Well, the world’s media is in a buzzfuzz about North Korea’s upcoming Nuclear test ([sarcasm]who knew?![/sarcasm]), but let’s have a quick look at other nuclear states.
The USA is the only country to have ever used a nuclear weapon (ok, two of them) in anger on another nation.
France, Russia, Great Britain and China (with the US the five permanent members of the UN Security Council) are all nuclear, but have never used them.
There are several countries with access to nukes but don’t technically own them (such as the Netherlands).
Then there was the recent spat about India and Pakistan who both tested nukes, were embargoed for them, but because of their help on the war on terror, we’ve seem to have decided to forget that they have them.
Israel is a friend of the US so we don’t get too upset about them having nukes.
BUT, there’s more we’re not hearing about:
Brazil and Argentina.
Both have a track record of lying about their weaponry programmes to appease the international community, and have the technology needed to enrich uranium. Especially Brazil is a viable candidate for nuclear weaponry.
Robin
Well, they’ve gone and done it – or have they? As I heard the news coming in I figured 1/2 a kiloton (550 tons of TNT equivalent) is not very much at all for a nuclear explosion, and as there was no radiation detection we can’t be sure they didn’t just push a cave near a faultine full of explosives and set that off.
Defensetech agrees with me
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002832.html
I sure wouldn’t like to be a North Korean nuclear scientist now…