Hiroshima To Fukushima
By Dr Arvind Kumar
August 6th, the anniversary of Hiroshima, should be a day of somber reflection, not only on the terrible events of that day in 1945, but also on what they revealed: that humans, in their dedicated quest to extend their capacities for destruction, had finally found a way to approach the ultimate limit. The Hiroshima tragedy was a catastrophe which brought to the world the birth of atomic weapons. This nuclear tragedy did not teach the world to stop all the nuclear production. Rather the opposite: the super powers and other small states moved to produce and engage in nuclear weapons’ production, proliferation. At the same time, this Hiroshima catastrophe was a big obstacle to any use of any atomic bombs, during all the Cold War years. Hiroshima kept the entire world wild awake during the Cold War period, to prevent any use of nuclear weapons again. And it has never been used again. The end of the Cold War set the entire world free from the fear of nuclear war. But the world is still in danger of some countries which can use the Bombs. Also, the world has still many nuclear bombs, and we want the entire world free from any nuclear bombs.
The Chernobyl accident was not enough to wake up the entire world to end nuclear energy. So the world needed a new catastrophe in Japan to wake up all the Japanese people and the rest of the world, from those dangers of nuclear accident and the danger of all the materials that had been produced from the use of nuclear energy. The catastrophe of Fukushima sent the world to demand freedom also from any use of nuclear energy. End all nuclear weapons in the world.
