Nuclear Secrecy Quotes
This quotation represents a colossal failure of politicians to understand science and the way that it works. They assumed that the processes and methods were secrets that if kept secret, would prevent others from constructing an atomic bomb. The reality was that the most important “secrets” had emanated from Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and other published scientific papers. So any competent physicist knew immediately how the bomb worked. A triggering mechanism would need to be developed but that was just a complicated engineering project. The largest barrier was the supply of enough radioactive material with sufficient purity. That then (as today) took a lot of money and some time. But after the initial bomb, the secrets might speed things up but were not necessary. That is why the French and the Russians quickly developed their bombs, and why it did not take the Israelis long once the had decided to invest the resources. China, India and Pakistan did not need the secrets either when much later, they decided to develop nuclear weapons. With the atomic bomb, spying and obtaining secrets shorten the required time and reduce the cost, but are not necessary. This is why nuclear proliferation is so hard to stop.
There have been dozens of serious nuclear accidents almost all of which were withheld from the public and even many of the civilian scientists who were trying to make the bombs error proof, but who did not know the details of the kinds of human errors that were being committed. The motivations for the secrecy were multiple. There was the usual one of saving the military from embarrassment which is typical throughout the government where they have the right to classify information. But another reason was the military leaders did not want the civilians to regain control. See {637984}. Perhaps most important, they did not want to provide ammunition for the anti-nuclear movement to have the incidents with which they could scare the public and erode public support for a large nuclear weapons program.
