Every August the memory of the black suns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki arises. Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. Nagasaki, August 9, 1945. Hundreds of thousands dead. Did Harry Truman, the American president at the time, at least have the excuse of not knowing which stirrup he was putting his foot in?
We still live in the age of nuclear hell. The destruction of the entire planet has never been so close to our fingertips. Yet we pretend to ignore it.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) stated this summer, based on the work of 17 researchers, that “we are currently living in one of the most dangerous periods in history”. The director of SIPRI’s weapons of mass destruction programme, Wilfred Wan, called on world leaders to take a step back so that they do not push us into the abyss.
Nine countries possess nuclear weapons, capable of reducing life on Earth to pulp several times over. Last year, as wars were being waged in Ukraine and Palestine — while deadly conflicts in Syria, Nagorno-Karabakh, Yemen, Congo, Myanmar and elsewhere went largely unnoticed — spending on nuclear weapons increased by 13 percent, according to a report by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
The nuclear military industry is thriving. It operates on the basis of annual expenditures, the cumulative total of which now exceeds the staggering sum of 91 billion dollars. For the nine countries armed to the teeth, this amounts to an outflow of 250 million dollars every day to pamper missiles.
The United States and Russia each have an arsenal of more than 5,000 nuclear weapons. And now President Putin is announcing, to anyone who will listen, that his country will produce more. China, for its part, is doing the same, although in a less thunderous manner. Kim Jong-un, the leader so beloved by his advertising departments, is multiplying the production of missile launchers in little Korea as if they were pea shooters. In this race towards the worst, should we be reassured by the fact that the United States is one step ahead?
It is worth remembering that the most serious dangers we now face are all the more so because of their invisibility. We are slaughtering the planet, as if there were no reason to suspect that we are going to die there too. At a time when everyone is gloating over the issue of climate change, can we imagine anything worse than the nuclear threat?
Of course, there are always bright minds who tell us that military nuclear power should not be confused with that of which industry is the repository. There is a slippery line of reasoning here, something outrageous to reason. Whether humanity is swept away by a missile or a supposedly harmless civilian power plant, what difference does it make, really? Think of this potential bomb that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine now represents. It is not just a comma in the history of the world. Nuclear “accidents”, after all, have been no shortage since the 1950s, including in Canada. What do you think of nuclear waste, such as that which is about to be stored near the Ottawa River, a tributary of the St. Lawrence River? How long will humanity escape the worst?
The nuclear power industry is on a roll, as if it were a reasonable solution to the planet’s ailments. The China General Nuclear Power Corporation, the main nuclear energy production company in the Middle Kingdom, now offers tourist tours of nine of its facilities, with a view to making their presence commonplace as well as encouraging their international expansion.
In Canada, AtkinsRéalis has just announced that the growth of this sector represents a new cash cow for it for 2024. The company, formerly known as SNC-Lavalin, speaks of “exceptional opportunities”, while highlighting an increase in its profits and revenues in this area. Ontario, by promising more nuclear power, is making people salivate. For his part, Quebec Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon does not miss an opportunity to say that we must think about reviving nuclear power, while the closure of Gentilly-2, a disaster from start to finish, risks having cost us at least 5 billion for its ridiculous lifespan.
Jeff Bezos, the billionaire whose “innovations” are hailed as inevitable progress, has embarked on a nuclear fusion project, an alternative to fission. According to the Financial Postthe Canadian company General Fusion received $20 million from two federal agencies, a colossal sum that is added to the purse of the former Amazon boss, who holds 75% of the marbles in this project.
Coincidence or not, Électricité de France turned to Amazon earlier this year to manage maintenance planning for French nuclear power plants. This partnership aims to digitize and save part numbers. Is it too much to worry about sensitive nuclear data coming under the control of private interests, whose influence promises to soon rival that of states?
When the management of nuclear energy, with all its cataclysmic implications, is delegated to private companies, we are not only selling technology, we are simply trading our future to the highest bidder.
How will we judge tomorrow the excesses of today, committed against the world as a whole?
Sometimes we react with all the intelligence we lack. Perhaps because our brain is crossed by the equivalent of 650 kilometers of blood vessels. On so many paths, it must be easy to lose one’s head, to the point of thinking like feet.
Anton Chekhov, in Uncle Vanyawondered how future generations would look at those who preceded them. “Those who will live a hundred years from now, two hundred years from now, will they remember us, will they even have a kind word for us?”