Today marks the 73rd anniversary of the first successful nuclear explosion in Alamogordo, New Mexico in 1945 and now there are nine countries that possess nuclear weapons, the US, Russia, the UK, France, China Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea but even more countries have given up their nuclear weapons programmes believe they were more of a liability than an asset for national security.
The apartheid regime in South Africa built six warheads before dismantling them in 1989 while Sweden had an advanced plan to build up to a hundred warheads, but gave up the project as too expensive in the 1960s.
Argentina and Brazil have both pursued covert nuclear weapons programmes in the 90s as did Taiwan and South Korea who began developing plutonium production programmes until the US persuaded them to halt and rely on Washington for security. Japan has has all the materials and know-how to build a nuclear warhead quickly if it decided to follow that path.
Saddam Hussein's Iraq dismantled their nuclear weapons programme after the first Gulf war in 1991, and Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi handed over his nuclear weapons programme to the US in 2003 which as it turned out later was a massive own goal and a warning to any future despots considering giving up their atomic dreams.
We can consider ourselves fortunate that these insane devices of global destruction are only in the custody of responsible governments who only have the interests of humanity in mind...hmmm.
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