The National 14th July 2017, PROTESTING pensioners Brian Quail and Angela Zelter are languishing in jail
after refusing to accept a court order banning them from campaigning
outside a nuclear arms base.
Quail, a 79-year-old retired Latin teacher is
being kept in HMP Low Moss, while 66-year-old Zelter has been remanded in
Corton Vale. The two were arrested by police after taking part in a
blockade of the nuclear warhead store at Coulport on Loch Long as part of
the Trident Ploughshares campaign.
CORE 7th July 2017CORE’s Janine Allis-Smith and Martin Forwood who have campaigned on Sellafield commercial operations since the 1980’s have been notified that they have won the international Nuclear Free Future Award (NFFA) for 2017
under the Education category.
Cited for their three decades of work ‘unmasking ‘ and disseminating information on operations at the West
Cumbrian site to a world-wide audience – and with CORE described as ‘an indispensable pillar of the British anti-nuclear movement’ – the award which carries a cash endowment of $10,000 will be made in Basel, Switzerland in September.
Commenting on the unexpected award the campaigners said today: ‘We are honoured to have received NFFA’s Education Award for 2017 and humbled to be joining the list of diverse and distinguished winners of the past. Since the 1980’s when Sellafield was preparing to double its commercial reprocessing activities, we have focused not only on acting locally but also being the ‘eyes and ears’ for the many interested parties world-wide on Sellafield and its many detrimentswhich include site accidents, environmental contamination, health risks, plutonium stockpiles and nuclear transports. http://corecumbria.co.uk/news/anti-nuclear-campaigners-from-local-group-core-win-international-award/
“We are in good shape,” said Marta Adams, a private attorney hired to fight the legal battle, told the state Board of Examiners today. Experts were ready to testify at any hearings by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, she said.
Adams fought against the Yucca Mountain project for 20 years with the Nevada Attorney General’s Office before she retired. She received a $300,000 contract as a private attorney to continue the battle, and that amount was raised to $450,000 a year by the Board of Examiners. This is federal money.
President Donald Trump’s administration has included $120 million in its budget for the Federal Regulatory Commission to restart hearings on licensing Yucca Mountain.
Gov. Brian Sandoval, chairman of the Board of Examiners, said the federal government was trying to do “an end run” around the authority of the state. He said the site sits atop an aquifer, and the stored radioactive material could get into the water.
Adams said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is not as ready as it thinks it is to begin the licensing process, with hearings that could last five years. She said the Nevada Legislature stands behind the state’s opposition.
Nuclear ship proceeds despite protests, Herald Sun ,Wolfgang Jung and Stephen Wolf, Deutsche Presse Agentur June 29, 2017 A transport ship loaded with highly radioactive nuclear waste has continued its journey along a German river after being halted by protesters.
Four activists from the German environmental group Robin Wood abseiled from a bridge over the Neckar river in the town of Bad Wimpfen in southwest Germany, unfurling a banner reading, “Prevent, don’t put off.”
Human chain against aging nuclear plants spans three countries http://www.dw.com/en/human-chain-against-aging-nuclear-plants-spans-three-countries/a-39408428 Thousands have protested to demand the closure of two nuclear reactors in Belgium over safety concerns. Demonstrators formed a human chain that stretched from Germany, through the Netherlands and into Belgium. Organizers claimed that some 50,000 protesters took part in the demonstration on Sunday, forming a human chain that stretched from Aachen, Germany, to Liege, Belgium, and Maastricht, the Netherlands.
The chain also passed close the Tihange nuclear power plant some 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) southwest of Liege. The Tihange 2 and Doel 3 reactors have been the subject of safety concerns about microcracks in their structures.
Doel lies in northern Belgium, close to the port city of Antwerp, about halfway between Brussels and Amsterdam. Numerous safety incidents, mostly low-level, have been reported from the two reactors which have each been in operation for more than 30 years.
Protesters who massed in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium complain they are living with excessive risk
German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks last year urged Belgium to take the two reactors offline until open safety questions were cleared up. However, the request was dismissed by Belgium’s nuclear regulator.
Aachen takes legal action
The city of Aachen and some 100 communities in the border region are currently suing the operators of Tihange 2.
