Two recent newspaper articles cover different subjects, but vividly point out two directions our world could to take - and neither refers to global warming. The first article reports that the Trump-proposed budget for 2021 contains an increase of 20 percent for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). This agency has the responsibility for development, manufacturing and stockpiling of nuclear weapons. The twenty percent could be used to increase our nuclear arsenal as a counter measure (first use?) against any country that might commit the insanity of using nuclear weapons. No mention of which country that might be, but, unnamed and always available, is China, Russia and now Iran. With the continuing instability in the Middle East and the saber rattling of this country, the use of nuclear weapons has become appallingly possible. Reference a recent announcement about the development of lower yield nuclear weapons that this country's generals consider using as tactical weapons on a battlefield.
Consideration of the use of nuclear weapons defies the well-established principle of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction, that projects the mutual destruction of all countries involved in a nuclear war. With international nuclear treaties now broken by this administration, MAD is still the greatest deterrent against nuclear war. Even knowing the destructive end game of nuclear weapons, history tells us that armies have always used the latest weapons in their arsenal. In the advent of a nuclear war, consideration of climate change would no longer be meaningful since the effects of radioactivity would devastate the existing climate. The immediate effects of nuclear winter would preempt decades, even centuries, of climate change.
The second newspaper article points out the height the human mind can attain. This article describes the ongoing and major research in the development of power derived from nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion, the same power source that fuels the sun, could produce unlimited power without the use of fossil fuels. The fuel sources for nuclear fusion are lithium and deuterium; deuterium a form of hydrogen found in the unlimited supply of seawater. The energy derived from the lithium in one laptop battery immersed in water would produce the equivalent amount of energy from forty tons of coal. That means the toxic effluent of burning forty tons of coal would never reach the atmosphere or end up in an ash pile. Fossil fuels would have had their day and breathable air would become sustainable. The technology for nuclear fusion is difficult, but increasingly doable. Research on this unlimited power force has come far in the last twenty years with the technical advances of today coming much closer to turning off fossil fuel plants.
The choice of what research -nuclear weapons or nuclear fusion - would best serve humankind rests before us. Nuclear energy plays the dual role of destruction as well as life-sustaining power. What choice do you want to make and pass on to your children and grand children?
