close window 
After doing a cost-benefit analysis of nuclear weaponry and estimating the probability of a nuclear attack, professor Kevin Murphy has concluded that the threat defined as total nuclear destruction is far less than it used to be. “Current progress shouldn’t be ignored,” said Murphy, George J. Stigler Distinguished Service Professor of Economics.
Murphy was among panelists examining the likelihood of another large scale nuclear deployment like Hiroshima at the 60th Anniversary Symposium of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists December 3 at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall. Panelists agreed the threat of nuclear attack has greatly decreased since the Cold War.
Wolfgang Panofsky, director emeritus of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, called nuclear weapons “tools of awesome physical reality” and said it’s not a question of whether there will be an attack, it’s a matter of when. “There’s near certainty something will happen in the next decade or later,” he said. “Nuclear weapons must be drastically reduced and controlled. We can do no less if doomsday is to be avoided.”
According to Murphy, the way to avoid doomsday is to “quantify objectives, quantify alternatives, and ask what’s cost effective.” The way to prevent an attack is to “reduce demand and disrupt supply” of nuclear weapons.
The United States, however, seems to do little to avoid attack, Murphy said. “Whatever number you put on prevention is higher than it costs to [allow] demand. The question is, do we have the will to stop people who are trying to go down the nuclear road?”
Looking on the bright side, James Cronin, PhD ’55, professor emeritus of physics at the College, said the emergence of nuclear power as an economic consideration is inevitable. “This inevitability may help the U.S. deal with nuclear power in a positive way.”
—Carmen Marti