3 The cost of nuclear weapons
Beyond the direct impact of nuclear weapons on individuals, a further reason why many people oppose these weapons is their astronomical cost. In 2023, the nine nuclear-armed countries in the world spent a staggering $91 billion (USD) on nuclear weapons – or $173,884 every minute. At a time when many national governments are facing budgetary pressures, these sums spent on nuclear weapons represent billions of dollars of public funds that could otherwise be diverted to areas such as healthcare and education.
Table 1 The spending on nuclear weapons for the year 2023
| Country | Amount spent on nuclear weapons in 2023 (in USD) |
| United States | $51.5 billion |
| China | $11.9 billion |
| Russia | $8.3 billion |
| United Kingdom | $8.1 billion |
| France | $6.1 billion |
| India | $2.7 billion |
| Israel | $1.1 billion |
| Pakistan | $1 billion |
| North Korea | $856 million |
| TOTAL | $91.4 billion |
OpenLearn - Banning the bomb: a global history of activism against nuclear weapons
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.