Black ministers join in supporting Virginia’s ban on uranium mining
it would be a tragic mistake for the Virginia General
Assembly to even consider allowing Virginia Uranium Inc., or whater
it’s called today, to open a uranium mine in our beautiful but
frequently flooded Southside Virginia
Seventeen black ministers signed a resolution requesting a permanent
ban on uranium mining in Virginia.
Roanoke pastor: uranium mining is bad news for Va.By Ralph Berrier
Jr.The Roanoke Times January 4, 2013
A coalition of black ministers from the Roanoke Valley and Southside
Virginia spoke out today in Roanoke against lifting Virginia’s ban on
uranium mining, citing what they believe would be disproportionate
negative consequences on minority populations should the ban be
lifted.
State lawmakers are considering ending the 30-year moratorium on
uranium mining, as Virginia Uranium Inc. hopes to mine one of the
world’s largest known uranium deposits in Pittsylvania County. Continue reading
Inquest on gun murder aboard UK nuclear submarine
HMS Astute nuclear submarine officer shot tackling gunman BBC News 2
Jan 13, A navy officer was shot in the head as he tried to stop a
junior rating killing others on a nuclear-powered submarine, an
inquest heard.
Lt Cdr Ian Molyneux, 36, of Wigan, Greater Manchester, was shot at
close range on board HMS Astute while docked in Southampton in 2011.
The inquest into his death heard he would have fallen unconscious
immediately and died shortly after.
Able Seaman Ryan Donovan was jailed for at least 25 years for murder.
The navigator yeoman also pleaded guilty to attempting to murder Lt
Cdr Christopher Hodge, 45, who he shot in the stomach, Petty Officer
Christopher Brown, 36, and Chief Petty Officer David McCoy, 37.
Donovan’s attack, on 8 April 2011, was only stopped when the then
leader of Southampton City Council, Royston Smith, and its chief
executive, Alistair Neill, wrestled the weapon from
him…..http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-20893271
Japanese waking up to the false economics of nuclear power
Radiation leaking from the damaged power plants has laid bare national policies and economic choices that have long gone unquestioned in Japan. “Please imagine!” one man told a priest. “A rural town, where there were no jobs, no money and no industries, was able to receive a chunk of money suddenly just by welcoming the construction of nuclear power plants.”
The conferees pledged “to pray for and with the people of Fukushima and other communities suffering the harms caused by nuclear power” and to send the conference’s final statement to next year’s WCC Assembly in Busan, Republic of Korea.
Nuclear tragedy finds a human face in Fukushima, 
Insights, ON 19 DEC 2012 BY STEPHENW “……..Christian and Buddhist clergy, as well as laypersons, told the 87 conferees from Asia, Europe and North America of their struggle to support families and communities, to cope with the disaster themselves and to challenge the official disaster response.
Conference participants resolved to initiate discussions in faith communities about “civilian and military uses of nuclear energy”, and to develop plans of action “including lifestyle changes”.
The conference began in the city of Koriyama, 100 kilometres from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and well beyond the official disaster exclusion zones. Radiation hotspots there—created when a reactor building exploded and contamination was spread by prevailing winds—are as dangerous as areas in the town nearest to the nuclear plant. Continue reading
Use practical diplomacy with Iran, says USA Conference of Catholic Bishops
The international community should affirm Iran’s “right to enrich uranium” in exchange for an Iranian commitment to “limit enrichment convincingly short of weapons-grade potential, as confirmed by verifiable inspections,” he said.
U.S. Bishops Call for Nuclear Negotiations With Iran http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/u.s.-bishops-call-for-nuclear-negotiations-with-iran/ Bishop Richard Pates, chairman of USCCB’s justice and peace committee, voices ‘deep concern’ over the current ‘dangerous situation.’ 20 Dec 12, ASHINGTON — The U.S. bishops’ leader on international peace issues said that dialogue is the path to a peaceful resolution of nuclear concerns between the United States and Iran.
