Abstract of Lecture 2002 

Abstract of Lecture 2002

“The Danger Posed by Nuclear Weapons”

Professor W.K.H Panofsky
Stanford University

Notwithstanding the end of the Cold War, continuing enormous inventories of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons-useable materials constitute a major risk to civilization. This risk is in three categories:

1. The risk that a fraction of the inventories of nuclear weapons held by the nuclear weapons states will be detonated in a future conflict, either accidentally or deliberately.

2. The risk of nuclear weapons technology diffusing to most nations of the globe. Historically such diffusion has occurred for all new technologies.

3. The risk that nuclear weapons will reach the hands of non-state actors, that is terrorist individuals or groups.

Each of these risks requires different measures to limit their impact. First, there must be a drastic reduction of the total inventories of nuclear weapons and their associated materials. There must be elimination of immediate readiness now incorporated in deployment of many of these weapons.

Nuclear weapons proliferation has actually been much less common than has been feared since most nations recognize that their national security is better served without nuclear weapons than with. Nevertheless the future stability of the non-proliferation regime is in danger, both because the nuclear weapons states have failed to decrease the discriminatory arrangement of the ‘have’ and the ‘have nots’ of the present world, and because some of the ‘have nots’ have engaged in clandestine programs of nuclear weapons development.

Finally the risk that non-state actors, that is terrorists, will acquire nuclear weapons must be diminished by a combination of interdiction of supply and political measures. However, none of these remedies can be assured of success. The United States as the leading power in non-nuclear armaments should take leadership in reducing reliance on nuclear weapons, rather than moving in the opposite direction as current polices seem to indicate.

Professor W.K.H. Panofsky
W.K.H. Panofsky

Professor Emeritus of Stanford University, is the founder and the first Director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), one of the world’s leading centers of high energy physics. Professor Panofsky also played an outstanding role as Consultant in the Arms Control Negotiations between the US and the USSR, and he was repeatedly on the US President’s Science Advisory Committee. In recent years his main activities have focused on post-cold war strategies and problems of nuclear disarmament. He has received numerous national and international honors and awards.