1.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
2.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
3.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
4.
Nuclear weapon
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A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from small amounts of matter. The first test of a bomb released the same amount of energy as approximately 20,000 tons of TNT. The first thermonuclear bomb test released the same amount of energy as approximately 10 million tons of TNT, a thermonuclear weapon weighing little more than 2,400 pounds can produce an explosive force comparable to the detonation of more than 1.2 million tons of TNT. A nuclear device no larger than traditional bombs can devastate a city by blast, fire. Nuclear weapons are considered weapons of destruction, and their use. Nuclear weapons have been used twice in nuclear warfare, both times by the United States against Japan near the end of World War II, the bombings resulted in the deaths of approximately 200,000 civilians and military personnel from acute injuries sustained from the explosions. The ethics of the bombings and their role in Japans surrender remain the subject of scholarly, since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have been detonated on over two thousand occasions for the purposes of testing and demonstration. Only a few nations possess such weapons or are suspected of seeking them, israel is also believed to possess nuclear weapons, though in a policy of deliberate ambiguity, it does not acknowledge having them. Germany, Italy, Turkey, Belgium and the Netherlands are nuclear weapons sharing states, south Africa is the only country to have independently developed and then renounced and dismantled its nuclear weapons. Modernisation of weapons continues to occur, all existing nuclear weapons derive some of their explosive energy from nuclear fission reactions. Weapons whose explosive output is exclusively from fission reactions are commonly referred to as bombs or atom bombs. This has long noted as something of a misnomer, as their energy comes from the nucleus of the atom. The latter approach is considered more sophisticated than the former and only the approach can be used if the fissile material is plutonium. A major challenge in all nuclear weapon designs is to ensure that a significant fraction of the fuel is consumed before the weapon destroys itself. The amount of energy released by fission bombs can range from the equivalent of just under a ton to upwards of 500,000 tons of TNT, all fission reactions necessarily generate fission products, the radioactive remains of the atomic nuclei split by the fission reactions. Many fission products are highly radioactive or moderately radioactive. Fission products are the radioactive component of nuclear fallout
5.
History of nuclear weapons
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Nuclear weapons possess enormous destructive power from nuclear fission or combined fission and fusion reactions. In August 1945, two bombs were dropped on Japan, and stands to date as the only use of nuclear weapons in combat. The Soviet Union started development shortly thereafter with their own atomic bomb project, in the first decades of the 20th century, physics was revolutionised with developments in the understanding of the nature of atoms. In 1898, Pierre and Marie Curie discovered that pitchblende, an ore of uranium, Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy identified that atoms were breaking down and turning into different elements. Hopes were raised among scientists and laymen that the elements around us could contain tremendous amounts of unseen energy, H. G. Wells was inspired to write about atomic weapons in a 1914 novel, The World Set Free, which appeared shortly before the First World War. In January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, leó Szilárd fled to London where he proposed, and in 1934 patented, the idea of a nuclear chain reaction via neutrons. The patent also introduced the critical mass to describe the minimum amount of material required to sustain the chain reaction. He subsequently assigned the patent to the British Admiralty so that it could be covered by the Official Secrets Act, in a very real sense, Szilárd was the father of the atomic bomb academically. In December 1938, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann sent a manuscript to Naturwissenschaften reporting that they had detected the element barium after bombarding uranium with neutrons, lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch correctly interpreted these results as being due to the splitting of the uranium atom. They gave the process the name fission because of its similarity to the splitting of a cell into two new cells, even before it was published, news of Meitner’s and Frisch’s interpretation crossed the Atlantic. Scientists at Columbia University decided to replicate the experiment and on January 25,1939, the following year, they identified the active component of uranium as being the rare isotope uranium-235. Uranium appears in nature primarily in two isotopes, uranium-238 and uranium-235, when the nucleus of uranium-235 absorbs a neutron, it undergoes nuclear fission, releasing energy and, on average,2.5 neutrons. Because uranium-235 releases more neutrons than it absorbs, it can support a chain reaction, uranium-238, on the other hand, is not fissile as it does not normally undergo fission when it absorbs a neutron. By the time Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, beginning World War II, physicists on both sides were well aware of the possibility of utilizing nuclear fission as a weapon, but no one was quite sure how it could be done. In August 1939, concerned that Germany might have its own project to develop fission-based weapons, Roosevelt responded by setting up the Uranium Committee under Lyman James Briggs but, with little initial funding, progress was slow. It was not until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December,1941, organized research first began in Britain as part of the Tube Alloys project. The blast from such an explosion would destroy life in a wide area, the size of this area is difficult to estimate, but it will probably cover the centre of a big city. Edgar Sengier, a director of Shinkolobwe Mine in Congo which produced by far the highest quality uranium ore in the world, had become aware of possible use in a bomb
6.
Nuclear warfare
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Nuclear warfare is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is used to inflict damage on the enemy. In contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can produce destruction in a much shorter time-frame, some activists had claimed in the 1980s that with this potential nuclear winter side-effect of a nuclear war, almost every human on Earth could starve to death. So far, two nuclear weapons have been used in the course of warfare, both by the United States near the end of World War II, on August 6,1945, a uranium gun-type device was detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, on August 9, a plutonium device was detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki. These two bombings resulted in the deaths of approximately 120,000 people, in 1974, India, and in 1998, Pakistan, two countries that were openly hostile toward each other, developed nuclear weapons. Israel and North Korea are also thought to have developed stocks of nuclear weapons, the Israeli government has never admitted to having nuclear weapons, although it is known to have constructed the reactor and reprocessing plant necessary for building nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons have been detonated on over 2,000 occasions for testing purposes, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the resultant end of the Cold War, the threat of a major nuclear war between the two nuclear superpowers was generally thought to have declined. Since then, concern over nuclear weapons has shifted to the prevention of localized nuclear conflicts resulting from nuclear proliferation, the possibility of using nuclear weapons in war is usually divided into two subgroups, each with different effects and potentially fought with different types of nuclear armaments. The first, a nuclear war, refers to a small-scale use of nuclear weapons by two belligerents. This term could apply to any use of nuclear weapons that may involve military or civilian targets. The second, a nuclear war, could consist of large numbers of nuclear weapons used in an attack aimed at an entire country, including military, economic. Such an attack would almost certainly destroy the economic, social, and military infrastructure of the target nation. Some Cold War strategists such as Henry Kissinger argued that a nuclear war could be possible between two heavily armed superpowers. Some predict, however, that a war could potentially escalate into a full-scale nuclear war. Even the most optimistic predictions of the effects of a nuclear exchange foresee the death of many millions of victims within a very short period of time. However, such predictions, assuming total war with nuclear arsenals at Cold War highs, have not been without criticism. The authors of the study estimated that as much as five tons of soot could be released, producing a cooling of several degrees over large areas of North America. The cooling would last for years and could be catastrophic, according to the researchers, either a limited or full-scale nuclear exchange could occur during an accidental nuclear war, in which the use of nuclear weapons is triggered unintentionally
7.
Nuclear weapon design
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Nuclear weapon designs are physical, chemical, and engineering arrangements that cause the physics package of a nuclear weapon to detonate. There are three existing basic design types, in many existing designs, the explosive energy of deployed devices is derived primarily from nuclear fission, not fusion. Pure fission weapons were the first nuclear weapons built and have so far been the type ever used in warfare. Implosion, a mass of either material is surrounded by high explosives that compress the mass. The implosion method can use either uranium or plutonium as fuel, the gun method only uses uranium. Boosted fission weapons improve on the implosion design, the high pressure and temperature environment at the center of an exploding fission weapon compresses and heats a mixture of tritium and deuterium gas. The hydrogen fuses to form helium and free neutrons, boosting can more than double the weapons fission energy release. Staged thermonuclear weapons are essentially a chain of fusion-boosted fission weapons, the secondary stage is imploded by x-ray energy from the first stage, called the primary. This radiation implosion is much more effective than the high-explosive implosion of the primary, consequently, the secondary can be many times more powerful than the primary, without being bigger. The secondary can be designed to maximize fusion energy release, but in most designs fusion is employed only to drive or enhance fission, as it is in the primary. More stages could be added and conceptual designs incorporating up to seven have been produced, pure fusion weapons have not been invented. Such weapons, though, would produce far less radioactive fallout than current designs, pure fission weapons historically have been the first type to be built by a nation state. Most known innovations in nuclear weapon design originated in the United States, although some were developed independently by other states. In early news accounts, pure fission weapons were called atomic bombs or A-bombs, Weapons involving fusion were called hydrogen bombs or H-bombs, also a misnomer since their energy comes mostly from fission. Practitioners favored the terms nuclear and thermonuclear, respectively, the term thermonuclear refers to the high temperatures required to initiate fusion. It omits the equally important factor of radiation pressure, which was considered secret at the time the term became widespread, many nuclear weapon terms similarly obfuscate because of their origin in a classified environment. Nuclear fission separates or splits heavier atoms to form lighter atoms, Nuclear fusion combines together lighter atoms to form heavier atoms. In some ways, fission and fusion are opposite and complementary reactions, to understand how nuclear weapons are designed, it is useful to know the important similarities and differences between fission and fusion
8.
Nuclear weapons testing
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Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine the effectiveness, yield, and explosive capability of nuclear weapons. Throughout the twentieth century, most nations that developed nuclear weapons tested them, the first nuclear device was detonated as a test by the United States at the Trinity site on July 16,1945, with a yield approximately equivalent to 20 kilotons of TNT. The first thermonuclear weapon technology test of engineer device, codenamed Mike, was tested at the Enewetak atoll in the Marshall Islands on November 1,1952, also by the United States. The largest nuclear weapon ever tested was the Tsar Bomba of the Soviet Union at Novaya Zemlya on October 30,1961, with the largest yield ever seen, the treaty permitted underground nuclear testing. France continued atmospheric testing until 1974, and China continued until 1980, underground tests in the United States continued until 1991, the Soviet Union until 1990, the United Kingdom until 1991, and both China and France until 1996. Non-signatories India and Pakistan last tested nuclear weapons in 1998, North Korea conducted nuclear tests in 2006,2009,2013, and 2016. The most recent confirmed nuclear test occurred in September 2016 in North Korea, Nuclear weapons tests have historically been divided into four categories reflecting the medium or location of the test. Atmospheric testing designates explosions that take place in the atmosphere, Nuclear explosions close enough to the ground to draw dirt and debris into their mushroom cloud can generate large amounts of nuclear fallout due to irradiation of the debris. This definition of atmospheric is used in the Limited Test Ban Treaty, underground testing refers to nuclear tests conducted under the surface of the earth, at varying depths. True underground tests are intended to be contained and emit a negligible amount of fallout. Unfortunately these nuclear tests do occasionally vent to the surface, producing from nearly none to considerable amounts of debris as a consequence. In 1976, the United States and the USSR agreed to limit the maximum yield of underground tests to 150 kt with the Threshold Test Ban Treaty. Underground testing also falls into two categories, tunnel tests in generally horizontal tunnel drifts, and shaft tests in vertically drilled holes. Exoatmospheric testing refers to tests conducted above the atmosphere. The test devices are lifted on rockets, underwater testing results from nuclear devices being detonated underwater, usually moored to a ship or a barge. Tests of this nature have usually been conducted to evaluate the effects of weapons against naval vessels. Another way to nuclear tests are by the number of explosions that constitute the test.1 second. The USSR has exploded up to eight devices in a single salvo test, Pakistans second, almost all lists in the literature are lists of tests, in the lists in Wikipedia, the lists are of explosions
9.
Nuclear weapons delivery
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Nuclear weapons delivery is the technology and systems used to place a nuclear weapon at the position of detonation, on or near its target. Several methods have developed to carry out this task. Strategic nuclear weapons are used primarily as part of a doctrine of deterrence by threatening large targets, weapons meant for use in limited military maneuvers, such as destroying specific military, communications, or infrastructure targets, are known as tactical nuclear weapons. In terms of yields, nowadays the former have much larger yield than the latter. The bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 were weaker than many of todays tactical weapons, historically, the first method of delivery, and the method used in the only two nuclear weapons actually used in warfare, was a gravity bomb dropped by a plane. S. Nuclear warheads are represented in bombs, although some are in the form of missiles, gravity bombs are designed to be dropped from planes, which requires that the weapon be able to withstand vibrations and changes in air temperature and pressure during the course of a flight. Early weapons often had a core for safety, known as in flight insertion cores. They had to meet safety conditions, to prevent accidental detonation or dropping, a variety of types also had to have a fuse to initiate detonation. US nuclear weapons that met these criteria are designated by the letter B followed, without a hyphen, the B61, for example, was the primary bomb in the US arsenal for decades. Various air-dropping techniques exist, including bombing, parachute-retarded delivery. The early gravity nuclear bombs could only be carried by the B-29 Superfortress, most ballistic missiles exit the Earths atmosphere and re-enter it in their sub-orbital spaceflight. Placement of nuclear missiles on the low Earth orbit has been banned by the Outer Space Treaty as early as 1967. An ICBM is more than 20 times as fast as a bomber and more than 10 times as fast as a plane, and also flying at a much higher altitude. ICBMs can also be fired quickly in the event of a surprise attack, early ballistic missiles carried a single warhead, often of megaton-range yield. Because of the accuracy of the missiles, this kind of high yield was considered necessary in order to ensure a particular targets destruction. Since the 1970s modern ballistic weapons have seen the development of far more accurate targeting technologies and this set the stage for smaller warheads in the hundreds-of-kilotons-range yield, and consequently for ICBMs having multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles. Advances in technology have enabled a single missile to launch a payload containing several warheads, the number of independent warheads capable of deployment from ballistic missiles depends on the weapons platform the missile is launched from. For example, one D5 Trident missile carried by an Ohio-class submarine is capable of launching eight independent warheads, MIRV has a number of advantages over a missile with a single warhead
10.
