—   Nu - Nz   —

NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
Enormously expensive and potentially extremely dangerous plants producing electricity from the energy released from the induced decay of radioactive elements, especially uranium. There are now much cheaper ways of producing electricity, which are also much safer and overall vastly more environmentally friendly. But a major faction of the bourgeoisie in many countries still likes nuclear power plants, and they have also fooled some naïve liberal environmental activists with quite false claims about their safety and economy.
        Among the serious disasters caused by accidents at nuclear power plants are the Three Mile Island crisis in the U.S. in 1979, the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986 (which led to a number of deaths and an evacuation of 300,000 people), and the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan in 2011. The serious problems of these last two disasters still continue decades later.

“The failure of nuclear power to arrive in a timely manner — indeed the reality that it is already obsolete — was played out beautifully last week in Finland where [the] Olkiluoto 3 [plant], having finally stuttered into life, had to be abruptly powered down due to Finland’s 500 megawatt-hours of new wind-generated electricity contributing to a dramatic drop in electricity prices.
         “Thus, after all the waiting, the cost over-runs, the technical failures, the lawsuits and withdrawals, Olkiluoto 3 is not so much a newborn as stillborn. Too expensive, too late and effectively dead on arrival.” —Linda Pentz Gunter, “Nuclear Fictions”, CounterPunch, May 24, 2023.

NUCLEAR WAR — Regional

[Speaking of the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union:] “While the threat of global nuclear war between two hostile superpowers had faded, the risk of regional nuclear war among nations with seemingly modest nuclear arsenals had intensified. A regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan, for example, would be unlikely to involve more than about one hundred Hiroshima-scale fifteen kiloton weapons, merely 1.5 megatons of total explosive force, less than the yield of many individual Soviet and U.S. hydrogen bombs. The primary destructive effect of nuclear weapons is mass fire, however, and with highly combustible South Asian megacities as the likeliest targets, such a nuclear exchange would kill between three million and sixteen million people. Smoke from mass fires would loft into the stratosphere, drift around the world, and darken and chill the earth for a decade, reducing global average temperatures below those of the European Little Ice Age of the sixteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, when crops failed and millions starved. Even a ‘small’ regional nuclear war, that is, would be an unmitigated disaster for the entire world.”   —Richard Rhodes, Twilight of the Bombs (2010), p. 8.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS — Authority to Use

“As later testimony revealed, the Soviet nuclear arsenal was never at risk during the coup [i.e., the attempted old guard coup against Gorbachev in 1991], thanks partly to what the American command-and-control expert Bruce Blair called its ‘ingenious’ design. Blair ... told a Senate subcommittee a month after the coup that the Soviet system’s safeguards ‘are more stringent than those of any other nuclear power, including the United States. The overall design of Soviet nuclear command and control is ingenious and its designers were deservedly awarded Lenin prizes for their efforts.’ Blair and his Soviet counterpart, command-and-control expert Gennadi Pavlov, explained to the subcommittee in some detail how the Soviet system worked.
        “‘We do not invest any authority to use nuclear weapons in a single individual,’ Pavlov began, ‘in contrast with the United States.’ In the American system, the president acting by himself can key the order to alert and launch nuclear weapons. The Soviet system was multileveled, with built-in checks and balances. At the leadership level it was a four-key system; the president, the minister of defense, and the chief of the general staff accounted for three Chegets [authorizing computer terminals], and any one of the three commanders in chief of Soviet strategic forces (the strategic rocket forces, the Air Force, or the Navy) accounted for the fourth. The three top leaders, their Chegets linked through the Kavkaz national-leadership network, had to act together to generate one combined code. That code in turn had to be combined with a code keyed into the system down the line by at least one of the three commanders in chief (CICs). A concurring CIC could authorize the alerting of only his own forces in concert with the top leadership. If he decided not to do so, then no authorization code would be generated for those forces.” —Richard Rhodes, Twilight of the Bombs (2010), pp. 92-93.
         [By contrast, under the U.S. system, not only can the President by himself start a nuclear war, but in practice so can a very large number of individual military officers! As Daniel Ellsberg discusses in his book The Doomsday Machine (2017), in 1959 President Eisenhower first authorized his regional military commanders in the world, including Admiral Harry Felt, the Commander-in-Chief in the Pacific area, to execute nuclear war on their own authority if they thought it was necessary and if communications were out between Washington and their headquarters. These area commanders then seem to have tacitly done the same thing with their own subcommanders, probably all the way down to the level of individual base commanders. And, in that era at least, some of these small base commanders were indeed out of communications with their superiors at times (because of natural weather conditions). So, for example, in effect the commander of the small U.S. Air Force Base at Kunsan, South Korea, who nobody ever heard of, had the authority to launch a nuclear war if he felt it was appropriate to do so! Communications have improved, but in a crisis they may still be put out of commission. Moreover, there were no locks on nuclear weapons to prevent a rogue commander or even a single pilot from using them without authority—and there probably still is not. —Ed.]

