| Towards a Safer WorldEven as the superpowers threatened one another with nuclear annihilation, they slowly worked towards reducing tensions. In 1963 the United States and the Soviet Union signed a limited test-ban agreement in which they pledged not to test nuclear weapons in the seas or in space to limit underground tests. Four years later, they agreed not to send any nuclear weapons into orbit in outer space. In 1968 both countries, along with France, Great Britain, and 124 other countries, signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which was designed to prevent more countries from developing nuclear weapons. In time, other countries joined them. New treaties were painstakingly discussed and ratified. In 1972 the two superpowers agreed to slow the rate of weapons production. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) set a limit on the number of long-range ground and seaborne missiles each country would amass. SALT I was signed that same year. Limiting the growth of nuclear weapons was widely applauded, but anti-nuclear activists had long hoped for an agreement to reduce the number of existing weapons, which by 1989, had reached 50,000. That year brought talks that led to such an agreement, known as the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which was signed in 1991. By the 1990s the economic cost of thr arms race was immense. The United States had spent about $350 billion on nuclear weapons. This was about twice as much as the nation spent on space exploration during the same years. About $13.5 trillion had been spent on related military hardware, such as new missile systems and new types of bombers. Four hundred uranium mines had been opened and 60 million tons of uranium ore had been used in weapons. By 1999, with an arsenal of about 10,400 warheads, the nation was spending about $35 billion annually just to maintain the weapons in its arsenal. When the cold war ended, there were some seventy thousand nuclear warheads throughout the world. Although the danger that the superpowers would wage nuclear war had diminished, significant problems remained and new ones emerged. Stockpiles of weapons needed to be safely dismantled and the radioactive components had to be disposed of. Nations on both sides of the cold war faced the problems of safely disposing of nuclear wastes that are the by-products of weapons production and preventing dangerous materials from being stolen or mishandled. Other nuclear threats still plague humankind. Intelligence agents, for example, have reported that Russian citizens had sold plutonium and some plutonium has been reported missing from Russian warehouses. The danger that this missing plutonium might be acquired by other nations seeking to develop nuclear weapons is real. Nations such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea have shown interest in joining the "nuclear club". Officials worry that terrorists might acquire and use nuclear weapons against the United States and others they perceive as their enemies. Despite non-proliferation efforts, the number of nuclear nations, which includes the United States, Russia, France, Britain, China, India and Pakistan, continues to grow. In 1998 Pakistan tested its first nuclear device. India responded with a new nuclear test of its own. Other countries, including Israel and South Africa, are thought to possess nuclear weapons, although they have never acknowledged this as a fact. On the other hand, some nations, inlcuding Japan, who could easily build their own nuclear weapons have chosen not to do so. In the new millennium, people around the world hoped that the nuclear threat would diminish as more weapons were dismantled and international organizations worked to resolve conflicts between peoples without the use of force.
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