UN warns world faces highest level of nuclear risk in nearly four decades

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned that the world faces the highest level of nuclear risk in nearly four decades, with nearly 14,000 nuclear weapons stored around the world activated at the push of a button. For that called for their disappearance this Sunday, September 26, International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

Guterres recalled that already in the first resolution approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations, in 1946, was reflected the will “to eliminate the atomic weapons of the national armaments, as well as all the other weapons capable of causing collective destruction. important ”.

“Seventy-six years later, we have yet to achieve the goals of this resolution,” Guterres lamented in a message warning that “we face the highest level of nuclear risk in nearly four decades.” Add that “There are approximately 14,000 nuclear weapons stored in the world” and “it takes just the push of a button and hundreds of them are launched.”

While it is true that the total number of these types of weapons has declined for decades, Guterres fears that “States are qualitatively improving their arsenals” and signaling “a new arms race”.

“These weapons are not a problem of the past. Today, they continue to pose a threat. Despite our progress, humanity remains unacceptably close to nuclear annihilation, ”he warned.

However, Guterres acknowledged that there were also reasons for hope, such as the recent decision by Russia and the United States to extend the New START Treaty, which limits the number of strategic weapons between the two countries, as well. that the willingness to enter into a dialogue.

Another cause for hope is the entry into force in January of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. “The responsibility to build on these advances now rests with the Member States. The Conference of the Parties to the Review of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons provides an opportunity for all countries to take concrete steps to prevent the use of these weapons, and to eliminate them, once and for all, Guterres added. .

For the UN chief, the shadow of nuclear conflict cannot continue to cloud efforts to spur development, achieve sustainable development goals and end the COVID-19 pandemic. “It is time to put an end to this scourge forever, to eliminate nuclear weapons from our world and to open a new era of dialogue, trust and peace for all,” he concluded.

China is preparing hypersonic weapons

This Sunday, it was learned that a team of rocket scientists from China were working on a new type of hypersonic weapon designed to generate an intense electromagnetic pulse capable of annihilating the communication and power lines of ‘a range of 3,000 km., roughly the distance between the east coast of China and Guam.

Unlike ballistic missiles, it would remain in Earth’s atmosphere to bypass space-based early warning systems.while using active stealth technology to avoid detection by ground-based radar, according to the team of researchers at the Chinese Academy of Launcher Technology in Beijing.

And when the weapon explodes over the target area, no life will be in danger. On the contrary, the powerful electromagnetic waves produced “would cause the efficient combustion of the main electronic devices of the target’s information network within a radius of 2 kmEngineer Sun Zheng and his Chinese Academy co-researchers said in an article published this month in a national magazine titled Tactical missile technology.

Early Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) weapons required a nuclear warhead to generate pulse energy, limiting their applications, while the EMP hypersonic weapon would instead use chemical explosives, according to Sun’s team. The chemical explosion would compress an electrically charged magnet known as a “flux compression generator,” which would convert the energy of the shock into short but extremely powerful bursts of microwaves.

A high altitude non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse bomb is known to be heavy and bulky because it must carry a large number of batteries to store enough electricity to trigger the explosion. This type of bomb is usually dropped from an aircraft.

Sun and his co-researchers say one of the main advantages of your new weapon is that the enemy won’t know you are in your way: “When an object travels through the air at hypervelocity, the air molecules are ionized by heat and form a thin layer of plasma on the surface of the object. The plasma layer can absorb radar signals, but not all ”.

To achieve total camouflage, the weapon designed by Sun’s team would convert ambient heat (typically at temperatures above 1,000 degrees Celsius) into electricity, and use that electricity to power numerous plasma generators located in different areas. body of the missile, says SCMP reporter Stephen Chen. .

With information from Europa Press

KEEP READING: