Ban the Bomb Nobel Peace Prize Exhibition 2017 – ICAN

Exhibition texts A Titan II Missile in its silo at a former intercontinential ballistic missile site in Arizona, now the Titan Missile Museum. The Titan II was the largest and heaviest missile ever built by the United States. The missile was 31.3 m long and 3.05 m wide. It weighed 149,700 kg when fully fueled and had a range of 15,000 km. This is the last of 54 such missiles that were clustered in Arizona, Arkansas and Kansas during the Cold War; the rest have been destroyed. As seen from the Chinese side, a guard inside a sentry border post in North Korea, along a stretch of the border close to where experts suspect is a missile base at Yongjo-ri, said to be about 20 km inland from the border with the Chinese city of Linjiang. “Imagine if the only nuclear weapons remaining were the relics in our museums.” Mohamed ElBaradei - Nobel Lecture, Oslo, December 10, 2005

Although Nobel Peace Prize laureate a world we do not otherwise have access to: Mohammed ElBaradei’s words remain a dream, at border posts, in control rooms and on top many people and organizations are working to of missile silos. Sim Chi Yin’s unique series of turn them into reality. This year’s winner of the photographs named “Fallout” reflects people’s Nobel Peace Prize is one such driving force. experience of nuclear weapons – now and in the past. By putting the images from North Korea The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear and the US side by side, in diptychs, Sim Chi Weapons (ICAN) was awarded the 2017 Nobel Yin is looking for parallels – visual, historical, Peace Prize for its work to draw attention to factual, symbolic – between these landscapes, the catastrophic humanitarian consequences and she invites us to explore the situation in two of any use of nuclear weapons, and for its countries which stand opposed. ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons. Their slogan is Nuclear weapons represent a constant threat to “Ban the Bomb” and this is also the title of this humanity and all life on Earth. On August 6 and year’s Nobel Peace Prize Exhibition. ICAN works 9, 1945, the US dropped two atomic bombs over to persuade the world’s nation states and other the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. bodies to work together to stigmatize, prohibit The bombs killed hundreds of thousands of and eliminate every nuclear weapon on the planet. people, and injured many more. In connection with this year’s Peace Prize Exhibition, we We live in a world where the risk of nuclear have been allowed to borrow personal items weapons being used is greater than it has been that belonged to some of the victims of the for a long time. Together with this year’s Peace Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. A bag and Prize Exhibition photographer, Sim Chi Yin, an air-raid hood belonging to a 13-year-old we invite you to join us on a journey along the boy, a young student’s lunchbox, a rosary and a border between China and North Korea, and wristwatch that stopped at the exact moment the across six US states. With her sensitive and atomic bomb fell over the city. These personal perceptive eye, and equipped with a camera possessions bear witness to unimaginable human and a drone, photographer Sim Chi Yin reveals suffering and loss. “Hibakusha” means “bomb affected people” to achieve a world without nuclear weapons a in Japanese. Some of those who experienced new direction and new vigour. The organization and survived the attacks on Hiroshima and strives to encourage as many people as possible Nagasaki are still alive. Their voices can still be to engage in the fight against nuclear weapons. heard, and are important because they describe Inspired by ICAN’s efforts, we invite visitors to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of make their own contribution towards the goal a nuclear attack. In the series of photographs of a world free of nuclear weapons. taken by photographer Haruka Sakaguchi, entitled Project1945, we meet more than 40 A ban is possible. The dream can become reality. hibakusha. Read their stories and listen to their message for future generations. Director of Exhibitions, Liv Astrid Sverdrup The campaign for nuclear disarmament has been going on for more than 70 years. ICAN has breathed new life into this effort. In the essay “The Genie and its Bottle” that the historian The Peace Prize Exhibition is an annual tradition Alex Wellerstein has written especially for the and is the thirteenth in succession to be staged at the exhibition, he tells the story of the nuclear arms Nobel Peace Center. Work on the exhibition began race and the struggle for disarmament, now and the moment this year’s new Peace Prize laureate was in the future. announced October 6, and was completed December 11. The exhibition was officially opened December 11 The Norwegian Nobel Committee points out 2017. that ICAN has in the past year given the efforts A missile field in rural North Dakota, near the Canadian border which held Sprint and Spartan anti- ballistic missiles designed to intercept attacking nuclear warheads from Soviet missiles coming over the North Pole. These were deployed at the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex near Langdon, North Dakota, in the mid 1970s – a radar and anti-ballistic missile defence site which was shuttered by 1979. The city of Hyesan in North Korea’s Ryanggang province sits across the Yalu River from the Chinese border town of Changbai. Hyesan is 120 km from the Punggye-ri nuclear test site where North Korea is estimated to have conducted six underground nuclear tests since 2006. Japanese news reports in October (2017) said that a tunnel at the site had collapsed, killing as many as 200 North Koreans. Pyongyang’s latest nuclear test, on September 3 (2017) recorded as a 6.3-magnitude earthquake in North Korea’s northeast. The Genie and its Bottle By Alex Wellerstein

In the summer of 1945, not long before the “atomic energy” from atomic nuclei had been first atomic bomb was detonated, one of the contemplated for some time, the discovery that scientists who had worked to start the American the heavy uranium nucleus could be split at will, atomic bomb project appealed to a fellow possibly in huge cascades of chain reactions, scientist to oppose the use of nuclear weapons inspired many scientists globally towards the in combat. The other scientist declined: though idea that this science might have military and sympathetic with the idea that the use of atomic industrial applications. bombs in combat would put the world in a dangerous situation, he believed that, in some The fact that this discovery took place on sense, the best way to shock the world into the eve of World War II was not lost on the never using them again was to use them once, global scientific community. Between 1939 and in a horrible fashion. “I feel that I should do the 1941, scientists in France, Germany, Japan, the wrong thing if I tried to say how to tie the little Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the toe of the ghost to the bottle from which we United States of America all approached their just helped it escape,” he concluded.1 governments to suggest that the splitting of atomic nuclei might have military implications, Can the nuclear genie be returned to its bottle? and recommend its further study. In the United The question has occupied minds since well States and United Kingdom in particular, before the bottle had even been fully opened. refugee scientists from Europe pushed for For some, the fearsomeness of the technology nuclear weapons development, fearing that the meant, paradoxically, that the world would never Nazis might be developing their own. be rid of it. For others, the same fearsomeness would prompt them to take action to oppose it The Manhattan Project relentlessly. Only the United States, with aid from the United Kingdom and Canada, actually pursued a full Science and the Atomic Bomb program to develop nuclear weapons for use The atomic bomb is an unusual case of a in the war, however. The Manhattan Project, scientific discovery leading very rapidly to as the effort was known, began in 1942, as massive international consequences. With the a partnership between US civilian scientists, atomic bomb, the time between the discovery of major industrial corporations and contractors, nuclear fission, the ability to split heavy atoms at and the US Army. The result was that by the will and release their energy, and its first use in summer of 1945, three nuclear weapons had military combat was only 6.5 years. been detonated: the first, a test detonation called “Trinity,” took place in New Mexico in Nuclear fission was discovered by a team of July 1945; the second and third took place over scientists working in Berlin, Germany, and the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in Stockholm, Sweden, in December 1938. Though early August 1945. The ending of World War it was the culmination of several decades of II several days later was attributed by many work by scientists to probe the inner secrets of to the use of the atomic bombs, but ignited atoms, its discovery was considered a dramatic a fierce and long-standing debate about the surprise. While radiation, nuclear reactions, appropriateness of using weapons that primarily and the possibility of releasing vast stores of injured and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the name of military strategy.

1 Teller to Szilard, 2 July 1945 During the development of the atomic bomb, In the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, some scientists in the Manhattan Project groups of concerned scientists began forming had expressed reservations about its use. worldwide. They felt that because the atomic A committee of scientists working at the bomb was ultimately founded on scientific University of Chicago, chaired by the Nobel discovery and technical expertise, scientists Prize-winner James Franck, issued a report in could not morally or practically afford to be June 1945, which argued that the first public use absent from future policy conversations. The of the atomic bomb should be a “demonstration scientists feared that if these matters were in an appropriately selected uninhabited area”, left up to politicians and statesmen alone, a show of force without casualties. The fear, the proposed policy “solutions” risked being the report’s authors concluded, was that if the dangerously ignorant. For example, they feared first use of the weapon was against a city, it that politicians would be attracted by the idea of would “sacrifice public support throughout scientific secrecy as a means of controlling the the world, precipitate the race of armaments, atomic bomb. This would be in serious error, and prejudice the possibility of reaching an they argued, because the bomb was ultimately international agreement on the future control of based on “secrets of nature,” not military such weapons”. secrets, and any competent scientific team could re-discover the secrets of nature independently. Some of the thousands of scientists working to make the bomb supported this position, though In the United States, this political organization many clung to the idea that the use of such a of scientists, many of whom were veterans weapon might end the war early, and thus save of the Manhattan Project, was known as the many more lives (both military and civilian) than Scientists’ Movement. Organizations like the the alternative. Some indicated that because the Atomic Scientists of Chicago, the Federation of future possibilities of the weapon were even American Scientists, and other groups lobbied more fearsome — the prospect of weapons for domestic and international policies that they hundreds if not thousands of times more felt would decrease the chance of future nuclear powerful were already being considered, as was war. One group had a simple mantra: “No secret, the possibility of putting such weapons onto no defense, international control”. To believe in the the tips of ballistic missiles with great range and power of secrecy was dangerous; there would speed — the best course for the present might never be an easy technical defense against be to use the weapon in as ghastly a fashion nuclear weapons; and lasting security could as possible, to scare the world into a better only be found through international control direction going forward. mechanisms.

