Nuclear Weapons case

Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, [1996] I.C.J. Rep. 226, 234, para 13 (hereinafter the Nuclear Weapons Case) (where the International Court of Justice states The fact that this question also has political aspects, as, in the nature of things, is the case with so many questions which arise in international hfe, does not suffice to deprive it of its character as a legal question and to deprive the Court of a competence expressly conferred on it by its Statute ). 

Uranium-235 Enrichment. The enrichment of uranium is expressed as the weight percent of in uranium. For natural uranium the enrichment level is 0.72%. Many appHcations of uranium requite enrichment levels above 0.72%, such as nuclear reactor fuel (56,57). Normally for lightwater nuclear reactors (LWR), the 0.72% natural abundance of is enriched to 2—5% (9,58). There are special cases such as materials-testing reactors, high flux isotope reactors, compact naval reactors, or nuclear weapons where enrichment of 96—97% is used. 

The earliest tables were compiled from data collected from nuclear weapon tests, in which very high yield devices produced sharp-peaked shock waves with long durations for the positive phase. However, these data are used for other types of blast waves as well. Caution should be exercised in application of these simple criteria to buildings or structures, especially for vapor cloud explosions, which can produce blast waves with totally different shapes. Application of criteria from nuclear tests can, in many cases, result in overestimation of structural damage. 

Denmark 1.5 days after the explosion. Air samples collected at Roskilde, Denmark on April 27-28, contained a mean air concentration of 241Am of 5.2 pBq/m3 (0.14 fCi/m3). In May 1986, the mean concentration was 11 pBq/m3 (0.30 fCi/m3) (Aarkrog 1988). Whereas debris from nuclear weapons testing is injected into the stratosphere, debris from Chernobyl was injected into the troposphere. As the mean residence time in the troposphere is 20-40 days, it would appear that the fallout would have decreased to very low levels by the end of 1986. However, from the levels of other radioactive elements, this was not the case. Sequential extraction studies were performed on aerosols collected in Lithuania after dust storms in September 1992 carried radioactive aerosols to the region from contaminated areas of the Ukraine and Belarus. The fraction distribution of241 Am in the aerosol samples was approximately (fraction, percent) organically-bound, 18% oxide-bound, 10% acid-soluble, 36% and residual, 32% (Lujaniene et al. 1999). Very little americium was found in the more readily extractable exchangeable and water soluble and specifically adsorbed fractions. 

The first of the open-ended problems to be considered is nuclear weapons proliferation, in the context of its relation to commercial nuclear power. There is a connection, because a country with an active nuclear power program has a head start, in terms of equipment and technically trained people, should it decide to embark upon a weapons program. This has been a live issue in the case of han.5... 

Indeed, when new countries like the U K. France or China became nuclear powers, countries which were already members of the club were strongly opposed, but now it is quite well accepted that possession of nuclear weapons by those countries did not provoke a catastrophe. Some even consider that the existence of nuclear weapons in different camps was a stabilizing factor during the Cold War and prevented a major conflict during the past half-century. Why, then, the possession by India should not stabilize the relation between India and China, and by Pakistan the relation between Pakistan and India, preventing major conflicts in these zones At least the question may be asked. In the same way, the possession by Israel of nuclear weapons, in the opinion of some, has stabilized the situation in the Middle East. In any case, when a country has decided that it is worth while to make the effort and take the risks of developing nuclear weapons, it seems that after some initial outcry, the world accepts it without major retaliation That shows some kind of hypocrisy in the initial claim of a fundamental evil connected with the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The real issue is probably to avoid the acquisition of nuclear weapons by unstable, not very democratic countries. May be Pakistan is in that category clearly the West would not like Libya or Iran and Iraq to possess such weapons. A real, major issue is full nuclear disarmament, but this is another story. 