NUCLEAR WEAPONS — Ease of Making
In the modern technological era it is by no means as hard to make nuclear weapons as is often supposed. There are no real ‘secrets’ to it; all the basic technical information necessary is available in books or on the Internet. It is mostly just a matter of engineering, and even that is no longer as difficult as is usually thought. Many countries have already acquired nuclear weapons, many others have at various times had programs which could have done so over time, and most of the rest of the countries of the world could create nuclear weapons if they were sufficiently determined to do so and had access to uranium (which is fairly widespread). For these reasons, humanity remains in a seriously perilous situation while nations (or even large well-funded political organizations) are motivated to acquire such weapons; i.e., as long as we remain in the capitalist-imperialist era. And far more serious even than the threat of new countries (or organizations) acquiring nuclear weapons is the continuing possession of many thousands of nuclear weapons by the major capitalist-imperialist countries themselves—none of which can be trusted one iota not to use them in one belligerent situation or another.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS — First Use Policy
Most nuclear powers, including China and the old Soviet Union, have promised that they will never be the first to use nuclear weapons and that if they use them at all it will only be in retaliation for the use of such weapons against them. The one country which has never promised this, is the United States. In fact, quite the contrary, the United States has often considered using such weapons first. Not only is the U.S. the only country to have actually used nuclear weapons (against Japan during World War II), it has seriously considered using them on several other occasions, including against China during the Vietnam War. During the early 1950s the U.S. even offered two such weapons to France to use against the peasant-based Viet Minh in Vietnam. (See the second quote below.) And President Trump threatened to use them first against North Korea. The American imperialists continue to threaten mass murder and genocide, even beyond the levels they engage in on a routine daily basis.

“[U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles] was at his most zealous in his discussion of nuclear arms policy. He proposed an unsettling shift in thinking about America s fearsome nuclear arsenal, moving away from the concept of doomsday weapons as an instrument of last resort to one of first resort. The United States must reserve the right to massively retaliate against any Soviet aggression in the world, wherever and whenever it chose, he wrote. By making it clear to the world that Washington was not afraid to wield its nuclear arms as if they were conventional weapons of war, the United States would gain a commanding strategic advantage. It was the type of leverage enjoyed by a heavily armed madman in a crowded room. But Foster had a more diplomatic way of expressing it. Weapons of mass destruction ‘in the hands of statesmen ... could serve as effective political weapons in the defense of peace.’
         “Foster further sweetened his argument by pointing out that a nuclear-based military strategy would help contain the growing costs of America’s ‘far-flung, extravagant’ defense complex that was threatening to bankrupt the nation. Instead of maintaining an expensive troop presence at every global flashpoint, Foster wrote, all the United States had to do was keep a ready finger on its nuclear trigger.
         “Even master of war Eisenhower was initially taken aback by Foster’s proposal for a ‘first-use’ nuclear strategy.... But Eisenhower did share Foster’s passionate anti-Communism. And the cost efficiencies of the massive retaliation strategy appealed to the budget-minded general, who was equally concerned about the growing burden of military spending on the economy. So began the reign of nuclear terror—or ‘brinksmanship’—that would hold the world in its grip for the next decade.” —David Talbot, Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government (2015), pp. 201-2.

“From the beginning of the [Eisenhower] administration, Secretary of State [John Foster] Dulles argued that the United States must overcome the ‘taboo against nuclear weapons. At a February 1953 National Security Council meeting, just three weeks into Eisenhower’s presidency, Foster raised what he called ‘the moral problem’ that hovered over all nuclear decision-making. He was not referring to the profound questions about mass slaughter and human survival. Foster meant the moral revulsion against doomsday weapons that prevented policy makers from seriously contemplating their use....
         “Foster seemed to have a chillingly remote perspective on what it means to drop a nuclear bomb. When the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu was on the verge of collapse, he offered to give two ‘A-bombs’ to French foreign minister Georges Bidault. The French official was deeply shaken by Foster’s blithe offer. Bidault responded ‘without having to do much thinking on the subject.’ He pointed out to Foster that ‘if those bombs are dropped near Dien Bien Phu, our side will suffer as much as the enemy.’ Likewise, during the Formosa Strait crisis, Foster was surprised to learn that the ‘precision’ nuclear bombing of Chinese targets that he was advocating would kill more than ten million civilians. Still, he was not chastened enough to stop his campaign to ‘punish’ the Chinese.” —David Talbot, ibid., pp. 244-5.

