Time for change

World-wide, there are currently 435 nuclear power plants in operation and 28 under construction (January 2007). The following graph shows the number of nuclear power plants in operation by country. Data source is the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

For countries with nuclear weapons, the bar is coloured in red, for countries without nuclear weapons, the bar is coloured in blue.

Observations:

• 4 out of the 6 countries with most nuclear power plants do also have nuclear weapons

• More than half of all nuclear power plants (55%) are located in countries who are known to have nuclear weapons

• The 6 countries with most nuclear power plants own 97% of all nuclear weapons world-wide.

Therefore it appears to be quite doubtful that using nuclear power for civil purposes is independent from military applications. The graph above seems to rather indicate "the more nuclear power plants, the more likely nuclear weapons".

Nuclear proliferation is a real threat and we should therefore be very reluctant to further applications of nuclear power. Considering on top of that other disadvantages of nuclear energy , we should definitely switch to renewable energies.

Number of nuclear weapons by country:

Data source for nuclear weapons is Carnegie Endowment for International Peace .

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