Nuclear Worries

Big Picture Science

Science, Technology

4.6 • 986 Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2022

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The nuclear threat is back, and the Doomsday Clock is almost at midnight. How did we end up here again? In the 1930s, German physicists learned that splitting the nuclei of heavy atoms could release tremendous amounts of energy. Such theoretical ideas became relevant when WW II began. Today, we try to eliminate nuclear weaponry while exploiting the atom for peaceful uses, such as energy generation. But as the invasion of Ukraine shows, power plants can also be military targets. We lay out some of the questions that scientists and strategists are grappling with considering recent events. Guests: John Mecklin – Physicist, and Editor-in-Chief of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Robert Rosner – Physicist at the University of Chicago and a former chair of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientist’s Science and Security Board. Eric Schlosser – Journalist, author of “Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety.” Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast.
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0:36.0	The world is constantly changing and transforming.
0:39.0	Cut through some of the noise with What's New With Wired.
0:42.0	A podcast that goes in depth on the latest
0:44.9	news and technology and culture. Their award-winning journalism will help you make
0:49.6	sense of what's happening in the world. Listen to What's New With Wired wherever you get your podcasts.
0:55.8	That's What's New With Wired, wherever you get your podcasts. 40 years ago during the height of the Cold War, a nuclear exchange was a major fear for the Americans,
1:16.8	Russians, frankly the world.
1:18.8	There were a few ways it could happen, but it never did,
1:21.9	leading some to conclude that the strategy of mutually assured
1:25.2	destruction could keep nuclear Armageddon at bay. Well, Russia's invasion of Ukraine is
1:31.0	renewed anxieties about a nuclear confrontation in
1:34.0	frighteningly familiar ways as well as some new ones unique to the battlefield.
1:38.6	We've returned to a time of imagining the unimaginable. We will assess some of the nuclear threats
1:45.8	presented by the conflict in Ukraine and reflect on some scientific and
	...

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