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
Nuclear balance of terror makes India and Pakistan less safe
Nuclear missiles don’t give security The Daily Star, Praful Bidwai, 1 May 12, “…….Nuclear weapons have made India and Pakistan more, not less, insecure. Millions of civilians in both are vulnerable to, but defenceless against, attacks by nuclear-capable missiles. Both are stockpiling large quantities of bomb fuel. Pakistan is building new plutonium facilities even as it expands its uranium enrichment programme. Continue reading
The bitter history of Malaysia’s Bukit Merah rare earths project.
Some of the surviving residents of Bukit Merah are still plagued with severe health problems. Until this very day, the Malaysian authorities refuse to acknowledge that the radioactive waste was responsible for the sudden escalation of health problems among the residents
Today, the government is the official custodian of this repository in Bukit Merah. This site in Bukit Merah is declared as a restricted and dangerous dump site for radioactive materials but a curtain of official silence has descended on it. Has the government not learnt from Bukit Merah?
The Lynas project is likely to be a replay of the ARE fiasco but on a much larger scale.
The benefits gained by Malaysia from the Lynas investment are very little relative to the risks involved. Whilst the profits of the project go to Lynas (untaxed) and the few Malaysian companies that are involved in the construction of and the provision of supplies to the Gebeng rare earth plant, the radioactive waste will remain in
Malaysian soil for hundreds of years.
Lynas issue: Not learning from bitter experience —The Malaysian Insider, Richard Pendragon, April 12, 2012 “……..Bukit Merah The history of the rare earth industry in Malaysia is little known to most Malaysians. Most Malaysians in fact think that the Lynas project in Pahang is the first time Malaysia has been associated with this industry.
Few Malaysians actually know that there was a rare earth plant in Bukit Merah, Perak, which has been closed some 10 or more years ago, following a ruling by the High Court of Malaysia that the company involved was in negligence, and that the radioactive waste generated by the plant was dangerous and had to be removed and secured in a safe
place away from people for hundreds of years.
The evidence of the hazardous legacy of this rare earth plant is still present in our midst as a reminder to every one of the risks involved. Continue reading
Mystery of USA’s lost nuclear attack submarine
Experts out to solve deep-sea mystery of the USS Scorpion By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY 12 April 12, Shipwreck disaster experts are calling for a deep-sea expedition to a lost U.S. nuclear attack sub, the USS Scorpion, in an effort to verify a new theory on what caused the Cold War vessel to sink. Continue reading
The Czech Republic’s cruel history of uranium mining
Around 80,000 people are believed to have been sentenced to work in the uranium mines by the Czechoslovak communist regime
A cheap and plentiful source of labor was concocted by the communist regime as it turned on its real and imaginary enemies after taking power…. Brutal conditions in the mines and the camps
Czech historian produces death tally for communist uranium camps Czech historian says he has drawn up the first accurate death tally for the former communist regime’s uranium labor camps Czech Position.com Chris Johnstone | 05.04.2012 A Czech historian has drawn up the first list of prisoners who perished in the Czechoslovak communist regime’s infamous network of uranium mining camps. Continue reading
Hypocrisy and racism – Australia’s sorry nuclear history
Dumping on Traditional Owners: the ugly face of Australian racism The Drum, 29 March 12 The nuclear industry has been responsible for some of the crudest racism in Australia’s history.
This racism dates from the British nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s but it can still be seen today.
The British government conducted 12 nuclear bomb tests in Australia in the 1950s, most of them at Maralinga in South Australia. Permission was not sought from affected Aboriginal groups such as the Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, Tjarutja and Kokatha. Thousands of people were adversely affected and the impact on Aboriginal people was particularly profound.
Many Aboriginal people suffered from radiological poisoning. There are tragic accounts of families sleeping in the bomb craters. So-called ‘Native Patrol Officers’ patrolled thousands of square kilometres to try to ensure that Aboriginal people were removed before nuclear tests took place. Signs were erected in some places – written in English, which few in the affected Indigenous communities could understand. The 1985 Royal Commission found that regard for Aboriginal safety was characterised by “ignorance, incompetence and cynicism”. Many Aboriginal people were forcibly removed from their homelands and taken to places such as the Yalata mission in South Australia, which was effectively a prison camp.
In the late-1990s, the Australian government carried out a clean-up of the Maralinga nuclear test site. It was done on the cheap and many tonnes of debris contaminated with kilograms of plutonium remain buried in shallow, unlined pits in totally unsuitable geology. As nuclear engineer and whistleblower Alan Parkinson said of the ‘clean-up’ on ABC radio in August 2002:
“What was done at Maralinga was a cheap and nasty solution that wouldn’t be adopted on white-fellas land.”
Despite the residual contamination, the Federal Government has off-loaded responsibility for the land onto the Maralinga Tjarutja Traditional Owners. The Government portrays this land transfer as an act of reconciliation, but the real agenda was spelt out in a 1996 government document which states that the clean-up was “aimed at reducing Commonwealth liability arising from residual contamination.”….. http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3919296.html
Misunderstanding, wrong translation of Ahmadinejad’s supposed words “Israel must be wiped off the map”
from Wikileaks: Translation controversy Many news sources repeated the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting statement by Ahmadinejad that “Israel must be wiped off the map”,[5][6] an English idiom which means to “cause a place to stop existing”,[7] or to “obliterate totally”,[8] or “destroy completely”.[9]
Ahmadinejad’s phrase was “بايد از صفحه روزگار محو شود” according to the text published on the President’s Office’s website.[10]
The translation presented by the official Islamic Republic News Agency has been challenged by Arash Norouzi, who says the statement “wiped off the map” was never made and that Ahmadinejad did not refer to the nation or land mass of Israel, but to the “regime occupying Jerusalem”. Norouzi translated the original Persian to English, with the result, “the Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”[11] Juan Cole, a University of Michigan Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History, agrees that Ahmadinejad’s statement should be translated as, “the Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e eshghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad).[12] According to Cole, “Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ because no such idiom exists in Persian.” Instead, “he did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse.”[13] The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translated the phrase similarly, as “this regime” must be “eliminated from the pages of history.”[14]
Iranian government sources denied that Ahmadinejad issued any sort of threat. On 20 February 2006, Iran’s foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference: “How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognize legally this regime.”[15][16][17]
1 This Month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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