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Nuclear Weapons : A Necessity Or Nonsense?

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Nuclear weaponry: A necessity or nonsense? Scientific breakthroughs in the 1930s led the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada to collaborate during World War 2 in an undercover venture named the “Manhattan project” aiming to create weaponry utilising nuclear fission. By 1945 a nuclear bomb called “Little boy” was created, and dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945. This is important as it was the first and only time an atomic bomb has been used on a populated area, and it was a method of analysing the effects of nuclear bombs in reality. Another use of them was that American’s believe that the number of people saved by ending World War 2 quickly would be greater than the number of people killed by the atomic bombs. Here are some quick…show more content…
the cost for developing and maintaining nuclear weapons is immense; the UK trident system which has 4 submarines carrying 16 nuclear missiles for example costs £12.6bn, £280m a year to maintain. Options for replacing Trident range from £5bn for the missiles alone to £20-30bn for missiles, submarines and research facilities. At minimum, for the system to continue after around 2020, the missiles will need to be replaced. Trident is more than 1,000 times powerful than the bomb that hit Hiroshima. Each warhead’s destructive power is measured in kilotons (kts). A kiloton is equal to 1,000 tons of TNT. The Hiroshima bomb was 16kts. Trident is far more deadly – each warhead is up to 100kts and there are 160 of them. That’s 16,000kts. Furthermore a 1998 study by the Brookings Institution found that the United States alone had spent more than $5.5 trillion on nuclear weapons programs between 1940 and 1996. The United States continues to spend some $25-$35 billion annually on research, development and maintenance of its nuclear arsenal. Now, compare this cost, to the cost to end world hunger for a year which is only $30b, and it shows the potential we could use the money to help the world. Moreover the production of nuclear weapons has polluted vast amounts of soil and water at hundreds of nuclear weapons facilities all over the world. Many of the substances released, including
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