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History of nuclear weapons

Building on major scientific breakthroughs made during the 1930s, the United Kingdom began the world's first nuclear weapons research project, codenamed Tube Alloys, in 1941, during World War II. The United States, in collaboration with the United Kingdom, initiated the Manhattan Project the following year to build a weapon using nuclear fission. The project also involved Canada.[1] In August 1945, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were conducted by the United States, with British consent, against Japan at the close of that war, standing to date as the only use of nuclear weapons in hostilities.

The Soviet Union started development shortly after with their own atomic bomb project, and not long after, both countries were developing even more powerful fusion weapons known as hydrogen bombs. Britain and France built their own systems in the 1950s, and the number of states with nuclear capabilities has gradually grown larger in the decades since.


A nuclear weapon, also known as an atomic bomb, possesses enormous destructive power from nuclear fission, or a combination of fission and fusion reactions.

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American developments after World War II[edit]

With the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, the U.S. Congress established the civilian Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to take over the development of nuclear weapons from the military, and to develop nuclear power.[42] The AEC made use of many private companies in processing uranium and thorium and in other urgent tasks related to the development of bombs. Many of these companies had very lax safety measures and employees were sometimes exposed to radiation levels far above what was allowed then or now.[43] (In 1974, the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) of the Army Corps of Engineers was set up to deal with contaminated sites left over from these operations.[44])


The Atomic Energy Act also established the United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which had broad legislative and executive oversight jurisdiction over nuclear matters and became one of the powerful congressional committees in U.S. history.[45] Its two early chairmen, Senator Brien McMahon and Senator Bourke Hickenlooper, both pushed for increased production of nuclear materials and a resultant increase in the American atomic stockpile.[46] The size of that stockpile, which had been low in the immediate postwar years,[47] was a closely guarded secret.[48] Indeed, within the U.S. government, including the Departments of State and Defense, there was considerable confusion over who actually knew the size of the stockpile, and some people chose not to know for fear they might disclose the number accidentally.[47]

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Cost[edit]

The designing, testing, producing, deploying, and defending against nuclear weapons is one of the largest expenditures for the nations which possess nuclear weapons. In the United States during the Cold War years, between "one quarter to one third of all military spending since World War II [was] devoted to nuclear weapons and their infrastructure."[82] According to a retrospective Brookings Institution study published in 1998 by the Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Committee (formed in 1993 by the W. Alton Jones Foundation), the total expenditures for U.S. nuclear weapons from 1940 to 1998 was $5.5 trillion in 1996 dollars.[83]


For comparison, the total public debt at the end of fiscal year 1998 was $5,478,189,000,000 in 1998 dollars[84] or $5.3 trillion. The entire public debt in 1998 was therefore equal to the cost of research, development, and deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons-related programs during the Cold War.[82][83][85]

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(1988). Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years. Random House. ISBN 978-0-394-52278-4.

Bundy, McGeorge

Burns, Richard Dean; Siracusa, Joseph M. (2013). . ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-440-80095-5. table of contents

A Global History of the Nuclear Arms Race: Weapons, Strategy, and Politics [2 volumes]: Weapons, Strategy, and Politics

(1982). Global Fission: The Battle Over Nuclear Power. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-195-54315-5.

Falk, Jim

(1964). Britain and Atomic Energy 1939–1945. London: Macmillan. OCLC 3195209.

Gowing, Margaret

; Anderson, Oscar E. (1962). The New World, 1939–1946 (PDF). OCLC 493738019. Retrieved March 26, 2013.

Hewlett, Richard G.

(2007). Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-307-26786-3.

Rhodes, Richard

conference and forum at the JFK Library, Boston, October 12, 2009. Four panels: "The Race to Build the Bomb and the Decision to Use It", "Cuban Missile Crisis and the First Nuclear Test Ban Treaty", "The Cold War and the Nuclear Arms Race" and "Nuclear Weapons, Terrorism and the Presidency".

"Presidency in the Nuclear Age"

(2013). Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety. Penguin Group. ISBN 978-1-594-20227-8.

Schlosser, Eric

Timeline of atomic age events

Federation of American Scientists – Worldwide Nuclear Forces Guide

The Genesis of the Atomic Bomb

– includes the nuclear weapon histories of many countries

Nuclear Weapons Archive

. Comparative table of the histories and arsenals of the five NPT-designated nuclear powers as of 1993.

NDRC Nuclear Notebook: Nuclear pursuits

Timeline- from Atomic Discovery to the 2000s (decade)

NuclearFiles.org

A comprehensive history of nuclear weapons, including Pre, During, and Post Cold War

NuclearFiles.org

Nevada Desert Experience

Ariel E. Levite, , Proliferation Papers, Paris, Ifri, Winter 2009

"Heading for the Fourth Nuclear Age"

– located in Albuquerque, New Mexico; a Smithsonian Affiliate Museum

The National Museum of Nuclear Science & History (United States)

.

Time-Lapse Map of All 2053 Nuclear Explosions on Planet Earth (7 Countries, 1945 – 1998) – Video (14:25)

For more on the history of nuclear proliferation see the Woodrow Wilson Center's Nuclear Proliferation International History Project website.

History of Nuclear Proliferation

Various documents about the US nuclear weapons history

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