International Control These sentiments were heard, and did have What would a better direction look like? The some effect. A proposal for a very restrictive law answer put forward by many scientists working covering atomic research in the United States on the Manhattan Project, including those who was defeated, though the law that eventually wanted and did not want to use the atomic replaced it was arguably little better. It appeared bomb, was called “international control”. as though for every step forward, there were International control schemes varied in their several steps backwards as well. specifics, but were broadly attempts to not only limit the further spread of nuclear weapons, but, In early 1946, the United Nations created the to varying degrees, prohibit their possession and UN Atomic Energy Commission, a forum for use altogether. discussing concrete proposals for international control. The United States’ proposal, known as the Baruch Plan, laid out one possible By the mid-1950s, both the United States and scheme. The idea, in brief, was to ban the future the Soviet Union had achieved the development production of nuclear weapons. Compliance of thermonuclear weapons, the so-called with the agreement would be verified by hydrogen bomb. These were weapons measured international inspectors, who would be in the millions of tons (megatons) of TNT granted access to known or suspected nuclear equivalent (e.g., the first American H-bomb, technology sites, which would be kept under “Ivy Mike,” was over 10,000,000 tons of TNT tight safeguards and observation. The Soviet equivalent). This increase dramatically magnified Union, however, was not eager to open its their destructive potential. Whereas a Nagasaki- borders to outsiders, and was alarmed by the sized weapon could destroy a medium-sized provisions that would allow the United States city, or knock out the downtown area of a large to maintain its own nuclear stockpile until full city, a megaton-range weapon could destroy an proof was obtained that the Soviets had no entire metropolitan area. Furthermore, these nuclear ambitions of their own. weapons also dramatically increased the amount of downwind radiation, nuclear fallout, that The Soviet proposal, the Gromyko plan, was was generated. A single 10 megaton weapon little more than a call for the weapons to be detonated in Washington, D.C., for example, banned, with no provisions for verification could seriously contaminate an area of some or punishment for non-compliance. It would 84,000 km², and create lethally dangerous zones require the immediate disarmament of the hundreds of kilometers downwind from the United States, who were suspicious of Soviet original target. intentions. On rock of this mutual mistrust, international control foundered. And during Just as worrying, however, were the rapidly the negotiations, the United States continued to multiplying methods of weapons “delivery”; build, and test, its own nuclear weapons, while the technologies that transported the nuclear the Soviet Union was secretly racing ahead with warheads to their targets. Intercontinental ballistic its own nuclear weapon development. The worst missiles, for example, could drop hydrogen fears of the atomic scientists, that the world bombs on targets thousands of kilometers away, would enter into a dynamic of mutual fear, and at speeds many times faster than the speed secret arsenals, and the possibility of nuclear of sound, providing only minutes of warning, annihilation, appeared to be coming true. if any. Submarines with nuclear warheads could lurk just offshore, hidden but capable of massive Expanding Arsenals destruction. And smaller nuclear weapons, Over the course of the 1940s and 1950s, the capable of being launched out of cannons or nuclear landscape became increasingly varied dropped by fighter planes, were also developed, and precarious. In 1949, the Soviet Union threatening to blur the boundaries between detonated its first nuclear weapon. The United conventional war and nuclear war. Kingdom did so in 1952, and France in 1960. More troublingly, the technology of the Tens of thousands of individual weapons were weapons themselves diversified in just the ways produced, mostly by the United States and the predicted in 1945. The weapons of World War Soviet Union, over the course of the Cold War. II were physically large, needed to be dropped The total explosive power in the United States by an airplane, and had explosive power arsenal peaked at over 20,000 megatons in 1960. measured in the thousands of tons (kilotons) of By comparison, the total amount of explosives TNT equivalent (e.g., the Nagasaki bomb was used in World War II, including the atomic 20,000 tons of TNT equivalent). attacks, was only around 2 megatons — an explosive force capable of being carried by a modest ballistic missile during the Cold War. Fortunately, the weapons were not used in anger. dispersion of nuclear weapons was done It was more than simple deterrence, or the threat secretly, sometimes without even the full of retaliation, that kept this from occurring. knowledge of the host nations. Over the course of the 1940s and 1950s, a “nuclear taboo” developed internationally, Allies and enemies alike found the dispersion of pushed by both political leaders and the massed nuclear weapons alarming. The Soviet Union, ranks of citizens worldwide. This “taboo” was in particular, was greatly disturbed by American a belief that nuclear weapons should not be intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Turkey, used, even if they had to exist — they were not just over its border. In an effort to “even the merely “weapons of war,” but technologies that odds,” the USSR attempted to place its own presented novel and potentially revolutionary intermediate-range missiles in Cuba. The tense moral and political problems. stare-down that followed American discovery of these efforts, the Cuban Missile Crisis, brought Movements Against the Bomb the world perilously close to nuclear war. In Nuclear weapons had been contentious since their the wake of the crisis, both the United States creation, and political movements to control their and the Soviet Union committed themselves development and use had begun in the 1940s. to de-escalation and increased communication But it was not until the 1950s that many of these between two states. movements began to gain mainstream political appeal, as the rapid growth of nuclear arsenals International movements against the possession, around the world was seen as representing an ever use, and testing of nuclear weapons emerged in increasing potential nuclear risk. the 1950s. After the testing of a large hydrogen bomb by the United States in the Marshall The 1950s appeared to open up possibilities Islands in 1954 resulted in the radiological of collaboration and cooperation between contamination of a massive swath of the Pacific the United States and the Soviet Union. The Ocean, and the introduction of radiation into Atoms for Peace program, launched by the the Japanese supply of tuna fish, a dedicated United States in 1953, served as a forum for the peace movement emerged in the country, tying global interchange of scientific information, the experiences of the victims of Hiroshima an opportunity for declassification and and Nagasaki (the hibakusha) to the modern dissemination of “peaceful” and “civilian” threats posed by nuclear arms. Nations who nuclear technology (such as medical isotopes did not possess nuclear weapons, but realized and civilian nuclear reactors). In 1957, the they would share in the contamination that International Atomic Energy Agency2 was would result from their use, urged the United created as an autonomous agency affiliated with States and Soviet Union to find peaceable the United Nations, originally tasked with the solutions to their disagreements. Citizens of the role of disseminating and promoting peaceful nuclear powers also lobbied their governments nuclear technology. to disarm. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, formed in the United Kingdom But these were also times of rising tensions. in 1957, united the semaphore signals for Through the 1950s and early 1960s, the United “N[uclear]” and “D[isarmament]” into a potent States placed nuclear weapons, officially under symbol that still exists today as the universal its control, at numerous sites around the world. symbol for peace. Airbases with nuclear bombs, or intermediate- range nuclear missiles, were located in over The testing of nuclear weapons, and the a dozen European and Asian nations. This radioactive fallout that accompanied them, became a particularly potent rallying point for 2 Nobel Peace Prize 2005 A factory, perhaps making cement, continues production into the night in Manpo, Chagang Province, North Korea, photographed from across the Yalu River from close to the northeastern Chinese city of Ji’an, Jilin province. About 35 km inland from Manpo is Kangye, the center of North Korea’s munitions industry and probably where the centrifuges for nuclear arms are built. This was the desk of a launch commander in a control center which could fire a Titan II Missile tipped with a 9 megaton thermonuclear warhead – the largest warhead ever deployed on an ICBM by the United States. There was a “No Lone Zone” rule here, meaning there were always at least two members of the crew present. If they received orders to launch a missile, they would each have to turn a launch key at exactly the same time. Once their keys were turned, the missile took 58 seconds to launch and 25 to 30 minutes to reach its target which could be 9,700km away. Crew members were never told where the missiles were targeted at. That launch order never came. This site, operational from 1963 to 1982, is now a museum. those who opposed the arms race. The rise approach allowed for exploratory discussions of of detectable radioactivity globally furthered ideas, treaties, and weapons limitations proposals anxieties about the dangers of such testing. in far less politicized contexts. Campaigns to increase public awareness of the fallout issue, including speeches, articles, and The late 1960s and early 1970s saw a succession debates by the Nobel-Prize winning chemist of arms control treaties negotiated and signed. Linus Pauling3, dramatically increased the The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 prohibited the number of American citizens who opposed militarization of space, and the introduction further atmospheric nuclear testing. of nuclear weapons into space. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (1972) put the first hard In 1963, the United States, Soviet Union, and limitations on the number and types of strategic United Kingdom, along with many non-nuclear nuclear weapons deployed by the United States states, signed a Partial Test Ban Treaty which and the Soviet Union. The Anti-Ballistic Missile banned further testing of nuclear weapons in Treaty (1972) limited anti-weapons systems that the atmosphere, underwater, or in outer space. threatened to destabilize the strategic balance, This did not halt nuclear testing, but it moved and the Biological Weapons Convention (1972) it underground, where radioactive releases were ostensibly removed one category of “weapons less common, and the testing of very large of mass destruction” from stockpiling. nuclear weapons was made more difficult. While this represented a benefit to public health, the The most consequential treaty, however, was removal of looming mushroom clouds meant probably the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that nuclear testing became a harder issue to (NPT) of 1968. It was the result of a decade’s rally public support around. lobbying by the international community, notably the Republic of Ireland, for a treaty Non-Proliferation and Arms Control that would prohibit the further spread of While there were still popular movements for nuclear weapons and, ideally, serve as a practical disarmament, little progress was made in this basis for true disarmament. After the People’s direction at the policy level through the 1960s. Republic of China detonated its first bomb Instead, a separate approach, known as “arms in 1964, it became apparent to the United control”, emerged. One of the pioneering States and the Soviet Union that even relatively organizations in this respect was the Pugwash poor and disorganized states (as the People’s Conferences on Science and World Affairs4, Republic of China was considered at the time) which convened meetings of international could develop nuclear weapons, and that this scientists to discuss technical issues relating to was neither in their interests nor in the world’s the control of nuclear armaments. interests.

