http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/208089,CST-NWS-doom12.article![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/5a/Doomsday-clock.jpg/180px-Doomsday-clock.jpg)
Doomsday clock ticks
Nuke programs push world to 'perilous period'
January 12, 2007
BY JIM RITTER Science Reporter
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.
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Background:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock