How bureaucrats worked secretly to subvert laws on nuclear weapons proliferation
U.S. and international law strictly limited the technology developed in the Clinch River program, particularly reprocessing technology used to separate plutonium from spent nuclear fuel. And the plan would require hundreds of international shipments of weapons-grade plutonium and high level nuclear waste on ships.
United States Circumvented Laws To Help Japan Accumulate Tons of Plutonium, DC Bureau By Joseph Trento, April 9th, 2012“…..Giving to Both Sides – Nuclear deals with China and Japan Westinghouse AP 1000 in China In 1984 the Westinghouse Corporation had struck a deal to supply nuclear reactors to China worth as much as $10 billion. The deal was an incredible windfall for the American nuclear industry and would be a cornerstone in [bureaucrat] Richard Kennedy’s efforts to make the United States dominate in the world’s nuclear commerce. The only problem was China’s abysmal record of sharing nuclear secrets with all bidders.
In a bitter session on the Senate floor, then Democratic Assistant Majority Leader Alan Cranston charged that the Reagan administration on [bureaucrat Richard] Kennedy’s watch had “systematically withheld, suppressed and covered up information – known virtually throughout the executive branch – which Congress might find worrisome.” China was already known to have sold nuclear technology to five international nuclear outlaws: Pakistan, Iran, South Africa, Brazil and Argentina. By 1984, Cranston and most of the American government knew that China had given sophisticated nuclear weapons designs to Pakistan. Beijing had also sold the enriched uranium that would find its way into South Africa’s nuclear bombs. China sold heavy water for use in Argentina’s bomb program, while also selling nuclear materials to arch rival Brazil and negotiating nuclear agreements with Iran.
China’s nuclear proliferation track record could hardly have been worse, but instead of negotiating ironclad safeguards, Kennedy returned from Beijing with an agreement so ambiguous that both sides could interpret it however they liked. Continue reading
Radio and Television Address to the American People on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty John Kennedy, Washington, D.C., July 26, 1963 “…….This treaty can be a step towards freeing the world from the fears and dangers of radioactive fallout. Our own atmospheric tests last year were conducted under conditions which restricted such fallout to an absolute minimum. But over the years the number and the yield of weapons tested have rapidly increased and so have the radioactive hazards from such testing. Continued unrestricted testing by the nuclear powers, joined in time by other nations which may be less adept in limiting pollution, will increasingly contaminate the air that all of us must breathe Even then, the number of children and grandchildren with cancer in their bones, with leukemia in their blood, or with poison in their lungs might seem statistically small to some, in comparison with natural health hazards. But this is not a natural health hazard-and it is not a statistical issue. The loss of even one human life, or the malformation of even one baby-who may be born long after all of us have gone-should be of concern to us all. Our children and grandchildren are not merely statistics towards which we can be indifferent.
Nor does this affect the nuclear powers alone. These tests befoul the air of all men and all nations, Continue reading
The unnecessary atrocity of Hiroshima nuclear bombing
Ham’s conclusion to his very well documented and stringently argued book is that for 70 years the world has accepted an American myth – that the atomic bombs ended the war by shocking Japan into surrender. In fact it was ‘a planned massacre of innocent civilians – an unwarranted, American atrocity’.
Hiroshima: A stain on human history , HIROSHIMA NAGASAKI BY PAUL HAM(Bantam Press £25) By PETER LEWIS, PUBLISHED, 26 July 2012 This controversial book delivers a double-whammy in the way of shocks. First, it argues that the Atomic Bombing of two Japanese cities in August, 1945, was militarily unnecessary and politically unjustified.
Second, by interviewing many survivors while he was living in the two cities, Paul Ham, an Australian journalist and expert on the Pacific war, gives an eye-witness picture that leaves Dante’s Inferno looking pale.
Let me start with the inferno, so that we realise just what we are considering. Tomiko Nakamura was a schoolgirl of 13 at Shintaku High School in Hiroshima when the Bomb exploded, killing almost all her 300 schoolmates in the playground. Although over a mile from the blast, the flash, she remembers, ‘felt like the sun had fallen out of the sky and landed right in front of us’.
She regained consciousness in darkness. The mushroom cloud had turned dirty brown and cut off the sun. Flashes like ‘sunrises’ were coming from it in all directions. She examined her scalp covered in glass splinters. ‘My skin rolled off my legs like stockings’. Her shirt and trousers had been burnt onto her flesh. ‘I felt very sick and sat down but the flames were coming closer’. She started to walk over the rubble. ‘Voices beneath the timbers cried “Help! Help! It’s so hot!” I just kept walking’.
She reached a bridge where people with black or red faces were jumping into the river. ‘I couldn’t tell men from women. Some were holding their insides in their hands, staring at them. Everywhere dehydrated people were crying for water but when they drank some they died. A girl screamed: ‘The faster I die the better!’ as she jumped into the river. Continue reading
The major security concern about Russia’s secret nuclear cities
Closed Cities & Nuclear Entrepreneurship In Russia JULY 30, 2012 by EDWARD PERELLO Faced with a dearth of opportunity, the aged nuclear scientist would not need much imagination, nor would he have to look far, to find a buyer interested in an exchange that would provide him with a hefty retirement package with which to live out his remaining
years….
.Russia’s ten nuclear cities contain the former Soviet Union’s principal nuclear weapons research, design and production facilities, and to the ordinary citizen, they weren’t really there. Nuclear cities were not officially recognised as existing until 1992 as they were amongst the Soviet unions many “closed cities” that were involved in certain sensitive activities. Located in remote regions around the country, closed cities were not labelled on any
publicly-available map and were isolated from the world. Continue reading
What has happened with UK’s nuclear Polaris missiles?
Faslane and Coulport nuclear weapons maintenance to be privatised – Polaris? For Argyll.com July 28, 2012 The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has made a contractual commitment to hand over to a private sector consortium the maintenance of the UK’s nuclear weapons – described by the BBC as ‘Trident and Polaris weapons systems’ – held in Argyll at Faslane and Coulport on the Clyde.
This raises an immediate public information issue.
What is our position on the Polaris system? It was quite a shock to see it mentioned, like a rising from almost forgotten history. Polaris – and are we storing redundant warheads? Continue reading
VIDEO: USA’s soldier guinea pigs watched atomic explosion
“It was a publicity stunt to show the American public how safe it was during an atomic bomb,” Yoshitake says, “and if there was a war or something, with atomic bombs going off, that it was going to be safe for the general public.”..
all six people who were there that day have had cancer
VIDEO How not to watch an overhead nuclear test http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57475611/how-not-to-watch-an-overhead-nuclear-test/ CBS News COLLEGE POINT, Md. 19 July 12 – On this date in 1957, the U.S. conducted one of the most important tests of the atomic age.
A nuclear-tipped missile was fired and detonated in the skies over the Nevada desert.
But what was happening on the ground at that moment seems beyond comprehension today. Continue reading
New Zealand art show a reminder of that country’s proud anti nuclear history
Her first-hand experiences and those of her fellow protesters feature in an anti-nuclear exhibition called Blast! Pat Hanly – The Painter and His Protests, on now at the Voyager New Zealand Maritime Museum….. Blast! is a travelling exhibition featuring the paintings
of anti-nuclear artist Pat Hanly and his wife Gil Hanly’s photographs.
Memories of anti-nuclear era Western Leader, Auckland NZ NICOLA MURPHY 19 July 12, PEACE PROTESTER: Jody Lusk doesn’t regret participating in New Zealand’s anti-nuclear protests, despite getting injured after attacks by French police. Continue reading
France used soldiers as guinea pigs for radiation effects
An excerpt published in the newspaper refers to the “Gerboise verte”, code name for the test firings of April 25, 1961. It states that the experiment “should allow for a study of the physiological and psychological effects of atomic weaponry on humans, with the goal obtaining the necessary elements to prepare physically and morally for modern combat.”
