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The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Another nuclear war-mongering week in the news

A bit of good news. The Golden Rule, the first boat to protest nuclear weapons is back to inspire a new generation.

Events. 17 May Online Seminar – Beyond Nuclear “Tritium and the U.S. Nuclear Power Sector”. 18 – 28 May .12TH INTERNATIONAL URANIUM FILM FESTIVAL RIO DE JANEIRO .

Climate. The most at-risk regions in the world for high-impact heatwaves.

Nuclear. What can I say? The longest section below “Weapons and Weapons Sales” says it all. It’s the war-mongering economy, stupid.

Christina notes. Australia’s Defence Minister Richard Marles – a puppet of the American war industry – leading us on to WW3.

CLIMATE. Despite the dangers of climate change, UK nuclear power stations still sited on the coastline!

ECONOMICS. Preparing for War: The Global Military Budget. Nuclear vs Solar: The Race For Renewable Dominance. Marketing. UK courts Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates for investments to salvage the nuclear dream

ENERGY. EDF Q1 revenues rise but nuclear output declines.

ENVIRONMENT. Remembering Chornobyl — Beyond Nuclear. Why did Russians dig trenches in radioactive Chernobyl woods? Marine deaths prompt calls for investigation and halt into any new nuclear dump tests. Hinkley fish deterrent farce makes mockery of Environment Agency and Minister.

HEALTH. Russian troops ‘went FISHING in the nuclear reactor cooling channel at Chernobyl’ and are now suffering from radiation sickness. ‘New Zealand should say sorry’ – sailors posted to watch nuclear tests.

HISTORY. REGAN Vest: Inside Denmark’s secret nuclear bunker.

MEDIA. BBC launches 7 part series on Fukushima nuclear disaster. Fukushima nuclear disaster – new Netflix series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtB8P59xWjw Survivors of Britain’s Cold War radiation experiments to have their stories recorded.

NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY. The age of small modular nuclear? Amid maintenance delays and strikes in nuclear industry, France restarts one reactor.

OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR. MPs and activists push back as Ottawa pitches expansion of nuclear energy -“a dirty dangerous distraction”.     Citizen opposition blocks discharge of radioactive water from Indian Point nuke into Hudson River, for now.             Anti nuclear campaign groups in Wales (Dwyfor and Meirionnydd) urge government to invest in energy conservation, NOT dirty nuclear power.

PERSONAL STORIES. The mind of Oppenheimer, inventor of nuclear bomb who turned pacifist. Chernobyl: Survivors reflect on nuclear accident, Russian occupation.

POLITICS. 

POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. 

PROTESTS.“We won’t be scapegoats!” — French opposition to nuclear waste dumping.

PUBLIC OPINION. Is nuclear power attractive or risky? In Minnesota, it’s both.

SAFETY Remembering Chernobyl as nuclear danger grows with attacks in the Zaporizhzhia region. Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant: a Catastrophe Waiting to Happen, Ukraine’s nuclear power plants are still a source of nightmares years after the Chornobyl disaster. Chernobyl anniversary offers a bleak look at what may await other Ukrainian nuclear plants. Russia fixing power line from Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant to land it controls, IAEA says. 

Japanese authorities doubtful of removal process of Fukushima radioactive sandbags. Libya lost, then found, 2.5 tonnes of uranium – a red flag for nuclear safety.   No change to nuclear transport rules following accident down under, says regulator.

SECRETS and LIES. 

SPACE. EXPLORATION, WEAPONS. India needs ‘space-based’ weapons – top generals. Stop SpaceX from crashing rockets in the Pacific. The wrong stuff – Musk and the 4/20 rocket drill .

SPINBUSTER. Caitlin Johnstone – The Single Dumbest Thing The Empire Asks Us To Believe.

WASTES. Nuclear waste from small modular reactors – Simon Daigle comments on recent article. A means to dispose of nuclear waste remains elusive and Canada continues to store the most per capita. The long and dirty legacy of nuclear power. Plans to release nuclear wastewater into Hudson River delayed following outcry.