The essential idea behind the Pugwash meetings The NPT was conceived as a bargain between was what is today called “track II diplomacy”. the nuclear powers and the non-nuclear weapons The meetings were ostensibly unofficial, not states. The nuclear powers that signed the treaty sponsored by state governments, and thus could pledged to not give nuclear weapons technology take place “scientist to scientist” without the to states that did not already have it. Non- posturing and political limitations that came in nuclear weapons states agreed to forego nuclear discussions between diplomats. In practice, these weapons technology, in exchange for which barriers, especially with Soviet scientists, were they were to be guaranteed the right to develop never quite so simple to remove, but the overall peaceful, civilian nuclear technology (e.g., nuclear power and nuclear medicine). Though 3 Nobel Peace Prize 1962 the treaty codified the possession of nuclear 4 Nobel Peace Prize 1995 weapons by five states (the USA, USSR, United generation of global citizens to the sorts of Kingdom, France, and the People’s Republic of concerns that had not been acutely felt since the China), it also required them to pursue “in good 1960s. Groups like International Physicians for faith” efforts that would lead to the “cessation the Prevention of Nuclear War5 emphasized, in of the nuclear arms race at an early date and terms understandable by the general public, the to nuclear disarmament.” The treaty would terrible physical, medical, and environmental require renewal every five years, thus giving the effects that would come from the use of nuclear non-nuclear states an opportunity to audit the weapons. Nuclear fear was back, and protests progress of the nuclear powers towards this end. against nuclear weapons spread around the The International Atomic Energy Agency would globe. modify its role to become a nuclear “watchdog”, monitoring compliance with the treaty by the These fears, however, appear to have driven the non-nuclear states. leaders of the superpowers towards the serious possibility of nuclear disarmament, perhaps for Not every nuclear power signed the NPT during the first time since the bomb had been invented. the Cold War. Both France and the People’s In discussions at Reykjavik, Iceland, American Republic of China protested, on the basis President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader that the treaty would infringe their national Mikhail Gorbachev6 discussed bold ideas sovereignty. (Both would go on to sign it after about the rapid disarmament of their arsenals. the end of the Cold War). And many non- The sticking point, in the end, was Reagan’s nuclear states, desiring to keep their options insistence on deploying the Strategic Defense open, did not sign the treaty immediately, either. Initiative, a ballistic-missile defense system that Several states rejected the treaty, proclaiming he claimed would make the world safe for all, that it was creating a world of nuclear “haves but that Gorbachev worried would destabilize and have-nots”, enshrining a fundamental the world and spur on new arms races. inequity into international law. India, Israel, Pakistan, and South Africa, in particular, When the Berlin Wall suddenly came down refused to sign the treaty, and all four eventually in 1989, and the Soviet Union disintegrated developed nuclear arsenals of their own. But on in 1991, the world was, on the whole, more the whole, the NPT, while acknowledged as far hopeful about nuclear weapons than it had ever from perfect, is generally credited with reducing been before. Both the United States and Russia the number of new nuclear nations, and creating made dramatic cuts in their nuclear arsenals, a framework through which proliferation and and a new era of cooperation appeared to be disarmament questions could be addressed at hand. Almost all of those countries which directly. had hitherto held out against the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty would soon sign and ratify The End of the Cold War it. In 1991 South Africa became the first state If the 1970s was a period of arms control and to renounce and dismantle its own nuclear détente, the 1980s was once again a period of arsenal. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, uncertainty and possibility. A second Cold War signed in 1991, imposed further reductions on period emerged, with new arms races, heated the superpower arsenals. Nuclear testing by rhetoric, and the ever-present possibility of both superpowers had stopped by 1992, and a accidental nuclear war. Proxy conflicts, such as Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, signed in 1996, the Soviet-Afghan War, ignited fears of nuclear sought to enshrine this practice permanently. escalation, while the basing of new intermediate- However, its failure to attract the support of range American nuclear weapons in Europe became an issue of major international concern. 5 Nobel Peace Prize 1985 The 1983 “Soviet war scare” introduced a new 6 Nobel Peace Prize 1990 several mandatory signatories, and a lack of pledged that his country would take “concrete ratification meant it never went into effect. steps towards a world without nuclear weapons,” and try to “reduce the role of nuclear weapons But the 1990s also brought with it new in our national security strategy, and urge others concerns, lurking in the background. The to do the same”. Turning the rhetoric into collapse of the Soviet Union had left a decaying reality has proved more difficult. The United nuclear infrastructure in its former component States and Russia continue to possess arsenals states. Soviet nuclear weapons were dispersed in numbering thousands of weapons each (and Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus, and careful many other states maintain arsenals that are each agreements were negotiated to transfer them in the hundreds of weapons). In addition, many to the Russian Federation. Russia had its own states have embarked on extremely expensive difficulties, as its economy plunged chaotically, “modernization” programs to improve the and the security of its nuclear assets was thrown capabilities and reliability of their Cold War into question. American aid was given to stockpiles. increase Russian nuclear security, and purchase surplus Russian plutonium for conversion into Disarmament Now and in the Future civilian nuclear fuel, with the goal of reducing The work of “putting the genie back in the the possibility of nuclear theft, diversion, and bottle” has been going on now for over seventy possibly terrorism. years. There are many philosophies as to how to approach it, each the product of different In 1998, both India and Pakistan tested a series eras and different movements. Arms control of nuclear weapons, and came precariously close advocates have tended to take disarmament as to war. India had detonated a “peaceful” nuclear a long-term, hopeful goal. In the short term, weapon in 1974, but its 1998 tests were of a they say, efforts should be devoted to reducing clearly military nature; Pakistan had long been international dependence on nuclear weapons, known to have a nuclear program, and probably putting limits on the spread and development of had a nuclear capability as early as the mid- weapons systems, and encouraging policies that 1980s, but had until that point kept it largely would decrease the risk of nuclear war even if under wraps. The possibility that nuclear war the weapons still existed. could explode in South Asia brought with it not only the possibility of millions of local deaths, Those who advocate total disarmament in but of climatic consequences — “nuclear the shorter term, however, have viewed these winter” — that would possibly result in global approaches as enshrining nuclear weapons as famines. an essential part of the international order. Frustration with the pace of disarmament, and Concerns about nuclear proliferation continued even skepticism that disarmament was occurring through the 2000s. A “black market” in in a meaningful sense at all, also appears to have nuclear technology, notably uranium-enriching driven a wedge between the nuclear powers and centrifuges, emerged out of Pakistan, leading to the non-nuclear signatories to the NPT. At a proliferation allegations against Iran, Libya, and time when many nations of the world, including North Korea. North Korea itself withdrew from the United States, Russia, and China, appear to the NPT in 2003, and detonated the first of be embarking on expensive “modernization” several nuclear tests in 2006. and upgrade programs for their nuclear forces, the argument that the NPT will “eventually” In 2009, US President Barack Obama7 gave a lead to disarmament has seemed increasingly speech in Prague, Czech Republic, in which he unlikely to many.

