BBC Nuclear Coverage

[DominiConnor]

Had News 24 on the morning of the parliamentary vote on nuclear weapons.
The BBC had an informed speaker.
Annie Lennox.
Yes, really.
Apparently, "we live in a democracy" which she and the BBC interpret as interviewing not very bright celebs about their views. She had some I think, hard to tell she was against nukes, for no reason she could articulate.
Then we had celebrity shopkeeper Anita Roddick, who mumbled some strident, but not very thoughtful remarks.
There are lots of things to say like the truly vast cost, risk of it being built by incompetent British manufacturers causing a horrible accident, or balanced by the threat from Iran, or the increasing number of nuclear states.
But instead we got celebs.
Would we see a celeb for nukes ?
Of course not this is the BBC.

Celebs aren't for nukes as it isn't trendy.

Personally, I'm not sure. I can't help thinking of a quote I heard during the weak - "can we really afford not to have this insurance policy?".

Following on from wotsisface out of Blur on the Iraq war, I suppose.

Guess this is what we (general populace) deserve for being so thoroughly apathetic.

Today Programme (Radio 4) had Des Browne the Defence Secretary. One of his justifications was that it maintained the UK defence industry. It seems a lot of money to keep Barrow in Furness in employment. I would like to know why we need a replacement - have the subs worn out?

Lilymaid, they're probably all out of warranty.

You know what no one else is asking, if Iran can supposedly have their nuclear weapons up and running pretty much soon after having nuclear power stations as our government and la Bush would have us believe why will ours take years? 'Cause we already have the know how.

So Iran isn't as much of a threat as they are having us believe then?

Thought not.

Weapons of mass destruction. See instead of sticking them in Faslane I suggests a port closer to the city of London. Who would be for them then?

I don't beliebe the
Indeed, the first nukes were knocked up very quickly, but not cheaply. The first nuke was easily the most expensive thing ever built by man, possibly by a factor of 10 or even 50.

You can actually build a "nuke" in a matter of months if all you want is a dirty bomb to take out Baghdad, and deliver it using an Airbus on a one way trip.
A lot of money goes into systems that stop some nutter pressing the big red button that says "do not press this button". Hardly likely to be used in Iran...

However, the big problem is delivery system, not the warhead. The design & build process for subs and missiles is very long, not helped by the fact that the deeply unattractive pay for engineers means we don't have the skills, and will need to acquire them. For vote buying purposes it's necessary for the subs to appear to be "British", but will have extensive American and possibly French subsystems.

A big part of the cost of our nukes is down to the desire for a first strike capability. To take out enemy launch sites you need precision and reliability.
The other big lump is building stuff that can survive a major nuclear attack such as could be launched against Britain by Russia or America.

Why not take the Japanese route?

The official Japanese government line on nukes is something like:

"We of Japan are the one nation to have experienced nuclear warfare. As such we abhor the use of nukes, and will possess no such weapons"Unless there are circumstances which seriously threaten us , e.g. North Korea scraping up a warhead or two; in which case we shall put our highly skilled engineers and rocket scientists to work on the 100 tons of high-grade plutonium we've stashed away inside a mountain. In a few months we'd have enough warheads to make most of Asia glow for 5000 years.

Obvious problem with this is that Britain values lawyers, stockbrokers and bankers far higher than engineers and scientists. Unless you want to use PFI to consume an enemy's economy from within, they're of limited use...

'There are lots of things to say like the truly vast cost, risk of it being built by incompetent British manufacturers causing a horrible accident, or balanced by the threat from Iran, or the increasing number of nuclear states.' Agree with this completely DC.

When you say 'can we really afford not to have this insurance policy' HD, what about the stockpile of nuclear weapons we have already? It is not like they don't work anymore. They can still kill people horribly and render habitats too toxic for life for decades/centuries. Why do we need to spend so much of our tax payers money on building new weapons? To keep up with the Jones's?