WAR and CONFLICT. 

WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES.

May 2, 2023 Posted by | Christina's notes | 1 Comment

India needs ‘space-based’ weapons – top generals

The space arms race is already ongoing, according to the chiefs of the Air Force and the Defense Staff.’

 https://www.rt.com/news/575556-india-space-based-weapons/ 30 Apr 23

India must boost its defensive and offensive capabilities in the space domain, as the “future lies in having space-based platforms,” Air Chief Marshal Vivek Ram Chaudhari told a national security and geopolitics forum on Saturday.

“

In the future, instead of having purely land-based offensive systems, we should also have space-based offensive systems,” Chaudhari said, according to The Economic Times.

The competition and rivalry between the global powers in space “will have its effects across all other domains of warfare,” he said, predicting that his Air Force will soon turn into an Air Space Force, and “will be called upon to take part in space situational awareness, space denial exercises or space control exercises.”

“The race to weaponize space has already started and the day is not far when our next war would spread across all domains of land, sea, air, cyber and space,” the air force chief warned back in March. On Saturday he stated that the race has actually been ongoing ever since Nazi Germany first launched its V-2 rocket almost 80 years ago.

India’s Chief of Defense Staff, General Anil Chauhan, also recently stated that the “military applications of space is the dominant discourse from which we cannot remain divorced.”

“The aim for all of us should be developing dual-use platforms with special focus on incorporating cutting-edge technology,” he told the Indian DefSpace Symposium on April 11.

It remains unclear what kind of futuristic space weapons the military seeks to obtain, but Chaudhari said India should capitalize on the success of its 2019 anti-satellite missile test. The so-called Mission Shakti destroyed a satellite some 300km away in low-Earth orbit and was hailed at the time as an “unprecedented achievement” by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

ndia has become the fourth “space superpower” after the US, Russia, and China, to openly demonstrate its ASAT missile capability. The space club members have regularly accused each other of weaponizing space, voicing suspicions over secretive military launches and dual-purpose tests, but have never admitted to possessing any orbital weapons systems.

May 2, 2023 Posted by | India, space travel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The long and dirty legacy of nuclear power

The trouble is that nuclear-power adherents are now seriously contemplating for future generations a ghastly rerun of the decommissioning nightmare. Small-to-medium-sized reactors, such as envisaged for Trawsfynydd and Wylfa, are the smart way forward, they chorus. Once more, the probably insoluble decommissioning and nuclear waste-management problem is being blanked out.

 https://www.cambrian-news.co.uk/opinion/the-long-and-dirty-legacy-of-nuclear-power-610039By Patrick O’Brien  Sunday 30th April 2023 

In the normal course of events, you’d know when you were financing a dodgy venture. It’s hard to imagine your money being ploughed into an enterprise doomed from the start and being ignorant of the fact.

So how many of us knew we’re bankrolling an outfit with a boat in the Irish Sea embarked on a mission guaranteed to be a very bad idea all round?

The craft in question operates with a simple instruction: to blast off underwater seismic guns – to the certain detriment of dolphins and porpoises – as part of a madcap exercise to find a subterranean cemetery for large amounts of lethal radioactive waste from Cumbria’s Sellafield nuclear site.

I refer to pollutants that, for the last 70 years, have contaminated seas off vast coastal areas of Wales and Ireland, and parts of England, with radioactive substances that take, literally, tens of thousands of years to decay.

Let me introduce Nuclear Waste Services, an entirely taxpayer-funded public body under the wing of the UK government, which is engaging marine geological surveyors to comb the seabed for an out-of-sight-out-of-mind repository for the terrifying remnants of a dangerous and long discredited system of energy-generation.

Yes, the UK is looking for a storage site for the world’s biggest stockpile of untreated nuclear waste, including 100 tonnes of plutonium.