7 Nobel Peace Prize 2009 A growing movement has emerged in the 21st control measures. But even its critics have been century again calling for total disarmament, impressed by ICAN’s ability to win international not arms control, and the banning of nuclear support, and it will be up to the future to judge weapons. The International Campaign to the long-term effect of the Treaty. Abolish Nuclear Weapons8, an organization created in 2007, embodies this latter-day Can the genie, eventually, be put back into its approach. ICAN was launched initially by bottle? Should it be? If not, can it be limited or International Physicians for the Prevention constrained? Experts, statesmen, and ordinary of Nuclear War as a major rallying point for citizens of the world have a dramatic range of non-governmental organizations in dozens views on this topic. But several common themes of countries. Over a decade, the ICAN emerge time and again when looking at this effort continued to grow and spread to other history. The risk of nuclear war can change, for countries, and to bring more organizations into better or worse, quite rapidly. Groundswells of their campaign. ICAN sought various means public opinion can, to various degrees, influence to stigmatize and draw attention to nuclear these changes. Many different methods have weapons, including identifying ways in which been proposed, and used, to approach the investment portfolios supported companies that problem of reducing the risk. Ultimately, the aided in the production of nuclear weapons. weapons were created by people — and people Their campaign also aimed to emphasize the can, if they so desire, un-create them. humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons, and encourage a belief that these issues were Alex Wellerstein is a historian of science and ones that could be realistically tackled by grass- an assistant professor at the Stevens Institute roots organizations, not merely delegated to of Technology, in New Jersey. He runs the blog government officials. Restricted Data.