Soldiers deliberately exposed to nuclear tests, says report According to the Tuesday edition of the French daily Parisian, a confidential military report proves that soldiers were deliberately exposed to nuclear tests that France conducted in Algeria in the 1960s. By FRANCE 24 17 July 12 Continue reading
A brief history of USA’s nuclear waste (mis)management
In 2010, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a “waste confidence decision” that asserted that used fuel rods could be stored at the power plants for 60 years after they close down. NRC also asserted that a permanent repository would be ready to handle such wastes “when necessary.”
NUCLEAR WASTE Manila Bulletin By ATTY. ROMEO V. PEFIANCO July 11, 2012, “…Storing used fuel rods from nuclear power reactors is one problem that remains unsolved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Nuclear waste in the US comes from: 1) nuclear weapons production facilities, 2) nuclear power plants, 3) medical equipment previously used in radiation treatments, 4) industrial sources of radioactivity used as a more powerful alternative to X-rays, and 5) residues from uranium mining. Continue reading
Never mind Iran; NO COUNTRY can be trusted with nuclear weapons
The notion that Iran can’t be trusted with such a weapon obscures a larger point: given their power to destroy life on a monumental scale, no individual and no government can ultimately be trusted with the bomb.
The only way to be safe from nuclear weapons is to get rid of them – not just the Iranian one that doesn’t yet exist, but all of them. It’s a daunting task. It’s also a subject that’s out of the news and off anyone’s agenda at the moment, but if it is ever to be achieved, we at least need to start talking about it. Soon.
Beyond nuclear denial, Aljazeera, William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, a TomDispatch regular, and the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.
How a world-ending weapon disappeared from our consciousness, but not our planet. : 10 Jul 2012 There was a time when nuclear weapons were a significant part of our national conversation. Addressing the issue of potential atomic annihilation was once described by nuclear theorist Herman Kahn as “thinking about the unthinkable”, but that didn’t keep us from thinking, talking, fantasising, worrying about it, or putting images of possible nuclear nightmares (often transmuted to invading aliens or outer space) endlessly on screen.
Now, on a planet still overstocked with city-busting, world-ending weaponry, in which almost 67 years have passed since a nuclear weapon was last used, the only nuke that Americans regularly hear about is one that doesn’t exist: Iran’s. The nearly 20,000 nuclear weapons on missiles, planes and submarines possessed by Russia, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, China, Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea are barely mentioned in what passes for press coverage of the nuclear issue. Continue reading
Plutonium’s deadly history
The Manhattan Project’s Fatal “Demon Core”, Physics Central, May 21, 2012 Sixty six years ago today, Louis Slotin saw a flash of blue light in the depths of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Seconds before, all that separated the young scientist from a lethal dose of radiation was a thin screwdriver.
The screwdriver supported a reflective covering that encased a sphere of plutonium, and if the reflector fell into place, a nuclear chain reaction would commence. When Slotin’s hand slipped, a lethal burst of radiation hit him, and he died nine days later. Continue reading
Kodak’s secret nuclear reactor
Now, to the small matter of Kodak’s nuclear reactor. Wait. Nuclear WHAT? The Telegraph, news.com.au May 16, 2012 Kodak had weapons-grade uranium in New York basement Company used nuclear reactor for quality testing Reactor destroyed in 2006 IS this how Kodak gets rid of red-eye?
In a startling development it’s been revealed that a New York Kodak facility secretly housed, oh, we don’t know, ONLY A NUCLEAR REACTOR. Kodak has gone bankrupt, but in its halcyon days made cameras and brought dreams to life with Kodak moments.
Little did we know the company also had the power to obliterate entire cities. Gizmodo.com reports that in the basement of Kodak’s New York property lay 3.5 pounds of enriched uranium. Which means they had enough to build an atomic bomb.
