Since the 1970s, physicists have worked on developing nuclear fusion as a clean, carbon-free, inexhaustible fuel source. Different from nuclear fission employed by nuclear power plants, fusion energy is one potential answer for addressing climate change while preventing depletion of natural resources and with no risk of radioactive nuclear accidents.
Physicists across the world are essentially building a big star on Earth, but the United States and other nuclear powers have also used the technology to make nuclear weapons exponentially more powerful than the ones developed by the Manhattan Project. Domestically, fusion research programs for energy and for bombs operate under the Department of Energy, with two national labs dedicated solely to creating nuclear warheads, or “the physics package.” The Department of Defense directs Energy on the specifics of and develops the delivery system that brings warheads to their destination.
The devastation likely to result from use of these thermonuclear weapons is far graver than that caused by the atomic bombs detonated by the United States over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, near the end of World War II.
“The threat of nuclear weapons is easy to understand and very, very hard to grasp,” said Stewart Prager, professor emeritus of physics at Princeton. Prager worked for decades on nuclear fusion before turning his energy toward arms control in 2018. “We live in a world where a few men essentially have the political and technical power, if they want, to end civilization within minutes. 24-7.”
A consortium of physicists, the Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction, has been an influential body, studying arms reduction and lobbying congress on nuclear weapons policy.
“The arms control community in the United States is a small one,” said Prager. “It’s effective. It’s smart. The people in it are terrific. But it’s hugely out resourced by those in the United States that favor using nuclear weapons as geopolitical tools. Seventy billion dollars is spent on nuclear weapons every year and that spawns a lobbying effort of more than $100 million. The whole arms control community is funded at much, much less than $100 million a year. That covers research, education—everything. The Coalition is succeeding as an organization. But the largely community is failing in its goals.”
Listen to Twelve Thousand Bombs on the NPR App or wherever you get your podcasts. For a full transcript, visit this episode on Apple Podcasts.