“What Eisenhower had learned in his two terms in office, i.e., that there could be no hope of maintaining world-wide U.S. military commitments without possession and willingness to use atomic weapons, certainly applied later as well. And in this connection ‘willingess to use’ meant and means willingness to use first, not willingness to use in response to a nuclear attack. In the long run, therefore, staying off the collision course will necessitate giving up the role of global gendarme. To persuade, and if need be force, the United States to adopt a policy of live and let live toward the forces of history is the mission which a successful peace movement must take upon itself.” —Harry Magdoff & Paul M. Sweezy, “Nuclear Chicken,” Monthly Review, September 1982 (reprinted in the November 2022 issue, p. 56).

NUCLEAR WEAPONS — Lost!
Yes, ridiculous and outrageous as it seems, an unknown total number of nuclear weapons have been lost, including at least 6 nuclear bombs lost by the U.S. and a completely unknown number by the old state-capitalist Soviet Union and other nuclear powers. Who knows if and when they, or their key components, will turn up again and fall into even more irresponsible hands!

[From the “Ask Smithsonian” column in the U.S. government sponsored Smithsonian magazine, June 2021, p. 80.]
         “Q: How do we know that lost nuclear weapons are really lost? Could some of them be in the hands of foreign governments?”   —George Pantagis, Englewood, New Jersey
         [Smithsonian experts reply:]   “Six nuclear weapons were lost by the United States in the 1950s and ’60s and never recovered. One rolled off the deck of a ship. Others vanished in plane crashes. The U.S. government searched for the components of these bombs but was unable to find them. It’s not absolutely impossible that someone else did, says Frank Blazich, curator of political and military history at the National Museum of American History. If another country got hold of our lost nukes, it might be able to study their design and ‘leapfrog ahead,’ Blazich says. But it’s far more likely that the bombs really are lost forever, whether deep in a swamp or at the bottom of the ocean.”
         [It’s damned irresponsible to be “losing” nuclear weapons! Nevertheless, I worry a lot more about what the U.S. and other capitalist-imperialist powers might do with all the nuclear bombs they haven’t lost than what somebody might conceivably do with those they have lost!   —S.H.]

NUCLEAR WEAPONS — Security Of

“A second trip to NATO [by Sam Nunn of Georgia], this time as a freshman senator, left a further imprint on Nunn of concern about nuclear command and control. The chairman of the Senate committee on armed services, John Stennis, asked the young senator in 1972 to inspect NATO for the committee. Nunn focused on storage and deployment sites for the thousands of tactical nuclear weapons that the U.S. shared with its NATO allies in Europe. ‘I remember very well,’ he said later, ‘visiting with U.S. generals who explained to me that all of our tactical nuclear weapons were secure. Everything was wonderful. We had perfect security. There was no problem.’ Unfortunately for the generals, a sergeant in one of the bunker complexes where the weapons were stored surreptitiously passed Nunn a note when they shook hands. Nunn pocketed the note and read it afterward in private. It asked the senator to meet the sergeant at his barracks that evening. Nunn did. ‘He and three or four of his fellow sergeants related a horror story to me, a story of a demoralized military, a story of drug abuse, alcohol abuse, a story of U.S. soldiers actually guarding tactical nuclear weapons while they were stoned on drugs. The sergeants thought that it would take no more than a group of six to eight well-trained terrorists to gain control over one of our tactical nuclear compounds in the middle of Western Europe. The horror stories went on and on for over two hours. I came out of that session thoroughly shaken and determined to do something about the matter.’”   —Richard Rhodes, Twilight of the Bombs (2010), pp. 98-99. [Possibly Senator Nunn did fix that one problem. But this is only one example of the gross carelessness of the U.S. military with regard to nuclear weapons, though of course the vastly greater danger is how they might well someday use them on purpose. —Ed.]

NUREMBERG WAR CRIMES TRIALS (After World War II)

“President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill were so intent on meting out a fitting punishment [to the Nazi war criminals] that they originally favored taking the law into their own hands and summarily shooting Hitler’s top military, ministerial, and party ranks—Churchill estimated the number would be somewhere between fifty and a hundred men. The prime minister thought that once the proper identifications were made, the killing could be completed within six hours. In one of history’s deeper ironies, it was Joseph Stalin who insisted that the Nazi leaders be put on trial, lecturing his Western allies on the merits of due process. ‘U[ncle]. J[oe].’ took an unexpectedly ultra-respectable line,’ Churchill wrote Roosevelt after meeting with Stalin in Moscow in October 1944. The Soviet premier told Churchill that ‘there must be no executions without trial: otherwise the world would say we were afraid to try them.’” —David Talbot, Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government (2015), p. 62. [Talbot is a liberal bourgeois writer. —Ed.]