Sunday’s demonstration was organized by numerous environmental organizations in all three countries and spearheaded by Belgian actor and director Bouli Lanners. The mayors of Aachen and Cologne also lent their weight to the protest.
“It is the strongest message the region could send,” said the administrative head of the Aachen city region, Helmut Etschenberg. “We no longer want to live with the element of uncertainty that is Tihange 2 and we will keep on and on.”
Environmental groups challenge TVA nuclear reactor plan, Miami Herald, 25 June 17 The Associated Press OAK RIDGE, TENN.
Environmental groups are challenging the Tennessee Valley Authority’s proposal to use a Tennessee nuclear reactor design site abandoned in the 1970s to develop new small modular reactors.
According to the Chattanooga Times Free Press , the Southern Alliance for Clean Power, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League have challenged the Oak Ridge project’s site application. They say the reactors remain untested, unsafe and unneeded.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing the application to determine if the site works for two or more reactors generating up to 800 megawatts of nuclear power.
Sara Barczak, the high risk energy choices program director with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, compared the project to the Clinch River Breeder Reactor project that was planned for the site in the 1970s, but was scrapped amid escalating prices for the technology.
“We are very concerned that history is once again repeating itself,” Barczak said. “And we are concerned that billions of dollars could be spent on a technology that is unproven, untested and significantly more expensive than other types of power technology that are available to TVA.”…….. http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article158140124.html
Herald 25th June 2017, Nuclear bomb bases on the Clyde are being targeted with blockades,
break-ins and a series of other protests next month. The campaign group,
Trident Ploughshares, is organising a disarmament camp at an ancient oak
woodland it owns near the UK’s nuclear weapons store at Coulport on Loch
Long from 8-16 July. The protest is timed to coincide with the close of
United Nations (UN) negotiations between 130 countries on a treaty banning
nuclear weapons. The UK government, along with other nuclear weapons
states, has boycotted the talks in New York. http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15369495.Blockades_to_target_Clyde_nuke_bases/
Youth & Student CND 19th June 2017, On the Saturday just gone, 17th June, while the rest of London sweltered at
the mercy of the hottest weekend so far this year, enthusiasts, activists,
and journalists alike, descended from across the world to Conway Hall,
Holborn,to take part in the first nuclear power conference in 30 years, No
Need for Nuclear: The Renewables are Here hosted by the Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament. With over 150 attendees of all ages, and 17 speakers
comprised of distinguished academics, MPs and industry representatives, the
conference was deemed a great success. The conference was graced with a
keynote address from Caroline Lucas MP, all the way from New York where the
UN disarmament meetings are taking place. The conference was broken into 4
sections: What’s wrong with Nuclear power? and The Politics of Nuclear
Power followed by UK Energy Demand, Energy Supply, and The Renewables after
lunch. http://www.yscnd.org/uk/what-you-missed-at-the-noneedfornuclear-conference/
A-bomb victims join NYC rally for ban on nuke weapons at U.N. http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201706180031.html, By KEITA MANO/ Staff Writer June 18, 2017, NEW YORK–Shouting “No More Hiroshima, No More Nagasaki,” hundreds of demonstrators marched through a downpour in New York City on June 17, calling for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons under negotiations at the United Nations.
Atomic bomb survivors and others took turns giving speeches when they arrived at the square near the United Nations headquarters. The 1.5-kilometer march was organized by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
Elayne Whyte, Costa Rica’s ambassador who is chairing the negotiations, pledged to strive toward the establishment of the treaty, while expressing gratitude toward the 3 million signatures collected in a campaign by atomic bomb survivors to highlight the importance of the U.N. talks.
Hibakusha survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki traveled to New York to coincide with the negotiations and handed the signatures to Whyte at the U.N. headquarters the previous day.
Toshiyuki Mimaki, 75, a hibakusha from Hiroshima, said he was touched by the participation of so many people in the march.
“Despite the heavy rain, a large number of people came and shouted Hiroshima and Nagasaki together,” said Mimaki. “I am so happy and grateful.”
Rallies were also held across Japan on June 17 to coincide with the New York City march.
