If you outlaw uranium, then only outlaws will have uranium. And they’ll use it to make bombs. That’s just a matter of time no matter what we do, unless we achieve complete long-term technological stagnation.
If you let ordinary law-abiding folk have it, they’ll find much better uses for it. Especially after a few of them have experimented with it for a while. Some of those uses will end up making it much easier to survive the inevitable advent of nutcases with nuclear weapons. (Not to mention plagues, natural disasters, and global climate change). And, of course, all of them will add up to lots more liberty and wealth for everyone, which is always worth a certain amount of risk.
The overwhelming association of nuclear technology with weapons is one of the most fascinating cultural facets of the 20th century. We don’t automatically link chemistry with explosives or nerve gas, medicine with bioweapons or computers with cryptography but we do automatically link anything nuclear with weapons even though it is harder to make a nuclear weapon than anything else.
More people have been killed by machetes than have died by nuclear weapons. Even more strange is the fact that as weapons nukes seem to be wholly defensive in nature. There really isn’t anyway to use them offensively that won’t cause more problems than it solves.
Shannon, exactly. But then the nuclear freeze movement folks are cut from the same cloth as the nuts who advocate handgun bans.