M.V. Ramana: Nuclear energy and the bomb [video]

The NB Media Co-op is a partner in the new five-year research project CEDAR (Contesting Energy Discourses through Action Research) that was launched at St. Thomas University on Oct. 12.

This video is the second of two from the recent CEDAR event that followed the launch: A Dialogue on Decolonization, Degrowth and Energy Transitions.

Physicist M.V. Ramana is a professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia.

His expertise is international security and energy supply, particularly nuclear energy and fissile materials that can be used to make nuclear weapons.

Most people around the world learned about power of the atom from newspapers on August 7, 1945 after the U.S. military dropped a nuclear bomb that destroyed the city of Hiroshima in Japan.

Governments soon realized that people would not accept nuclear energy to generate electricity unless they believed that it was completely separate from nuclear weapons. Most famously, the U.S. began an “atoms for peace” propaganda campaign starting in the early 1950s to convince Americans to accept nuclear energy despite their knowledge of its terrible destructive power.

The link between the two “is a truth that has been systematically masked” says Ramana. Still today, different organizations involved in nuclear technology run publicity campaigns to try to create an illusion that these are separate. Ramana’s talk at St. Thomas University on October 12 explored how the two are related.

One implication of this knowledge is that expanding nuclear energy will make eliminating nuclear weapons and avoiding nuclear war much harder.