Currently the search centres on the seabed off Cumbria. The nearby notorious Sellafield nuclear complex having, since 1952, openly discharged substantial quantities of liquid and solid radioactive waste into the Irish Sea, a disreputable industry’s servants are now embarked on a final fling, dressed up, naturally, as a service to the UK population.

Thus Chris Eldred, a Nuclear Waste Services senior manager, expounding on the benefit of the gorgeously clinically named geological disposal facilities (GDFs) his company has set its heart on.

GDFs, he vouchsafes, “will protect future generations from the risks of keeping hazardous radioactive waste in surface stores for thousands of years.” Thank goodness, therefore, that we have the sea at our unfettered disposal, there to hide away nuclear power’s abiding torment – what to do with the reverberating remnants of a spent technology that will never in thousands of years be stilled.

To help us with this vital work”, Mr Eldred says, “we will undertake surveys to provide a better understanding of the deep geology beyond the coast, while doing everything we can to minimise any environmental impact.”

In his apparent innocence, you wonder whether he has in mind earplugs for dolphins and porpoises, which are observed to be disorientated, distraught and damaged by the monstrous decibels of seismic guns. These theoretically protected animals, let it be remembered, are in all probability some of those we marvel at off the Ceredigion coast.

Not that the UK government or Nuclear Waste Services or anyone else has checked with us, the funders of this desperate exploration.

Not that they have seen fit, either, to mention that sea-borne radioactive waste, pumped for seven decades into the sea at Sellafield, has been detected off coasts of Wales, as well as hundreds of miles further south and west of the Cumbria nuclear site.

We’re talking here about insoluble radionuclides, such as highly dangerous plutonium-239, which has a half life of, truly, 24,110 years and can attach to particles in the sea, there to be transported over long distances and timescales and ultimately deposited into fine sediments. such as estuarine and coastal mudflats and salt-marshes. Since the early 1950s, this stuff has floated unhindered down from Sellafield off Wales’s west coast, ending up as far away as the Bristol Channel and the southern North Sea.

Sellafield’s tentacles have even reached inland Wales. In the late 1980s, the then Dyfed County Council commissioned a study of radioactivity in the county which found Caesium-137 – proved to have come from Sellafield sea discharges – in pasture grass seven miles inland from the Cardigan Bay coast. Radiocaesium, which has a 30-year half-life, can increase the risk for cancer.

The size of the current nuclear power-station decommissioning conundrum is mind-boggling. Even the UK government admits the seabed dump site it seeks for the world’s largest stockpile of untreated nuclear waste would need to keep its terrible debris “safe and secure over the hundreds of thousands of years it will take for the radioactivity to naturally decay”.

Meanwhile, councils signed up to the Nuclear Free Local Authorities grouping, including Ceredigion’s and Gwynedd’s, believe the pretty well obvious: no matter how effective the marine storage barriers, some radioactivity would eventually leak to the surface of the sea. They prefer the idea of a “near surface, near site storage of waste” to allow for monitoring and management.

Trying to show willing, they’re seizing on a least-worst option, which is nevertheless woefully inadequate.

The trouble is that nuclear-power adherents are now seriously contemplating for future generations a ghastly rerun of the decommissioning nightmare. Small-to-medium-sized reactors, such as envisaged for Trawsfynydd and Wylfa, are the smart way forward, they chorus. Once more, the probably insoluble decommissioning and nuclear waste-management problem is being blanked out.

All that’s left is for the realists among us to resolve, very firmly, that we will never allow a return to the insanity of a 1950s future.

May 2, 2023 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Why did Russians dig trenches in radioactive Chernobyl woods?

Even Ukrainians who stayed after the nuclear disaster tried to warn their
enemies. On February 24, 2022, the first day of the invasion of Ukraine,
the Russians crossed into the area from Belarus. They stayed for five
weeks, camping out for part of that time in some of the most contaminated
land around the site of the worst nuclear accident in history.

They dug defensive positions in the Red Forest, within a six-mile radius of reactor
No 4, where they lived, ate and slept for a fortnight. Nobody can
understand why.

