NNSA and National Academies roll out study on enviro effects of nuclear war

In a study on the environmental effects of nuclear war, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine said to focus less on extreme cases and more on the “realm of possible outcomes,” the organization said in a public panel announcing the study.

The nonprofit, in tandem with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), released the report last week on June 25 in a webinar led by members of the report committee.

The report was presented to a meeting of the National Academies’ Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board. 

The key takeaways of the report were the need for a better understanding on possible outcomes, rather than the extreme cases in existing studies. For example, the report said some studies have assumed “up to 100% of an adversaries’ nuclear weapons stockpile would be employed against the other country,” which National Academies considers “unlikely.” 

Another takeaway was that only “higher employment scenarios” would likely inject particles into the stratosphere with “global impacts,” according to committee members in the webinar. It is “context dependent” in smaller scenarios.

“More countries in the world now possess nuclear weapons with various degrees of power,” according to the 200-page report. It is no longer necessarily “a superpower-versus-superpower scenario.” The report considers how a “smaller-scale nuclear war” would affect the environment and society. . 

The report also included recommendations for the NNSA to coordinate with other agencies, such as Departments of Agriculture, Defense and Justice, to fund research at its national laboratories to reduce “uncertainties” in the event of a nuclear war. Therefore, an “assumption of closer to 50% of an adversary’s stockpile is more plausible from a military strategy” perspective.

Antonio Busalacchi, co-chair of the report and president of the United Corporation of Atmospheric Research, said in the webinar that despite recent events in the Middle East, Iran is “outside the scope of this report” given nuclear weapons have not been deployed.