Trident Renewal

James Gray Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Nuclear weapons have no utility. They cannot be used to advance any cause or secure any territory without the most devastating effects. The true believers present them as benign, silently gliding under the oceans or quietly snoozing in bunkers doing no harm, but it is not so. Some 18 months ago, a book called “Command and Control” was published detailing more than 1,000 nuclear accidents in the United States. Its author, Eric Schlosser, spent six years researching and submitting freedom of information requests. The results are terrifying and would be unbelievable if they had not come directly from official military sources. Historic accidents range from the proverbial spanner being dropped, causing a fuel leak, leading to a missile explosion, and a warhead being blown off, to a nut being left off a bomber, resulting in the engine catching fire and the fire only failing to reach the bomb bay due to the prevailing wind. Today, there is far more dependence on computer technology than on the mechanical, but there is no consolation in that. In 2008, an engineer went to a Minuteman silo, realised that there had been a fire and that the fire alarm had failed. Luckily, the fire burned itself out before it got to the missile. In 2010 at the same base, online contact was lost for an hour with 50 Minuteman missiles—a computer chip had come loose, but it could have been a cyber-attack.

Even more terrifying is the true story of Stanislav Petrov, now portrayed in a film called “The Man Who Saved The World.” Petrov was a colonel in charge of a Soviet nuclear early warning centre when an alarm went off signifying that five American nuclear missiles were heading towards the USSR. Petrov took it on himself to refuse to follow protocol and did not send the signal for a retaliatory strike. He believed that the alarm had to be a malfunction, and he was right, but just suppose somebody else had been on duty. Had a nuclear exchange occurred at that time, we know that the world’s eco-system would have been destroyed. Today we are told that nuclear arsenals are smaller, which is true, and that the world is a safer place, which is not true.

In 2007-08, several groups of scientists published new and peer-reviewed research on the effects of a regional exchange of nuclear weapons, such as might occur between India and Pakistan. The firepower used for modelling purposes was 50 Hiroshima-sized bombs on each side, which represents just 0.03% of the explosive power of the current global arsenal.

We have known since 1945 of the immediate effects of nuclear weapons—blast, firestorms and radioactivity that would kill millions, but only those who are near the targets. This is what the scientists say of the indirect effects: about five megatons of black smoke would be produced and, as the smoke lifts into the stratosphere, it would be transported around the world. The climatic effects of this high layer of smoke would be unprecedented, plunging the planet into temperatures colder than the little ice age that began in the 17th century. Worldwide agriculture would be severely affected. A larger nuclear exchange, including that involving UK weapons, would result in a true nuclear winter, making agriculture impossible. Both scenarios show climate effects lasting more than a decade and up to 2 billion people dying of starvation.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

The right hon. Lady speaks with great passion and great authority on these matters. The question is whether she thinks that the awful scenario that she describes would be more or less likely if we did away with nuclear deterrents.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I will come on to suggest what the world community thinks about that. It is of course my opinion that we would be safer without nuclear weapons. If the hon. Gentleman were both to read the research on nuclear winters and the report of the accidents that have been recently published, he would realise that there is no safety in the possession of nuclear weapons, even if they are not used in anger.

It is instructive to look at how we view the world. We need to reflect on the deaths of those 17 people in Paris at the hands of terrorists. We were rightly outraged and right to mourn them, so how can it be that we are willing to contemplate the deaths of millions? Why do we have such moral certitude over the banning of chemical and biological weapons, land mines and cluster bombs but not nuclear weapons? It is also instructive to inquire how other countries and institutions view the nuclear weapon states such as Britain.