Nations with nuclear weapons

Description

Data on the 9 nuclear-weapon states as of April 2019.

Usage

data(nuclearWeaponStates)

Format

A dataframe containing :

nation

The name of the country (character). The former USSR is listed here as Russia.

ctry

ISO 31661- alpha-2 two-letter country codes (character).

firstTest

Date of first test of a nuclear weapon.

For Israel, which has not publicly acknowledged that it has nuclear weapons, this uses the Date of the Vela Incident.

firstTestYr

lubridate::decimal_date(firstTest)

yearsSinceLastFirstTest

c(NA, diff(firstTestYr))

nuclearWeapons

number of nuclear weapons

nYieldNA, nLowYield, nMidYield, nHighYield

number of weapons for which the yield in (nYieldNA) = unknown or variable, (nLowYield) = at most 15 kt (kilotons), the size of the Hiroshima bomb, (nMidYield) = greater than 15 but less that 50 kt, and (nHighYield) = at least 50 kt.

popM, popYr

popM = estimated population in millions for year popYr, per the Wikipedia article for the indicated country on 2020-02-05.

GDP_B, GDPyr

GDP_B = nominal Gross Domestic Product in billions of US dollars for year GDPyr, per the Wikipedia article for the indicated country on 2020-02-05.

Maddison

Country code used by the Maddison Project.

startNucPgm

Estimated date of the substantive commitment of the country to obtain nuclear weapons. See 'Details' below

startNucPgmYr

lubridate::decimal_date(startNucPgm)

Details

Most of the contents of this dataset are easily defined and not controversial. That's not true for the date upon which each country started its nuclear program, coded in startNucPgm and startNucPgmYr. The following summarizes the rationale behind the selection of the date for each country in this dataset.

• US The Manhattan Project started in stages. It was officially brought to the attention of the US government by a letter officially from Albert Einstein to US President Roosevelt, 1939-08-02. It was officially authorized 1942-01-19. We use this later date as the date of the start of the US nuclear-weapons program.

• RU Russian scientists were studying uranium before the first world war but didn't get much official attention until the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, 1945-08-06. Shortly thereafter on 1945-08-22, Stalin appointed Lavrentiy Beria. Beria was a able administrator and guided the project to fruition in four years.

• GB British scientists were among the leaders in nuclear technology in the late nineteenth century. They welcomed German-Jewish physicists Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, who estimated in 1939 that only a few pounds or kilograms of uranium-235 might be enough to achieve a critical mass, whereas several tonnes of natural uranium would likely be required. Because of the war, this information was passed to scientists in the United States, who developed it into the bomb dropped on Hiroshima 1945-08-06, with help from British and Canadian scientists and Canadian industry. After the war, the US refused to share much of the information developed in the Manhattan Project with the British. British elites felt disrespected by US. On 1947-01-08, the British government decided to initiate their own nuclear-weapons program.

• FR France was one of the nuclear pioneers, going back to the work of Marie Curie and Henri Becquerel in the 1890s. In 1956 the French were deeply offended by the refusal of the US to support them in the Suez Crisis. On France and Israel secretly agreed to collaborate in the development of nuclear weapons.

• CN Mao Zedong reportedly decided to begin a Chinese nuclear-weapons program during the First Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1954–1955. That crisis was resolved shortly after 1955-04-23, when China stated it was willing to negotiate. We use this as the date of the start of China's nuclear weapons program.

• IN Indian scientists started research on nuclear weapons before Indian independence but didn't make a substantive commitment to actually making a nuclear weapon until they lost territory to China in the Sino-Indian War that ended 1962-11-21. We use that date as the date for the initiation of India's nuclear-weapons program.

• IL Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was reportedly "nearly obsessed" with obtaining nuclear weapons to prevent the Holocaust from recurring. For present purposes, we use 1949-03-10, the date of the end of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, as the beginning of Israel's nuclear-weapons program.

• PK Pakistan's elite were totally humiliated by their defeat in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, 1971-12-03 / -16: That war ended the Bangladesh Liberation War, by which Pakistan lost over half their population and 14 percent of their land area. Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto compared Pakistan's surrender to the Treaty of Versailles, which Germany was forced to sign in 1919. Bhutto observed 1972-01-20 that a Pakistani scientist had been part of the Manhattan Project, and Pakistani scientists could do the same in Pakistan. While significant funding seemed not to have come until later, 1972-01-20 is the date we will use here for the beginning of Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program.

• KP The 1950-1953 Korean War ended with a cease-fire, not an official end to hostilities. Since then North Korea has perceived nuclear threats from the US. In 1956 the Soviet Union began giving North Korean scientists and engineers "basic knowledge" to help them initiate a nuclear program. About 1962, North Korea committed itself to what it called "all-fortressization", which was the beginning of the hyper-militarized North Korea of today. North Korea reportedly asked the Soviet Union for help with a nuclear weapons program in 1963 and was turned down. China turned down similar requests in 1964 and 1974. Around 1980 North Korea began mining its own supplies of uranium and building its own factory to produce yellowcake. (See also Bolton, 2012.) For lack of something better, we use 1980-01-01 as the start of North Korea's nuclear weapons program. They clearly wanted nuclear weapons much earlier but didn't seem to move seriously in the direction of developing nuclear weapons until around

Source

Overview from World Nuclear Weapon Stockpile

firstTest from Wikipedia, "List of states with nuclear weapons"

US from Hans M. Kristensen & Robert S. Norris (2018) United States nuclear forces,2018, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 74:2, 120-131, doi:10.1080/00963402.2018.1438219

Russia from Hans M. Kristensen & Matt Korda (2019) Russian nuclear forces, 2019, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 75:2, 73-84, doi:10.1080/00963402.2019.1580891

UK from Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen (2013) The British nuclear stockpile, 1953-2013, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 69:4, 69-75s, doi:10.1177/0096340213493260

France from Robert S. Norris & Hans M. Kristensen (2008) French nuclear forces, 2008, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 64:4, 52-54, 57, doi:10.2968/064004012

China from Hans M. Kristensen & Robert S. Norris (2018) Chinese nuclear forces, 2018,Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 74:4, 289-295, doi:10.1080/00963402.2018.1486620

India from Hans M. Kristensen & Robert S. Norris (2017) Indian nuclear forces, 2017,Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 73:4, 205-209, doi:10.1080/00963402.2017.1337998

Israel from Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris (2014) Israeli nuclear weapons, 2014, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 70:6, 97-115, doi:10.1177/0096340214555409

Pakistan from Hans M. Kristensen, Robert S. Norris & Julia Diamond (2018)Pakistani nuclear forces, 2018, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 74:5, 348-358, doi:10.1080/00963402.2018.1507796

North Korea from Hans M. Kristensen & Robert S. Norris (2018) North Korean nuclear capabilities, 2018, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 74:1, 41-51, doi:10.1080/00963402.2017.1413062

Derek Bolton (2012) North Korea's Nuclear Program (2012-08, American Security Program, accessed 2020-07-15) https://www.americansecurityproject.org/ASP%20Reports/Ref%200072%20-%20North%20Korea%E2%80%99s%20Nuclear%20Program%20.pdf

Examples

data(nuclearWeaponStates)
plot(yearsSinceLastFirstTest~firstTest, 
    nuclearWeaponStates, type='h', xlab='', ylab='')
with(nuclearWeaponStates, 
  text(firstTest, yearsSinceLastFirstTest, ctry))