Weapons of Mass Destruction Conference: Avoiding a Nuclear Catastrophe. Summary Report.

摘要

An estimated 35 countries have nuclear weapons, highly enriched uranium, and/or stockpiles of plutonium on their soil. Although four out of every five nuclear weapons that have been built since 1945 have retired from service, the world is still awash in nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons states now possess around 23,300 such weapons. This is occurring at a time when one such weapon detonated in a major city could have catastrophic human and economic effects. For example, one RAND study estimates that one 10-kiloton weapon explosion in Long Beach, California, could cause 60,000 immediate deaths and up to 150,000 other casualties. Such a detonation would destroy the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, causing about 6 million people to evacuate the area to escape fallout, and 2 3 million people to relocate. Such a nuclear catastrophe would contaminate 500 square kilometers and destroy or make uninhabitable up to 600,000 homes. It would also inflict an economic rebuilding cost estimated at one trillion dollars. This could make the 9/11 attacks, however grisly, seem somewhat minor. Yet this would be the consequence of only one nuclear bomb at one major US port. A full-scale nuclear war between two major states, such as the United States and Russia, would have far more catastrophic effects than even a nuclear terror attack. The deaths could reach hundreds of millions in the first exchange.