“Bold steps must be considered to counter this unfortunate and continually rising tide of aggressive posturing between our own nation and Iran,” said Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines, Iowa. In a Dec. 18 letter to Thomas Donilon, national security advisor to the Obama administration, he explained that a “peaceful resolution will require direct, sustained negotiations over a considerable period of time.”
The bishop, who chairs the Committee on International Justice and Peace for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, voiced “deep concern” over the “dangerous situation facing our nation, the international community and Iran.”
Speaking on behalf of his committee, he urged the U.S. to immediately begin direct negotiations with the nation in order to avoid further escalation. “Initiating such talks should be done without preconditions and might include extending to Iran some relief from current international sanctions,” he said. Continue reading
Conflict of interest in Japanese scientists on International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP)
The doctor on the parliamentary panel, Hisako Sakiyama, is outraged about utility funding for Japan’s ICRP members. She fears that radiation standards are being set leniently to limit costly evacuations.
“The assertion of the utilities became the rule. That’s ethically unacceptable. People’s health is at stake,” she says. “The view was twisted so it came out as though there is no clear evidence of the risks, or that we simply don’t know.”
Japanese Radiation Regulators Admit Conflict of Interest, Laboratory Equipment, 12 Dec 12 Yuri Kageyama Influential scientists who help set Japan’s radiation exposure limits have for years had trips paid for by the country’s nuclear plant operators to attend overseas meetings of the world’s top academic group on radiation safety.
The potential conflict of interest is revealed in one sentence buried in a 600-page parliamentary investigation into last year’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant disaster and pointed out to The Associated Press by a medical doctor on the 10-person investigation
panel.
Some of these same scientists have consistently given optimistic assessments about the health risks of radiation, interviews with the scientists and government documents show. Their pivotal role in setting policy after the March 2011 tsunami and ensuing nuclear meltdowns meant the difference between schoolchildren playing outside or indoors and families staying or evacuating their homes.
One leading scientist, Ohtsura Niwa, acknowledged that the electricity industry pays for flights and hotels to go to meetings of the International Commission on Radiological Protection, and for overseas members visiting Japan……… Continue reading
Kudankulam nuclear plant too close for Sri Lanka’s comfort
India’s nuclear fallout: Raise the bar to political level, The Sunday Times, 28 Oct 12 The Indian Government’s plans to expand its nuclear energy programme by establishing 48 new reactors throughout the sub-continent, more
than double of what it has, is already causing ripples within that country.
It will also be cause for concern for Sri Lanka whose population is less than 160 kms from India’s southern-most plant at Kudankulam and not too far away from the Kalpakkam plant. Continue reading
Plight of Fukushima’s heroic emergency workers
Nuclear workers in Japan Heroism and humility Meet the “Fukushima 50”, the men on the front line of the nuclear disaster The Economist Oct 27th 2012 | TOKYO | ACCORDING to his friends, the man in charge of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear-power plant during the 2011 disaster, Masao Yoshida, says it felt like being on Iwo Jima. That is the North Pacific island heroically defended by the Japanese in 1945 but doomed to fall to the Americans.
His two underlings, Atsufumi Yoshizawa and Masatoshi Fukura, do not portray the struggle quite so graphically. In their first interviews since the disaster, they spoke of the sense of responsibility of the so-called Fukushima 50, those who risked their lives to fight the soaring levels of radiation coming out of the plant in the hours and days after the earthquake and tsunami on March 11th last year. They were driven, especially, by a desire to protect the local communities in which many of their families lived.
Yet the Fukushima 50, despite heroic efforts, still suffer from the complex of emotions that soldiers might experience when returning from a losing battle. A sense of shame and stigmatisation lingers. Continue reading
The wisdom of being afraid of nuclear weapons and nuclear power
Lies, Damn Lies, and Nuclear Lies The International News Magazine , 22 September 2012 David Swanson USA Our government likes to lie to us about nuclear weapons. This poor impoverished nation halfway around the world is about to nuke us. No, that one is. The result, of course, is mass murder. But there’s another result potentially even worse. We begin to think there’s something wrong with being terrified of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy.
