Courage or Perdition? The Fourteen Fundamental Facts of the Nuclear Age

Abstract

However distasteful it may be, nuclear weapons of the fission and fusion types have come to stay. Henceforth, they will be as much a part of human existence as rain and snow, morality and crime, the telephone and the airplane, pacifism and aggressiveness, freedom and tyranny, stupidity and wisdom. It is unlikely that this new invention can be undone except through the destruction of civilization itself. On the contrary, nucleonics sooner or later will provide the foundation of industrial civilization all over the globe. Given the anticipated increase in consumption of our energy resources, it appears that nuclear fuels, on a large scale, will have to be made available to industry within the life span of the present generation. Otherwise economic decline (and hence political catastrophe) must come about as the result of the gradual depletion of oil and coal deposits, the concurrent price rise of mineral fuels, the lack of a mineral energy basis in many countries, the rapidly rising demand for industrial goods, and the uninterrupted increase of population.