Dr. Strangelove Returns: Analyzing the New U.S. Nuclear Policy
Beyond Nuclear on Sputnik Radio's "Loud & Clear."
On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Greg Mello, the executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, and Kevin Kamps, the Radioactive Waste Watchdog at the organization Beyond Nuclear.
The Trump Administration announced its Nuclear Posture Review, which calls for a major upgrade in the US nuclear arsenal, including more new nuclear weapons, and smaller tactical nukes that would be used on the battlefield. The policy is a violation of longstanding international agreements and could lead to a new arms race.
Listen to the audio recording, which begins at the 2 minute 40 second mark, and ends at the 27 minute 7 second mark. The written transcript is also posted at that link.
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During this interview, Vasili Arkhipov was mentioned. In addition to Stanislav Petrov (a Soviet nuclear missile warning system duty officer who is credited with saving the world by detecting a malfunction in 1983, and courageously averting nuclear war), Arkhipov has been credited with saving the world. He single-handedly prevented the launch of a Soviet submarine's nuclear-tipped torpedo during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. That launch could well have sparked all-out thermonuclear war between the United States and Soviet Union.
In 2017, Arkhipov was posthumously awarded the inaugural Future of Life Award.
Much less known is that Arkhipov also survived a nuclear sub reactor accident in 1961 that came very close to a meltdown. The radiation doses suffered by the nuclear sub's engineering crew resulted in multiple radiation poisoning deaths. Other crew members -- likely even Arkhipov himself -- ultimately succumbed to radation-induced cancer and other maladies.