Japan's nuclear plea lacks usual emotive power

Seventy-nine years ago on Aug 9, a United States B-29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, killing around 40,000 people in an instant, and another 30,000 from radiation poisoning by the end of the year.

Three days before that, a nuclear weapon was used for the first time, when the US dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing some 70,000 people instantly, and tens of thousands more from radiation poisoning within a year.

Those have been the only times nuclear weapons have been used in war since their development. The deaths and devastation they caused led to the establishment of what was intended to be a strict international regime to prevent the proliferation and use of such lethal weapons of mass destruction.