Nuclear weaponry is a topic that interests many people. With its effects of mass destruction and long lasting damage nuclear weapons have been an explosive topic for years.

“I don’t know that much about nuclear weapons but I am eager to learn,” Jake Filyo a senior at Saint Johns Catholic Prep said.

A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destruction force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Nuclear weapons became extremely more prevalent in the United States after the Manhattan project.

“The Manhattan Project was a huge cost for the United States, of about 20 billion dollars. The successful production of the atomic bomb made it all worth it,” Dr. Alex Partella said.

The Manhattan project was a research and development program that was led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada. It produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army Corps of Engineers.

"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky that would be like the splendor of the mighty one" Robert Oppenheimer, an engineer working on the bomb said.

Over the past 60 years there have been over 67,500 nuclear missiles have been built in the US alone. Many people wonder why the construction of these weapons continues to take place because there is no real threat at this point in time that would cause the usage of a nuclear weapon.

“We cannot allow them to have a hundred nuclear weapons. We cannot allow a country to, in effect, become the bomb-seller of the world because they're in a snit, and because they can't grow a crop,” Bill Clinton said.

The U.S.’s stance on nuclear weapons has been debated for years. Today the policy focuses on near-term policies to reduce nuclear weapons to the lowest possible level consistent with maintaining a credible deterrent, while also ensuring that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is safe, secure, and reliable for as long as it is needed.

"The imperative before the Obama administration," the report says, "is to use all available tools to prevent the use and further acquisition of nuclear weapons,” an anonymous Obama representative had said.

The Nuclear Weapon Task Force is comprised of eminent leaders of the national security community and is directed by CFR Senior Fellow Charles D. Ferguson. Since 1998 an estimated spending on all U.S. nuclear weapons and weapons-related programs was $35,100,000,000.

“Nuclear weaponry is not that dominant of a problem at this point in time. Sure it is an issue but is not one that will prevent Americans from going on with their everyday lives, at least we hope not,” Phillip Barr a research analyst said.