Doomsday clock ticks
Nuke programs push world to ‘perilous period’
January 12, 2007
BY JIM RITTER

Warning that the world has entered “the most perilous period since Hiroshima,” the keepers of the famed nuclear Doomsday Clock plan to move it closer to midnight.

The symbolic clock now stands at 7 minutes to midnight, with midnight representing global catastrophe.

Board members of the Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists magazine cite nuclear weapons programs in Iran and North Korea, unsecured nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere and 25,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia, including 2,000 that are ready to launch.

Also, the threat of global warming is helping to revive the nuclear energy industry. Nuclear plants don’t release carbon dioxide believed to cause global warming. But the reactors could increase the risk of nuclear proliferation.

Bulletin officials signaled the change in a media advisory. They plan a joint announcement Wednesday in Washington and London to announce the exact time change.

The Bulletin covers global security issues, especially nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. It was founded after World War II by scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project that produced the first atomic bombs.

Last moved in 2002
The Doomsday Clock first appeared on the Bulletin’s cover in 1947 and has since moved closer or farther from midnight 17 times.

The closest was 2 minutes to midnight in 1953, after the United States and Soviet Union tested thermonuclear bombs. The farthest was 17 minutes to midnight in 1991, after the United States and Soviet Union signed an arms-reduction treaty.

In its most recent movement in 2002, the clock ticked ahead two minutes after little progress was made on global nuclear disarmament and terrorists sought nuclear and biological weapons.