Nuclear security

Nuclear weapons and climate change

Now, a single nuclear detonation, especially in current times, is capable of causing significant and irreparable environmental damage.

On the one hand, there is the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) produced by any nuclear detonation. A single high-altitude EMP – which does not require a high-powered nuclear bomb – is capable of disabling electrical systems and devices in an entire continental area, be it North America or Europe, and would have massive effects on the power grid, on communications systems, on the operation of cars and ambulances – disrupting civilized life as we know it – but it would also affect, in the same way, nuclear power plants, and could provoke several dozen simultaneous nuclear meltdowns. Let us think for a moment about the damage caused by a single nuclear accident. The world is still living the damages of the 2011 nuclear accident in Fukushima, a single nuclear power plant. Let’s multiply that by dozens. Far from being hypothetical, this disaster is the threat that until recently Kim Jong-Un made to the United States, knowing that the North Korean arsenal, a very small fraction of the American arsenal, is enough to alter life for the entire North American subcontinent.

On the other hand, even limited use of nuclear weapons would have catastrophic climatic consequences. In 2012, a prospective study[3] was published on what would happen after such a war between India and Pakistan, both countries being nuclear states and currently in conflict. With 100 Hiroshima sized bombs, less than 0.5% of the global arsenal, the catastrophic impact would not only be local and regional, but also global.