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NFLAs make plea for medal issue to Britain’s forgotten nuke test ‘Sniffers’

The Chair of the UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities has today written to the new Veterans Minister calling for the issue of the Nuclear Test Medal to the Service and civilian personnel who were involved in monitoring the atmospheric nuclear tests carried out by the French and Chinese in the Pacific.

The date is particularly significant because it is the 73rd anniversary of the first British atom bomb test off the West coast of Australia.

The NFLAs have been strong advocates for justice and compensation for Britain’s nuclear test veterans and their families.

The Nuclear Test Medal can currently be awarded to ‘UK Service and civilian personnel, and civilians of other nations, who served at the locations where the UK atmospheric nuclear tests were conducted, including the preparatory and clear-up phases, between 1952 and 1967 inclusive’, or to their surviving relatives.

However other veterans are excluded from receiving it, including those air and naval crews who monitored the fallout clouds which followed French and Chinese atmospheric testing by flying or sailing through them, and the groundcrews who subsequently decontaminated the monitoring aircraft. They were exposed to radioactive contamination, and their health has suffered as a result.

To NFLA Chair Councillor O’Neill this seems ‘not only unjust, but also bizarre and perverse’ given these veterans faced the same dangers as their colleagues who engaged in ‘sniffing’ duties on British tests and who have received the medal.

The NFLAs have therefore made a plea to the Veterans’ Minister, Louise Sandher-Jones MP, to do justice by these excluded nuclear test ‘sniffers’, the men of 27 and 543 Squadrons RAF and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel, Sir Percivale, by issuing them with the medal.

October 4, 2025 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Powering forward the Transatlantic Nuclear Free Alliance

2 Oct 25, https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/powering-forward-the-transatlantic-nuclear-free-alliance/

The UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities were proud to partner with Canadian and United States anti nuclear activists at a lively webinar, kindly hosted and organised by SOS: The San Onofre Syndrome, last Thursday (25 September).

Richard Outram, NFLA Secretary, was humbled to join an online panel of distinguished speakers who are working in opposition to new nuclear plants and nuclear waste dumps in both nations. There was an audience of around 50 activists joining us from across the globe, from Colwyn Bay to Hawaii, who had been invited to view the award-winning film ‘SOS – The San Onofre Syndrome: Nuclear Power’s Legacy’.

This time the focus was upon examining the situation in Canada.

Britain’s Nuclear Waste Services, being responsible for locating and building an undersea repository for our nation’s legacy and future high-level radioactive waste – the so called Geological Disposal Facility – has established strong ties with its Canadian counterparts, the Nuclear Waste Management Organisation which has determined to build a similar, though inland and underground, repository – called a Deep Geological Repository – at Ignace in Ontario.

Dr Gordon Edwards is a mathematician, physicist, nuclear consultant, and president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (https://www.ccnr.org). CCNR is a not-for-profit organization, federally incorporated in 1978, dedicated to education and research on all issues related to nuclear energy, whether civilian or military — including non-nuclear alternatives — especially those pertaining to Canada. He is based in Montreal.

Brennain Lloyd from We the Nuclear Free North (https://wethenuclearfreenorth.ca/) is a community organizer, public interest researcher and writer. For the last 30 plus years, Brennain has worked with environmental, peace and women’s organizations as a facilitator and adult educator supporting public participation in environmental and natural resource decision-making and various planning processes.  She is based in northeastern Ontario.

The panel was also joined by Team SOS in the United States, namely
Mary Beth Brangan and James Heddle, who are award-winning filmmakers of ‘SOS – The San Onofre Syndrome: Nuclear Power’s Legacy’ and co-directors of EON – the Ecological Options Network (https://www.eon3.org) and Morgan Peterson is an Oscar-nominated producer/director and director/editor of ‘SOS – The San Onofre Syndrome’. Mary Beth and James are based in Northern California, USA, whilst Morgan is based in Indiana, USA.

Richard is delighted that colleagues in the USA are looking to start work to build a network of nuclear free local authorities based on the model established from 1981 in the UK and Ireland.