There isn’t. This stuff should scare the hell out of us. And the arrogant lunacy of imagining that even an honest and accountable authority, much less our government, could set up a commission to regulate the winds of hell and deadly substances with a half-life as long as the age of the Earth must give us serious pause.
What are we thinking? How are we thinking? Are we thinking?
One Pentagon report documents 563 nuclear mistakes, malfunctions, and false alarms over the years so far — near misses, near apocalypses.
Soldiers in war sometimes learn to accept the senseless risk to their lives. But need our whole species and all the other species that we write off as collateral damage accept catastrophic risks as part of a permanent state of war? Or has accepting that risk in fact facilitated our acceptance of this permanent state of war? If nuclear weapons and nuclear energy were done away with, imagine the space that would open up in our minds for the possibility of living in peace and looking back on war as we look back on more small-scale forms of human sacrifice, and on cannibalism, slavery, or duelling. Continue reading
USA and Israel’s demonisation of Iran
On a Pedestal of Nuclear Immorality, Counter Punch by SAUL LANDAU, 21 Sept 12, “…….Western leaders did not predict, however, the political turnaround that occurred with the Iranian revolution. The fiercely pro western orientation of the Shah quickly turned as millions of Iranians backed a nationalist and anti American ideology in which the country’s leaders rejected both western ideology and the legitimacy of its regional representative, Israel.
Teheran denounced the very idea of a Jewish state and began to refurbish the old plans to produce nuclear power, which the U.S. and Israel now claim is a cover for a nuclear weapons program. The Ayatollah Khamenei, however, has condemned nuclear weapons and denies nuclear weapon ambitions. Continue reading
Kawasaki city serves students radioactive lunches
Kawasaki city mayor, “School serves radioactive lunch for educational
purpose.” http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/09/kawasaki-city-mayor-school-serves-radioactive-lunch-for-educational-purpose/#.UE6PhZVElhg.facebook by Mochizuki on September 10th, 2012 · Schools keep serving contaminated lunch for the students and they
don’t even solve the problem. (cf. Cesium from finished school lunch in Miyagi) Continue reading
Ethics and medical radiation
John Gofman on medical x rays. http://nuclearhistory.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/john-gofman-on-medical-x-rays/ 10 Spt 12,
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/OHofJWGforDOE/
An Interview with John Gofman, “Benefits of Radiation Therapy and Ethics”.
GOURLEY: Now, one thing confuses me terribly about all this, and I’m not a scientist and I’m new on this: You, yourself, said that [there are] medical benefits in certain cases and certain specific cancers and that sort of thing. How does the line fall between where it can be therapeutic, [and] where it’s harmful?
GOFMAN: Line falls at one point. I have no difficulty with radiation therapy being beneficial in certain situations. I have no difficulty with diagnostic radiation, finding something important out [from] a diagnosis that can [save] a person’s life.
GOURLEY: Which diagnosis are you speaking of here?
GOFMAN: You can talk about the possibility of pneumonia that’s not appreciated or some mass in the abdomen or something like a cardiac lesion. I have never in my life said people should not have an x ray. I have never argued against radiation therapy. I talked to you earlier about some places where I participated in radiation therapy and I know people were benefited.
GOURLEY: Right.
GOFMAN: That is a world apart from what your problem is in this whole thing. Where I stand on it is, you voluntarily, you accept a risk for a benefit to you or your child or your mother or father if you discussed it with them. That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s when somebody says you shall be allowed to get x units of radiation as a member of the public without any benefit to you: “Society will benefit.”
That’s immoral, it’s illegal, and it’s being done every day. I just think it’s just illegal and it’s a violation of the Declaration of Independence. It’s a violation of Constitutional rights and none of the medical ethicists are saying a goddamn thing about. I’m very critical of medical ethicists for that.’ http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/OHofJWGforDOE/
Tougher charges against elderly Catholic anti nuclear nun: could face 10 years in prison
New charges filed in nuclear weapons plant breach The Sacfamento Bee, By ERIK SCHELZIG Associated Press, Aug. 9, 2012 – NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A federal grand jury toughened the charges against three anti-war protesters who authorities say cut their way through three security fences and spray-painted slogans on the walls of a nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee.
