This article describes the geological origin of uranium and related actinides from the time of the primordial singularity also known as the 'Big Bang', focussing on their historical, sociological, civilian and military industrial aspects and applications, with additional material providing an astronomical and historical context to actinide nucleosynthesis.
Nuclear weapons pose the most acute existential threat to humankind and the biosphere. Both qualitatively and quantitatively, they are uniquely destructive. Their incendiary effects are likely to exact the greatest toll: the largest cause of acute casualties in nuclear war would be from fires; the greatest cause of long-term casualties would be agricultural collapse and global famine from decade-long worldwide cooling, darkening and drying under a blanket of millions of tons of sooty smoke from burning cities. Only about 2% of current nuclear weapons, exploded on cities, would abruptly cause ice age temperatures, putting over 2 billion people at risk of starvation in just the following 2 years. A nuclear war involving a substantial fraction of the global arsenal would decimate the vast majority of the human population, risk human extinction and that of many other species, and catastrophically disrupt the Earth systems on which the biosphere, including humans depend. The evidence on nuclear winter and famine is the most consequential scientific evidence of the nuclear age. This article reviews the history and status of research on the climate and food production impacts of nuclear war, draws lessons and describes new UN and WHO initiatives on nuclear war effects.
Over several decades, scientific research published in peer-reviewed journals has informed activists working for nuclear disarmament by describing and providing the evidence for the health and environmental damage nuclear weapons have inflicted, even when they are not used in war. During the Cold War of the 1970s and 1980s, books, research articles, and independent studies about the effects of nuclear weapons were published around the world. Nuclear disarmament campaigning based upon this scientific evidence and humanitarian concerns reached a peak during this period. In the mid-2000s, a renewed focus on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons emerged. All of the existing scientific evidence about the health and environmental impacts of nuclear weapons was gathered together and brought into the service of what would ultimately become the HINW (Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons) process, leading to the negotiation and adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in 2017. A new generation of activists, which recognizes the threat of nuclear war as intrinsically connected to the climate crisis, has emerged. A growing number of health and peace organizations have made explicit connections between the climate crisis, nuclear disarmament, and public health.
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