The nuclear testing legacy
==========================

The nuclear testing legacy is John Kiriakou's point about the unpaid bill left by the atomic era, raised in July 2023 alongside his assessment of the Zaporizhzhia accusations.

Seventy years to the cheque

Kiriakou observed that tens of thousands of nuclear devices had been set off in test form over the preceding sixty or seventy years, which "can't be great for the planet." The consequence he chose to dwell on was administrative rather than geological: "Here we are all these years after the post-World War II testing in the South Pacific. And we're just now offering money to the people who were affected and to relocate their families because of nuclear contamination. We're talking about 70 years after the end of the war. It's ridiculous."

Read against present risk

He raised the point immediately after agreeing that the world in 2023 stood closer to a nuclear incident, accidental or otherwise, than it had in generations. The pairing is the argument: seventy years of documented consequence had not translated into either caution or prompt repair, and the response to the next incident was unlikely to be faster.

His interviewer's summary, that humanity was still finding "more creative ways to kill each other", drew agreement rather than qualification.

See also

- The Zaporizhzhia accusations
- Iran Nuclear Assessment
