Letters: Only the UN can slow SRS danger

Savannah River Site, the most contaminated place on earth, produced plutonium and tritium for nuclear weapons.

The threat of destruction from Soviet missiles led us to sacrifice homes and land, but now we face a much greater threat. What will future generations pay for the creation of the deadly waste that will be dangerous for 240,000 years, contaminating our land and water? What will happen with the waste from modernizing nuclear weapons?

Who will pay for protecting the environment from this deadly material? How horrifying to think the contamination will flow down to Hilton Head and out into the ocean, or the already-contaminated groundwater will spread to drinking water.

The director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons said, “It is beyond question that nuclear weapons violate the laws of war and pose a clear danger to global security.”

Our hope lies in the U.N. treaty to ban the possession and use of nuclear weapons that 122 countries have agreed to sign. The International Committee of the Red Cross called the treaty a “historic step towards delegitimizing” nuclear weapons and declared its adoption “an important victory for our shared humanity.”