The culmination of their efforts so far was Selected Bibliography the crafting of a Treaty on the Prohibition of Braithwaite, Rodric. Armageddon and paranoia: The nuclear Nuclear Weapons. Modeling their work on the confrontation. London, UK: Profile Books, 2017. International Campaign to Ban Landmines9, De Groot, Gerard. The bomb: A life. Cambridge, Mass.: ICAN gradually built support for what was Harvard University Press, 2005. considered by both friends and foes to be a Hoffman, David E. The dead hand: The untold story of the Cold War arms race and its dangerous legacy. New York, NY: radical idea. The Treaty is a comprehensive Doubleday, 2009. prohibition on any nuclear weapons activities, Richelson, Jeffrey. Spying on the bomb: American nuclear intelligence including possession, use, testing, and from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea. New York, NY: development. The Treaty was opened for Norton, 2006. signature in the United Nations in the summer Smith, Alice Kimball. A peril and a hope: The Scientists’ Movement of 2017, with 53 countries signing it soon after. in America, 1945-1947. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965. Tannenwald, Nina. The nuclear taboo: The United States and The Treaty is controversial. It has not, for the non-use of nuclear weapons since 1945. New York, NY: example, been signed by any state that currently Cambridge University Press, 2007. possesses nuclear weapons. There also are Weart, Spencer. The rise of nuclear fear. Cambridge, Mass.: worries that it will drive an even bigger wedge Harvard University Press, 2012. between the nuclear powers and the non-nuclear Wittner, Lawrence S. Confronting the bomb: A short history of the world nuclear disarmament movement. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford weapons states, and may be at-odds with arms University Press, 2009.

8 Nobel Peace Prize 2017 9 Nobel Peace Prize 1992 China and North Korea share a 1,420km border, separated by two rivers and a mountain. This gate was in a fence along the China-North Korea border near the Chinese city of Tumen, just across the Tumen River from the North Korean town of Namyang. Tumen City offers clear views into North Korea and attracts Chinese tourists – and sometimes North Korean fugitives who wade across the river into China. A facility atop a hill looking into the Nellis Air Force Range outside Indian Springs, Nevada, about 90 km from Las Vegas. The Nellis Air Force Range provides a buffer to the Nevada Test Site, where over 900 nuclear weapons tests were conducted between 1951 and 1992. Combined with the Nevada site, this region is one of the largest unpopulated areas in the US. Fallout By Sim Chi Yin

One is the only country to have tested nuclear escape hatches, and wandered around command weapons in the 21st century. The other is the and control centers used during the Cold War. first country to have tested and used them. North Korea and the United States are at two I was looking for parallels – visual, historical, ends of the nuclear equation – but today are factual, symbolic – between these landscapes. locked in a dangerous cycle of threats and North Korea is the only country to have tested counter-threats. nuclear weapons in the 21st century. The United States was first country to test and is the only Documentary photographer Sim Chi Yin country to have used them, in 1945. The two travelled 6,000 kilometers along the China- countries are also locked in a rhetorical war, North Korea border and through six states in with President Donald Trump taking swipes at the United States, to create a series of diptychs North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as “Little reflecting on humankind’s experience with Rocket Man,” while his counterpart called him a nuclear weapons, past and present. “gangster fond of playing with fire”.