Nuclear weapon yield
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An explosive yield of one terajoule is 0.239 kt of TNT. The yield-to-weight ratio is the amount of weapon yield compared to the mass of the weapon, the practical maximum yield-to-weight ratio for fusion weapons has been estimated to six megatons of TNT per metric ton of bomb mass. Yields of 5.2 megatons/ton and higher have been reported for large weapons constructed for use in the early 1960s. Most artificial non-nuclear explosions are considerably smaller than even what are considered to be very small nuclear weapons, the yield-to-weight ratio is the amount of weapon yield compared to the mass of the weapon. According to nuclear-weapons designer Ted Taylor, the practical maximum yield-to-weight ratio for fusion weapons is about 6 megatons of TNT per metric ton. The Taylor limit is not derived from first principles, and weapons with yields as high as 9.5 megatons per metric ton have been designed and built. The 25 Mt yield option reported for the B41 would give it a ratio of 5.1 megatons of TNT per metric ton. This results in the B41 still retaining the record for the highest Yield-to-weight weapon ever designed, in 1963 DOE declassified statements that the U. S. had the technological capability of deploying a 35 Mt warhead on the Titan II, or a 50-60 Mt gravity bomb on B-52s. Neither weapon was pursued, but either would require yield-to-weight ratios superior to a 25 Mt Mk-41, for current smaller US weapons, yield is 600 to 2200 kilotons of TNT per metric ton. By comparison, for the very small devices such as the Davy Crockett it was 0.4 to 40 kilotons of TNT per metric ton. For historical comparison, for Little Boy the yield was only 4 kilotons of TNT per metric ton, and for the largest Tsar Bomba, the yield was 2 megatons of TNT per metric ton. The largest pure-fission bomb ever constructed Ivy King had a 500 kiloton yield, however, there is no known upper yield limit for a fusion bomb. For example, the Mk-36 bomb as built had a ratio of 1.25 megatons of TNT per metric ton. Delivery size limits can be estimated to ascertain limits to delivery of high yield weapons. If the full 250 metric ton payload of the Antonov An-225 aircraft could be used, likewise, the maximum limit of a missile-delivered weapon is determined by the missile gross payload capacity. The large Russian SS-18 ICBM has a capacity of 7,200 kg. A Saturn V-scale missile could deliver over 120 tons, giving a maximum yield of about 700 megatons. The following list is of nuclear explosions
11.
Effects of nuclear explosions
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The blast effect is created by the coupling of immense amounts of energy, spanning the electromagnetic spectrum, with the surroundings. Locations such as submarine, surface, air burst, or exo-atmospheric determine how energy is produced as blast. In general, denser media around the bomb, like water, absorb more energy, when an air burst occurs, lethal blast and thermal effects proportionally scale much more rapidly than lethal radiation effects, as higher and higher yield nuclear weapons are used. Energy from an explosive is initially released in several forms of penetrating radiation. When there is a material such as air, rock, or water. This causes vaporization of surrounding material resulting in its rapid expansion, kinetic energy created by this expansion contributes to the formation of a shockwave. When a nuclear detonation occurs in air near sea level, much of the released energy interacts with the atmosphere, intense thermal radiation at the hypocenter forms a nuclear fireball and if the burst is low enough, it is often associated with a mushroom cloud. In a burst at high altitude, where the air density is low, more energy is released as ionizing gamma radiation and this would concern a nuclear reaction of two nitrogen atoms forming a carbon and an oxygen atom, with release of energy. This energy would heat up the remaining nitrogen enough to keep the reaction going until all nitrogen atoms were consumed. Hans Bethe was assigned the task of studying there was a possibility in the very early days. Richard Hamming, a mathematician, was asked to make a similar calculation just before Trinity, nevertheless, the notion has persisted as a rumor for many years, and was the source of black humor at the Trinity test. The high temperatures and radiation cause gas to move outward radially in a thin, the front acts like a piston that pushes against and compresses the surrounding medium to make a spherically expanding shock wave. At first, this wave is inside the surface of the developing fireball. For air bursts at or near sea-level, 50–60% of the energy goes into the blast wave, depending on the size. As a general rule, the blast fraction is higher for low yield weapons, furthermore, it decreases at high altitudes because there is less air mass to absorb radiation energy and convert it into blast. This effect is most important for altitudes above 30 km, corresponding to <1 per cent of air density. The effects of a rain storm during an Operation Castle nuclear explosion was found to dampen, or reduce. Much of the caused by a nuclear explosion is due to blast effects
12.
Nuclear explosion
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A nuclear explosion is an explosion that occurs as a result of the rapid release of energy from a high-speed nuclear reaction. Atmospheric nuclear explosions are associated with clouds, although mushroom clouds can occur with large chemical explosions. It is possible to have an air-burst nuclear explosion without these clouds, nuclear explosions produce radiation and radioactive debris. Any nuclear explosion would have wide-ranging, long-term, catastrophic effects, radioactive contamination would cause genetic mutations and cancer across many generations. The first nuclear explosion occurred on July 16,1945 at 5,50 am on the Trinity Test Site near Alamogordo, New Mexico in the United States, the event involved the full-scale testing of an implosion-type fission atomic bomb. In a memorandum to the U. S. Secretary of War, in the years following World War II, eight countries have conducted nuclear tests with 2475 devices fired in 2120 tests. In 1963, the United States, Soviet Union, and United Kingdom signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, pledging to refrain from testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, underwater, or in outer space. Many other non-nuclear nations acceded to the Treaty following its entry into force, however, power generation, see PACER Peaceful nuclear explosions Only two nuclear weapons have been deployed in combat—both by the United States against Japan in World War II. The second event occurred three days later when the United States Army Air Forces dropped a plutonium device, code-named Fat Man. It killed 39,000 people, including 27,778 Japanese munitions employees,2,000 Korean slave laborers, in total, around 119,000 people were killed in these bombings. Since the Trinity test and excluding the use of nuclear weapons, mankind has detonated roughly 1,700 nuclear explosions. Of these, six were peaceful nuclear explosions, nuclear tests are experiments carried out to determine the effectiveness, yield and explosive capability of nuclear weapons. Throughout the 20th century, most nations that have developed nuclear weapons had a staged test of them, testing nuclear weapons can yield information about how the weapons work, as well as how the weapons behave under various conditions and how structures behave when subjected to a nuclear explosion. The devastating impact of the explosion does not stop after the initial blast, a cloud of nuclear radiation travels from the epicenter of the explosion, causing an impact to life forms even after the heat waves have ceased. Any nuclear explosion would have wide-ranging, long-term, catastrophic effects, radioactive contamination would cause genetic mutations and cancer across many generations. Lists of nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents Soviet nuclear well collapses Visual depictions of explosions in fiction
13.
Nuclear winter
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Nuclear winter is the severe global-climatic-cooling-effect, hypothesized to occur after the ignition of a number of firestorms. It was within this early 1980s context, that the effects of soot from fires, was chanced upon. In these modelled scenarios, various soot cloud events, containing quantities of soot, were assumed to form over cities, oil refineries. Once the quantity of soot is decided upon by the researchers, the term nuclear winter was specifically coined in 1983 by Richard P. As nuclear devices need not be involved in the ignition of a firestorm and this is due, in greatest part, to the vast majority of published papers stating, without qualitative justification, that nuclear explosions are the cause of the modeled firestorm effects. Although rarely discussed, the proponents of the hypothesis do state that the nuclear winter effect would occur if 100 conventionally lit firestorms were ignited. The climate models suggest that the ignition of 100 firestorms, comparable in intensity to that observed in Hiroshima in 1945, the burning of these firestorms would result in the injection of soot into the Earths stratosphere, producing an anti-greenhouse effect that lowers the Earths surface temperature. Robock has not modeled, but speculated, that this would have global agricultural losses as a consequence, a much larger number of firestorms, in the thousands, was the initial assumption of the computer modelers who coined the term in the 1980s. These were speculated to be a result of any large scale employment of countervalue city-airbursting nuclear weapon use during an American-Soviet total war. This cooling was produced due to a 99% reduction in the solar radiation reaching the surface of the planet in the first few years. This is somewhat analogous to the frequent volcanic eruptions that inject sulfates into the stratosphere and thereby produce minor, even negligible, volcanic winter effects. Information regarding all of these properties is necessary to ascertain the length and depth of the cooling effect of firestorms. Presently, from satellite tracking data, stratospheric smoke aerosols are removed in a time span under approximately two months, the existence of any hint of a tipping point into a new stratospheric condition where the aerosols would not be removed within this time frame remains to be determined. As the incendiary effects of a nuclear explosion do not present any especially characteristic features.2 kilotons of incendiary bombs from 220 B-29s distributed over the city, aerosol–atmosphere interactions are still poorly understood. Sooty aerosols can have a range of properties, as well as complex shapes. These partially burnt organics as they are known, often form tar balls and brown carbon during common lower-intensity wildfires, and can also coat the purer carbon black particles. A study presented at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December 2006 found that even a small-scale. The cooling would last for years, and, according to the research, a 2008 study by Michael J
14.
Nuclear labor issues
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A subculture of frequently undocumented workers do the dirty, difficult, and potentially dangerous work shunned by regular employees. When they exceed their allowable radiation exposure limit at a specific facility, the industry implicitly accepts this conduct as it can not operate without these practices. The World Nuclear Association states that the transient workforce of nuclear gypsies - casual workers employed by subcontractors has been part of the scene for at least four decades. Existent labor laws protecting worker’s health rights are not always properly enforced, records are required to be kept, but frequently they are not. Some personnel were not properly trained resulting in their own exposure to toxic amounts of radiation, at several facilities there are ongoing failures to perform required radiological screenings or to implement corrective actions. The median annual wage for hazardous radioactive materials removal workers, according to the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is $37,590 in the U. S - $18 per hour. A 15-country collaborative cohort study of cancer due to exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation. The study evaluated 31 types of cancers, primary and secondary, in 1942 thirty indigenous Dené men were recruited to mine uranium, locally known as the money rock for three dollars per day at the Port Radium mine. By 1998,14 of these workers had died of lung, colon and kidney cancers, the Dené were not told of the hazards of mining uranium, and breathed radioactive dust, slept on the ore, and ate fish from the tailings ponds. Ottawa was the worlds largest supplier of uranium at that time, in subsequent decades, thousands of Native miners were not warned of the risks. Namibias Rössing Uranium Mine is the longest-operating open-pit uranium mine, the company is owned and operated by Rio Tinto, one of the worlds largest mining groups, and Rössing Uranium Limited. The uranium mill tailings dam has been leaking for a number of years, and on January 17,2014, the France-based laboratory, Commission de Recherche et dInformation Independentantes sur la Radioactivite reported elevated levels of radioactive materials in the area surrounding the mine. There have been numerous reports published on labor and human rights conditions at the mine, Workers were not informed of the dangers of working with radioactive materials and the health effects thereof. The Director of Labor Resource and Research Institute, Hilma Shindondola-Mote, at the open cut Kayelekera uranium mine near Karonga, Malawi, a mine employee, Khwima Phiri, was killed on July 20,2013. He was struck in the chest and killed while inflating a wheel, there have been allegations of radiation-induced diseases among the mine workers and nearby residents. The Malawi government has been unable to verify these, stating that the absence of monitoring equipment, on June 19,2011 a truck at the mine caught fire, killing the driver. On September 23,2010, workers were ordered to work despite the fact that the mine could not provide them with dust masks to protect them against radioactive materials. The American and British demand for large quantities of uranium to use in nuclear weapons initiated New Zealands uranium survey during WWII, in 1944 in Wellington, geologists and physicists assembled two exploration teams to survey South Island, particularly the granite deposits and black beach sand areas
15.