The most extreme case of gamma radiation dose would arise from explosion of a nuclear weapon. Nuclear weapons release intense gamma radiation that can produce fatal doses miles from an explosion (see Chapter 5). A less extreme but more likely scenario involves radioactive materials dispersed via conventional explosives (dirty bombs), where only the immediate area is contaminated with gamma-emitting radionuclides. 

A worst-case terrorist attack would involve the use of a nuclear weapon. While guidance for attacks using conventional weapons generally applies to a nuclear attack, additional discussion is necessary because of the sheer magnitude of the devastation that would occur. The purpose of this chapter is to provide background information on nuclear weapons and practical guidance for responding to a nuclear attack. 

For decades, fluorine was a laboratory curiosity and it was studied mainly by mineral chemists. As is often the case, it was coincidence and not planned research that gave rise to fluorine chemistry. The development of the organic chemistry of fluorine is a direct consequence of the Manhattan Project in order to build nuclear weapons, the isotopic enrichment of natural uranium into its radioactive isotope was needed. For this purpose, the chosen process involved gas diffusion, which required the conversion of uranium into gas uranium hexafluoride (UFs) was thus selected. In order to produce UFe gas on a large scale, fluorhydric acid and elemental fluorine were needed in industrial quantities. This was the birth of the fluorine industry. 

Alkali metals (K, Rb, Cs) behave similarly and sometimes one is accumulated preferentially when another is deficient. A similar case is made for Sr and Ca (Whicker and Schultz 1982a). The most important alkali metal isotope is Cs because of its long physical half-life (30 years) and its abnndance as a fission prodnct in fallout from nuclear weapons and in the inventory of a nuclear reactor or a fuel-reprocessing plant. Cesium behaves much like potassium. It is rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream and distribnted throughout the active tissues of the body, especially muscle. The P and y radiation from the decay of Cs and its daughter, Ba, result in essentially whole-body irradiation that harms bone marrow (Hobbs and McClellan 1986). 

The third principal component of environmental radioactivity is that due to the activities of humans, the anthropogenic radionuclides. This group of nuclides includes the previously discussed cases of 3H and 14C along with the fission products and the transuranium elements. The primary sources of these nuclides are nuclear weapons tests and nuclear power plant accidents. These events and the gross nuclide releases associated with them are shown in Table 3.1. Except for 14C and... 

For instance, in the case of nuclear weapons, the significant quantity , defined as the approximate quantity of nuclear material in respect of which the possibility of manufacturing a nuclear explosive device cannot be excluded, has been set at 8 kg for plutonium and 25 kg for high enriched uranium. 

According to the report by Bunn (1997), smuggling of sensitive nuclear materials has in fact already occurred. L. Koch of the European Commission s Joint Research Centre that analyses material from nuclear smuggling cases says that some involved weapon material or weapon-usable material. Indeed, there have been multiple seizures by authorities in Russia and elsewhere of kilogram quantities of weapons-usable material, mostly highly enriched uranium. 

The primary source of radionuclides produced in the fission process and found in the environment is atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. The public has been exposed to these and other radionuclides for five decades, but there has been a substantial decline in atmospheric testing in the past two decades. Therefore the major source of fission product radionuclides in recent years has been from nuclear accidents. A nuclear reactor meltdown could release a spectrum of radionuclides similar to that of a nuclear bomb explosion, but the ratios of nuclides would greatly differ for the two cases. The reason for the differences in ratios of radionuclides is that during the reactor operation the long-lived radionuclides tend to build up progressively, whereas the... 

In all, 193 experiences nucleaires (nuclear tests and safety trials) were conducted at the French nuclear weapon test site at Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls. Of these, 178 were nuclear tests , in which a nuclear device was exploded with a large release of fission and, in some cases, fusion energy and 15 were safety trials in which more or less fully developed nuclear devices were subjected to simulated accident conditions and the nuclear weapon cores were destroyed by means of conventional explosives, with no or—on a few occasions—very small releases of fission energy. 

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