It is almost 45 years since Manchester declared itself the world’s first nuclear free city and hosted the Secretariat of the Nuclear Free Local Authorities. Many cities across the globe followed Manchester’s lead in making similar declarations, many notably in the United States. It would be gratifying if these nuclear free cities could take the lead in establishing a new network across the Atlantic.

Richard said: “The purpose of establishing this Transatlantic Nuclear Free Alliance was to bring together anti-nuclear activists from both sides of the huge ocean which physically divides us in an online forum where we can share information on developments, support one another with campaigns, celebrate our successes, and share our common goals for a nuclear-free, peaceful and sustainable world.

“The UK / Ireland NFLAs would be delighted if from this meeting our colleagues in the United States could begin work to build their own network of nuclear free municipalities and we stand ready to lend support to such an initiative, where we can”.

Lisa Smithline from Moca Media TV, who ably performed the critical job of facilitating the event, summarised the event: “It was a deep and meaningful conversation. The feedback has been extremely positive, people are hungry for this information, the attendees didn’t want it to end!” 

A future event will be held in around two months’ time – so do watch out for the invitation.

If you would like to attend and are not yet on the NFLA mailing list for news and future events, please email Richard Outram at richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk

In the meantime, the 25 September event can be viewed online at:

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/Y3wQ_8YDumxukIDLCS5_uuBpUxnuYe9SbUHTF2PhVWEmPtE0Id2qNglFWDShT91n.dY8SN70Lrx5xxyqc
Passcode: RgMr442*

October 4, 2025 Posted by | Canada, opposition to nuclear, UK, USA | Leave a comment

‘Listen to the cry of the Earth’: Pope Leo takes aim at climate change sceptics.

Associated Press in Rome, 2 Oct 25, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/01/pope-leo-climate-change-sceptics-cry-of-the-earth

Pontiff laments that some ‘ridicule those who speak of global warming’, days after Trump’s claims of ‘con job’

Pope Leo XIV has taken aim at people who “ridicule those who speak of global warming” as he embraced Pope Francis’s environmental legacy and made it his own in some of his strongest and most extensive comments on the subject to date.

Leo presided over the 10th-anniversary celebration of Francis’s landmark ecological encyclical, Laudato Si (Praised Be), at a global gathering south of Rome. The encyclical cast care for the planet as an urgent and existential moral concern and launched a global grassroots movement to advocate for caring for God’s creation and the peoples most harmed by its exploitation.

Leo told the estimated 1,000 representatives from environmental and Indigenous groups that they needed to put pressure on national governments to develop tougher standards to mitigate the damage already done. He said he hoped the upcoming UN climate conference “will listen to the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor”.

He did not name names but history’s first American pope spoke just days after Donald Trump complained, with false statements, to the UN general assembly about the “con job” of global warming. Trump has long been a critic of climate science and polices aimed at helping to transition to green energies such as wind and solar power.

Leo quoted Francis’s follow-up encyclical, published in 2023, in which the Argentinian pope challenged world leaders before a UN conference to commit to binding targets to slow climate change before it was too late.

Citing Francis’s text, Leo recalled that some leaders had chosen to “deride the evident signs of climate change, to ridicule those who speak of global warming and even to blame the poor for the very thing that affects them most”.

He called for a change of heart to truly embrace the environmental cause and said any Christian should be onboard.

“We cannot love God, whom we cannot see, while despising his creatures. Nor can we call ourselves disciples of Jesus Christ without participating in his outlook on creation and his care for all that is fragile and wounded,” he said, presiding on a stage that featured a large chunk of a melting glacier from Greenland and tropical ferns.

October 4, 2025 Posted by | climate change, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

We don’t need gas or nuclear to power data centres, says Octopus Energy boss.

 Greg Jackson, CEO of Britain’s biggest energy supplier, hit back at claims from
union leaders and AI bosses that only fossil fuels and nuclear could meet
demand. Jackson, who has been a vocal proponent of renewable energy,
electric cars and heat pumps, said: “Today I think we are in a world
where what do you hear? ‘We’ve got this incredible demand for energy for
data centres: it can only be met by gas and maybe new nuclear.’ Forgive me:
this is horseshit, right?”

Times 1st Oct 2025, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/environment/article/octopus-energy-ceo-greg-jackson-jv92kbp2l

October 4, 2025 Posted by | renewable | Leave a comment

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