Nuclear ethics
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In contemporary security studies, the problems of nuclear warfare, deterrence, proliferation, and so forth are often understood strictly in political, strategic, or military terms. In the study of organizations and law, however, these problems are also understood in legal terms. Specifically, it assumes that the outcomes of human extinction, mass human destruction, another area of inquiry concerns future generations and the burden that nuclear waste and pollution imposes on them. Some scholars have concluded that it is morally wrong to act in ways that produce these outcomes. Ethical justifications of nuclear deterrence, for example, emphasize its role in preventing great power nuclear war since the end of World War II, indeed, some scholars claim that nuclear deterrence seems to be the morally rational response to a nuclear-armed world. Moral condemnation of nuclear deterrence, in contrast, emphasizes the seemingly inevitable violations of human, the application of nuclear technology, both as a source of energy and as an instrument of war, has been controversial. Even before the first nuclear weapons had developed, scientists involved with the Manhattan Project were divided over the use of the weapon. The role of the two atomic bombings of the country in Japans surrender and the U. S. s ethical justification for them has been the subject of scholarly and popular debate for decades. The question of whether nations should have nuclear weapons, or test them, has continually and nearly universally controversial. The public became concerned about nuclear testing from about 1954. In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, about 50,000 women brought together by Women Strike for Peace marched in 60 cities in the United States to demonstrate against nuclear weapons. In 1963, many countries ratified the Partial Test Ban Treaty which prohibited atmospheric nuclear testing, some local opposition to nuclear power emerged in the early 1960s, and in the late 1960s some members of the scientific community began to express their concerns. In the early 1970s, there were protests about a proposed nuclear power plant in Wyhl. The project was cancelled in 1975 and anti-nuclear success at Wyhl inspired opposition to power in other parts of Europe. Nuclear power became an issue of public protest in the 1970s. Between 1949 and 1989, over 4,000 uranium mines in the Four Corner region of the American Southwest produced more than 225,000,000 tons of uranium ore. This activity affected a number of Native American nations, including the Laguna, Navajo, Zuni, Southern Ute, Ute Mountain, Hopi, Acoma. Many of these worked in the mines, mills and processing plants in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah
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List of nuclear weapons
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This is a list of nuclear weapons listed according to country of origin, and then by type within the states. US nuclear weapons of all types – bombs, warheads, shells, all designs which were formally intended to be weapons at some point received a number designation. Pure test units which were experiments are not numbered in this sequence, early weapons were very large and could only be used as free fall bombs. These were known by Mark designators, like the Mark 4 which was a development of the Fat Man weapon, as weapons became more sophisticated they also became much smaller and lighter, allowing them to be used in many roles. At this time the weapons began to receive designations based on their role, bombs were given the prefix B, while the same used in other roles, like missiles. For instance, the W-53 warhead was used as the basis for the B53 nuclear bomb. Such examples share the same sequence number, in other cases, when the modifications are more significant, variants are assigned their own number. An example is the B61 nuclear bomb, which was the parent design for the W80, W81, there are also examples of out-of-sequence numbering and other prefixes used in special occasions. This list includes weapons which were developed to the point of being assigned a model number and those models are listed as canceled, along with the year or date of cancellation of their program. Bombs – designated with Mark numbers until 1968, and with B numbers after that, test Experimental bombs designated with TX. Mark 1 – Little Boy gun-type uranium weapon, Mark 3 – Fat Man plutonium implosion weapon. Mark 4 – Post-war Fat Man redesign, Bomb designed with weapon characteristics as the foremost criteria. Mark 5 – Significantly smaller high efficiency nuclear bomb, Mark 6 – Improved version of Mk-4. Mark 7 – Multi-purpose tactical bomb, Mark 8 – Gun-assembly, HEU weapon designed for penetrating hardened targets. Mark 10 – Improved version of Mk-8, Mark 12 – Light-weight bomb to be carried by fighter aircraft. Mark 13 – Improved version of Mk-6, tX/Mark 14 – First deployable solid-fuel thermonuclear bomb. Mark 15 – First lightweight thermonuclear weapon, tX/Mark 16 – First weaponized thermonuclear weapon. Heaviest U. S. weapon, second highest yield of any U. S. weapon, Mark 18 – Very high yield fission weapon
17.
Nuclear espionage
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Nuclear espionage is the purposeful giving of state secrets regarding nuclear weapons to other states without authorization. During the history of nuclear weapons there have been cases of known nuclear espionage. States are also limited in their making public of weapons information by non-proliferation agreements and these people are often referred to as the Atomic Spies, and their work continued into the early Cold War. The most prominent of these included, Klaus Fuchs – German refugee theoretical physicist who worked with the British delegation at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project and he was eventually discovered, confessed, and sentenced to jail in Britain. He was later released, and he emigrated to East Germany, theodore Hall – a young American physicist at Los Alamos, whose identity as a spy was not revealed until very late in the 20th century. He was never arrested in connection to his work, though seems to have admitted to it in later years to reporters. David Greenglass – an American machinist at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, Greenglass confessed that he gave crude schematics of lab experiments to the Russians during World War II. Some aspects of his testimony against his sister and brother-in-law are now thought to have been fabricated in an effort to keep his own wife from prosecution, Greenglass confessed to his espionage and was given a long prison term. George Koval – The American born son of a Belorussian emigrant family that returned to the Soviet Union where he was inducted into the Red Army and he infiltrated the US Army and became a radiation health officer in the Special Engineering Detachment. Acting under the code name DELMAR he obtained information from Oak Ridge and his work was not known to the west until he was posthumously recognized as a hero of the Russian Federation by Vladimir Putin in 2007. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg – Americans who were involved in coordinating and recruiting an episonage network which included David Greenglass. While most scholars believe that Julius was likely involved in some sort of network, Julius and Ethel refused to confess to any charges, and were convicted and executed at Sing-Sing Prison. Harry Gold – American, confessed to acting as a courier for Greenglass, whether the espionage information significantly aided the speed of the Soviet atomic bomb project is also disputed. On 10 July 1985, the branch of the French foreign intelligence services carried out the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior. During the operation, two operatives sank the flagship of the Greenpeace fleet, the Rainbow Warrior in the port of Auckland, the French government wanted to prevent the ship from interfering with a planned nuclear test in Moruroa. In April 2013, the French interior intelligence agency DCRI attempted to have the article about the Pierre-sur-Haute military radio station removed from the French language Wikipedia, the DCRI pressured a volunteer administrator of the French language Wikipedia into deleting the article. Israel has never acknowledged or denied having a program, and Vanunu was abducted and smuggled to Israel. Vanunu did not immediately release his information and photos on leaving Israel, the politics of the case are hotly disputed
18.
Nuclear proliferation
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Four countries besides the five recognized Nuclear Weapons States have acquired, or are presumed to have acquired, nuclear weapons, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel. None of these four is a party to the NPT, although North Korea acceded to the NPT in 1985, then withdrew in 2003, Research into the development of nuclear weapons was undertaken during World War II by the United States, Germany, Japan, and the USSR. The United States was the first and is the country to have used a nuclear weapon in war. With their loss during the war, Germany and Japan ceased to be involved in any nuclear weapon research, in August 1949, the USSR tested a nuclear weapon. The United Kingdom tested a nuclear weapon in October 1952, France developed a nuclear weapon in 1960. The Peoples Republic of China detonated a weapon in 1964. India exploded a device in 1974, and Pakistan conducted a series of nuclear weapon tests in May 1998. In 2006, North Korea conducted its first nuclear test, none of these efforts were explicitly public, because the weapon developments themselves were kept secret until the bombing of Hiroshima. The Baruch Plan, which drew heavily from the Acheson–Lilienthal Report of 1946, proposed the verifiable dismantlement, Security Council could veto, and which would proportionately punish states attempting to acquire the capability to make nuclear weapons or fissile material. Baruchs plea for the destruction of nuclear weapons invoked basic moral, in one part of his address to the UN, Baruch said, Behind the black portent of the new atomic age lies a hope which, seized upon with faith, can work out our salvation. If we fail, then we have damned every man to be the slave of Fear and we must elect World Peace or World Destruction. We must answer the worlds longing for peace and security, with this remark, Baruch helped launch the field of nuclear ethics, to which many policy experts and scholars have contributed. Although the Baruch Plan enjoyed wide support, it failed to emerge from the UNAEC because the Soviet Union planned to veto it in the Security Council. Still, it remained official American policy until 1953, when President Eisenhower made his Atoms for Peace proposal before the U. N. General Assembly, eisenhowers proposal led eventually to the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1957. Efforts to conclude an agreement to limit the spread of nuclear weapons did not begin until the early 1960s. Although these efforts stalled in the early 1960s, they renewed once again in 1964, in 1968, governments represented at the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee finished negotiations on the text of the NPT. In June 1968, the U. N. General Assembly endorsed the NPT with General Assembly Resolution 2373, and in July 1968, the NPT entered into force in March 1970. The main materials whose generation and distribution is controlled are highly enriched uranium and plutonium, dual-use technology refers to the possibility of military use of civilian nuclear power technology
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Nuclear disarmament
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Nuclear disarmament refers to both the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons and to the end state of a nuclear-weapons-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated. There have been many large demonstrations and protests. On June 12,1982, one million people demonstrated in New York Citys Central Park against nuclear weapons and it was the largest anti-nuclear protest and the largest political demonstration in American history. In recent years, some U. S. elder statesmen have also advocated nuclear disarmament, the four have created the Nuclear Security Project to advance this agenda. Organisations such as Global Zero, an international group of 300 world leaders dedicated to achieving nuclear disarmament, have also been established. Proponents of nuclear disarmament say that it would lessen the probability of nuclear war occurring, critics of nuclear disarmament say that it would undermine deterrence. In 1945 in the New Mexico desert, American scientists conducted Trinity, even before the Trinity test, national leaders debated the impact of nuclear weapons on domestic and foreign policy. On August 6,1945, towards the end of World War II, subsequently, the world’s nuclear weapons stockpiles grew. Operation Crossroads was a series of nuclear tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean in the summer of 1946. Its purpose was to test the effect of weapons on naval ships. Pressure to cancel Operation Crossroads came from scientists and diplomats, manhattan Project scientists argued that further nuclear testing was unnecessary and environmentally dangerous. A Los Alamos study warned the water near a recent surface explosion will be a witchs brew of radioactivity, to prepare the atoll for the nuclear tests, Bikinis native residents were evicted from their homes and resettled on smaller, uninhabited islands where they were unable to sustain themselves. Radioactive fallout from nuclear testing was first drawn to public attention in 1954 when a Hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific contaminated the crew of the Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon. One of the fishermen died in Japan seven months later, the incident caused widespread concern around the world and provided a decisive impetus for the emergence of the anti-nuclear weapons movement in many countries. The anti-nuclear weapons movement grew rapidly because for many people the atomic bomb encapsulated the very worst direction in which society was moving, Peace movements emerged in Japan and in 1954 they converged to form a unified Japanese Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs. Japanese opposition to the Pacific nuclear weapons tests was widespread, CND organised Aldermaston marches into the late 1960s when tens of thousands of people took part in the four-day events. On November 1,1961, at the height of the Cold War and it was the largest national womens peace protest of the 20th century. In 1958, Linus Pauling and his wife presented the United Nations with the petition signed by more than 11,000 scientists calling for an end to nuclear-weapon testing, Pauling started the International League of Humanists in 1974
20.
Nuclear terrorism
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Nuclear terrorism refers to an act of terrorism in which a person or people belonging to a terrorist organization detonates a nuclear device. Some definitions of nuclear terrorism include the sabotage of a nuclear facility and/or the detonation of a device, colloquially termed a dirty bomb. It is considered plausible that terrorists could acquire a nuclear weapon, former U. S. President Barack Obama called nuclear terrorism the single most important national security threat that we face. It would destabilize our security, our economies, and our way of life. I was wondering if anything of that kind might be available to use as a defense against that type of use of atomic bombs. Dr. Oppenheimer, If you hired me to walk through the cellars of Washington to see there were atomic bombs, I think my most important tool would be a screwdriver to open the crates. I think that just walking by, swinging a little gadget would not give me the information and this sparked further work on the question of smuggled atomic devices during the 1950s. Discussions of non-state nuclear terrorism among experts go back at least to the 1970s, in 1975 The Economist warned that You can make a bomb with a few pounds of plutonium. By the mid-1980s the power stations may easily be turning out 200,000 lb of the each year. And each year, unless present methods are changed, many thousands of pounds of it will be transferred from one plant to another as it proceeds through the fuel cycle. The dangers of robbery in transit are evident, vigorous co-operation between governments and the International Atomic Energy Agency could, even at this late stage, make the looming perils loom a good deal smaller. And the New York Times commented in 1981 that The Nuclear Emergency Search Teams origins go back to the aftershocks of the Munich Olympic massacre in mid-1972. Until that time, no one in the United States Government had thought seriously about the menace of organized, international terrorism, but it has since been revealed that the physical safeguarding of bomb-grade material against theft was almost scandalously neglected. This discussion took on a public character in the 1980s after NBC aired Special Bulletin. The probability of nuclear terrorism, the experts warned, is increasing, the World Institute for Nuclear Security is an organization which seeks to prevent nuclear terrorism and improve world nuclear security. It works alongside the International Atomic Energy Agency, WINS was formed in 2008, less than a year after a break-in at the Pelindaba nuclear facility in South Africa, which contained enough enriched uranium to make several nuclear bombs. Partners join the GICNT by endorsing the Statement of Principles, a set of nuclear security objectives. GICNT partner nations organize and host workshops, conferences, and exercises to share best practices for implementing the Statement of Principles, the GICNT also holds Plenary meetings to discuss improvements and changes to the partnership
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Anti-nuclear movement
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The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement that opposes various nuclear technologies. Some direct action groups, environmental groups, and professional organisations have identified themselves with the movement at the local, national, the initial objective of the movement was nuclear disarmament, though since the late 1960s opposition has included the use of nuclear power. Many anti-nuclear groups oppose nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The formation of parties in the 1970s and 1980s was often a direct result of anti-nuclear politics. Scientists and diplomats have debated nuclear weapons policy since before the bombings of Hiroshima. The public became concerned about nuclear testing from about 1954. In 1963, many countries ratified the Partial Test Ban Treaty which prohibited atmospheric nuclear testing, some local opposition to nuclear power emerged in the early 1960s, and in the late 1960s some members of the scientific community began to express their concerns. In the early 1970s, there were protests about a proposed nuclear power plant in Wyhl. The project was cancelled in 1975 and anti-nuclear success at Wyhl inspired opposition to power in other parts of Europe. Nuclear power became an issue of public protest in the 1970s. A protest against nuclear power occurred in July 1977 in Bilbao, Spain, following the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, an anti-nuclear protest was held in New York City, involving 200,000 people. The largest protest was held on June 12,1982, when one million people demonstrated in New York City against nuclear weapons, a 1983 nuclear weapons protest in West Berlin had about 600,000 participants. In May 1986, following the Chernobyl disaster, an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people marched in Rome to protest against the Italian nuclear program. In the US, public opposition preceded the shutdown of the Shoreham, Yankee Rowe, Millstone 1, Rancho Seco, Maine Yankee, and many other nuclear power plants. For many years after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster nuclear power was off the agenda in most countries. The 2011 Japanese nuclear accidents undermined the nuclear power industrys proposed renaissance and revived nuclear opposition worldwide. As of 2016, countries such as Australia, Austria, Denmark, Greece, Malaysia, New Zealand, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland are phasing-out nuclear power. Globally, more nuclear reactors have closed than opened in recent years
22.