No-one knew about it – not cops, firies, New York officials – except for a few top Kodak execs and White House types. “It’s such an odd situation because private companies just don’t have this material,” said Miles Pomper from Washington’s centre for Nonproliferation Studies. Apparently Kodak acquired the reactor in 1974 to check for impurities and other assorted testing. It was dismantled in 2006.
Denouncing the Doctrine of Discovery as the basis for exploitation of indigenous peoples
Papal bull that granted those European monarchs the right to claim sovereignty over these newly “discovered” lands occupied by non-Christian “barbarous nations.”
the Doctrine of Discovery is the basis for all Indian land law in this country, and it has imposed similar burdens on indigenous peoples all over the world — in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, in Africa, in Latin America and in the island nations of the Caribbean and Oceania.
Stand for Human Rights for Indigenous Peoples and Renounce the ’Doctrine of Discovery’ HUFFINGTON POST, Tadodaho Sid HillSpiritual Leader, Haudenosaunee (Six Nations/Iroquois Confederacy), 15 May 12,
When the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues convened on May 7th in New York, native peoples around the world turned their eyes to the most important effort to renounce the Doctrine of Discovery, a 15th century Papal bull that has been exploited for five centuries to deny the human rights of hundreds of millions of people who continue to be subject to its power. Continue reading
Archival test results of low level radiation do NOT show health benefits
Reactor casualties 4 – The phony lost archive versus the real one. Paul Langley’s Nuclear History Blog, 11 May 12, In a recent issue of “Nature” claims are made of a “lost archive” of Cold War era animal tissue. The animals had been injected with radioactive isotopes in the USSR and the USA. 1,000s of animals were involved. Both nations’ governments wanted to know the effect of internalised substances which were radioactive. The claim in “Nature” involves the supposed recent “discovery” of these lost archives of tissue in both countries. Lo and behold, the quoted scientist claims that the tissue “proves” the health benefits of low dose radiation. Sound familiar?
The history of Germany’s anti nuclear movement
The Germans also had an anti-nuke party as of 1980, namely the Greens, who carried the concerns of the mass movement into the national parliament, the Bundestag. No other country in the world has had a force so determined and influential in taking on the powerful atomic energy lobby.
From Advocates to Enemies: Nuclear Decline in Germany World Policy Blog May 10, 2012 -By Paul Hockenos “……….it wasn’t until the early 1970s when protests broke out in Germany’s southwestern-most corner that Germans began looking twice at the nuclear power facilities and waste repositories in their backyards. The anti-nuclear energy movement was born in the wine-growing region of the Black Forest abutting the borders of Switzerland and France’s Alsace-Loraine. There, in the tiny hamlet of Wyhl, the area’s staunchly conservative farmers, joined by left-wing activists from the nearby university city of Freiburg, as well as concerned French and Swiss citizens, organized to stop the construction of a planned reactor.
The Wyhl coalition bore many of the characteristics that would define the movement for years to follow: It was locally led, politically diverse, and committed to non-violent civil disobedience. Initially, the farmers’ objection was that the steam clouds from the reactor’s cooling towers would block the sun light in their vineyards, not that radioactivity as such was a hazard. This changed as the community learned more about the health effects of low-level radiation, such as that produced by nuclear power plants on pregnant women in their vicinity.
Against all odds, the Wyhl coalition forced the utility giant to back down and scrap its plans. Continue reading
1 This Month
5 January -Webinar-What is Trump’s Golden Dome?
REGISTER AT Massachusetts Peace Action Education
New book – https://www.amazon.com/dp/1923372157?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Now until to February 10, 2026 Radioactive waste storage in France: the debate is finally open! How to participate?
-
Archives
- January 2026 (8)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (377)
- September 2025 (258)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
- April 2025 (305)
- March 2025 (319)
- February 2025 (234)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 