Kevlar the Japanese position is at variance with known facts. Nukes were used on a country that did not have them, twice. By 1945 Japan could not mount an aerial defence, much less retaliate even with conventional weapons.
We observe that nuclear N.Korea is treated with kid gloves, but non-nuclear Iraq got invaded.
China, Russia and America have all invaded non nuclear nations. Never even tried with a nuclear one.

As for the existing weapons they are quite old, and will simply stop working. Also, there are several attacks we might choose to make that need reliable kit. Firing a nuke at someone that fails to explode, or hits the wrong country is likely to make things worse.
If you assume an Iran-like situation where religious loonies have gotten hold of nuclear weapons, you need to hit the silos with some considerable precision. Although arty-greens talk of huge areas destroyed by nukes, the radius at which a vaguely well built bunker would be destroyed is quite small.

As for Britain valuing bankers more than engineers it's a little more complex than that. The media and government do indeed do so.
Ironically bankers really like science grads. I'm not sure quite what my clients would say if I sent them a graduate in French, but they'd either laugh or be very very rude.
A senior HR at one large firm is really quite sad that although she has good arty academic background ,there's no way the bank would ever hire her to get anywhere near the money.
A big reason we have such a strong banking sector is that numerate grads would be insane to join manufacturing industry.

Blimey, I'm in agreement with DominiConnor. I need to go and have a lie-down.

'Although arty-greens talk of huge areas destroyed by nukes, the radius at which a vaguely well built bunker would be destroyed is quite small.'
Have to go out and will have to address your other points later DC, but couldn't let this go. Just made me LOL.

ruty, honestly, i don't really know the answer.

My feeling is that with internation terrorism being such a fluid enemy (or friend, depending on who we support this week), nuclear weapons are redundant. BUT I think that there's a fear that if we don't have them, we will be open to bullying from nations that do. How real that may be, I have no idea.

With or without them, we do need to stop bum chumming with the US. It's killing what little good will we still have with other countries.

"risk of it being built by incompetent British manufacturers causing a horrible accident"

I know some damned good British Engineers. This repetitious claim of yours, DC, is not only rude but down right false.

Oh, okay, so you did sustitute "manufaturer" for "engineer". But, it's the same old tune.

Actually Eleusis I am a damned good British engineer. I've done stuff like been hired by IBM & Microsoft to tell them what's wrong with their stuff, been on the review cycle for the Intel Pentium and directed th contstruction of secure wide area networks for the government. For a few years I wandered the world dispensing engineering wisdom at a non trivial daily rate.
I am also mildly competent at English...

I said "manufacturer", not engineer. We have almost no one competent in the managment of engineering, except a few foreigners sent here.

But I am a historical relic. The quality of people going into engineering courses has been in monotonic decline for years. When I went up to study, they were sniffy about which science subjects you had grade A's in. Now you can in into many courses with two C's of a considerably dumbed down A level.

Feel free to argue with me ruty, but it's a straight fact that even the biggest nukes can't reliably destroy a bunker unless they are quite close. As a very very rough approximation to get twice the sure kill radius you need 8 times as much yield, to get three times you need 27 times as much.
You should look carefully at the pictures you've seen of nuclear explosions. Where are the craters ?
They exist but are a lot smaller than you might think.

no DC i was laughing about the shocking lack of regard you and others seem to have of the impact of nuclear weapons on people and habitats. People who do are You are talking about bunkers and craters, legitimate arguments when talking about conventional weapons perhaps. I am talking about cancer, deformities over generations, habitats rendered radioactive and useless for a very long time. I do believe in a scale of immorality when it comes to weapons. All weapons are immoral, but nuclear weapons as i see them are the most immoral of all. As you probably know, Einstein regretted his part in encouraging the US to do atomic research, and Rotblatt resigned from the Manhattan Project on humanitarian principles.

Developing a whole new generation of nuclear weapons is totally against our non proliferation treaty, a treaty China, France and Russia jave also signed. If you argue that circumstances have changed, that begs the question what the hell are these treaties for as anyone can change their mind at any point. It is totally hypocritical to ask Iran and others to stop making nuclear weapons when we are spending billions on a whole new generation of nukes.