“Don’t try to find logic,” said Oksana Pyshna, 30, a
tour guide turned employee of the state ministry responsible for the
exclusion zone, who showed us around. “It’s stupid.” The place is
called the Red Forest because that’s the colour the trees went after the
disaster as the cloud of poison spread through Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, on
to the Baltics and Scandinavia.

In 1986 and the years after, teams of men
dug up the topsoil and buried it: under the surface it is far more
poisonous. Carving trenches there was a terrible idea, said Pyshna.
“It’s the most dangerous territory in the special zone, because under
the ground we have nuclear waste.”

Perhaps the Russians felt safer there
because they knew the Ukrainians wouldn’t shell the area around the
nuclear plant. Perhaps the beauty of the woods blinded them to the danger.
Catfish throng the reactor’s cooling channel, deer shy through the silver
birches when visitors pass. There are, apparently, bears in the forests;
wolves too, wild ponies. In the autumn, the trees hang heavy with the most
perfect apples, green and pink.

But their pips can hold radioactive
isotopes: caesium-137 or strontium-90. Some Russian soldiers stationed in
the forest got radiation sickness, diplomats have confirmed. Kicking up the
dust or walking on the moss can contaminate you. Digging is much worse. The
few dozen locals – average age, 86 – who remained here after the
disaster have become unspeakably blasé about the risks of nuclear
radiation. Even they were shocked.

 Times 29th April 2023

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ukraine-chernobyl-nuclear-putin-russia-invasion-rgjzskfvq

May 2, 2023 Posted by | environment, Ukraine | Leave a comment

“We won’t be scapegoats!” — French opposition to nuclear waste dumping

“This land is our land.” French goats bleat against nuclear fuel pool threat

“We won’t be scapegoats!” — Beyond Nuclear International

Contrary to popular propaganda, nuclear reprocessing is not recycling. This has never been more evident than in the current crisis at La Hague, where the irradiated fuel pools are now full to capacity. Part of the reason is the country’s insistence on producing mixed-oxide reactor fuel from the plutonium and uranium separated at La Hague. So much of it has proven defective, that is has been returned to La Hague, filling up the fuel pools.

opposing French plans to extend the licenses of current reactors and to build new ones with, as they point out, absolutely no consideration of what will happen to the radioactive waste.

A new tongue-in-cheek rebellion has risen in France, but the cause is deadly serious

By Linda Pentz Gunter,   https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/04/30/we-wont-be-scapegoats/

In France, civil disobedience and defiance of authority — and authoritarianism — is in the national DNA. We have seen it most recently in the demonstrations against the raising of the retirement age, and against proposed agricultural reservoirs known as mega-basins. Before that it was the “yellow vests”, angered at a rise in fuel prices. Further back came the Resistance during World War II, and even further back, of course, the Revolution of 1789.

The French anti-nuclear movement is no exception and has engaged in protests that deliver considerable numbers and abundant creativity — and sometimes a lot of useful tractors as well.

It’s no surprise then to learn that such continued defiance has now spread: to goats. 

Before continuing, it’s necessary to explain what a ZAD is. In French, it stands for Zone À Défendre (zone to defend.) ZADs are usually occupations or blocades created by citizens protecting something they deem precious from development or destruction. There are scores of ZADs across France, deemed illegal by French authorities. ZADs have sometimes won, most notably at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, where an unpopular airport project was stopped.

But raids on ZADs can sometimes turn violent, and authorities can over-react as they did in February 2018 at Bure, when 500 gendarmes went in to remove just 15 anti-nuclear activists occupying and attempting to protect the forested site targeted to become the country’s high-level radioactive waste dump.

Dressed in riot gear, the gendarmes used bulldozers, trucks, helicopters, drones and chainsaws to confront the occupiers, self-described “owls” who had been living in tree houses and lookout towers for the past 18 months.