List of states with nuclear weapons
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There are eight sovereign states that have successfully detonated nuclear weapons. Five are considered to be nuclear-weapon states under the terms of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, in order of acquisition of nuclear weapons these are, the United States, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, France, and China. Since the NPT entered into force in 1970, three states that were not parties to the Treaty have conducted tests, namely India, Pakistan. North Korea had been a party to the NPT but withdrew in 2003, Israel is also widely known to have nuclear weapons, though it maintains a policy of deliberate ambiguity regarding this, and is not known definitively to have conducted a nuclear test. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institutes SIPRI Yearbook of 2014, according to Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Nuclear Notebook 2014, the total number of nuclear weapons worldwide is estimated at 10,144. South Africa developed nuclear weapons but then disassembled its arsenal before joining the NPT, nations that are known or thought to have nuclear weapons are sometimes referred to informally as the nuclear club. This list is known in global politics as the Nuclear Club. With the exception of Russia and the United States these figures are estimates, in particular, under the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty thousands of Russian and U. S. nuclear warheads are inactive in stockpiles awaiting processing. The fissile material contained in the warheads can then be recycled for use in nuclear reactors, from a high of 68,000 active weapons in 1985, as of 2016 there are some 4,000 active nuclear warheads and 10,100 total nuclear warheads in the world. Many of the weapons were simply stored or partially dismantled. These five states are also the UN Security Councils permanent members with veto power. It tested the first nuclear weapon on July 16,1945 at 5,30 am and it was the first nation to develop the hydrogen bomb, testing an experimental prototype in 1952 and a deployable weapon in 1954. Throughout the Cold War it continued to modernize and enlarge its nuclear arsenal, the U. S. nuclear arsenal contained 31,175 warheads at its Cold War height. During the Cold War, the United States built approximately 70,000 nuclear warheads, the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear weapon in 1949, in a crash project developed partially with espionage obtained during and after World War II. The Soviet Union was the nation to have developed and tested a nuclear weapon. The direct motivation for Soviet weapons development was to achieve a balance of power during the Cold War and it tested its first megaton-range hydrogen bomb in 1955. The Soviet Union also tested the most powerful explosive ever detonated by humans, with a yield of 100 megatons. After its dissolution in 1991, the Soviet weapons entered officially into the possession of the Russian Federation, the Soviet nuclear arsenal contained some 45,000 warheads at its peak, the Soviet Union built about 55,000 nuclear warheads since 1949
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Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
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Opened for signature in 1968, the treaty entered into force in 1970. As required by the text, after years, NPT Parties met in May 1995. More countries have adhered to the NPT than any other arms limitation and disarmament agreement, four UN member states have never accepted the NPT, three of which are thought to possess nuclear weapons, India, Israel, and Pakistan. In addition, South Sudan, founded in 2011, has not joined, the treaty effectively recognizes five states as nuclear-weapon states, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China. The treaty is reviewed every five years in meetings called Review Conferences of the Parties to the Treaty of Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. S, government efforts led by Ambassador Thomas Graham Jr. At the time the NPT was proposed, there were predictions of 25–30 nuclear weapon states within 20 years, instead, over forty years later, five states are not parties to the NPT, and they include the only four additional states believed to possess nuclear weapons. Critics argue that the NPT cannot stop the proliferation of weapons or the motivation to acquire them. Several high-ranking officials within the United Nations have said that they can do little to stop states using nuclear reactors to produce nuclear weapons, the NPT consists of a preamble and eleven articles. These pillars are interrelated and mutually reinforcing, with the right to access the benefits of peaceful nuclear technology comes the responsibility of nonproliferation. Progress on disarmament reinforces efforts to strengthen the regime and to enforce compliance with obligations. Under Article III of the Treaty, non-nuclear-weapon states pledge to accept IAEA safeguards to verify that their nuclear activities serve only peaceful purposes. Five states are recognized by NPT as nuclear weapon states, China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and these five nations are also the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. These five NWS agree not to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices and not in any way to assist, encourage. NNWS parties to the NPT agree not to receive, manufacture, however, these undertakings have not been incorporated formally into the treaty, and the exact details have varied over time. The U. S. also had nuclear warheads targeted at North Korea, Article VI of the NPT represents the only binding commitment in a multilateral treaty to the goal of disarmament by the nuclear-weapon states. Under this interpretation, Article VI does not strictly require all signatories to conclude a disarmament treaty. Rather, it requires them to negotiate in good faith. On the other hand, some governments, especially non-nuclear-weapon states belonging to the Non-Aligned Movement, have interpreted Article VIs language as being anything, the ICJ opinion notes that this obligation involves all NPT parties and does not suggest a specific time frame for nuclear disarmament
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United States and weapons of mass destruction
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The United States is known to have possessed three types of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and biological weapons. The U. S. is the country to have used nuclear weapons in combat. It had secretly developed the earliest form of the weapon during the 1940s under the title Manhattan Project. The United States pioneered the development of both the nuclear fission and hydrogen bombs and it was the worlds first and only nuclear power for four years, until the Soviet Union managed to produce its own nuclear weapon. The United States has the second largest number of deployed nuclear weapons in the world, Nuclear weapons have been used twice in combat, two nuclear weapons were used by the United States against Japan during World War II in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Altogether, the two bombings killed 120,000 people and injured another 130,000 while devastating hundreds or thousands of military bases, factories, the U. S. conducted an extensive nuclear testing program. 1,054 tests were conducted between 1945 and 1992, the exact number of nuclear devices detonated is unclear because some tests involved multiple devices while a few failed to explode or were designed not to create a nuclear explosion. The last nuclear test by the United States was on September 23,1992, Air Forces heavy bomber group The United States is one of the five Nuclear Weapons States under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the U. S. ratified in 1968. On October 13,1999, the U. S. Senate rejected ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, having previously ratified the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963. In the early 1990s, the U. S. stopped developing new weapons and now devotes most of its nuclear efforts into stockpile stewardship. The administration of George W. Bush decided in 2003 to engage in research towards a new generation of nuclear weapons. The budget passed by the United States Congress in 2004 eliminated funding for some of this including the bunker-busting or earth-penetrating weapons. The exact number of weapons possessed by the United States is difficult to determine. In its Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty declaration for 2003, the U. S. listed 5968 deployed warheads as defined by START rules, other warheads are in some step of the disassembly process. The exact number as of Sept.30,2009, was 5,113 warheads, in 2002, the United States and Russia agreed in the SORT treaty to reduce their deployed stockpiles to not more than 2,200 warheads each. In 2003, the U. S. rejected Russian proposals to reduce both nations nuclear stockpiles to 1,500 each. In 2007, for the first time in 15 years, the United States built new warheads and these replaced some older warheads as part of the Minuteman III upgrade program. 2007 also saw the first Minuteman III missiles removed from service as part of the drawdown, overall, stockpiles and deployment systems continue to decline in number under the terms of the New START treaty
25.
Russia and weapons of mass destruction
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The figures are, by necessity, only estimates because the exact number of nuclear weapons in each countrys possession is a closely held national secret. In addition to weapons, Russia declared an arsenal of 39,967 tons of chemical weapons in 1997. The Soviet Union ratified the Geneva Protocol on April 5,1928 with reservations, the reservations were later dropped on January 18,2001. Russia is also party to the Biological Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Soviet Union had a peak stockpile of 45,000 nuclear warheads in 1988. It is estimated that from 1949 to 1991 the Soviet Union produced approximately 55,000 nuclear warheads, at the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Soviet nuclear weapons were deployed in four of the new republics, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Ukraine agreed to give up its weapons to Russia, in exchange for guarantees of Ukrainian territory from Russia, the UK, China and France also made statements in support of the memorandum. The exact number of warheads is a state secret and is therefore a matter of guesswork. According to 2016 data from the New START Treaty Aggregate Numbers of Strategic Offensive Arms facts sheet, on the other hand, Russia is estimated to have roughly 1,500 tactical nuclear weapons, all of which are declared to be in central storage. S. In 2015, informations emerged that Russia may be developing a new up to 100 megatons nuclear torpedo, two potential carrier submarines, the Project 09852 Belgorod, and the Project 09851 Khabarovsk, are new boats laid down in 2012 and 2014 respectively. Status 6 appears to be a deterrent weapon of last resort and it appears to be a torpedo-shaped robotic mini-submarine, that can travel at speeds of 185 km/h. More recent information suggests a top speed of 100 km/h, with a range of 10,000 km and this underwater drone is cloaked by stealth technology to elude acoustic tracking devices. After the Korean War, the Soviet Union transferred nuclear technology and weapons to the Peoples Republic of China as an adversary of the United States, subsequently, the Soviet Union built all the essentials of China’s new military nuclear industry. Russia is one of the five Nuclear Weapons States under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, a number of Soviet-era nuclear warheads remained on the territories of Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. It is estimated that the Soviet Union had approximately 45,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled at the time of its collapse, the collapse of the Soviet Union allowed for a warming of relations with NATO. Fears of a nuclear holocaust lessened, in September 1997, the former secretary of the Russian Security Council Alexander Lebed claimed 100 suitcase sized nuclear weapons were unaccounted for. He said he was attempting to inventory the weapons when he was fired by President Boris Yeltsin in October 1996, in 2005, Sergey Sinchenko, a legislator from the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, said 250 nuclear weapons were unaccounted for. When comparing documents of nuclear weapons transferred from Ukraine to weapons received by Russia, indeed, several US politicians have expressed worries and promised legislation addressing the threat. In 2002, the United States and Russia agreed to reduce their stockpiles to not more than 2,700 warheads each in the SORT treaty, in 2003, the US rejected Russian proposals to further reduce each nations nuclear stockpiles to 1,500
26.
