French nuclear weapons, 2023

Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Reactors

This report addresses the tenuous link between nuclear power reactor development and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, particularly with respect to possible terrorist exploitation. Arguments are presented that contradict the popular image of nuclear weaponry as a "basement project". 4 CONTENTS

Effects of nuclear weapons

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August, 1945. The energy yields were equivalent to 12 500 tonnes and 20 000 tonnes of high explosive. Yields from thermonuclear weapons (H-bombs) range up to several megatons (Mt). Between 1945 and the signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996, over 2000 nuclear tests were carried out by the USA, USSR, Britain, France and China, plus one by India. Mo...

The Effects of Nuclear Weapons

A Prohibition on Nuclear Weapons

UK atmospheric nuclear weapons tests

Exposure to radiation in all its forms is part of being alive. Ionising radiation is taken to mean radiation of high-enough energy to displace electrons from atoms and includes cosmic rays, gamma rays, X-rays, alpha and beta radiation. The average level of exposure to natural background radiation varies throughout the world dependent mainly on the geology of the underlying earth. In the UK it i...