In the pitch darkness, a single light reflected over Much of this takes place in the abstract – on the shallow waters of the Tumen river. All that Twitter, in newspapers or in theory. I wanted to was visible on the far shore was a pair of giant see what the actual nuclear infrastructure looks portraits: of North Korean founder Kim Il-sung like. I wanted to understand how these weapons and his son and successor Kim Jong-il. In the work, what the command chain was, how we distance, beyond the barren hills, dogs barked, as used them and might do so again. I wondered if in rhythm. about the morality: What do we make of the repeated calls to ban these weapons on the one Two weeks later, I stood on the desolate, dusty hand, and those who argue we need them for hills cocooning the U.S. nuclear test site in deterrence? Nevada, listening to the calming, eerie ring of silence. I seemed to hear those same dogs. On my journey, I met people from both ends of the spectrum. Some view the weapons with awe I had come to find traces of humans’ encounter and respect, such as Yvonne Morris, director with nuclear bombs – the only weapon that can of the Titan Missile Museum in Arizona, who destroy humanity in a single blow. In October, spoke quietly as she looked down at the massive, 2017, I drove the quiet, empty border between sleek missile illuminated by flood lamps newly China and North Korea, photographing across installed in its silo. This was the nuclear-tipped the two rivers and one mountain that divide weapon she had commanded in the 1980s. “I them. I searched out locations closest to North would have had no trouble following the launch Korea’s nuclear test sites, missile-manufacturing command, if it had come to that, because it facilities and munitions bases. would have meant that the U.S. was under attack,” she said. Two weeks later, I traveled through equally quiet stretches of the western United States, I also met educator Joseph Brehm, whose father from snowy North Dakota, where an all-seeing was an American World War II bomber pilot pyramidal radar complex stands, to the white saved from having to fight in Japan because the heat of the cratered test site in Nevada’s desert. I atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and climbed into missile silos, crawled out of bomber Nagasaki might have helped end the war. The younger Brehm grew up believing in nuclear In the U.S., I was welcomed in to look at weapons but now calls for disarmament. “I love decommissioned facilities preserved for technology, love the wow factor: ‘Oh my god tours and education, and sites that have been look what we created.’ But then you have to abandoned after having served their purpose. take a step back and realize ‘what did we create?’ Only at the 3,500 km2 Nevada National Security Because it literally is the sword that could slay Site – a still-active site – was I kept outside humanity.” the fence. Over 900 nuclear weapons tests were carried out here between 1951 and 1992, With each site I visited, I felt the beauty and creating a series of giant craters in the ground the weight of these landscapes and these quiet resembling a moonscape visible in satellite machines. I had studied Cold War history at images. university, reading books and texts about that dangerous era, but suddenly these events came It was seeing an archival U.S. military alive in the meters-thick concrete blast doors of photograph of the largest of these – the Sedan the missile silos and in the rusty complexes far crater – that first led me to think I could create a below ground. series of anonymized landscapes from these two countries that, when placed side by side, might North Korea’s nuclear ambitions can be gauged let us suspend our sense of place and enter the only through satellite images, seismic tests, and realm of reflection and imagination. propaganda pictures. That forced me to look through barbed wire fences, from mountains Elements of what I saw in both places fed off and villages, metaphorically trying to see the each other in my mind. Some of the parallels missile sites and the Punggyi-ri nuclear test site were clear as soon as I shot the second picture where Pyongyang has conducted six nuclear in the pairs. Others I discovered in the editing tests since 2006. The latest and largest test had process. taken place just a month before my journey, causing buildings to shake, knives to rattle in Across both countries, there were some striking kitchens and schools to evacuate in neighboring similarities in the landscapes – both natural and Chinese towns. man-made. Perhaps, as Natalie Luvera, curator at the National Atomic Testing Museum in In some ways, the landscapes were from a Nevada, put it: “We haven’t learnt from history. different era: farmers pushing carts at a gentle What the US did in the past is being repeated speed, single-story houses with stacks of corn right now. In North Korea.” out front, steam-powered tractors, workers bicycling back to factories after lunch hour, and Sim Chi Yin was comissioned as this year’s Nobel factory chimneys with wisps of smoke rising Peace Prize photographer to make an exhibition into the night sky. But the sense of tension on the 2017 Peace Prize winner, the International was palpable: the regular guardposts on the Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) North Korean side, and on the Chinese side the constant checkpoints and border police forbidding photography. A chimney and factory building making unspecified products in Manpo, Chagang Province, North Korea, shot from across the Yalu River near the northeastern Chinese city of Ji’an, Jilin province. About 35 km inland from Manpo is Kangye, the center of North Korea’s munitions industry and probably where the centrifuges for nuclear arms are built. The B Reactor at the Hanford Site, in Washington State, western United States was the world’s first full-scale plutonium reactor. Opened in September 1944, it was where the plutonium for the first ever nuclear test, the Trinity Test in July 1945, and the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki a month later was created, as part of the Manhattan Project. It was shut down in February 1968 and is today preserved as a museum. It was built next to the Columbia River so that the core of the reactor could be cooled 70,000 gallons (265,000 liters) of the river’s water per minute when fully operational. Rocket refueling suits inside the Titan II Missile The B Reactor at the Hanford Site, in Museum in Sahuarita, Arizona. These suits were Washington State, western United States was worn by technicians who worked on the Titan II the world’s first full-scale plutonium reactor. Missile fuel. Opened in September 1944, it was where the plutonium for the first ever nuclear test, the Trinity Test in July 1945, and the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki a month later was created, as part of the Manhattan Project. It was shut down in February 1968 and is today preserved as a museum. These spring-loaded valves were used to control the flow of water that had passed through the hot core of the reactor and was on its way to cooling tanks outside.

