Mordechai Vanunu Quotes

I would say that I was absolutely convinced of the possibility of our making an uranium engine, but I never thought that we would make a bomb; and at the bottom of my heart, I was really glad that it was to be an engine and not a bomb.

In 1947 I defended my thesis on nuclear physics, and in 1948 I was included in a group of research scientists whose task was to develop nuclear weapons.

Unlike uranium, plutonium was created in an American lab in 1940, but scientists soon realized that it could produce even wilder chain reactions and even bigger explosions. In fact, fearing another country would create it, too, the American government went to great lengths to keep even the existence of plutonium a secret.

By developing atomic energy for peaceful purposes, you reach the nuclear option. There are no two atomic energies.

These experiments might make it possible to produce power by means of nuclear energy and radioactive elements. Unfortunately also perhaps atomic bombs.

Reports in Washington show that our reasoning was just like that of your physicists. With all this information available, at least to privileged persons, I cannot understand why it is generally held in the United States that we completely missed the basic principle of the bomb until after Hiroshima.

There's an amazing documentary, 'The Day After Trinity,' which is crazy good.

The mystique associated with the bomb, the role that scientists played in it, and its general importance could not fail to impress even a six-year old.

The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.

The atom was unleashed in 1946, right when all this stuff was occurring. And the bomb's incredible release of energy and light may have signalled somebody in a dimension which is sharing space with us very closely.

My job was to produce plutonium that was used for atomic bomb.

At the height of Iraq's clandestine nuclear weapons program, which nearly succeeded in building a bomb in 1991, Tuwaitha incorporated research reactors, uranium mining and enrichment facilities, chemical engineering plants and an explosives fabrication center to build the device that detonates a nuclear core.

I grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, which is my hometown. In Los Alamos is, for people who don't know, a nuclear lab that built the atomic bomb. The only reason the town exists is to make nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction, and that's still happening there.

The H-Bomb Secret: How We Got It, Why We’re Telling It

You see what pressure the enemies of the world of Islam exert with regard to the issue of nuclear energy in Iran. They know we are not pursuing the atomic bomb. They are concerned because of the progress of science in this country, and because of the progress of technology in any Islamic country. This Islamic country has shown it does not surrender to America's policies. It has shown that it is not afraid of America. They believe that this Islamic country should not have the most important technology in the world today --- nuclear technology. That is why they exert such pressure.

The only reason to treat nuclear power differently from all the other developments in the field of physics is its staggering possibilities as a means of political pressure in peace and sudden destruction in war.

Atoms for War and Atoms for Peace are Siamese twins.

The Physicist was the darling of the cold war …atomic energy was responsible for so much of the politics of the Cold War.

The Soviet Union will not produce an atomic bomb for at least another 4 years

Iran doesn't need one centrifuge. Canada has nuclear energy. Spain has nuclear energy. Switzerland has nuclear energy, and they don't enrich uranium. You don't need to enrich uranium in order to use nuclear energy. You enrich uranium in order to produce a bomb.

I love nuclear.

No scientific subject has ever aroused quite the same mixture of hopes and fears [as atomic energy].

The barbarian weapon is fission: the splitting asunder. It has been perfected for death. Our only weapon is fusion: an imperfect process still, though designed for life.

I will have nothing to do with a bomb! [Response to being invited (1943) to work with Otto Robert Frisch and some British scientists at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project to create the atomic bomb.]

The one great gift to humankind from our nuclear physicists has been the nuclear bomb. How can we ever thank them?