United Kingdom and weapons of mass destruction
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The United Kingdom possesses, or has possessed, a variety of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. The United Kingdom is one of the five nuclear weapon states under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has an independent nuclear deterrent. The UK has been estimated to have a stockpile of 120 active nuclear warheads and 215 nuclear warheads in total and it had renounced the use of chemical and biological weapons in 1956 and subsequently destroyed its general stocks. They also manufactured five million linseed-oil cattle cakes with a hole bored into them for addition of anthrax spores between 1942 and mid-1943 and these were to be dropped on Germany using specially designed containers each holding 400 cakes, in a project known as Operation Vegetarian. It was intended that the disease would destroy the German beef and dairy herds, preparations were not complete until early 1944. Operation Vegetarian was only to be used in the event of a German anthrax attack on the United Kingdom, offensive weapons development continued after the war into the 1950s with tests of plague, brucellosis, tularemia and later equine encephalomyelitis and vaccinia viruses. In particular five sets of trials took place at sea using aerosol clouds, Operation Harness off Antigua in 1948-1949. Operation Cauldron off Stornoway in 1952, the trawler Carella unknowingly sailed through a cloud of pneumonic plague bacilli during this trial. It was kept under observation until the incubation period had elapsed. Operation Hesperus off Stornoway in 1953, Operation Ozone off Nassau in 1954. Operation Negation off Nassau in 1954-5, the programme was cancelled in 1956 when the British government renounced the use of biological and chemical weapons. In 1974, biological weapons were banned, and the United Kingdom ratified the Biological, the UK was a signatory of the Hague Conventions which outlawed the use of poison gas in warfare. Britain used a range of gases, originally chlorine and later phosgene, diphosgene. They also used small amounts of the irritant gases chloromethyl chloroformate, chloropicrin, bromacetone. Gases were frequently mixed, for example white star was the given to a mixture of equal volumes of chlorine and phosgene. See Use of poison gas in World War I, historians are divided as to whether or not gas was in fact used. The UK ratified the Geneva Protocol on 9 April 1930, the UK signed the Chemical Weapons Convention on 13 January 1993 and ratified it on 13 May 1996. Despite the signing of the Geneva Protocol, the UK carried out testing of chemical weapons from the early 1930s onwards
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France and weapons of mass destruction
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France is one of the five Nuclear Weapons States under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but is not known to possess or develop any chemical or biological weapons. France was the country to test an independently developed nuclear weapon in 1960. France denies currently having chemical weapons, ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1995, France had also ratified the Geneva Protocol in 1926. France was one of the pioneers, going back to the work of Marie Skłodowska Curie. Curie’s last assistant Bertrand Goldschmidt became the father of the French Bomb, after World War II Frances former position of leadership suffered greatly because of the instability of the Fourth Republic, and the lack of finance available. During the Second World War Goldschmidt invented the method for extracting plutonium while working as part of the British/Canadian team participating in the Manhattan Project. But after the Liberation in 1945, France had to start its own program almost from scratch, nevertheless, the first French reactor went critical in 1948 and small amounts of plutonium were extracted in 1949. There was no commitment to a nuclear weapons program at that time. However, in the 1950s a civilian nuclear program was started. In 1956 a secret Committee for the Military Applications of Atomic Energy was formed, the intervention of the United States in the Suez Crisis that year is credited with convincing France that it needed to accelerate its own nuclear weapons program to remain a global power. With the return of Charles de Gaulle to the presidency of France in the midst of the May 1958 crisis, the decisions to build an atomic bomb were taken. According to Lieutenant Colonel Warner D, progress in nuclear science and technology in France and Israel remained closely linked throughout the early fifties. Israeli scientists probably helped construct the G-1 plutonium production reactor and UP-1 reprocessing plant at Marcoule, in 1957 Euratom was created, and under cover of the peaceful use of nuclear power the French signed deals with Germany and Italy to work together on nuclear weapons development. The West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer told his cabinet that he wanted to achieve, through EURATOM, as quickly as possible, in 1958 de Gaulle became President and Germany and Italy were excluded. France developed its nuclear and thermonuclear bombs without outside assistance, the United States, however, began providing technical assistance in the early 1970s through the 1980s. The aid was secret, unlike the relationship with the British nuclear program, areas in which the French received help included MIRV, radiation hardening, missile design, intelligence on Soviet anti-missile defences, and advanced computer technology. Because the French program attracted the best brains of the nation, France is understood to have tested neutron or enhanced radiation bombs in the past, apparently leading the field with an early test of the technology in 1967 and an actual neutron bomb in 1980. There were 210 French nuclear tests from 1960 through 1995, seventeen of them were done in the Algerian Sahara between 1960 and 1966, starting in the middle of the Algerian War
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China and weapons of mass destruction
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The Peoples Republic of China has developed and possesses weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and nuclear weapons. The first of Chinas nuclear weapons tests took place in 1964, tests continued until 1996, when China signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. China has acceded to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention in 1984, the number of nuclear warheads in Chinas arsenal is a state secret. There are varying estimates of the size of Chinas arsenal, according to some estimates, the country could more than double the number of warheads on missiles that could threaten the United States by the mid-2020s. Early in 2011, China published a white paper, which repeated its nuclear policies of maintaining a minimum deterrent with a no-first-use pledge. Yet China has yet to define what it means by a minimum deterrent posture and this, together with the fact that it is deploying four new nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, invites concern as to the scale and intention of China’s nuclear upgrade. China signed the Chemical Weapons Convention on January 13,1993, China ratified the CWC on April 25,1997. It has declared only three former chemical production facilities that may have produced gas, phosgene and Lewisite. China was found to have supplied Albania with a stockpile of chemical weapons in the 1970s during the Cold War. However, China was reported to have had a biological weapons program in the 1980s. Kanatjan Alibekov, former director of one of the Soviet germ-warfare programs, Alibekov asserted that Soviet reconnaissance satellites identified a biological weapons laboratory and plant near a site for testing nuclear warheads. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright expressed her concerns over possible Chinese biological weapon transfers to Iran, in response to this, China issued export control protocols on dual use biological technology in late 2002. Mao Zedong decided to begin a Chinese nuclear-weapons program during the First Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1954–1955 over the Quemoy, while he did not expect to be able to match the large American nuclear arsenal, Mao believed that even a few bombs would increase Chinas diplomatic credibility. Construction of uranium-enrichment plants in Baotou and Lanzhou began in 1958, and a facility in Jiuquan. The Chinese, who preferred to import technology and components to developing them within China, exported uranium to the Soviet Union, and that year, however, Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev told Mao that he planned to discuss arms control with the United States and Britain. China was already opposed to Khruschevs post-Stalin policy of peaceful coexistence, although Soviet officials assured China that it was under the Soviet nuclear umbrella, the disagreements widened the emerging Sino-Soviet split. The Chinese conducted their first nuclear test, code-named 596, on 16 October 1964, Chinas last nuclear test was on July 29,1996. According to the Australian Geological Survey Organization in Canberra, the yield of the 1996 test was 1–5 kilotons and this was Chinas 22nd underground test and 45th test overall
29.
India and weapons of mass destruction
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India possesses weapons of mass destruction in the form of nuclear weapons and, in the past, chemical weapons. In 1999 India was estimated to have 800 kg of separated reactor-grade plutonium, with an amount of 8300 kg of civilian plutonium. India is not a signatory to the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, India has signed and ratified the Biological Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention. India is also a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime, India has a well-developed biotechnology infrastructure that includes numerous pharmaceutical production facilities and bio-containment laboratories for working with lethal pathogens. It also has highly qualified scientists with expertise in infectious diseases, some of Indias facilities are being used to support research and development for biological weapons defence purposes. India has ratified the Biological Weapons Convention and pledges to abide by its obligations, there is no clear evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, that directly points toward an offensive BW program. India does possess the capability and infrastructure to launch an offensive BW program. In terms of delivery, India also possesses the capability to produce aerosols and has numerous potential delivery systems ranging from crop dusters to sophisticated ballistic missiles. No information exists in the public domain suggesting interest by the Indian government in delivery of biological agents by these or any other means. To reiterate the latter point, in October 2002, the then President Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam asserted that India will not make biological weapons and it is cruel to human beings. In 1992, India signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, stating that it did not have chemical weapons, by doing this India became one of the original signatories of the CWC in 1993, and ratified it on 2 September 1996. Others suggested that the fact that India has found chemical weapons dispensable highlighted its confidence in the weapons system at its command. In June 1997, India declared its stock of chemical weapons, India informed the United Nations in May 2009 that it had destroyed its stockpile of chemical weapons in compliance with the international Chemical Weapons Convention. With this India has become third country after South Korea and Albania to do so and this was cross-checked by inspectors of the United Nations. India has a commercial chemical industry, and produces the bulk of its own chemicals for domestic consumption. Homi Bhabha when he founded the research centre, the Institute of Fundamental Research. India first tested a device in 1974, which it called a peaceful nuclear explosion. The test used plutonium produced in the Canadian-supplied CIRUS reactor, and this also stimulated the early work of the Nuclear Suppliers Group
30.
Nuclear weapons and Israel
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It is one of four nuclear-armed countries not recognized as a Nuclear Weapons State by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the others being India, Pakistan and North Korea. Israel maintains a policy known as nuclear ambiguity, Israel has refused to sign the NPT despite international pressure to do so, and has stated that signing the NPT would be contrary to its national security interests. Additionally, Israel has made efforts to deny other regional actors the ability to acquire their own nuclear weapons. The counter-proliferation, preventive strike Begin Doctrine added another dimension to Israels existing nuclear policy, Israel remains the only country in the Middle East believed to possess them. Israel is alleged to have built its first nuclear weapon in December 1966, but it is not publicly confirmed. In 1987, an unclassified US DoD report stated that As far as nuclear technology is concerned and it should be noted that the Israelis are developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. Estimates as to the size of the Israeli nuclear arsenal vary between 75 and 400 nuclear warheads, former U. S. officials Jimmy Carter and Colin Powell have stated that Israel has 200 or more than 300 nuclear warheads. Israels first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was nearly obsessed with obtaining nuclear weapons to prevent the Holocaust from recurring. He stated, What Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Teller, the three of them are Jews, made for the United States, could also be done by scientists in Israel, for their own people. Ben-Gurion decided to recruit Jewish scientists from abroad even before the end of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War that established Israels independence, in 1949 a unit of the Israel Defense Forces Science Corps, known by the Hebrew acronym HEMED GIMMEL, began a two-year geological survey of the Negev. In early 1952 Hemed Gimmel was moved from the IDF to the Ministry of Defense and was reorganized as the Division of Research and that June, Bergmann was appointed by Ben-Gurion to be the first chairman of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission. The techniques were two more advanced than American efforts. Bergmann, who was interested in increasing nuclear cooperation with the French, although they were never commercialized, it was a consequential step for future French-Israeli cooperation. In addition, Israeli scientists probably helped construct the G-1 plutonium production reactor, France and Israel had close relations in many areas. At the same time Israeli scientists were also observing Frances own nuclear program, According to Lieutenant Colonel Warner D. Progress in nuclear science and technology in France and Israel remained closely linked throughout the early fifties, furthermore, according to Farr, There were several Israeli observers at the French nuclear tests and the Israelis had unrestricted access to French nuclear test explosion data. The French justified their decision to provide Israel a nuclear reactor by claiming it was not without precedent, in September 1955 Canada publicly announced that it would help the Indian government build a heavy-water research reactor, the CIRUS, for peaceful purposes. In exchange, France would provide the nuclear reactor as the basis for the Israeli nuclear weapons program, Shimon Peres, sensing the opportunity on the nuclear reactor, accepted
31.
Pakistan and weapons of mass destruction
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Pakistan is one of nine states to possess nuclear weapons, and the only Muslim majority country to do so. The Kahuta Project started under the supervision of a board that oversaw the activities of KRL. The Board consisted of A G N Kazi, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, and Agha Shahi, Ghulam Ishaq Khan and General Tikka Khan appointed military engineer Major General Ali Nawab to the program. Eventually, the passed to Lt General Zahid Ali Akbar in President General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haqs Administration. Moderate uranium enrichment for the production of material was achieved at KRL by April 1978. Pakistans nuclear weapons development was in response to the loss of East Pakistan in 1971s Bangladesh Liberation War, Bhutto called a meeting of senior scientists and engineers on 20 January 1972, in Multan, which came to known as Multan meeting. In December 1972, Abdus Salam led the establishment of Theoretical Physics Group as he called scientists working at ICTP to report to Munir Ahmad Khan and this marked the beginning of Pakistans pursuit of nuclear deterrence capability. Finally, on 28 May 1998, a few weeks after Indias second nuclear test, Pakistan detonated five nuclear devices in the Ras Koh Hills in the Chagai district, Balochistan. This operation was named Chagai-I by Pakistan, the underground iron-steel tunnel having been long-constructed by provincial martial law administrator General Rahimuddin Khan during the 1980s. The last test of Pakistan was conducted at the sandy Kharan Desert under the codename Chagai-II, also in Balochistan, Pakistans fissile material production takes place at Nilore, Kahuta, and Khushab/Jauharabad, where weapons-grade plutonium is refined. Pakistan thus became the country in the world to successfully develop. Although, according to a sent by A. Q. Khan to General Zia, the capability to detonate a bomb using highly enriched uranium as fissile material produced at KRL had been achieved by KRL in 1984. After the Partition of India in 1947, India and Pakistan have been in conflict over several issues, including the territory of Jammu. The uneasy relationships with India, Afghanistan, the former Soviet Union, on 8 December 1953, Pakistan media welcomed the U. S. Atoms for Peace initiatives, followed by the establishment of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission in 1956, in 1953, Foreign minister Muhammad Zafarullah Khan publicly stated that Pakistan does not have a policy towards the atom bombs. Before 1971, Pakistans nuclear development was peaceful but an effective deterrent against India, Pakistans nuclear energy programme was established and started in 1956 following the establishment of PAEC. Pakistan became a participant in U. S. President Eisenhowers Atoms for Peace program, pAECs first chairman was Dr. Nazir Ahmad
32.
North Korea and weapons of mass destruction
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North Korea and weapons of mass destruction concerns North Korea, which declared in 2009 that it had developed a nuclear weapon, and possessed a small stockpile of relatively simple nuclear weapons. North Korea may also have a chemical weapon and/or biological weapons capability, since 2003, North Korea is no longer a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The nuclear program can be traced back to about 1962, when North Korea committed itself to what it called all-fortressization, in 1963, North Korea asked the Soviet Union for help in developing nuclear weapons, but was refused. The Soviet Union agreed to help North Korea develop a nuclear energy program. Later, China, after its nuclear tests, similarly rejected North Korean requests for help with developing nuclear weapons, in 1979 North Korea indigenously began to build in Yongbyon a second research reactor, an ore processing plant and a fuel rod fabrication plant. North Koreas nuclear weapons program dates back to the 1980s, in 1985 North Korea ratified the NPT, but did not conclude the required safeguards agreement with the IAEA until 1992. In early 1993, while verifying North Koreas initial declaration, the IAEA concluded that there was strong evidence this declaration was incomplete, when North Korea refused the requested special inspection, the IAEA reported its non-compliance to the UN Security Council. In 1993, North Korea announced its withdrawal from the NPT, under the 1994 Agreed Framework, the U. S. government agreed to facilitate the supply of two light water reactors to North Korea in exchange for North Korean disarmament. Such reactors are considered more proliferation-resistant than North Koreas graphite-moderated reactors, implementation of the Agreed Framework floundered, and in 2002 the Agreed Framework fell apart, with each side blaming the other for its failure. By 2002, Pakistan had admitted that North Korea had gained access to Pakistans nuclear technology in the late 1990s, on October 9,2006, North Korea announced it had successfully conducted its first nuclear test. An underground nuclear explosion was detected, its yield was estimated as less than a kiloton, on January 6,2007, the North Korean government further confirmed that it had nuclear weapons. In April 2009, reports surfaced that North Korea has become a fully fledged nuclear power, on May 25,2009, North Korea conducted a second nuclear test, resulting in an explosion estimated to be between 2 and 7 kilotons. The 2009 test, like the 2006 test, is believed to have occurred at Mantapsan, Kilju County, on February 11,2013, the U. S. Geological Survey detected a magnitude 5.1 seismic disturbance, reported to be a third underground nuclear test. North Korea has officially reported it as a nuclear test with a lighter warhead that delivers more force than before. Multiple South Korean sources estimate the yield at 6–9 kilotons, while the German Federal Institute for Geosciences, however, the German estimates has since revised to a yield equivalent of 14 kt when they published their estimations in 2016 Jan. On January 6,2016 in Korea, the United States Geological Survey detected a magnitude 5.1 seismic disturbance, North Korea claimed that this test involved a hydrogen bomb. This claim has not been verified, within hours, many nations and organizations had condemned the test. Expert U. S. analysts do not believe that a bomb was detonated
33.