An original sign from the Hanford Site sits in an Two floors below an abandoned radar and outer room inside the B Reactor building. Signs anti-ballistic missile defense facility in rural like these were posted all over the Hanford Site North Dakota. The anti-ballistic missile defense to warn staff and outsiders of the potentially site - the only one to be built in the US – was dangerous conditions. The B Reactor at the designed to detect and intercept attacking Hanford Site, in Washington State, western nuclear warheads from Soviet missiles coming United States was the world’s first full-scale over the North Pole. plutonium reactor. The pyramid-shaped Missile Site Control The back of one of four array antenna, each Building stands in the middle of the on one side of a pyramidal structure that was SAFEGUARD Complex. This anti-ballistic the Missile Site Control Building at the Stanley missile defense site – the only one of its kind in R Mickelsen SAFEGUARD Complex. The the US – was designed to detect and intercept facility, built in the early 1970s at a cost of attacking nuclear warheads from Soviet missiles US$5.7 billion, was fully operational for only coming over the North Pole. Nuclear-tipped a day in October 1975 before Congress voted Sprint and Spartan anti-ballistic missiles were to shut it down. At the time, it was one of the deployed to shoot down any incoming Soviet most advanced radar systems in the world. With missiles. its deterrent effect, it is seen as having been a bargaining chip for the US in the SALT treaties.

A decommissioned Boeing B52 bomber at the The control tower of Desert Rock Airport, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base Boneyard in inside the Nevada National Security Site, Tucson, Arizona. This B52 had its tail removed formerly known as the Nevada Test Site where and placed at a 45 degree angle to the rest of over 900 nuclear tests were done between 1951 the airplane to demonstrate the US’s compliance and 1992. This airport can be seen from the with the New START agreement with Russia, entrance to the Test Site which is one of the which was ratified in 2010. The US Air Force least populated and most secure parts of the keeps these B52s for spare parts. United States. We were denied access to the site which is still active though no nuclear tests have been done there since 1992. This launch control center at the Oscar-Zero The Deputy Missile Control Center Missile Alert Facility in Cooperstown, North Commander’s desk at the Oscar-Zero Missile Dakota was part of a network of bases where Alert Facility. The red box top left is where the missiles were deployed in the 1960s across the missile launch keys were stored and the bottom Great Plains, as part of America’s strategy of right console is where the deputy commander nuclear deterrence against the Soviet Union. would put his key in case of a launch order. The facility was designed to launch Minuteman II missiles. In case of a nuclear attack, the two missileers could remain underground for up to nine weeks. The facility was decommissioned with the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in 1991.

The commander’s launch control panel at the A Minuteman II Missile sits in the Delta 09 silo Oscar-Zero Missile Alert Facility, North Dakota. outside of the town of Wall in South Dakota, This is where the commander would turn his United States. This intercontinental ballistic key on getting an order to launch the missiles. missile (ICBM) could travel across 12,500 km and deliver its payload in less than 30 minutes. It was in the US nuclear arsenal between 1965 and 1994. A third generation of this missile, the Minuteman III, is the only ICBM still deployed by the US. As of 2017, there are over 400 Minuteman III missiles on alert in North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana. All photos: “Fallout” by Sim Chi Yin for the Nobel Peace Center/2017, chiyinsim.com Contributors: Sim Chi Yin, Alex Wellerstein and Liv Astrid Sverdrup Editors: Liv Astrid Sverdrup and Erik Kaspartu Graphic designer: Stian Berger, melkeveien.no Printed by: Rolf Ottesen AS

© Nobel Peace Center The material in this publication is covered by the provisions of the Copyright Act. Without written agreement, any reproduction or distribution is permitted only to the extent authorised by law or agreement with Kopinor. Photo: Gabriel Ellison-Scowcroft Sim Chi Yin (@chiyin_sim) photographs a decommissioned B52 Bomber at the Davis- Monthan Air Force Base Boneyard in Tucson, Arizona on November 20, 2017. B52 bombers were designed to carry nuclear weapons and are still in service in the United States Air Force today. This particular aircraft is one of several dozen that provide parts for the B52s still being flown. MAIN SPONSORS AND PARTNERS