Skip navigation.

Abolish nuclear weapons

George Bush leads the US toward a policy of unilateral, pre-emptive counterproliferation warfighting strategy.

George Bush leads the US toward a policy of unilateral, pre-emptive counterproliferation warfighting strategy.

Enlarge Image

The Cold War may be over, but this does not mean nuclear weapons have disappeared. Far from it: There are over 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world, with more than a thousand of them ready to launch at a moment's notice, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Over 400 reactors in warships and nuclear submarines are still circling the globe. Some are rotting away on the bottom of the ocean or in a distant port somewhere in Russia. Accidents such as the Russian submarine, the Kursk, tragically sinking in the Barents Sea can happen every day, anywhere.

Over 2,000 nuclear weapons tests have left a legacy of global and regional contamination. People living near the test sites have suffered from cancers, stillbirths, miscarriages and other health effects -- and are still suffering today. Many had to leave their hometown or island as it became too contaminated to live there.

Help us improve this website section by taking this quick survey.

The nuclear threat has quite literally scaled down in the last two decades. While the prospect of an all out exchange of arsenals between Russia and the US has receded, the 15 kilotons of destruction that obliterated Hiroshima could today be accomplished with a lunch-box sized bomb. George Bush talks openly of developing new "more useable" nuclear weapons. Even more alarmingly, the administration continues to seek approval for a programme geared toward designing more robust, more 'usable' nuclear weapons.

The prospects of a nuclear weapon actually being used are perhaps greater today than during the cold war.
 

Today, the number of countries involved in active weapons programs is increasing. A growing number of countries are lining up to join the nuclear club, increasing the chance that a nuclear catastrophe will happen somewhere on the planet. 

George Bush's war on Weapons of Mass Descruction had its first concrete result when the number of countries in the world with declared nuclear weapons increased to 8 from 7, when North Korea announced that it had built "enough nuclear weapons to deter a US attack."

Nuclear brinkmanship is inevitable in a climate of nuclear hypocrisy. Only when all countries pursue nuclear disarmament in good faith can we begin putting the nuclear genie back in the bottle by banning the use and manufacture of the nuclear materials at the heart of the bomb.

The only thing that will stop the threat is the voice of the second superpower: world opinion.


More nuclear power = less nuclear weapons? Only if you're as mad as a hatter. Enlarge Image

Alice in Nuclear Blunderland

Editor's note: In preparing this article about the meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, we read the news stories from all of the most reputable sources, we read the reports from all of the best institutions, we read the statements from all of the governments and agencies, but nowhere could we find a reasonable, rational, or plausible explanation of what was happening. We decided the only answer was the absurd.

Pop goes the missile

The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, has arrived in Oslo to pick up this year's Nobel Peace Prize, which he will share with the IAEA. We've got another prize for him...

Illustration explaining the convergence of nuclear and non-nuclear options for Pentagon war planning. Enlarge Image

US nuclear warplans fly around the internet

"Even in an unclassified world this is not the kind of thing you want flying around the Internet," says Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita. He was talking about a document, yanked from a Pentagon website on September 19th, which outlines US nuclear warfighting plans, including the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons and the use of nukes in conventional war.

Visitor to the Greenpeace Peace Embassy at a US nuclear weapons base in Turkey. Enlarge Image

Of figs and bombs

I am writing from the Greenpeace Peace Embassy just a few hundred metres from an estimated stockpile of ninety B61 nuclear missiles – each capable of many times the force of the Hiroshima bomb that killed over 120,000 people.

Greenpeace volunteers project peace messages on to the bow of the USS Blue Ridge, command ship of the US 7th Fleet, as part of the global campaign against the possible war in Iraq. Enlarge Image

NPT ends in failure

All the kings horses and all the kings men failed to reach agreement on reducing nuclear arms at the conclusion of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in New York. Now it's up to you and me.

The International Court of Justice has declared the threat or use of nuclear weapons illegal. Greenpeace has joined with other groups in setting up citizens' inspections of illegal nuclear weapons sites around the world. Enlarge Image

Inspecting illegal nuclear weapons

The one international treaty dedicated to controlling the spread of nuclear weapons is deadlocked by the unwillingness of those countries which already have nuclear weapons to let the treaty do its job.

Greenpeace activists attempt a citizens' inspection of NATO headquarters in Brussels. Enlarge Image

Bombspotting: Eyes of Mass Inspection

We all know that weapons of mass destruction are bad. Especially when "evil" people have them. But what about when they're right in your own back yard - does that make Belgium "evil"? Or Italy? Or the UK? Sick of this hypocrisy, armies of Bombspotters have descended on Belgium to conduct their own "citizen inspections". At least these weapons of mass destruction can easily be found, in no less than six European countries.

192,000 people died from the bombing of Hiroshima. 'As long as nuclear weapons exist, it is inevitable that some country, at some point, will experience the horror that Hiroshima and Nagasaki already know.' --Former Hiroshima mayor Takashi Hiraoka Enlarge Image

Is your Mayor for Peace

Until we can rid the world of nuclear weapons nation by nation, we'll start town by town. That's the strategy behind the Mayors for Peace project - an international effort which began with the mayor of one city, Hiroshima, Japan, who in 1982 said "never again" to the suffering his own town endured.

Greenpeace's "Most Wanted" nuclear solitaire deck Enlarge Image

War on WMD backfires

George Bush's war on weapons of mass destruction has just had its first concrete result: the world now has 8 countries with declared nuclear weapons instead of 7. North Korea has officially announced that they have manufactured "enough nuclear weapons to deter a US attack." Nice going, George.

Activists onboard the Greenpeace ship, MV Esperanza, wait off the coast of France for the imminent arrival of two BNFL (British Nuclear Fuels) ships that are carrying 140kg of radioactive weapons-grade plutonium. The Pacific Pintail and the Pacific Teal left the U.S. port of Charleston, SC on September 20th. Greenpeace believes the shipment conducted by the US and France is unnecessarily threatening international security and putting the environment at risk. Enlarge Image

Terror cargo lands in France

After weeks of cat-and-mouse antics, the Pacific Pintail slipped into the port of Cherbourg with a deadly cargo of Plutonium -- but only after a French court ensured Greenpeace would be kept out of the way.

-
More news stories

Go to your national site

World websites

GREENPEACE EMAIL

Sign up for international email updates
SocialTwist Tell-a-Friend