Pope condemns possession of nuclear weapons

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Even if your interpretation is correct, which I highly doubt, how does unilateral disarmament protect us from it?
 
The truth is that we had already crossed that line. The atomic bombs were simply a more efficient version of the firebombing campaigns. That said, while nothing can justify the terror campaign against civilians, the demand of unconditional surrender was justified. The Vatican and the United States seem to be talking past each other on this point; in our parlance, “unconditional surrender” means “in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.” No punishment will come to civilians not in the high command, nor will soldiers be punished merely for committing acts of war against the Allies. Obviously, demanding that the enemy submit to arbitrary punishment even up to annihilation will only steel their resolve to keep fighting, but seeking peace requires that the result is actually peace, and not simply a 20-year hiatus in the conflict. Had the Japanese regime been permitted to hold their gains from the war and re-arm, a full-scale nuclear war between the United States and Japan in the 1960’s would be all but inevitable. There’s no way Japan could have built a nuclear weapon while under siege by the United States, but give them 20 years of peace and it would be easy.
 
You fear what you do not understand. The problem of radioactive waste is a political problem, not an engineering problem. We know exactly what to do with it; it’s just that politicians won’t let us do what needs to be done.

Furthermore, your position is a logical contradiction. It is IMPOSSIBLE to get rid of nuclear weapons without nuclear power plants. The only way to be permanently rid of a nuclear weapon is to burn up its core; anything short of that leaves open the possibility of reassembling the nuclear weapon.
 
The problem of spent fuel rods sitting in pools of water has not been solved. Even after spending billions for site selection and a storage method. They know how to incinerate nuclear waste now but have no incentive to do it.
 
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Sure it has. They have to cool for ten years, and then they are transferred into air-cooled storage casks. They can then be reprocessed or buried.
 
Jesus would be against nukes also. So the Pope, as Christ vicar on earth would of course be against them too.
 
EvangelistVictor said:
Jesus would be against nukes also. So the Pope, as Christ vicar on earth would of course be against them too.
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mythbuster1 said:
…nothing can justify the terror campaign against civilians…
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I agree.
The Holy Father has done the right thing in condemning the possession of nuclear weapons. It is inevitable that if used, the nuclear bomb would cause widespread death, pain and misery to tens of thousands of innocent people. Of course all wars have deadly consequences and every effort should be made to end them immediately. The amount of money wasted by the Americans in conducting wars is incredible and could have been used to clothe, feed and shelter the thousands of destitute people living on the streets of the USA and there would still be left over hundreds of millions of dollars.
 
edwest211 said:
There’s no money in peace.
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This is where Americans have their priorities wrong. They spend little on peace, but on wars the Americans spend hundreds of billions. For example, the war in Afghanistan has already cost one thousand billion dollars.
 
The average American has nothing to do with Defense spending. Defense Contractors have to keep bombs, planes, tanks, etc. rolling off the lines. Find out who the world’s biggest arms dealer is.
 
edwest211 said:
The average American has nothing to do with Defense spending.
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So the USA is not a representative democracy after all? The American people have no sayso in defense spending?
I don’t believe that. Americans can demonstrate and march for peace and for lower defense spending. They can write letters to their elected officials. That is, if they were really concerned about the huge amounts allotted to waging wars.
 
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People can’t vote for defense spending. The military deals directly with the government. And there is the additional complication of purchasing items that are classified. In order to keep America safe, we observe our enemies and build weapons to defeat their weapons. Fortunately, considering the problems associated with nuclear weapons - large area of destruction, radiation and radioactive fallout - it appears we are moving toward weapons that will destroy the enemies’ weapons, especially rockets/missiles, as close to the launch area or above it, quite effectively.

Of course people can write letters and protest. That has never stopped being true.
 
The Union of Concerned Scientists are a bunch of hacks. You can’t build a nuclear weapon from commercial reprocessed plutonium because it has too much Pu-240, whose high spontaneous fission rate makes it difficult to handle and pre-initiates the device. Production of weapons-grade plutonium requires graphite- or heavy water-moderated reactors, which can irradiate the fuel in short intervals to produce significant amounts of Pu-239 and very little Pu-240. Furthermore, the longer the fuel is irradiated, the more Pu-241 is produced, which decays into non-fissile Am-241 in timescales significant to nuclear weapons. It’s far easier to build fuel-air bombs than to weaponize used nuclear fuel (scaled to destructive potential).
 
Which part? The part about World War III? That’s just common sense based on what happened after World War I. The part about treating the surrendering enemy with dignity? Exactly what we did after they did surrender. Terrible indeed is the scandal of war that imbued American decision makers with such a sense of desperation. My only response to the intentional ignition of firestorms, whether from firebombs or nukes is, “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.”
 
Baloney.
The problem is that there is no safe place to dump nuclear waste. And no one wants that toxic stuff stored or buried anywhere near them. Most of this stuff will be toxic for a long, long time.
The more we use nuclear power plants, the more waste is created.
The best thing to do it to stop creating more nuclear plants and to find some place remote to dump most of what nuclear waste we already have.
As bad as the use of petroleum products are toward causing the greenhouse effect, that effect can be undone over a period of time.
Nuclear waste is toxic for a long amount of time. There is not safe place, near human beings, to dump the waste.
If we rid ourselves of nuclear power plants, there will be less nuclear stuff to be used for the formation of bombs, especially so-called dirty bombs…
Natural gas, solar, and wind are the way to go. They are the cleanest forms of energy that we now have.
 
First, you never addressed the problem that only by burning them up in nuclear power plants can we get rid of nuclear weapons cores without detonating them.

Second, reprocessing can dramatically reduce the amount of nuclear waste for easier storage, as well as reducing the time it remains radioactive.

Third, with or without reprocessing, we do have a good place to store them already: the various heavily shielded plants that produce said waste.

Fourth, dirty bombs are a nuisance, not a serious threat. The radiation levels from a dirty bomb won’t kill anybody; a dirty bomb would just cause very expensive property damage.
 
Mythbuster1 is not suitable. You should use Mythcreator1.
There are tons and tons and tons of radioactive waste that will be lethal to human beings for hundreds of years.
Nuclear reactors continue to create more waste that must be dealt with. But no one wants that stuff stored in or around them. So they must hold the stuff near nuclear reactor plants.
Besides not wanting to have that radioactive waste stored anywhere near them, most people do not want that stuff trucked or railed to big proposed dump sites. The treat of accidents through transport could make for a catastrophe.
Radiation from a dirty bomb can kill people. It depends on how much radioactive product is in the bomb. And there is also the explosion, too.
It is imperative to stop more nuclear plants from being built and to decommission those that currently are in use.
 
I’m a nuclear engineer. I think I know a whole lot more about nuclear power than you.
 
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