Scientists: The Power for Peace?
Dominique Lalanne
Nuclear weapons became possible with the discovery by Frederic Joliot in 1939 of the chain reaction, and even though this research was not for the purpose of making weapons, it immediately involved registering a patent for the “improvement of explosives.”
In the same year, Albert Einstein in his first letter to US President Roosevelt insisted on making a nuclear bomb because of the possibility that the Nazis were developing one, and this request was renewed in 1940 in a second letter. Then, the Manhattan project was started, resulting five years later in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Albert Einstein was very worried that the bomb had actually been used on Japan, and that was the reason he founded the Atomic Scientists Emergency Committee immediately afterwards. Many members of the Manhattan project participated in the committee, and one French scientist, Frederic Joliot, joined them.
Then, in 1950, the famous Stockholm Appeal, initiated by Frederic Joliot, generated a huge wave of support, with 400 million signatures from all over the world, of which 14 million were from France. Following this, a second appeal in 1954, the Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein Manifesto, brought together scientists who opposed the nuclear age, and a little later, the Pugwash movement was born in Canada at a meeting in the village Pugwash in Nova Scotia in 1957. Since then, many scientists continued to question and oppose nuclear weapons – and there is no need to tell you about the lack of success these initiatives had.
In the following, I will try to give an explanation for this failure and describe how this ugly game is being repeated today.
Firstly, it is clear that the scientists were fully aware of their contribution to the creation of weaponry, even if the uses and consequences might not have been clear at the beginning of World War II. Secondly, having understood those uses and consequences, many of them, although not all, changed their minds and opposed the continuation of the project. How ever important their influence might have been for the decision to build the nuclear bomb, their interventions had no effect whatsoever on a decision to dismantle it.
That is easy to explain. A scientist is an expert in his own research area. The credibility of a nuclear physicist is not contestable when he proposes a possible nuclear weapon design. This is no longer the case when it comes to dismantling the weapon – which is considered outside the scope of his expertise. State leaders or people in power believe that they are experts in this field and that they are solely responsible for choosing the right path towards “security” for their country or people. The only possible force that could convince them of the need to dismantle their nuclear weapons arsenals is the people, public opinion. Accordingly, an important role of scientists is to provide the public with the information that is needed to form an opinion and to become active. Direct lobbying of state representatives by scientists is useful, too, but the real power rests with the people, but I maintain that scientists should particularly focus on making good use of the information available to them.
The drama of the early times of the nuclear age is presently being replayed, with the stage being set by two major projects: the Megajoule in France and the Nuclear Ignition Facility in the United States. The goal of both facilities is to develop pure fusion bombs. Rather than igniting the fusion by blasting a uraniumor plutonium-based A-bomb, the Hbomb would be ignited by a laser. Other than for fission of a uranium or plutonium core, no “critical mass” is need to start a hydrogen fusion process. As a result, the yield – or explosive power – of a fusion bomb can be freely chosen. “Small” nuclear bombs become possible, especially in the region between 10 and 1,000 tons (0.01 and 1 kt) of TNT that is currently technically infeasible. With no clear borderline between conventional and nuclear, future weaponry can render the use of nuclear weapons “normal,” bearing the risk of escalation up to the most devastating of these weapons. This is the beginning of new nuclear wars. This is the third nuclear age.
It is scientists who work on these concepts. Many of my colleagues participate in such research. They do it because of their technical interest in this particular field, which involves cutting-edge work on plasma behavior, lasers, and fusion. They do it without questioning what they do. Even more amazingly, many French members of the Pugwash movement belong to the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique (CEA), the very institution headed by Frederic Joliot in the 1950s. In France, the CEA has total leadership on all fusion-related work, to which belong the Megajoule laser to study explosion processes and the ITER facility, now under construction for “civil” purposes. This new nuclear age is to involve pure fusion with tritium, an hydrogen isotope. But this new nuclear age, conceived by many as the nuclear future, has close connections with nuclear weaponry. Tritium is the way to do both: enlarge the yield of the bomb to thousands of Hiroshimas and to lower the yield to meet needs of the military for “theater use.”
My message as a nuclear physicist is directed to you as citizens. You must be aware that your power can stop the funding of fusion research. Scientists in INESAP or Pugwash can provide you with the necessary information, but they cannot do more on their own. They have no greater credibility than you when it comes to disarming existing arsenals or stopping the new arms race of the third nuclear age. You are the Power for Peace.
This presentation was held at the World Peace Forum 2006.