South Africa and weapons of mass destruction
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From the 1960s to the 1980s, South Africa pursued research into weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. The country has been a signatory of the Biological Weapons Convention since 1975, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons since 1991, and the Chemical Weapons Convention since 1995. In 1957, South Africa reached an understanding with the United States after signing a 50-year collaboration under the U. S. -sanctioned programme, the Atoms for Peace. The treaty concluded the South African acquisition of a nuclear research reactor. The SAFARI-2 reactor was intended to be moderated by heavy water, in 1969, the project was abandoned by the South African government because the reactor was draining resources from the uranium enrichment program that was initiated in 1967. South Africa began focusing on the success of its enrichment programme which was seen by its scientists as easier compared to plutonium. South Africa was able to mine uranium ore domestically, and used aerodynamic nozzle enrichment techniques to produce weapons-grade material. The South African and Pakistani scientists studied the use of aerodynamic-jet nozzle process to enrich the fuel at the University of Birmingham and it is not clear how much knowledge they gained and to what extent they cooperated. South Africa gained sufficient experience with the technology to capitalize on the promotion of the U. S. governments Peaceful Nuclear Explosions program. Finally in 1971, South African minister of mines Carl de Wet gave approval of the countrys own PNE programme with the stated objective of using PNEs in the mining industry. The date when the South African PNE programme transformed into a program is a matter of some dispute. South Africa developed a small finite deterrence arsenal of gun-type fission weapons in the 1980s, six were constructed and another was under construction at the time the program ended. South Africa only produced a weapon after Armscor took over production. In 1982, Armscor built the first operational weapon, code-named Hobo and this device reportedly had a yield of 6 kilotons of TNT. It was eventually dissembled and the warhead reused in a production model bomb, Armscor then built a series of pre-production and production models under the code-name HAMERKOP after a bird. While Hobo/Cabot were not functional, the HAMERKOP series were smart television-guided glide bombs, the South African Atomic Energy Board selected a test site in the Kalahari Desert at the Vastrap weapons range north of Upington. Two test shafts were completed in 1976 and 1977, one shaft was 385 metres deep, the other,216 metres. In 1977, the AEB established its own high-security weapons research and development facilities at Pelindaba, in mid-1977, the AEB produced a gun-type device—without a highly enriched uranium core
34.
Cold War
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The Cold War was a state of geopolitical tension after World War II between powers in the Eastern Bloc and powers in the Western Bloc. Historians do not fully agree on the dates, but a common timeframe is the period between 1947, the year the Truman Doctrine was announced, and 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed. The term cold is used there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides, although there were major regional wars, known as proxy wars, supported by the two sides. The Cold War split the temporary alliance against Nazi Germany, leaving the Soviet Union. The USSR was a Marxist–Leninist state ruled by its Communist Party and secret police, the Party controlled the press, the military, the economy and all organizations. In opposition stood the West, dominantly democratic and capitalist with a free press, a small neutral bloc arose with the Non-Aligned Movement, it sought good relations with both sides. The two superpowers never engaged directly in full-scale armed combat, but they were armed in preparation for a possible all-out nuclear world war. The first phase of the Cold War began in the first two years after the end of the Second World War in 1945, the Berlin Blockade was the first major crisis of the Cold War. With the victory of the communist side in the Chinese Civil War and the outbreak of the Korean War, the USSR and USA competed for influence in Latin America, and the decolonizing states of Africa and Asia. Meanwhile, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was stopped by the Soviets, the expansion and escalation sparked more crises, such as the Suez Crisis, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The USSR crushed the 1968 Prague Spring liberalization program in Czechoslovakia, détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. The early 1980s were another period of elevated tension, with the Soviet downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, the United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the communist state was already suffering from economic stagnation. In the mid-1980s, the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the reforms of perestroika and glasnost. Pressures for national independence grew stronger in Eastern Europe, especially Poland, Gorbachev meanwhile refused to use Soviet troops to bolster the faltering Warsaw Pact regimes as had occurred in the past. The result in 1989 was a wave of revolutions that peacefully overthrew all of the communist regimes of Central, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself lost control and was banned following an abortive coup attempt in August 1991. This in turn led to the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. The United States remained as the only superpower. The Cold War and its events have left a significant legacy and it is often referred to in popular culture, especially in media featuring themes of espionage and the threat of nuclear warfare
35.
Superpower
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Superpower is a term used to describe a state with a dominant position, which is characterised by its extensive ability to exert influence or project power on a global scale. This is done through the combined-means of technological, cultural, military and economic strength, as well as international relations. Traditionally, superpowers are preeminent among the great powers, the term was first applied to the British Empire, the United States, and the Soviet Union. At the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, There have been many attempts by historians to apply the term superpower to a variety of past entities. However, since even the most powerful empires of old had little to no means to exert influence over very long distances, no agreed definition of what is a superpower exists, and may differ between sources. This was because the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union had proved themselves to be capable of casting great influence in global politics and military dominance. The term in its current political meaning was coined by Dutch-American geostrategist Nicholas Spykman in a series of lectures in 1943 about the shape of a new post-war world order. A year later, in 1944, William T. R, according to him, there were three states that were superpowers, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union. According to Lyman Miller, The basic components of superpower stature may be measured along four axes of power, military, economic, political, although, many modifications may be made to this basic definition. According to Professor June Teufel Dreyer, A superpower must be able to project its power, soft and hard, in his book, Superpower, Three Choices for Americas Role in the World, Dr. There have been attempts by historians to apply the term superpower retrospectively. Recognition by historians of these states as superpowers may focus on various superlative traits exhibited by them. The two countries opposed each other ideologically, politically, militarily, and economically, the Soviet Union promoted the ideology of communism, planned economy and a one-party state, whilst the United States promoted the ideologies of liberal democracy and the free market. This was reflected in the Warsaw Pact and NATO military alliances, respectively and these alliances implied that these two nations were part of an emerging bipolar world, in contrast with a previously multipolar world. Additionally, much of the conflict between the superpowers was fought in wars, which more often than not involved issues more complex than the standard Cold War oppositions. After the Soviet Union disintegrated in the early 1990s, the term began to be applied to the United States. This term, popularized by French foreign minister Hubert Védrine in the late 1990s, is controversial, one notable opponent to this theory, Samuel P. Huntington, rejects this theory in favor of a multipolar balance of power. In 1999, Samuel P. However, he rejected the claim that the world was unipolar, but that does not mean that the world is unipolar, describing it instead as a strange hybrid, a uni-multipolar system with one superpower and several major powers
36.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
37.
Axis powers
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The Axis powers, also known as the Rome–Berlin–Tokyo Axis, were the nations that fought in World War II against the Allied Powers. The Axis agreed on their opposition to the Allies, but did not completely coordinate their activity, the Axis grew out of the diplomatic efforts of Germany, Italy, and Japan to secure their own specific expansionist interests in the mid-1930s. The first step was the treaty signed by Germany and Italy in October 1936, Mussolini declared on 1 November that all other European countries would from then on rotate on the Rome–Berlin axis, thus creating the term Axis. The almost simultaneous second step was the signing in November 1936 of the Anti-Comintern Pact, Italy joined the Pact in 1937. At its zenith during World War II, the Axis presided over territories that occupied parts of Europe, North Africa. There were no three-way summit meetings and cooperation and coordination was minimal, the war ended in 1945 with the defeat of the Axis powers and the dissolution of their alliance. As in the case of the Allies, membership of the Axis was fluid, at the time he was seeking an alliance with the Weimar Republic against Yugoslavia and France in the dispute over the Free State of Fiume. The term was used by Hungarys prime minister Gyula Gömbös when advocating an alliance of Hungary with Germany, when Mussolini publicly announced the signing on 1 November, he proclaimed the creation of a Rome–Berlin axis. Italy under Duce Benito Mussolini had pursued an alliance of Italy with Germany against France since the early 1920s. He believed that Italy could expand its influence in Europe by allying with Germany against France, in early 1923, as a goodwill gesture to Germany, Italy secretly delivered weapons for the German Army, which had faced major disarmament under the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. General Hans von Seeckt supported an alliance between Germany and the Soviet Union to invade and partition Poland between them and restore the German-Russian border of 1914. The discussions concluded that Germans still wanted a war of revenge against France but were short on weapons, however at this time Mussolini stressed one important condition that Italy must pursue in an alliance with Germany, that Italy must. Tow them, not be towed by them, the French government warned Italy that it had to choose whether to be on the side of the pro-Versailles powers or that of the anti-Versailles revanchists. Grandi responded that Italy would be willing to offer France support against Germany if France gave Italy its mandate over Cameroon, France refused Italys proposed exchange for support, as it believed Italys demands were unacceptable and the threat from Germany was not yet immediate. In 1932, Gyula Gömbös and the Party of National Unity rose to power in Hungary, Gömbös sought to alter Hungarys post–Treaty of Trianon borders by forming an alliance with Austria and Italy, knowing that Hungary alone was not capable of challenging the Little Entente powers. At the meeting between Gömbös and Mussolini in Rome on 10 November 1932, the question came up of the sovereignty of Austria in relation to the rise to power in Germany of the Nazi Party. Mussolini was worried about Nazi ambitions towards Austria, and indicated that at least in the term he was committed to maintaining Austria as a sovereign state. Italy had concerns over a Germany which included Austria laying land claims to German-populated territories of the South Tyrol within Italy, Mussolini said he hoped the Anschluss could be postponed as long as possible until the breakout of a European war that he estimated would begin in 1938
38.
Soviet atomic bomb project
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The project was directed by Soviet nuclear physicist Igor Kurchatov, while the military logistics and intelligence efforts were undertaken and managed by NKVD peoples commissar Lavrentiy Beria. The Soviet Union benefited from highly successful efforts on the part of the GRU of the Soviet General Staff. However, because of the bloody and intensified war with Nazi Germany, the Soviets accelerated the program after the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Soviet atomic project was charged with gathering intelligence on the German nuclear energy project as well as the American nuclear efforts, after the war, the Soviet Union expanded its research facilities, military reactors, and employed many scientists. With the success of this test, the Soviet Union became the nation after the United States to detonate a nuclear device. In early 1930s, the Soviets were instrumental to the advancement of nuclear physics, the Soviet interest in nuclear physics had begun in the early 1930s, an era in which a variety of important nuclear discoveries and achievements were made. Even before the Russian revolution and the February Revolution, the mineralogist Vladimir Vernadsky had made a number of calls for a survey of Russias uranium deposits. The main motivation for research at the time was radium, which had scientific as well as medical uses. The soviet Atomic Bomb Project has its roots all the way back in the 1910s, the research being done was not officially institutionalized until 1922 when the Radium Institute in Petrograd opened. Through the thirties there were other institutions opened across the nation. It is important to acknowledge that the research and institutions were all a part of civil society and this meant that the military did not directly control the progress being made. In 1940, a commission was set up to address the Uranium Problem allowing intelligentsia to study nuclear fission, although significant ground had been broke the majority of research would be abandoned during World War II. Russia would spend the four years in conflict with Europe. Flyorov deduced that this meant such research had been classified, creation in 1943 of Laboratory No.2 under the Academy of Sciences of the USSR was the first stage of the Soviet atomic bomb project. When the United States tested the Atom Bomb in 1945 Stalin decided to push the intellectuals even harder and they appointed a special committee that was fully funded. This committee was headed by Beria who was now in charge of a group of specialists in science. Again it is important to note that Stalin did not include military men. Instead he put those from the party, civilians, and secret police in charge, on April 9,1946, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted the resolution on creation of Design Office#11 to develop an atomic bomb
39.
Manhattan Project
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The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom, from 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. Nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the actual bombs, the Army component of the project was designated the Manhattan District, Manhattan gradually superseded the official codename, Development of Substitute Materials, for the entire project. Along the way, the project absorbed its earlier British counterpart, the Manhattan Project began modestly in 1939, but grew to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US $2 billion. Over 90% of the cost was for building factories and to produce material, with less than 10% for development. Research and production took place at more than 30 sites across the United States, the United Kingdom, two types of atomic bombs were developed concurrently during the war, a relatively simple gun-type fission weapon and a more complex implosion-type nuclear weapon. Chemically identical to the most common isotope, uranium-238, and with almost the same mass, three methods were employed for uranium enrichment, electromagnetic, gaseous and thermal. Most of this work was performed at the Clinton Engineer Works at Oak Ridge, in parallel with the work on uranium was an effort to produce plutonium. The plutonium was then separated from the uranium. The Fat Man implosion-type weapon was developed in a concerted design, the project was also charged with gathering intelligence on the German nuclear weapon project. Through Operation Alsos, Manhattan Project personnel served in Europe, sometimes behind enemy lines, where they gathered nuclear materials and documents, despite the Manhattan Projects tight security, Soviet atomic spies still penetrated the program. The first nuclear device ever detonated was a bomb at the Trinity test, conducted at New Mexicos Alamogordo Bombing. Little Boy and Fat Man bombs were used a later in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It maintained control over American atomic weapons research and production until the formation of the United States Atomic Energy Commission in January 1947, there were fears that a German atomic bomb project would develop one first, especially among scientists who were refugees from Nazi Germany and other fascist countries. In August 1939, Hungarian-born physicists Leó Szilárd and Eugene Wigner drafted the Einstein–Szilárd letter and it urged the United States to take steps to acquire stockpiles of uranium ore and accelerate the research of Enrico Fermi and others into nuclear chain reactions. They had it signed by Albert Einstein and delivered to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Roosevelt called on Lyman Briggs of the National Bureau of Standards to head the Advisory Committee on Uranium to investigate the issues raised by the letter. Briggs held a meeting on 21 October 1939, which was attended by Szilárd, Wigner, the committee reported back to Roosevelt in November that uranium would provide a possible source of bombs with a destructiveness vastly greater than anything now known. The Advisory Committee on Uranium became the National Defense Research Committee Committee on Uranium when that organization was formed on 27 June 1940, Briggs proposed that the spend $167,000 on research into uranium, particularly the uranium-235 isotope, and the recently discovered plutonium
40.