Now, activists around the La Hague nuclear reprocessing site on the northern Cherbourg peninsula, have redefined the ZAD acronym to stand for Zone À Déchets  (Waste Zone), and specifically radioactive waste.

Contrary to popular propaganda, nuclear reprocessing is not recycling. This has never been more evident than in the current crisis at La Hague, where the irradiated fuel pools are now full to capacity. Part of the reason is the country’s insistence on producing mixed-oxide reactor fuel from the plutonium and uranium separated at La Hague. So much of it has proven defective, that is has been returned to La Hague, filling up the fuel pools.

A slowdown in reprocessing due to technical failures has also hastened the overcrowding of La Hague’s four spent fuel pools with excess irradiated fuel rods. These pools risk saturation by 2030 and the French safety authority has criticized La Hague owner, Orano’s suggestion that it could pack the pools more densely as this raises safety risks.

The owner of the French nuclear fleet, EDF, is responsible for managing the waste fuel their reactors produce. Its solution to the overcrowding at La Hague is to build a new fuel pool at the site, at a cost of $1.37 billion.

And that has locals up in arms — and hooves.

Normandy, the province in which La Hague is located, is strongly agricultural. Cows — and dairy products — abound. As do goats. While those still domesticated produce cheese, there is also a significant and famous wild goat population, known as les chèvres des fossés, that ranges freely on the coastal cliffs.

Accordingly, a new La Hague opposition group, Piscine Nucléaire Stop (Stop the Nuclear Fuel Pool), found a way to communicate the threat a new fuel would pose to agriculture and the environment by recruiting some goats to their cause.

In an amusing action that was posted on Facebook and was covered in the press, the activists placed an array of artistic — and realistic — cut-out goats at an intersection in the town of Jobourg, one of the communities that would be affected by the health and environmental risks of a new nuclear fuel pool. The town gives its name to the famous wild Jobourg goats and has erected a statue in their honor.

Then the goats put out their own statement. It read:

“We nanny and billy goats of Jobourg, claim our right to decide the fate of our land, and affirm today our opposition to the EDF spent fuel storage pool project. 

Continue reading →

May 2, 2023 Posted by | France, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

Japanese authorities doubtful of removal process of Fukushima radioactive sandbags

 https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-05-01/Japanese-authorities-doubtful-of-removal-process-of-Fukushima-radioactive-sandbags-1jrKQmaC652/index.html

Japanese authorities have expressed doubt over the removal of radioactive sandbags at the Fukushima nuclear plant as the plant operator aims to start the recycling procedure this fiscal year, NHK reported on Monday.

Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority said the recycling approach needs to be fully verified, adding that it was unclear whether the procedure can be carried out as expected.

The zeolite-packed sandbags were put on the basement floors of the factory building as an emergency measure to lower radiation levels of contaminated water after the 2011 nuclear disaster.

Although their radiation levels have weakened with time, the sandbags can still emit radiation levels of up to 4.4 sieverts per hour, which could kill people exposed to the high reading for two hours.

The plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) plans to use robots to collect the sandbags and store them in other receptacles. The company is expecting the plan to be approved in September.

The regulator said tests need to be carried out this summer to verify the plan’s safety.

May 2, 2023 Posted by | Japan, wastes | Leave a comment

Dealing with a debacle: A better plan for US plutonium pit production

Bulletin, By Curtis T. Asplund, Frank von Hippel | April 27, 2023

For two decades, the Pentagon and Congress have been increasingly concerned that the United States does not have a reliable capability to produce plutonium “pits,” the cores of US thermonuclear warheads. In 2018, the agency responsible for the production and maintenance of US nuclear warheads, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), responded with a plan to build, on a crash basis, pit production lines in New Mexico and South Carolina at the same time, with a combined production capacity of 80 pits per year.

