Download or read book British Nuclear Weapons and the Test Ban 1954 1973 written by John R. Walker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-23 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1962 Dean Acheson famously described Britain as having lost an Empire but not yet found a role. Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in the realms of nuclear weapons. An increasingly marginal world power, successive post-war British governments felt that an independent nuclear deterrent was essential if the country was to remain at the top table of world diplomacy. Focusing on a key twenty-year period, this study explores Britain's role in efforts to bring about a nuclear test ban treaty between 1954 and 1973. Taking a broadly chronological approach, it examines the nature of defence planning, the scientific goals that nuclear tests were designed to secure, Anglo-American relationships, the efficacy of British diplomacy and its contribution to arms control and disarmament. A key theme of the study is to show how the UK managed to balance the conflicting pressures created by its determination to remain a credible nuclear power whilst wanting to pursue disarmament objectives, and how these pressures shifted over the period in question. Based on a wealth of primary sources this book opens up the largely ignored subject of the impact of arms control on the UK nuclear weapons programme. Its appraisal of the relationship between the requirements and developments of the UK nuclear weapons programme against international and domestic pressures for a test ban treaty will be of interest to anyone studying post-war British defence and foreign policy, history of science, arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation and international relations. It also provides important background information on current events involving nuclear proliferation and disarmament.
Download or read book British Nuclear Weapons and the Test Ban 1954 73 written by John R. Walker and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2010 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on a key twenty year period, this study explores Britain's role in efforts to bring about a nuclear test ban treaty between 1954 and 1973. Taking a broadly chronological approach, it examines the nature of defence planning, Anglo-American relationships, the efficacy of British diplomacy and UK contributions to arms control and disarmament. The appraisal of the relationship between the requirements and developments of the UK nuclear weapons programme against the countervailing international and domestic pressures for a test ban treaty will be of interest to anyone studying post-war British defence and foreign policy, history of science, arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation and international relations, or who is looking for background information on current events involving nuclear proliferation and disarmament.
Download or read book United States Nuclear Tests written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This document lists chronologically and alphabetically by name all nuclear tests and simultaneous detonations conducted by the United States from July 1945 through September 1992. Two nuclear weapons that the United States exploded over Japan ending World War II are not listed. These detonations were not "tests" in the sense that they were conducted to prove that the weapon would work as designed (as was the first test near Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945), or to advance nuclear weapon design, or to determine weapons effects, or to verify weapon safety as were the more than one thousand tests that have taken place since June 30,1946. The nuclear weapon (nicknamed "Little Boy") dropped August 6,1945 from a United States Army Air Force B-29 bomber (the Enola Gay) and detonated over Hiroshima, Japan had an energy yield equivalent to that of 15,000 tons of TNT. The nuclear weapon (virtually identical to "Fat Man") exploded in a similar fashion August 9, 1945 over Nagaski, Japan had a yield of 21,000 tons of TNT. Both detonations were intended to end World War II as quickly as possible. Data on United States tests were obtained from, and verified by, the U.S. Department of Energy's three weapons laboratories -- Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California; and Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico; and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Additionally, data were obtained from public announcements issued by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and its successors, the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration, and the U.S. Department of Energy, respectively.
Download or read book British Nuclear Weapons and the Test Ban written by John R. Walker and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-05-05 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an overview of how the UK tried to maintain and modernize its strategic and tactical nuclear weapons during 1974-82, whilst also pursuing a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. The core question addressed in the book is how a test ban treaty would impact on the reliability and safety of the UK’s nuclear weapons and how this would constrain and limit efforts to secure a comprehensive treaty that would prohibit nuclear testing indefinitely. An added complication lay in the fact that a ban treaty could also prevent or limit the UK’s ability to test new warhead designs to replace its existing tactical nuclear weapons and a new strategic successor system to Polaris. How all of this played out between 1974 and 1982, when the UK announced its decision to acquire Trident and the US decided that a test ban treaty was no longer in its security interests, is discussed. A detailed review, based on the available materials in the UK National Archives, also looks at the aims and objectives of UK nuclear tests in Nevada and on the decisions taken on the Chevaline warhead and its Trident replacement. The book also considers whether there was a far greater threat to the UK nuclear programme from shortages of skilled craftsmen and industrial action at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston than from a test ban treaty. It also looks at whether nuclear defence trumped arms control objectives during this period. This book will be of much interest to students of British politics, nuclear proliferation and Cold War History.
Download or read book The Surveillance Imperative written by S. Turchetti and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-09-17 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveillance is a key notion for understanding power and control in the modern world, but it has been curiously neglected by historians of science and technology. Using the overarching concept of the "surveillance imperative," this collection of essays offers a new window on the evolution of the environmental sciences during and after the Cold War.
