Forty-five years since the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) took effect, and 70 years since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, more than 16,000 nuclear weapons still exist-many on Cold War-era alert, ready to launch in 15 minutes.
Over the past 45 years, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has put in place an indispensable yet imperfect set of rules for creating a safer world.
Under the treaty, countries without nuclear weapons agree not to get them, and countries with nuclear weapons, (China, France, Russia, the UK and the US) agree to eventually get rid of them. India, Israel and Pakistan have nuclear weapons but have not joined the NPT; North Korea withdrew from the NPT in 2003, and then began testing nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, nuclear armed countries are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on modernising their arsenals.