RE: Does the prospect of nuclear disaster still frighten anyone these days?
March 21, 2015 at 4:30 pm
(This post was last modified: March 21, 2015 at 4:49 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(March 21, 2015 at 4:18 pm)abaris Wrote:(March 21, 2015 at 4:10 pm)Chuck Wrote: I think any serious act of biological warfare could easily escalate into the use of nuclear weapons in retaliation, if only to take out the weapon facilities with a degree of overkill to reduce chances of contamination.
Which probably would achieve the opposite effect.
If the targeting is accurate and precise, it would achieve the desired effect by securely both irradiating and incinerating biological warfare agent.
Depending on the design of the bio warfare facility, there may be no other practical way to destroy the facility remotely without risking releasing some of the stored biological warfare agents.
Nuclear retaliation against biological or chemical warfare use has always been an largely unspoken tenant of American nuclear posture. During first Gulpf war, the U.S. made it explicit to Iraq.
That said, I think the threat of serious biological warfare use by non-state actors is slim. Weaponizing microbes is more difficult than commonly realized. There are probably fewer states that can successfully weaponize a really lethal biological agent than there are than can build an atomic bomb. So chance of successfuly theft of useable biological warfare munition is probably also less than the chance of theft of nuclear weapons.
I think the nuclear threat with the highest chance of actual occurrence within foreseeable future would be from the catastrophic failure of another nuclear power plant. Although state of the art of nuclear safety has greatly improved, and sketchy early generation nuclear reactors are being retired, the diminution in risk is being counterbalanced of proliferation of nuclear power plants to countries with sketchy industrial safety records and relatively little experience running nuclear power plants, as well as to those countries with relatively weak infrastructure for civil defence and emergency evacuations. There are more nuclear plants being built in third world countries than there are being retired in developed countries.
I think next major nuclear accident would likely occur in emerging nuclear states.