Download or read book Uranium Enrichment and Nuclear Weapon Proliferation written by Allan S. Krass and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-20 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1983, this book presents both the technical and political information necessary to evaluate the emerging threat to world security posed by recent advances in uranium enrichment technology. Uranium enrichment has played a relatively quiet but important role in the history of efforts by a number of nations to acquire nuclear weapons and by a number of others to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. For many years the uranium enrichment industry was dominated by a single method, gaseous diffusion, which was technically complex, extremely capital-intensive, and highly inefficient in its use of energy. As long as this remained true, only the richest and most technically advanced nations could afford to pursue the enrichment route to weapon acquisition. But during the 1970s this situation changed dramatically. Several new and far more accessible enrichment techniques were developed, stimulated largely by the anticipation of a rapidly growing demand for enrichment services by the world-wide nuclear power industry. This proliferation of new techniques, coupled with the subsequent contraction of the commercial market for enriched uranium, has created a situation in which uranium enrichment technology might well become the most important contributor to further nuclear weapon proliferation. Some of the issues addressed in this book are: A technical analysis of the most important enrichment techniques in a form that is relevant to analysis of proliferation risks; A detailed projection of the world demand for uranium enrichment services; A summary and critique of present institutional non-proliferation arrangements in the world enrichment industry, and An identification of the states most likely to pursue the enrichment route to acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Download or read book Science Anti Communism and Diplomacy written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1957 onwards, the "Pugwash Conferences" brought together elite scientists from across ideological and political divides to work towards disarmament. Through a series of national case studies - Austria, China, Czechoslovakia, East and West Germany, the US and USSR – this volume offers a critical reassessment of the development and work of “Pugwash” nationally, internationally, and as a transnational forum for Track II diplomacy. This major new collection reveals the difficulties that Pugwash scientists encountered as they sought to reach across the blocs, create a channel for East-West dialogue and realize the project’s founding aim of influencing state actors. Uniquely, the book affords a sense of the contingent and contested process by which the network-like organization took shape around the conferences. Contributors are Gordon Barrett, Matthew Evangelista, Silke Fengler, Alison Kraft, Fabian Lüscher, Doubravka Olšáková, Geoffrey Roberts, Paul Rubinson, and Carola Sachse.
Download or read book Why a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty written by United States. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy written by Todd S. Sechser and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-02 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are nuclear weapons useful for coercive diplomacy? This book argues that they are useful for deterrence but not for offensive purposes.
Download or read book Getting MAD Nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction Its Origins and Practice written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly 40 years after the concept of finite deterrence was popularized by the Johnson administration, nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) thinking appears to be in decline. The United States has rejected the notion that threatening population centers with nuclear attacks is a legitimate way to assure deterrence. Most recently, it withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, an agreement based on MAD. American opposition to MAD also is reflected in the Bush administration's desire to develop smaller, more accurate nuclear weapons that would reduce the number of innocent civilians killed in a nuclear strike. Still, MAD is influential in a number of ways. First, other countries, like China, have not abandoned the idea that holding their adversaries' cities at risk is necessary to assure their own strategic security. Nor have U.S. and allied security officials and experts fully abandoned the idea. At a minimum, acquiring nuclear weapons is still viewed as being sensible to face off a hostile neighbor that might strike one's own cities. Thus, our diplomats have been warning China that Japan would be under tremendous pressure to go nuclear if North Korea persisted in acquiring a few crude weapons of its own. Similarly, Israeli officials have long argued, without criticism, that they would not be second in acquiring nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Indeed, given that Israelis surrounded by enemies that would not hesitate to destroy its population if they could, Washington finds Israel's retention of a significant nuclear capability totally "understandable."
Download or read book Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control in South Asia After the Test Ban written by Eric H. Arnett and published by SIPRI Research Reports. This book was released on 1998 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the nuclear weapon states continue to reduce their nuclear arsenals and international efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons are reinvigorated, South Asia remains a unique region almost entirely unencumbered by nuclear arms control. Despite the recent popularity of the notion that nuclear deterrence is stabilizing the Indo-Pakistani conflict, there is good reason to believe that the risks of war and the use of nuclear weapons are not fully appreciated. Nevertheless, the prospects for negotiated measures to improve the situation are not good because of the domestic politics on both sides. Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control in South Asia after the Test Ban sheds new light on the risks of the current stand-off, the hidden costs of the nuclear options, and the domestic sources of the region's inertia, bringing together Indian, Pakistani and Chinese perspectives.
