nuclear-news

Although the Vienna conference was unable to come up with a concrete timetable to get rid of nuclear arms, discussions at the meeting helped deepen understanding among participants of “the consequences and the actual risks posed by nuclear weapons,” according to the statement issued by Sebastian Kurz, Austria’s minister for foreign affairs and integration, who chaired the confeƒrence.

The meeting underscored all the more the need for both nuclear powers and nonnuclear states to make serious efforts to make the world free of the devastating weapons whose effects will put victims in affliction for decades to come.

The chair’s summation of the discussions by delegates from 158 nations, the United Nations, the Red Cross movement, civic organizations and academia stressed that the “scope, scale and interrelationship of the humanitarian consequences caused by a nuclear weapon detonation are catastrophic and more complex than commonly understood. These consequences can be large-scale and potentially irreversible.”

More than five years have passed since U.S. President Barack Obama put forward his vision of creating a world without nuclear weapons in his April 2009 speech in Prague. But little progress for nuclear disarmament has since been made, despite the signing of a new nuclear arms reduction treaty between the United States and Russia.

Both countries are modernizing their nuclear weapons. ……..

The U.S. and the United Kingdom, both nuclear weapons states under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, attended the conference for the first time — itself a meaningful development.

But while the chair’s statement said the “only assurance against the risk of a nuclear weapon detonation is the total elimination of nuclear weapons,” the U.S. expressed opposition to a treaty banning nuclear arms, although it said its commitment to creating a nuclear weapons-free world is firm.

The U.K. also opposed prohibiting nuclear weapons at this moment or setting up a timetable for their elimination from security viewpoint………

Setsuko Thurlow, who was exposed to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima at the age of 13 and now lives in Canada, talked about her experience and suffering. She asked how long the world will continue to allow the nuclear powers to threaten lives on Earth and called for starting work immediately toward a nuclear arms ban treaty…….http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/12/14/editorials/nuclear-arms-risks-reminder/#.VI8q6NLF8nk