And what about the old ones? What is going to happen to them? more toxic radioactive waste to be dealt with. Oh don't worry, we can just put them in glass boxes and dump them in the sea. They are quite safe. Anyway don't listen to me, I'm just an arty green type. God help our children, because we certainly are not.

[I meant people who do are labelled arty green types.] FFS.

It's redundant of you to call yourself an arty green type. You cite treaties with specatacular inaccuracyh, and confuse supersitious emoting with thought.

We are not "asking" Iran to do anything, we are threatening them. Totally different thing.
Iran is run by religious loonies, our nuke may be necessary to take them out before they use them. If they use them on a civilised country Iran moves to becoming somewhere between a runour and a text book example of evolution on a large scale.
Imagine Tony Blair decided that nukes were bad and abandoned them.
Do you really think that Iran is going to take a moral lead from Tony Blair ?
Really ?
Can you see mullahs lauding his moves to peace, and spitting upon their nuclear programme ?

I love the idea of you citing Einstein, selectively. Are you going to embrace all his societal ideas ? Do you even know what they were ? Care to enumerate the most common "cause" cited in the many death threats he received ?

You are simply and flatly wrong about the proliferation treaty both in fact and intention. It was desinged to keep other nations out of our club, no more, no less.

i confuse superstitious emoting with thought? This is the man who describes all Churches as hotbeds of child rape. PMSL. Why, because I call nuclear weapons immoral? Because i don't like the fact that they cause cancer and genetic damage? PMSL again. You, on your numerous occasions posturing on MN, have stated your opinions with no regard for the truth whatsoever, and ignore people when they try to correct you. What was it again? George bell [not an Archbishop BTW, but bishop of Chichester] supported the Nazis? Funny how you'd never heard of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, his close friend and ally. I could go on and on.

I don't agree with you about the proliferation treaty. And I'm not the only one. And you may be good with numbers DC but you sure as hell aren't any good with words.

and you seriously think 'taking out' [love the schoolboy computer game geek language] Iran with a nuke may be warranted and morally supportable? Bloody hell, you really depress me.

Oh don't get me started.

The BBC is beyond biased.

Ruty, as I said emoting is not analysis, calling me a geek because I've bothered to check the facts makes you look more bad than me.
You shoild try understanding something, doesn't matter what, it would give you a new perspective. Start small though. You may think understanding and knlwedge are geeky, but you are falling into a stereotype here.

I wouldn't take out Iran in any scenario near where we currently are. But things could get worse. Being a geek I've read history, and have seen what happens to countrie that couldn't fighr back, the word "colony" come to mind as does "victims of atrocity", and of coure "who ? did they used to be country then ?"

What would you do if Iran threatened us.
Get the international community to stop them taking part in international sport ?

ok, read very slowly DC. I called you a geek because of the language you used, because you used the phrase 'taking out'. Which facts have you actually bothered to check, pray? Do tell. Much better to detail them instead of resorting to personal insults all the time, makes you look worse than me. I am not going to get into an argument with you about whether there would be a time in the future when it would be legitimate to 'nuke' Iran. I find the language you use incredibly naive and paranoid, reminiscent of some old Commie hating git going on about the Cold War. Of course Iran is problematic, but if you think nuking is the answer you are not just a bit irritating you are a bit insane [as well as a bit ignorant of your own gaps in knowledge and intellectual shortfalls] If you want to detail the 'facts' that you are so knowledgeable about please do so but forgive me if i don't come back to you tonight. I would rather do something enjoyable.

DC, I thought you were Irish? And now you claim to be a "damned good British Engineer".

If you could elaborate on what "stuff" you worked on at IBM and Microsoft, I might be persudaed to amend my opinion of you.

What discipline of engineer are you?

I'm of Irish descent, both north and south.
One legend has it that an ancestor of mine threw Rockall at Scotland... But was educated in Britain, so that makes me a British engineer.
IBM & MS were developing a successor to Windows. Oh the fun we had. If you are an IT person, then you might be impressed with the fact that my bug reports were so compelling that MS actually admitted to them, and fixed them.
If not then that probably sounds minor.

Hmmm... mildly impressed. But, I still think you are Irish.