Download or read book Defense s Nuclear Agency 1947 1997 DTRA History Series written by Defense Threat Reduction Agency and published by Militarybookshop.CompanyUK. This book was released on 2003-09 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This official history was originally printed in very small numbers in 2002. "Defense's Nuclear Agency, 1947-1997" traces the development of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP), and its descendant government organizations, from its original founding in 1947 to 1997. After the disestablishment of the Manhattan Engineering District (MED) in 1947, AFSWP was formed to provide military training in nuclear weapons' operations. Over the years, its sequential descendant organizations have been the Defense Atomic Support Agency (DASA) from 1959 to 1971, the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) from 1971 to 1996, and the Defense Special Weapons Agency (DSWA) from 1996 to 1998. In 1998, DSWA, the On-Site Inspection Agency, the Defense Technology Security Administration, and selected elements of the Office of Secretary of Defense were combined to form the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).
Download or read book The English Historical Review written by and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Britain and Disarmament written by John R. Walker and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2012 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the use of poison gas during the First World War and the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan at the end of the Second World War, nuclear, biological or chemical (NBC) weapons have registered high on the fears of governments and individuals alike. Recognising both the particular horror of these weapons, and their potential for inflicting mass death and destruction, much effort has been expended in finding ways to eliminate such weapons on a multi-lateral level. Based on extensive official archives, this book looks at how successive British governments approached the subject of control and disarmament between 1956 and 1975. This period reflects the UK's landmark decision in 1956 to abandon its offensive chemical weapons programme (a decision that was reversed in 1963, but never fully implemented), and ends with the internal travails over the possible use of CR (tear gas) in Northern Ireland. Whilst the issue of nuclear arms control has been much debated, the integration of biological and chemical weapons into the wider disarmament picture is much less well understood, there being no clear statement by the UK authorities for much of the period under review in this book as to whether the country even possessed such weapons or had an active research and development programme. Through a thorough exploration of government records the book addresses fundamental questions relating to the history of NBC weapons programmes, including the military, economic and political pressures that influenced policy; the degree to which the UK was a reluctant or enthusiastic player on the international arms control stage; and the effect of international agreements on Britain's weapons programmes. In exploring these issues, the study provides the first attempt to assess UK NBC arms control policy and practice during the Cold War. About the Author: Dr John R. Walker works in the Arms Control and Disarmament Research Unit, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, UK. Publisher's note.
Download or read book The Nuclear Taboo written by Nina Tannenwald and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-12-20 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why have nuclear weapons not been used since Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945? Nina Tannenwald disputes the conventional answer of 'deterrence' in favour of what she calls a nuclear taboo - a widespread inhibition on using nuclear weapons - which has arisen in global politics. Drawing on newly released archival sources, Tannenwald traces the rise of the nuclear taboo, the forces that produced it, and its influence, particularly on US leaders. She analyzes four critical instances where US leaders considered using nuclear weapons (Japan 1945, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Gulf War 1991) and examines how the nuclear taboo has repeatedly dissuaded US and other world leaders from resorting to these 'ultimate weapons'. Through a systematic analysis, Tannenwald challenges conventional conceptions of deterrence and offers a compelling argument on the moral bases of nuclear restraint as well as an important insight into how nuclear war can be avoided in the future.
Download or read book British Nuclear Culture written by Jonathan Hogg and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-01-28 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The advent of the atomic bomb, the social and cultural impact of nuclear science, and the history of the British nuclear state after 1945 is a complex and contested story. British Nuclear Culture is an important survey that offers a new interpretation of the nuclear century by tracing the tensions between 'official' and 'unofficial' nuclear narratives in British culture. In this book, Jonathan Hogg argues that nuclear culture was a pervasive and persistent aspect of British life, particularly in the years following 1945. This idea is illustrated through detailed analysis of various primary source materials, such as newspaper articles, government files, fictional texts, film, music and oral testimonies. The book introduces unfamiliar sources to students of nuclear and cold war history, and offers in-depth and critical reflections on the expanding historiography in this area of research. Chronologically arranged, British Nuclear Culture reflects upon, and returns to, a number of key themes throughout, including nuclear anxiety, government policy, civil defence, 'nukespeak' and nuclear subjectivity, individual experience, protest and resistance, and the influence of the British nuclear state on everyday life. The book contains illustrations, individual case studies, a select bibliography, a timeline, and a list of helpful online resources for students of nuclear history.
Download or read book Nuclear Illusion Nuclear Reality written by Richard Moore and published by Nuclear Weapons and International Security since 1945. This book was released on 2010-05-19 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the political, military and technical aspects of Britain's nuclear weapons programme under the Macmillan government, contrasting Britain's perceived political decline with its growth in technological mastery and military nuclear capability. Important reading for anyone interested in the history and military technology of the cold war.