Joseph Stalin
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Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Holding the post of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he was effectively the dictator of the state. Stalin was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to manage the Bolshevik Revolution, alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Sokolnikov, and Bubnov. Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and he managed to consolidate power following the 1924 death of Vladimir Lenin by suppressing Lenins criticisms and expanding the functions of his role, all the while eliminating any opposition. He remained General Secretary until the post was abolished in 1952, the economic changes coincided with the imprisonment of millions of people in Gulag labour camps. The initial upheaval in agriculture disrupted food production and contributed to the catastrophic Soviet famine of 1932–33, major figures in the Communist Party and government, and many Red Army high commanders, were arrested and shot after being convicted of treason in show trials. Stalins invasion of Bukovina in 1940 violated the pact, as it went beyond the Soviet sphere of influence agreed with the Axis, Germany ended the pact when Hitler launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Despite heavy human and territorial losses, Soviet forces managed to halt the Nazi incursion after the decisive Battles of Moscow, after defeating the Axis powers on the Eastern Front, the Red Army captured Berlin in May 1945, effectively ending the war in Europe for the Allies. The Soviet Union subsequently emerged as one of two recognized world superpowers, the other being the United States, Communist governments loyal to the Soviet Union were established in most countries freed from German occupation by the Red Army, which later constituted the Eastern Bloc. Stalin also had relations with Mao Zedong in China and Kim Il-sung in North Korea. On February 9,1946, Stalin delivered a public speech in which he explained the fundamental incompatibility of communism and capitalism. He stressed that the system needed war for raw materials. The Second World War was but the latest in a chain of conflicts which could be broken only when the economy made the transformation into communism. Stalin led the Soviet Union through its post-war reconstruction phase, which saw a significant rise in tension with the Western world that would later be known as the Cold War, Stalin remains a controversial figure today, with many regarding him as a tyrant. However, popular opinion within the Russian Federation is mixed, the exact number of deaths caused by Stalins regime is still a subject of debate, but it is widely agreed to be in the order of millions. Joseph Stalin was born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, the Russian-language version of his birth name is Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Ioseb was born on 18 December 1878 in the town of Gori, Georgia and his father was Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, while his mother was Ekaterine Keke Geladze, a housemaid. As a child, Ioseb was plagued with health issues
41.
Potsdam Conference
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The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm, in Potsdam, occupied Germany, from 17 July to 2 August 1945. Participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States, the three powers were represented by Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin, Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and, later, Clement Attlee, and President Harry S. Truman. The goals of the conference included the establishment of post-war order, peace treaty issues. In the five months since the Yalta Conference, a number of changes had taken place which would affect the relationships between the leaders. Firstly, the Soviet Union was occupying Central and Eastern Europe, by July, the Red Army effectively controlled the Baltic states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, and fearing a Stalinist take-over, refugees were fleeing from these countries. Stalin had set up a communist government in Poland and he insisted that his control of Eastern Europe was a defensive measure against possible future attacks and claimed that it was a legitimate sphere of Soviet influence. Secondly, Britain had a new Prime Minister, a general election was held in the UK on 5 July, the results of which became known during the conference, with a Labour Party majority, Labour leader Clement Attlee became the new Prime Minister. During the war and in the name of Allied unity, Roosevelt had brushed off warnings of a potential domination by a Stalin dictatorship in part of Europe, while inexperienced in foreign affairs, Truman had closely followed the allied progress of the war. With the end of the war, the priority of allied unity was replaced with a new challenge, the two leading powers continued to sustain a cordial relationship to the public but suspicions and distrust lingered between them. As the suspicion grew between the two rising powers, Stalin proposed that America will use their advantage and success in order to entices other nations into expanding their U. S. policies. Truman became much more suspicious of communist moves than Roosevelt had been, Truman and his advisers saw Soviet actions in Eastern Europe as aggressive expansionism which was incompatible with the agreements Stalin had committed to at Yalta the previous February. However, the Potsdam Conference marks the first and only time Truman would ever meet Stalin in person, at the end of the conference, the three Heads of Government agreed on the following actions. All other issues were to be answered by the peace conference to be called as soon as possible. Allied Chiefs of Staff at the Potsdam Conference decided to temporarily partition Vietnam at the 16th parallel for the purposes of operational convenience. It was agreed that British forces would take the surrender of Japanese forces in Saigon for the half of Indochina. The Allies issued a statement of aims of their occupation of Germany, Germany and Austria were to be divided respectively into four occupation zones, and similarly each capital, Berlin and Vienna, was to be divided into four zones. It was agreed that the Nazi war criminals would be put to trial, all German annexations in Europe were to be reversed, including Sudetenland, Alsace-Lorraine, Austria, and the westernmost parts of Poland. Germanys eastern border was to be shifted westwards to the Oder–Neisse line, the territories east of the new border comprised East Prussia, Silesia, West Prussia, and two thirds of Pomerania
42.
President of the United States
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The President of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president directs the executive branch of the government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. The president is considered to be one of the worlds most powerful political figures, the role includes being the commander-in-chief of the worlds most expensive military with the second largest nuclear arsenal and leading the nation with the largest economy by nominal GDP. The office of President holds significant hard and soft power both in the United States and abroad, Constitution vests the executive power of the United States in the president. The president is empowered to grant federal pardons and reprieves. The president is responsible for dictating the legislative agenda of the party to which the president is a member. The president also directs the foreign and domestic policy of the United States, since the office of President was established in 1789, its power has grown substantially, as has the power of the federal government as a whole. However, nine vice presidents have assumed the presidency without having elected to the office. The Twenty-second Amendment prohibits anyone from being elected president for a third term, in all,44 individuals have served 45 presidencies spanning 57 full four-year terms. On January 20,2017, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th, in 1776, the Thirteen Colonies, acting through the Second Continental Congress, declared political independence from Great Britain during the American Revolution. The new states, though independent of each other as nation states, desiring to avoid anything that remotely resembled a monarchy, Congress negotiated the Articles of Confederation to establish a weak alliance between the states. Out from under any monarchy, the states assigned some formerly royal prerogatives to Congress, only after all the states agreed to a resolution settling competing western land claims did the Articles take effect on March 1,1781, when Maryland became the final state to ratify them. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris secured independence for each of the former colonies, with peace at hand, the states each turned toward their own internal affairs. Prospects for the convention appeared bleak until James Madison and Edmund Randolph succeeded in securing George Washingtons attendance to Philadelphia as a delegate for Virginia. It was through the negotiations at Philadelphia that the presidency framed in the U. S. The first power the Constitution confers upon the president is the veto, the Presentment Clause requires any bill passed by Congress to be presented to the president before it can become law. Once the legislation has been presented, the president has three options, Sign the legislation, the bill becomes law. Veto the legislation and return it to Congress, expressing any objections, in this instance, the president neither signs nor vetoes the legislation
43.
Harry S. Truman
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Harry S. Truman was an American politician who served as the 33rd President of the United States, assuming the office upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt during the waning months of World War II. In domestic affairs, he was a moderate Democrat whose liberal proposals were a continuation of Franklin Roosevelts New Deal, but the conservative-dominated Congress blocked most of them. He also used weapons to end World War II, desegregated the U. S. armed forces, supported a newly independent Israel. Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri, and spent most of his youth on his familys 600-acre farm near Independence, in the last months of World War I, he served in combat in France as an artillery officer with his National Guard unit. After the war, he owned a haberdashery in Kansas City, Missouri, and joined the Democratic Party. Truman was first elected to office as a county official in 1922. After serving as a United States Senator from Missouri and briefly as Vice President, he succeeded to the presidency on April 12,1945, upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Germany surrendered on Trumans 61st birthday, just a few weeks after he assumed the presidency, but the war with Imperial Japan raged on and was expected to last at least another year. Although this decision and the issues that arose as a result of it remain the subject of debate to this day. Truman presided over a surge in economic prosperity as America sought readjustment after long years of depression. His presidency was a point in foreign affairs, as the United States engaged in an internationalist foreign policy. Truman helped found the United Nations in 1945, issued the Truman Doctrine in 1947 to contain Communism and his political coalition was based on the white South, labor unions, farmers, ethnic groups, and traditional Democrats across the North. Truman was able to rally groups of supporters during the 1948 presidential election. The Soviet Union became an enemy in the Cold War, Truman oversaw the Berlin Airlift of 1948 and the creation of NATO in 1949, but was unable to stop Communists from taking over China. When communist North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, he sent U. S. troops, after initial successes in Korea, however, the UN forces were thrown back by Chinese intervention, and the conflict was stalemated throughout the final years of Trumans presidency. Scholars, starting in 1962, ranked Trumans presidency as near great, Harry S. Truman was born on May 8,1884, in Lamar, Missouri, the oldest child of John Anderson Truman and Martha Ellen Young Truman. His parents chose the name Harry after his mothers brother, Harrison Harry Young, while the S did not stand for any one name, it was chosen as his middle initial to honor both of his grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young. The initial has been written and printed followed by a period
44.
Trinity (nuclear test)
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Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. It was conducted by the United States Army at 5,29 am on July 16,1945, the test was conducted in the Jornada del Muerto desert about 35 miles southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, on what was then the USAAF Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range. The only structures originally in the vicinity were the McDonald Ranch House and its ancillary buildings, a base camp was constructed, and there were 425 people present on the weekend of the test. The code name Trinity was assigned by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the test was of an implosion-design plutonium device, informally nicknamed The Gadget, of the same design as the Fat Man bomb later detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9,1945. The complexity of the design required a major effort from the Los Alamos Laboratory, the test was planned and directed by Kenneth Bainbridge. Fears of a fizzle led to the construction of a containment vessel called Jumbo that could contain the plutonium, allowing it to be recovered. A rehearsal was held on May 7,1945, in which 108 short tons of high explosive spiked with radioactive isotopes were detonated, the Gadgets detonation released the explosive energy of about 22 kilotons of TNT. Observers included Vannevar Bush, James Chadwick, James Conant, Thomas Farrell, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, Leslie Groves, Robert Oppenheimer, Geoffrey Taylor, and Richard Tolman. The test site was declared a National Historic Landmark district in 1965, the creation of nuclear weapons arose from scientific and political developments of the 1930s. The decade saw many new discoveries about the nature of atoms, the concurrent rise of fascist governments in Europe led to a fear of a German nuclear weapon project, especially among scientists who were refugees from Nazi Germany and other fascist countries. When their calculations showed that nuclear weapons were theoretically feasible, the British and these efforts were transferred to the authority of the U. S. Army in June 1942, and became the Manhattan Project. Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves, Jr. was appointed its director in September 1942, the weapons development portion of this project was located at the Los Alamos Laboratory in northern New Mexico, under the directorship of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. The University of Chicago, Columbia University and the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, production of the fissile isotopes uranium-235 and plutonium-239 were enormous undertakings given the technology of the 1940s, and accounted for 80% of the total costs of the project. Uranium enrichment was carried out at the Clinton Engineer Works near Oak Ridge, theoretically, enriching uranium was feasible through pre-existing techniques, but it proved difficult to scale to industrial levels and was extremely costly. Only 0.71 percent of natural uranium was uranium-235, and it was estimated that it would take 27,000 years to produce a gram of uranium with mass spectrometers, plutonium is a synthetic element with complicated physical, chemical and metallurgical properties. It is not found in nature in appreciable quantities, until mid-1944, the only plutonium that had been isolated had been produced in cyclotrons in microgram amounts, whereas weapons required kilograms. In April 1944, physicist Emilio Segrè, the head of the Los Alamos Laboratorys P-5 Group and he discovered that, in addition to the plutonium-239 isotope, it also contained significant amounts of plutonium-240. The Manhattan Project produced plutonium in nuclear reactors at the Hanford Engineer Works near Hanford and this meant that the Thin Man bomb design that the laboratory had developed would not work properly
45.