The Canary 14th June 2017, The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) has criticised what it calls the
“ill-advised” appointment by Theresa May of Michael Gove as Environment
Secretary. Its condemnation comes ahead of a conference on renewable
energy. And The Canary spoke exclusively to CND General Secretary Kate
Hudson about climate change, renewables and the future under a potential
Conservative-led government.
The CND was formed in 1957, with the specific goal of campaigning for an end to nuclear weapons. But over the years, the
group has broadened its remit, and on Saturday 17 June it will be holding a
conference on renewable energy. Entitled No need for nuclear: the
renewables are here, it will be tackling: What’s wrong with nuclear
power; The politics of nuclear power; Energy demand and energy efficiency;
The scope of renewables in the UK. Hudson told The Canary, tackling nuclear
power is nothing new for the CND. In fact, she says the group has been
addressing renewables for “decades”: CND is best known for being
anti-nuclear weapons but for some decades now we have also had an
anti-nuclear power stance. The technologies are inextricably linked and the
radiation impacts are of shared devastation. Nuclear power is dirty,
dangerous, expensive and absolutely unnecessary. Renewables now demonstrate
that final point beyond all question. The idea that nuclear power is worth
the risk is finished. Many countries already recognise that and it’s time
for the UK to kick its nuclear addiction in the interests of people and
planet. https://www.thecanary.co/2017/06/14/major-campaign-group-slammed-ill-advised-appointment-climate-change-skeptic-government/
In one of its final acts of 2016, the United Nations General Assembly adopted with overwhelming support a landmark resolution to begin negotiations on a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons. This historic decision heralds an end to two decades of paralysis in multilateral nuclear disarmament efforts.
Throughout June and July of 2017, governments will negotiate a ban on nuclear weapons at the United Nations. WILPF and our coalition are hitting the streets to celebrate and also demand a good treaty that prohibits these weapons of mass destruction once and for all!
The Women’s March to Ban the Bomb is a women-led initiative building on the momentum of movements at the forefront of the resistance, including the Women’s March on Washington. It will bring together people of all genders, sexual orientations, ages, races, abilities, nationalities, cultures, faiths, political affiliations and backgrounds to march and rally at 12 PM – 3PM Saturday, June 17th 2017 in New York City! https://www.womenbanthebomb.org/
East Anglian Daily Times 9th June 2017, A high-profile baroness and environmental campaigner has labelled Suffolk’s new nuclear proposals “incredibly disastrous”. Jenny Jones, Baroness of Moulsecoomb, made the comments at a recent meeting attended by more than 100 people in Woodbridge at which Sizewell C faced criticism from campaigners, academics and Suffolk residents.
A decade-long legal battle to save their fertile land from being used for the country’s largest nuclear power plant ended in a victory for farmers from Saurashtra’s Bhavnagar district.
The Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) recently informed the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to shift the proposed 6,000 megaWatt (MW) nuclear plant — the first under the Indo-US civil nuclear pact of 2008 — from the coastal district of Gujarat to Kavvada in Andhra Pradesh “on account of delay in land acquisition at Chhaya-Mithivirdi site”.
The plant was to be set up by state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) with technical support from Toshiba Corp’s Westinghouse Electric Company (WEC), which will build six nuclear reactors at the new site.
On May 18, MoEF said that in view of shifting of the said project the proposal for environment clearance (EC) before it has been delisted.
The villagers had approached NGT on March 3, 2015, challenging the coastal regulatory zone (CRZ) clearance given to NPCIL for the project. NGT’s Western Zone Bench, comprising Justice UD Salvi and Ranjan Chatterjee as expert member, disposed of the petition post the MoEF submission regarding shifting the site for the project.
India has planned to increase its nuclear power generation capacity from the existing 6,780 MW to 63,000 MW by 2032.
It is learnt that farmers in Andhra Pradesh have agreed to give away their lands for Westinghouse Electric’s AP-1000 pressurised water reactors. The project will initially require about 800 hectares of land in the eastern coastal district of Srikakulam.
In Gujarat’s Mithivirdi, however, farmers are celebrating. “A get-together has been planned on June 2 to celebrate the victory. The project would have directly affected about 340 farmer families and about 2,000 people indirectly associated with farm-related activities,” said Shaktisinh Gohi, one of the petitioners.