An indictment released Thursday in Knoxville charges an 82-year-old Roman Catholic nun with Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus, a gardener and a housepainter with “depredation”
of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. Continue reading
That naughty 82 year old anti nuclear nun!
Aging protesters paint nuclear arsenal in Tenn. Knox News Associated Press July 31, 2012 OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (AP) — Emerging details about a security alert at the federal government’s Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge reveal three aging activists staged the protest.uranium.
offered to share a Bible, candles and white roses with the guards.
Rice is from Nevada; Boertje-Obed is from Duluth, Minn.; and Walli is from Washington, D.C. They were arrested on federal trespassing charges.
The protesters called themselves “Transform Now Plowshares.” There is no known Plowshares national protest group, but there is a philosophical practice of using high-profile demonstrations to draw attention to nuclear disarmament and related causes.
Details about how they got into the high-security area aren’t known….. http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/jul/31/aging-protesters-paint-nuclear-arsenal-in-02/
Catholic nun and two workers breach top security nuclear weapons complex
Catholic activists breach Tennessee nuclear weapons plant in protest National Catholic Reporter, Jul. 31, 2012 By Joshua J. McElwee Michael Walli, Sr. Megan Rice and Greg Boertje-Obed. The three were arrested Saturday at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
Three Catholics broke into a guarded nuclear weapons complex in Tennessee on Saturday in an act of civil disobedience and made their way into one of its most secure facilities before they were arrested.
The three, an 82-year-old religious sister and two middle-aged men connected with the Catholic Worker movement, were able to enter the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge early Saturday before a guard found them inside the complex’s storage facility for bomb-grade uranium.
The three call themselves the Transform Now Plowshares and said they wished to “indict the U.S. government” for its nuclear weapons modernization program and for planning to build a new facility at the Y-12 site, according to friends of the activists….
The activists’ next hearing has been set for Thursday. They are currently being held
in the Blount County Detention Facility in Maryville, Tenn.
In the documents explaining their action, the activists said the continued use of the facility is an “ongoing criminal endeavor in violation of international treaty law.”
“The ongoing building and maintenance of Oak Ridge Y-12 constitute war crimes that can and should be investigated and prosecuted by judicial authorities at all levels,” the activists wrote. “We are required by International Law to denounce and resist known crimes.” …
http://ncronline.org/news/peace/catholic-activists-breachtennessee-nuclear-weapons-plant-protest
Plowshares speak out against USA nuclear weapons facility
Transform Now Plowshares Continues a Long Tradition by Leonard Eiger for Salem-News.com 29 July 12Includes two statements from Transform Plowshares about Y-12 nuclear weapons facility, Courtesy: disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com
(OAK RIDGE, TN) – Early this morning three plowshares activists performed a disarmament action in response to Government plans to invest $80 billion to sustain and modernize the nuclear weapons complex. Calling themselves Transform Now Plowshares, Michael R. Walli (63), Megan Rice (82), and Greg Boertje-Obed (57) entered the Y-12 nuclear
weapons facility before dawn.
They released a faith-based statement saying, “A loving and compassionate Creator invites us to take the urgent and decisive steps to transform the U.S. empire, and this facility, into life-giving alternatives which resolve real problems of poverty and environmental degradation for all.”
The actors also delivered an indictment citing U.S. Constitutional and Treaty Law as well as the Nuremberg Principles:
“The ongoing building and maintenance of Oak Ridge Y-12 constitute war crimes that can and should be investigated and prosecuted by judicial authorities at all levels. We are required by International Law to denounce and resist known crimes.”
This action is one of a long tradition of Plowshares disarmament actions in the US and around the world which challenge war-making and weapons of mass destruction.
At Y-12 NNSA plans to replace facilities for production and dismantlement of enriched uranium components with a new consolidated Uranium Processing Facility (UPF). It is budgeted to cost more than $6.5 billion……
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/july292012/transform-plowshares-le.php
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