One of the production lines is in an advanced state of installation at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the home of US pit-production expertise. The other is to be installed at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina, where there is no pit-production expertise, in a massive building that the Department of Energy built for another purpose and was then forced to abandon because of huge cost overruns. South Carolina’s congressional delegation, led by Sen. Lindsey Graham, successfully prevailed on the Trump administration to repurpose this $6 billion building—once known as Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility and intended to downblend surplus military plutonium for use as commercial reactor fuel—to plutonium pit production. History is repeating itself, however. The NNSA’s cost estimate for using the Savannah River facility to manufacture warhead pits has already risen from $3.6 billion in 2017 for an 80 pit-per-year production capacity to $11.1 billion for a 50 pit-per-year capacity in 2023.

The NNSA’s rationale for its ambitious pit production program is, to say the least, questionable. The agency proposes to first build 800 pits for new US intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) warheads, which would be needed only if the US decides to increase the number of warheads on each missile from one to three. Previous US administrations have considered such uploading destabilizing; silo-based ICBMs are targetable and increasing the number of warheads they each carry would make them more attractive targets. Loading the ICBMs with more warheads would also make compliance with the New START arms control agreement with Russia extremely difficult, should that agreement be extended in 2026.

After producing the ICBM warheads, the NNSA plans to replace all 1,900 US submarine-launched ballistic missile warheads with new warheads, equipped with what is known as insensitive high explosive, which is shock resistant and therefore less susceptible to accidental explosions that could disperse a warhead’s plutonium. No such accident has ever happened with ballistic missile warheads, and it is unclear how much this program would actually improve safety. The warheads in the Trident II missile used by US submarines are located near the missile’s third stage, which carries propellant that is as detonable as conventional explosive.

There is also another concern about the NNSA’s  plans: The designs of new warheads in which new plutonium pits would be used may depart from designs that have been previously tested. This could result in demands to resume explosive testing, which would undermine the moratorium on nuclear testing that has been observed by all nuclear-weapon states (other than North Korea) since 1998.

Given these questionable production plans and the already out-of-control cost and schedule of the Savannah River pit production facility, and because the remaining life expectancy of the pits in current US warheads is at least 60 years and perhaps much longer, we propose that the Savannah River facility be put on hold and that the Los Alamos program be focused on demonstrating reliable production of 10 to 20 pits per year. Such a demonstration production line would establish that the United States has the capacity to produce pits and would reduce the time required to build additional production lines, if they are needed.

The NNSA should also renew research programs at the Livermore and Los Alamos Laboratories to study the aging of the already existing plutonium pits in the US arsenal and also the older pits from retired warheads. ……………………………………………………………………………….. more https://thebulletin.org/2023/04/dealing-with-a-debacle-a-better-plan-for-us-plutonium-pit-production/

May 2, 2023 Posted by | - plutonium, USA | Leave a comment

France: NATO’s rehearsal for war with Russia includes cyber, space, electromagnetic components — Anti-bellum

NATOAllied Air CommandApril 28, 2023 French-hosted multinational exercise strengthens NATO collective defence  The multinational joint exercise ORION has started with 12,000 participants conducting air-land integrated training across the French territory based on a NATO collective defence scenario. Powerful, modern, well-trained, interoperable and certified armed forces enable Allied nations to meet the requirements…. From April 19 to […]

France: NATO’s rehearsal for war with Russia includes cyber, space, electromagnetic components — Anti-bellum

May 2, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

NATO drills fifth-generation warplanes for all-domain “immediate response under Article 5” — Anti-bellum

NATODeployable Air Command and Control CentreApril 27, 2023 Ramstein Ambition exercise accomplishes goal of training and improving air command and control skills Exercise Ramstein Ambition 2023 (RAAM23), held for the first time in Italy, ended on April 25, 2023 at the Poggio Renatico base, Italy, home to NATO’s Deployable Air Command Centre (DACCC). The exercise […]

NATO drills fifth-generation warplanes for all-domain “immediate response under Article 5” — Anti-bellum

May 2, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

New pact mandates EU honor NATO’s Article 5 collective war clause — Anti-bellum

Daily SabahApril 27, 2023 Thriving NATO, EU ties amid shifting security dynamics in Europe Ryszard CzarneckiFormer minister of EU Affairs in Poland, member of the European Parliament The relationship between NATO and the European Union is essential for European security and defense. As the security environment becomes more complex and unpredictable, the two organizations must […]

