Archive Article: India And Pakistan Nuclear Testing June 1998
December 22, 2008

The Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests have again reminded the world of the dangers of nuclear weapons. But we ought not to forget the terrible legacy of the five other nuclear powers.

The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. The Russian Committee of that organization has published a book called Atom Declassified, dealing with the Soviet Union’s nuclear history. Now that the Cold War is over and the Soviet Union has collapsed it is possible to get access to the top secret information on the Soviet Union’s nuclear activities.

The book sets out the medical history of the nuclear era: the impact on human beings and the environment. An advantage for ruthless scientists living in a totalitarian regime, where there were no free media or protest groups, was that scientists could pay less attention to the health impacts of the tests. They could focus on the weapons and not the victims.

The book shows the impact of a variety of nuclear activities: nuclear testing, nuclear facilities that have accidentally discharged radioactive material into the surrounding environment, the haphazard methods of mining uranium, the slovenly dumping of uranium mining waste, the radioactive contamination of surrounding agricultural land, the problems of the wreckage of nuclear-powered vessels around and under the Soviet Union’s coastline, and the continuing disaster of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor tragedy. Indeed, Chernobyl was simply the tip of the nuclear iceberg.

There are four lessons from this book. First, the Cold War may be over politically but the health and environmental impact of it will remain for many years to come. Indeed, given the long-term consequences of radiation, the Cold War will not be “ended”, so to speak, in some cases for a few centuries.

Today, tourists visit the battlefields of previous eras and they are mass graves, memorials or museums. Alas, for later generations we will be leaving them a more tangible reminder of the Cold War. Indeed, later generations will still be paying for the clean-up costs for centuries to come.

Second, we still do not know the full cost of that clean-up. This Russian book has various references to the need for further research.

Third, the book also deals with the Soviet Union’s development of chemical weapons. As might be expected, the Soviet Union was also active in developing such weapons. Meanwhile, we still have to learn about the Soviet Union’s development of biological warfare, such as anthrax. As I say, in a sense, the Cold War has still not ended.

Finally, the book is an indirect endorsement of the peace movement in western countries. The Soviet Union had its own official peace movement but that was largely an arm of Soviet foreign policy. But western groups were not an arm of their own governments. They helped monitor the nuclear developments in their own country. Their scrutiny helped make sure that their own governments were not as haphazard in nuclear matters as in the Soviet Union.

BROADCAST ON FRIDAY JUNE 12 1998 ON RADIO 2GB’S “BRIAN WILSHIRE PROGRAMME” AT 9 PM, AND ON JUNE 14 1998 ON “SUNDAY NIGHT LIVE” AT 10.30 PM.