Espionage
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Espionage is the obtaining of information considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage can be committed by an individual or a spy ring, in the service of a government or a company, the practice is inherently clandestine, as it is by definition unwelcome and in many cases illegal and punishable by law. Espionage is a subset of intelligence gathering, which includes espionage as well as information gathering from public sources, Espionage is often part of an institutional effort by a government or commercial concern. However, the term is associated with state spying on potential or actual enemies primarily for military purposes. Spying involving corporations is known as industrial espionage, one of the most effective ways to gather data and information about the enemy is by infiltrating the enemys ranks. This is the job of the spy, Spies can bring back all sorts of information concerning the size and strength of enemy forces. They can also find dissidents within the forces and influence them to defect. In times of crisis, spies can also be used to steal technology, counterintelligence operatives can feed false information to enemy spies, protecting important domestic secrets, and preventing attempts at subversion. Nearly every country has strict laws concerning espionage, and the penalty for being caught is often severe. However, the benefits that can be gained through espionage are generally great enough that most governments, events involving espionage are well documented throughout history. The Old Testament of the Christian Bible, which is based primarily on the Hebrew Bible, speaks about Joshua and Caleb, the ancient writings of Chinese and Indian military strategists such as Sun-Tzu and Chanakya contain information on deception and subversion. Chanakyas student Chandragupta Maurya, founder of the Maurya Empire in India, made use of assassinations, spies and secret agents, the ancient Egyptians had a thoroughly developed system for the acquisition of intelligence, and the Hebrews used spies as well, as in the story of Rahab. Spies were also prevalent in the Greek and Roman empires, during the 13th and 14th centuries, the Mongols relied heavily on espionage in their conquests in Asia and Europe. Feudal Japan often used ninjas to gather intelligence, aztecs used Pochtecas, people in charge of commerce, as spies and diplomats, and had diplomatic immunity. Many modern espionage methods were established by Francis Walsingham in Elizabethan England, in 1585, Mary, Queen of Scots was placed in the custody of Sir Amias Paulet, who was instructed to open and read all of Marys clandestine correspondence. In a successful attempt to expose her, Walsingham arranged a single exception, Mary was misled into thinking these secret letters were secure, while in reality they were deciphered and read by Walsinghams agents. He succeeded in intercepting letters that indicated a conspiracy to displace Elizabeth I with Mary, in foreign intelligence, Walsinghams extensive network of intelligencers, who passed on general news as well as secrets, spanned Europe and the Mediterranean. While foreign intelligence was a part of the principal secretarys activities, Walsingham brought to it flair and ambition
46.
Klaus Fuchs
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While at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Fuchs was responsible for many significant theoretical calculations relating to the first nuclear weapons, and later, early models of the hydrogen bomb. He was expelled from the SPD in 1932, and joined the Communist Party of Germany, after the Second World War broke out in Europe, he was interned on the Isle of Man, and later in Canada. After he returned to Britain in 1941, he became an assistant to Rudolf Peierls, in 1943, Fuchs and Peierls went to Columbia University, in New York City, to work on the Manhattan Project. In August 1944 Fuchs joined the Theoretical Physics Division at the Los Alamos Laboratory and his chief area of expertise was the problem of implosion, necessary for the development of the plutonium bomb. After the war he returned to the UK and worked at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell as head of the Theoretical Physics Division, in January 1950, Fuchs confessed that he was a spy. He was sentenced to fourteen years imprisonment and stripped of his British citizenship and he was later appointed deputy director of the Institute for Nuclear Research in Rossendorf, where he served until he retired in 1979. Emil Julius Klaus Fuchs was born in Rüsselsheim, Grand Duchy of Hesse, on 29 December 1911, the third of four children of a Lutheran pastor, Emil Fuchs, Fuchs was always known by his last given name, Klaus. He had an older brother Gerhard, an older sister Elisabeth, the family moved to Eisenach, where Fuchs attended the gymnasium, and took his Abitur. At school, Fuchs and his siblings were taunted over his fathers political views. They became known as the red foxes, Fuchs being the German word for fox, Fuchs entered the University of Leipzig in 1930, where his father was a professor of theology. Fuhs continued his studies in mathematics and physics at the university, in October 1931, his mother committed suicide by drinking hydrochloric acid. The family later discovered that his grandmother had also taken her own life. However, when the Communist Party of Germany ran its own candidate, Ernst Thälmann, Fuchs offered to speak for him and that year Fuchs and all three of his siblings joined the KPD. Fuchs and his brother Gerhard were active speakers at public meetings, at one such gathering, Fuchs was beaten up and thrown into the river. When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, Fuchs decided to leave Kiel and he enrolled at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin. On 28 February, he took a train to Berlin for a KPD meeting there. On the train, he read about the Reichstag fire in a newspaper, Fuchs correctly assumed that opposition parties would be blamed for the fire, and quietly removed his hammer and sickle lapel pin. The KPD meeting in Berlin was held in secret, fellow party members urged him to continue his studies in another country
47.
Theodore Hall
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His brother, Edward Hall, was a rocket scientist who worked on ICBMs for the United States government. Theodore Alvin Holtzberg was born in Far Rockaway, New York City to a devout Jewish couple, Barnett Holtzberg and his father was a furrier, and the Great Depression affected his business significantly. When his fathers business became unable to support the household, the moved to Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan. Even at an age, Theodore showed an aptitude in mathematics and science. After skipping three grades at Public School 173 in Washington Heights, in the fall of 1937, Hall entered the Townsend Harris High School for gifted boys. After graduation from school, he was accepted into Queens College at the age of 14 in 1940, and transferred to Harvard University in 1942. In the fall of 1936, despite the protests of their parents, Edward, his brother, at the age of 19, and through the recommendation of John Van Vleck, Hall was among the youngest scientists to be recruited to work on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. At Los Alamos Hall handled experiments for the device and helped determine the critical mass of uranium for Little Boy. Theodore Hall later claimed that he became concerned about the consequences of an American monopoly of atomic weapons after the war and he was especially worried about the possibility of the emergence of a fascist government in the United States. Saville Sax delivered the report to the Soviet Consulate a few days later under the guise of inquiring about relatives still in the Soviet Union. The two eventually met with Anatoly Yatskov, the New York station chief, who transmitted the information to the NKVD using a one-time pad cipher. After officially becoming informants for the Soviet Union, Hall was given the code-name MLAD, a Slavic root meaning young, and Sax was given the code-name STAR, a Slavic root meaning old. Kurnakov reported in November 1944, Rather tall, slender, brown-haired, pale and his hair is parted and often falls on his forehead. His English is highly cultured and rich and he answers quickly and very fluently, especially to scientific questions. Eyes are set together, evidently, neurasthenic. Perhaps because of mental development, he is witty and somewhat sarcastic but without a shadow of undue familiarity. His main trait - a highly sensitive brain and quick responsiveness, in conversation, he is sharp and flexible as a sword. He comes from a Jewish family, though doesnt look like a Jew and his father is a furrier, his mother is dead
48.
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
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The United States dropped nuclear weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9,1945, respectively, during the final stage of World War II. The United States had dropped the bombs with the consent of the United Kingdom as outlined in the Quebec Agreement, the two bombings, which killed at least 129,000 people, remain the only use of nuclear weapons for warfare in history. In the final year of the war, the Allies prepared for what was anticipated to be a costly invasion of the Japanese mainland. This was preceded by a U. S. conventional and firebombing campaign that destroyed 67 Japanese cities, the war in Europe had concluded when Nazi Germany signed its instrument of surrender on May 8,1945, just after Hitler committed suicide. The Japanese, facing the fate, refused to accept the Allies demands for unconditional surrender. The Allies called for the surrender of the Japanese armed forces in the Potsdam Declaration on July 26, 1945—the alternative being prompt. The Japanese response to this ultimatum was to ignore it, orders for atomic bombs to be used on four Japanese cities were issued on July 25. Three days later, on August 9, a plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. During the following months, large numbers died from the effect of burns, radiation sickness, in both cities, most of the dead were civilians, although Hiroshima had a sizable military garrison. Japan announced its surrender to the Allies on August 15, six days after the bombing of Nagasaki, on September 2, the Japanese government signed the instrument of surrender, effectively ending World War II. The justification for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is still debated to this day, in 1945, the Pacific War between the Empire of Japan and the Allies entered its fourth year. The Japanese fought fiercely, ensuring that U. S. victory would come at an enormous cost, December 1944 saw American battle casualties hit an all-time monthly high of 88,000 as a result of the German Ardennes Offensive. In the Pacific, the Allies returned to the Philippines, recaptured Burma, offensives were undertaken to reduce the Japanese forces remaining in Bougainville, New Guinea and the Philippines. In April 1945, American forces landed on Okinawa, where fighting continued until June. Along the way, the ratio of Japanese to American casualties dropped from 5,1 in the Philippines to 2,1 on Okinawa, although some Japanese were taken prisoner, most fought until they were killed or committed suicide. Nearly 99% of the 21,000 defenders of Iwo Jima were killed, of the 117,000 Japanese troops defending Okinawa in April–June 1945, 94% were killed. American military leaders used these figures to estimate high casualties among American soldiers in the invasion of Japan. As the Allies advanced towards Japan, conditions became steadily worse for the Japanese people, Japans merchant fleet declined from 5,250,000 gross tons in 1941 to 1,560,000 tons in March 1945, and 557,000 tons in August 1945
49.
Little Boy
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It was the first atomic bomb to be used in warfare. The Hiroshima bombing was the second artificial nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity test, and it exploded with an energy of approximately 15 kilotons of TNT. The bomb caused significant destruction to the city of Hiroshima, Little Boy was developed by Lieutenant Commander Francis Birchs group of Captain William S. Parsonss Ordnance Division at the Manhattan Projects Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. Parsons flew on the Hiroshima mission as weaponeer, the Little Boy was a development of the unsuccessful Thin Man nuclear bomb. Like Thin Man, it was a fission weapon. This was accomplished by shooting a hollow cylinder of enriched uranium onto a cylinder of the same material by means of a charge of nitrocellulose propellant powder. It contained 64 kg of enriched uranium, of less than a kilogram underwent nuclear fission. Its components were fabricated at three different plants so that no one would have a copy of the complete design, the Navy Bureau of Ordnance built another 25 Little Boy assemblies in 1947 for use by the Lockheed P2V Neptune nuclear strike aircraft. All the Little Boy units were withdrawn from service by the end of January 1951, according to Serber, he chose them based on their design shapes. The Thin Man was a device, and its name came from the Dashiell Hammett detective novel. The Fat Man was round and fat, and was named after Sydney Greenstreets Kasper Gutman character in The Maltese Falcon, Little Boy came last, and was named after Elisha Cook, Jr. s character in the same film, as referred to by Humphrey Bogart. Because uranium-235 was known to be fissionable, it was the first approach to bomb development pursued, as the first design developed, it is sometimes known as the Mark I. The vast majority of the came in the form of the isotope enrichment of the uranium necessary for the weapon. Enrichment was performed at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the separation plant, known as Y-12. The first shipments of enriched uranium were sent to the Los Alamos Laboratory in June 1944. At least part of the 1,200 long tons of uranium ore, Little Boy was a simplification of Thin Man, the previous gun-type fission weapon design. Thin Man,17 feet long, was designed to use plutonium, in July 1944, almost all research at Los Alamos was redirected to the implosion-type plutonium weapon. Overall responsibility for the uranium gun-type weapon was assigned to Captain William S. Parsonss Ordnance Division, all the design, development, and technical work at Los Alamos was consolidated under Lieutenant Commander Francis Birchs group
50.
Hiroshima
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Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu - the largest island of Japan. The citys name, 広島, means Broad Island in Japanese, Hiroshima gained city status on April 1,1889. On April 1,1980, Hiroshima became a designated city, as of August 2016, the city had an estimated population of 1,196,274. The GDP in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Metropolitan Employment Area, is US$61.3 billion as of 2010, kazumi Matsui has been the citys mayor since April 2011. Hiroshima was established on the river delta coastline of the Seto Inland Sea in 1589 by powerful warlord Mōri Terumoto, Hiroshima Castle was quickly built, and in 1593 Terumoto moved in. Terumoto was on the side at the Battle of Sekigahara. The winner of the battle, Tokugawa Ieyasu, deprived Mōri Terumoto of most of his fiefs, including Hiroshima and gave Aki Province to Masanori Fukushima, after the han was abolished in 1871, the city became the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture. Hiroshima became an urban center during the imperial period, as the Japanese economy shifted from primarily rural to urban industries. During the 1870s, one of the seven government-sponsored English language schools was established in Hiroshima, Ujina Harbor was constructed through the efforts of Hiroshima Governor Sadaaki Senda in the 1880s, allowing Hiroshima to become an important port city. The Sanyō Railway was extended to Hiroshima in 1894, and a line from the main station to the harbor was constructed for military transportation during the First Sino-Japanese War. During that war, the Japanese government moved temporarily to Hiroshima, New industrial plants, including cotton mills, were established in Hiroshima in the late 19th century. Further industrialization in Hiroshima was stimulated during the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, the Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Hall was constructed in 1915 as a center for trade and exhibition of new products. Later, its name was changed to Hiroshima Prefectural Product Exhibition Hall, during World War I, Hiroshima became a focal point of military activity, as the Japanese government entered the war on the Allied side. About 500 German prisoners of war were held in Ninoshima Island in Hiroshima Bay, during World War II, the 2nd General Army and Chugoku Regional Army were headquartered in Hiroshima, and the Army Marine Headquarters was located at Ujina port. The city also had large depots of supplies, and was a key center for shipping. The bombing of Tokyo and other cities in Japan during World War II caused widespread destruction, there were no such air raids on Hiroshima. However, a real threat existed and was recognized, in order to protect against potential firebombings in Hiroshima, school children aged 11–14 years were mobilized to demolish houses and create firebreaks. On Monday, August 6,1945, at 8,15 a. m, by the end of the year, injury and radiation brought the total number of deaths to 90, 000–166,000
