The Nuclear Age

 

Xerxes has seen an art exhibit on the theme of the nuclear age. He left angered, he reports, at Canada’s “complicity.” Canada; after all, was a participant in the Manhattan Project, The uranium used in the first bombs was mined in Canada, and refined in Canada.

But was unleashing the genie of nuclear power on balance a bad thing? This is far from self-evident, and an interesting question.

For example, when Canada joined in the Manhattan Project, circa 1942, there was good reason to believe that getting to the bomb first would be the difference between ending Nazism and surrendering the world to it--should they have gotten there first. Should any Canadian feel guilt? I think pride is more appropriate.

Today, many are concerned about global warming—even seeing it as some world-ending threat. Nuclear power is our best option to reduce greenhouse gases. Aside from being more practical, it is less harmful to the environment than any alternative. There is something to be said for cheap, clean, essentially unlimited power.

Of course, there is a risk of nasty accidents; that is an engineering challenge. Fire is risky in a similar way, but we have not refused to use it.

Then there is the horror of nuclear war. But even this, since 1945, has been only a theoretical danger. That’s a pretty good safety record in itself. It may be that the concept of “mutually assured destruction” was right: once both sides have nuclear weapons, there is essentially no chance of any high-intensity conflict. It would be suicidal, including for the leader who initiated it. In the first half of the last century, we had two devastating “world wars.” Right up to the invention of the bomb, it looked as though “total war” was going to become a permanent and escalating feature of our existence; the sides were already drawn up for the next big one. This is what Orwell predicted in 1984. It looks as though the bomb ended all that with an exclamation point.

Someday, someone in authority might make a miscalculation, or just not care anymore, and unspeakable devastation might result. But it seems possible that the bomb has been preventing unspeakable devastation for seventy years or so, and counting. That perhaps should be weighed in the balance.