Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Environment

Sipri

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367716240
• eBook ISBN: 9781000371468
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

The effects of weapons of mass destruction cannot be contained, either spatially or temporally, are unpredictable, discriminate poorly between combatants and civilians, and are highly disruptive of ecosystems. This book, first published in 1977, examines several WMD and analyses the extent and duration of environmental damage to be expected from them. Chapters are devoted to the ecological impacts of nuclear weapons, chemical and biological weapons, and geophysical and environmental weapons.

1. Nuclear weapons

Superior numerals, thus⁵, refer to notes on pages 24-30.

I. Introduction

Nuclear weapons exist, they have been employed and they can have a tremendous ecological impact. No treatment of the interaction between weapons of mass destruction and the environment would be complete without an examination of nuclear weapons.¹

Nuclear weapons come in all sizes or yields² and can be delivered in a variety of ways. The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima had an energy yield of about 13 kt and the one which destroyed Nagasaki a yield of about 21 kt (US Atomic Energy Commission, priv. comm., 9 Jan. 1974; see also Penney et al., 1970). Although a nuclear device of over 50 Mt has been detonated (Glasstone, 1964: 681 a), one gathers that likely sizes for use as strategic nuclear weapons would be in the range of 1 Mt to 10 Mt. Hundreds if not thousands of such weapons might be expended within a period of days during some major nuclear exchange of the future. By way of partial contrast, the total energy yield of all the munitions expended during $8\frac{{\displaystyle 1}}{{\displaystyle 2}}$ years of the Second Indochina War comes to less than 4 Mt (note 3).

Nuclear weapons are awe-inspiring not only for their total energy yield, but also for the several forms in which this energy is dissipated, as will be seen in the following section. The ecological consequences of nuclear war are covered in section III of this chapter.

II. Description

General

The effects of a nuclear attack depend not only upon the number of devices detonated and their types and sizes, but also upon how they are distributed in time and space. The effects are strongly influenced by whether a burst occurs at or near ground level, substantially below ground, under water, in the denser portions of the atmosphere (that is, below about 30 km), or even in the very rarified upper atmosphere.⁴ The character of the terrain, weather conditions and other factors also modify the character and magnitude of the effects.

A nuclear bomb that bursts in the troposphere high enough that its fire-ball does not reach the ground⁵ will dissipate about half of its energy in the form of a blast or shock wave (Table 1.1). Another third of the energy will be released in the form of thermal radiation. The remaining energy will be expended in the form of nuclear radiation, about one third of this within the initial minute and the rest over a much longer period of time.

Table 1.1. Distribution of energy release by a nuclear bomb exploded in the troposphere

		Energy released
Energy form		(10^12 J)	(10^15 J)	(10^15 J)
	Bomb size:	18 kt	0.91 Mt	9.1 Mt
Blast (shock)		41.9	2.28	22.8
Thermal radiation		29.3	1.59	15.9
Nuclear radiation, first min		4.2	0.10	1.0
Nuclear radiation, residual		8.4	0.21	2.1
Total		83.7	4.19	41.9

Notes:

(a) For an explanation of bomb size designations, see note 2.

(b) The data are derived from those of Glasstone (1964: 7-9).

(c) The 18 kt bomb is a fission bomb, whereas the 0.91 Mt and 9.1 Mt bombs are half fission and half fusion. The explosions are so-called typical air bursts.⁵ Comparable data for surface bursts are difficult to generalize about.

A burst in the very thin air above the stratosphere⁴ will translate significantly less of its energy into blast and more into thermal radiation. Surface and sub-surface bursts, either terrestrial or aquatic, produce far more radioactive fall-out than do air bursts. Underwater bursts are a class by themselves. Their effects differ markedly depending upon how far below the surface the bomb is detonated, how deep and how large the body of water is and other factors. The reader is referred to Glasstone (1964: VI) for further information on underwater nuclear explosions.

In the sections that follow can be found separate descriptions of the blast (shock) wave of a nuclear detonation, of its pulse of thermal radiation and of its nuclear radiation. The tabulated data are usually presented for three bomb sizes: 18 kt, 0.91 Mt and 9.1 Mt (note 2). The smallest of these is roughly comparable to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki shots, whereas the larger two sizes are likely to be employed in any future nuclear war.

The ecological consequences of nuclear attack will in many respects be similar to those of conventional warfare or other major environmental disturbance. The consequences will differ, however, owing to the novel stresses imposed upon the involved ecosystems by nuclear (and perhaps also ultra-violet) radiation. And, depending upon the magnitude of the nuclear exchange, they can differ dramatically in scale....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Conventions and units of measure
• Foreword
• Chapter 1. Nuclear weapons
• Chapter 2. Chemical and biological weapons
• Chapter 3. Geophysical and environmental weapons
• Chapter 4. Epilogue
• References
• Related SIPRI publications
• Index