New pact mandates EU honor NATO’s Article 5 collective war clause — Anti-bellum

May 2, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Sardinia: NATO strike force practices war with Russia — Anti-bellum

Stars and StripesApril 27, 2023 NATO’s high-alert task force to test fighting mettle in Sardinia exercise Elements of NATO’s quick-reaction spearhead force are being put through their paces this week in Sardinia, where a series of drills is intended to showcase its fighting capabilities. The unit is part of the NATO Response Force and was […]

Sardinia: NATO strike force practices war with Russia — Anti-bellum

May 2, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Statement by the G7 Parliamentarian Forum for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

 https://www.icanw.org/g7_mp_statement 29 Apr 23,

Ahead of the G7 Leaders’ Summit taking place in Hiroshima in May, ICAN convened the G7 Parliamentarian Forum for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons in Tokyo and Hiroshima. The adopted statement urges the G7 governments to recognize the humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons, condemn threats to use nuclear weapons and to recognise the TPNW as a the comprehensive and effective legal tool for the abolition of nuclear weapons. See the full statement and list of participants below.

We parliamentarians from G7 countries reiterate our commitment to nuclear disarmament on the occasion of the G7 Summit in the city of Hiroshima, a city that  is marked by nuclear obliteration due to the dropping of the first atomic bomb on August 6, 1945. We are reminded of the 140,000 lives lost in the city as well as over 70,000 lives lost in Nagasaki, by the end of 1945 and the ongoing physical, social, and psychological suffering of the Hibakusha. Their fate remains at the centre of our political agenda towards complete global nuclear disarmament. 

We recognize that the risk of nuclear war increases over time as long as nuclear weapons exist. The repeated missile tests and continued nuclear programs of the DPRK have dangerously and irresponsibly increased this risk. We condemn Russia’s illegal war of aggression on Ukraine, which exposed the unacceptable risks associated with nuclear weapons. The Russian plans to station nuclear weapons in Belarus highlight the importance of halting and reversing such actions and ensuring that nuclear weapons are never again used as tools of aggression and intimidation. The ongoing nuclear arms race, in which all nuclear weapon states are involved, increases the risk of the use of these weapons either by accident or design, with devastating consequences for humanity and the planet and must therefore be stopped as a matter of international urgency.

In order to strengthen the norm of not using and not threatening to use nuclear weapons, we condemn any and all nuclear threats and reiterate that the only guarantee of non-use is the total elimination of nuclear weapons. To this end, we commit to strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which provide the crucial, mutually-reinforcing framework for achieving a world free of nuclear weapons. We underline the importance of Article VI of the NPT, which calls for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons, and we welcome the TPNW’s comprehensive provisions as an important reinforcement of the nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation regime especially in a time of heightened risks. Complementary to the TPNW’s explicit prohibition of nuclear weapons testing, the norms of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) must be upheld. 

As representatives of their peoples, parliamentarians have a vital role to play in building support for disarmament and ensuring that our governments prioritise the elimination of nuclear weapons. Let us collaborate with states parties to the TPNW and civil society to achieve our shared goal of a safer and more peaceful world, free from the threat of nuclear war. We encourage all non-signatory states to observe the second Meeting of States Parties to the TPNW and urge our governments to explore options to collaborate with states parties, particularly in the area of victim assistance and environmental remediation, as set out in Article 6 and 7 of the TPNW. We will intensify our political efforts to encourage our countries to sign and ratify the TPNW, with the goal of achieving its universalization at the earliest possible time. 


