The knowledge can't be removed from the world. Scientists need to develop another kind of knowledge - knowledge of the dangers that go with scientific inventions. Just because we know how to build zeppelins doesn't mean we're going to. Nuclear weapons aren't useful. They're outdated and create much greater risk than any illusion of security that they appear to provide.
Nuclear weapons deter conventional war, as the cold war proved.
At the height of the cold war we had wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Algeria. The cold war was just as murderous as a real war. Everybody wants the bomb because they want to be on a par with the superpowers that have it. There are some 50 countries that have the technical capacity to build a bomb, but only a handful want these weapons. The story of renunciation is much bigger than the story of proliferation.