nuclear-news

A TOTAL BAN ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS

After four days in Thailand, Francis moves on to Japan, where international and domestic politics will loom large, particularly on Nov. 24, when he visits Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

About 400,000 people were killed, either instantly or from radiation illness or injuries resulting from the atomic bombs that the United States dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945 and on Nagasaki three days later as it sought to end World War Two.

Francis wants a total ban on nuclear weapons, going further than his predecessors when he said in 2017 that countries should not stockpile them even for the purpose of deterrence……..

Francis will meet blast survivors, pray, and read a major “message on nuclear weapons” at the bomb epicenter in Nagasaki. He later visits Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima.

Nuclear energy will also feature in the trip when the pope meets victims of Japan’s “triple disaster,” the 2011 earthquake that triggered a tsunami that in turn caused a meltdown at the Fukushima power plant. Radiation forced 160,000 people to flee and thousands will never return.

Following the Fukushima disaster, Japan’s Catholic Bishops Conference issued a document calling for the abolition of nuclear power generation.

They also oppose Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s moves to revise Japan’s post-war pacifist constitution……..https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-asia/pope-francis-to-take-anti-nuclear-mission-to-japans-ground-zeros-idUSKBN1XR0BV