Gohil stated that NPCIL wanted about 777 hectares of land for the project from three to four villages around Mithivirdi. On March 5, 2013, before the company was granted CRZ clearance for the site, there were about 7,000 villagers who staged a walk-out from the Environmental Public Hearing as a mark of protest. Farmer leaders have been “sensitising” people about the risks of a nuclear reactor in the vicinity by distributing materials and showcasing films of the nuclear disasters in parts of the world.
“Our protests and arguments were backed by academic and scientific facts. We fought a very well-organised battle to get rid of this project. ,” said Rohit Prajapati, another petitioner.
High court ruling on nuclear was a victory for SA – Liziwe McDaid
A month after winning the court bid, Safcei spokesperson Liz McDaid said the victory opened space for other civil society organisations to come together to keep the nuclear programme from moving forward.
McDaid, who was engaging with stakeholders in Khayelitsha last week, told Fin24 that the court victory was a major boost in bringing other stakeholders together.
“For civil society, this has opened a space,” she said. “It has meant that organisations involved in child care, youth work (and) social justice have realised what the impact of such a deal could have on their work.
“Right now, it’s up to civil society to consolidate that gain, to spread that message and to mobilise going forward.”
McDaid said Safcei would focus its attention on the Department of Energy’s draft integrated resource plan and energy plan, which is currently undergoing stakeholder engagement and public hearings.
“One of our critical areas is the electricity plan, which was five years out of date,” she said. “We want to make sure that process runs properly and that renewable energy is given its proper place, because we want to see South Africa move into the future.
“The future energy is definitely renewable and not nuclear,” she said. Continue reading →
A major leader of the anti-nuclear movement, Father Moon Paul Kyu-Hyn, said “getting rid of nuclear power is the only way to survive, to save ourselves, and save the world,” according to Public Radio International.
A missile defense system has caused tensions between the U.S. and China as well as between China and South Korea. The country’s new president, Moon Jae-in, has emphasized his goal to solve the issues in the Korean Peninsula.
Father Moon expressed his disappointed in the new Terminal High Altitude Area Defense or THAAD, which became operational on May 2 in the Korean Peninsula. An agreement to install the system was established between the United States and South Korea’s former president, recently incarcerated for political corruption.
“THAAD is a weapon of war. You can’t be for peace if you’re preparing for war,” said Father Moon, an activist who spent three years in jail for illegally crossing over into North Korea in 1989.
He is now leading the charge on the anti-nuclear demonstrations participated by the clergy and lay people, who are opposed the expansion of nuclear power in all of Korea and the rest of the world. The group recently gathered in downtown Seoul to collect a million signatures for support against nuclear energy.
Nearly a third of the country’s electrical consumption relies on nuclear power from over 20 nuclear reactors. Moon Jae-in, who was confirmed president this week, promised to halt expansion of nuclear power and focus on clean energy during a campaign speech in April.
The push to remove nuclear power has increased in South Korea since three plants in Fukushima had a meltdown in 2011 caused by a Tsunami along the shores of Japan. The meltdown forced over 100,000 people to be evacuated from their homes, and the government is still cautious to allow everyone to return due to fears of radiation poison.
In an interview with Public Radio International, Father Cho Hyun-chul, a theology professor at Sogang University in Seoul, said if there is a similar accident revolving South Korea’s power plants then there would be “no room for us to live here. There is no more safe land.”
He continued to say that the destruction nuclear power can cause is “directly against God’s intention,” and the movement is stressing the need to care for the environment – a need heavily emphasized by Pope Francis especially in his encyclical Laudato Si.
The Pope recognized the “tremendous power” nuclear energy has gifted to humanity, but he also spoke against its dangers to the environment and the risk of being used improperly. He said a global consensus to focus on clean and renewable energy is essential for sustaining the earth.
“Such a consensus could lead, for example, to planning a sustainable and diversified agriculture, developing renewable and less polluting forms of energy,” Pope Francis wrote in Laudato Si.
According to Reuters, President Moon promised to ease away from nuclear energy in a campaign speech in April. The head for the president’s team on energy policy said South Korea “should move away from coal and nuclear power, and shift to clean or renewable energy-based platforms,” and that he would stop the plans to construct two new reactors in the south of the country.
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