In the upcoming Hiroshima Summit, we urge the leaders of the G7 to meet with and listen to the Hibakusha, to acknowledge the devastating harm caused by the use of nuclear weapons on people and the environment, to unequivocally condemn any and all threats to use nuclear weapons, and to recognize the significance of the TPNW in advancing global nuclear disarmament efforts. We maintain that all countries should engage in sincere and constructive negotiations to achieve the total elimination of nuclear weapons so that never again will any person be subjected to the fate endured by the Hibakusha.

Participants of the G7 Parliamentarian Forum on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons:  

Boldrini, Laura / Camera, Partito Democratico, Italy

McPherson, Heather / House of Commons, NDP, Canada

Satouri, Mounir / European Parliament, Green, France/EU  (video message)

Spellerberg, Merle / German Bundestag, Green, Germany (video message)

Ribeiro-Addy, Bell / House of Commons, Labour, UK (video message)

Inoguchi, Kuniko  / House of Councillors, LDP, Japan

Minoru, Terada / House of Representative, LDP, Japan (video message)

Hiraguchi, Hiroshi / House of Representatives, LDP, Japan

Taniai, Masaaki / House of Councillors, Komeito, Japan

May 2, 2023 Posted by | 2 WORLD, politics international | Leave a comment

US deployed Nuclear Disablement Teams to S. Korea in March

The Dong-A Ilbo . 01, 2023 

It was confirmed that South Korea and the U.S. conducted training during the Freedom Shield joint exercise in March to enter North Korea and disable its nuclear weapons in case of emergency. The U.S. Department of Defense released the details and pictures of the March training on the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service on Wednesday, the day of the summit between the two countries. It is deemed a warning against North Korea, following the ‘Washington Declaration’ made by the two countries’ leaders, which mentions measures to strengthen extended deterrence, including setting up the Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG).

According to the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army’s Nuclear Disablement Teams (NDT) trained with the South Korean Army’s Nuclear Characterization Teams (NCT) from March 20 to March 24. The training was for entering North Korean territory and removing warheads mounted on missiles in case of emergency. This is the first time that the U.S. Army’s deployment of NCT to South Korea and its joint training with the South Korean Army were revealed.

In the pictures, the members of South Korean and the U.S. armies are inspecting protective equipment during the training. The Department of Defense explained that NDT disables the infrastructure and components of nuclear and radioactive weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to remove the enemy’s capabilities, making the following WMD removal operations easier. The South Korean Army’s NCT is part of the ROK Army CBR Defense Command under the Ministry of National Defense and conducts similar missions as the U.S. NDT…………………….more https://www.donga.com/en/article/all/20230501/4125589/1

May 2, 2023 Posted by | politics international, South Korea | Leave a comment

Mombasa Appeal for peace and prevention of Nuclear War – International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

30.04.23 – Pressenza IPA

At our 23rd World Congress in Mombasa in April 2023, we, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, discussed the risks and impending consequences of the current, crisis situation on our planet. The war in Ukraine bears enormous costs for people mainly, but not only in Ukraine and causes unspeakable suffering. So many civilians and soldiers from both sides have lost their lives, health and livelihoods. In addition, global food supplies have already suffered and prices for essential goods are rising. According to current figures, hunger in Africa threatens to increase by 117% if the war is not stopped immediately.

Crucially there is a real and growing risk that the world will enter a nuclear war in the near future. With every day of the ongoing war in Ukraine, this risk increases. At the same time, the conflict over Taiwan threatens to escalate further, including the danger of nuclear war involving China and the USA. Nuclear war will almost certainly not remain limited. Military planning games regularly lead to total escalation and mutual annihilation once nuclear weapons are used…………………………………………………………………… more https://www.pressenza.com/2023/04/mombasa-appeal-for-peace-and-prevention-of-nuclear-war/

May 2, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

April 30 Energy News — geoharvey

Opinion: ¶ “Volkswagen Has A Huge Avenue For US Market Expansion – If It Takes It” • In the first quarter of 2023, Volkswagen accounted for less than 2% of the US auto market. It doesn’t have a big US presence. But it could. A significant change in a market provides an opportunity for companies […]

April 30 Energy News — geoharvey

May 2, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

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