do not continue to face the threat of countries trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction or particularly nuclear weapons.
