A recent “60 Minutes” program on CBS revealed the tremendous unnecessary risk of keeping this country’s vast nuclear arsenal on high-alert status. The program explored what is behind recent scandals of drug abuse and cheating on competency exams by those in charge of managing our nuclear weapons. Equally disturbing was a review of numerous, well-documented close-calls that could have resulted in accidental nuclear detonations.

Whether through human error or mechanical failure, detonation of a single nuclear weapon would likely cause hundreds of thousands of deaths and massive global economic disruption — dwarfing the impact of destruction of the World Trade Center or the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown.

Why continue to hold ourselves at this level of risk? Our aggressive nuclear posture is of no use in addressing current threats to this nation’s security.

The most recent nuclear posture review, signed off on by the Departments of Defense, State and Energy, and the National Security Council and the president, determined that adequate security can be assured with a nuclear arsenal 30 percent smaller than currently being planned to be maintained indefinitely.

As a physician, it is my feeling that in this kind of situation, we must prevent what we cannot cure.

The only way to improve national security and reduce the risk of a catastrophic nuclear accident is to take this country’s nuclear forces off their high-alert status and negotiate further deep reductions in U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. And, as a bonus, more than $100 billion could be saved in the process.

Peter Wilk, MD, Portland, board member, Maine Physicians for Social Responsibility