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Give Nuclear Exposure Victims a Break

Those who become sick as a result of work in the nuclear weapons manufacturing and testing industry are eligible for health care benefits and compensation from those two federal programs: the Radiation Exposure Compensation Program (RECP) and the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program (EEOICP). 

Give Nuclear Exposure Victims a Break  https://progressive.org/op-eds/give-nuclear-victims-break-stephens-220202/

My experience working with nuclear weapons and uranium workers has shown me that we must continue to provide essential benefits to workers and their survivors.

BY R. HUGH STEPHENS, FEBRUARY 2, 2022  Every month or so, my law office will get a call from the spouse of a nuclear weapons or uranium worker who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. We help file a claim for the worker with the Department of Justice or the Department of Labor, both of which run a compensation program.

Typically, these claims can be handled in a matter of weeks. Modest compensation provided through these programs provide help with medical bills and certain other financial obligations. 

Most people don’t realize that these programs exist, or even that our nuclear weapons system affects so many people across the country.

Originally known as the Manhattan Project, the U.S. nuclear weapons program in 1945 produced its first nuclear blast, the Trinity Test, in Alamogordo, New Mexico. But the impact of this testing has not been limited by either time or geography. Every day, downwinders, on-site participants, uranium miners, millers and ore transporters are diagnosed with cancers, pulmonary fibrosis and other serious illnesses from exposures that happened decades ago. Even today, nuclear weapons workers are being made ill at facilities across the country.

Those who become sick as a result of work in the nuclear weapons manufacturing and testing industry are eligible for health care benefits and compensation from those two federal programs: the Radiation Exposure Compensation Program (RECP) and the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program (EEOICP). 

The programs, not unlike the Veterans Affairs program that provides benefits for U.S. soldiers, provide vital benefits to workers who have borne the brunt of the physical and financial toll imposed by the nation’s nuclear weapons program. 

Currently pending bills would extend the RECP and allow on-site participants and downwinders to receive medical care for their accepted conditions under the EEOICP. This would make their claims more similar to the other beneficiaries, including uranium miners, millers and ore transporters, thereby eliminating a flaw in the RECP that prevents on-site participants throughout the country and downwinders in the southwest from receiving the same medical benefits as uranium miners, millers, and ore transporters receive.

Without action from Congress and the president, RECA will expire in July of this year. One path forward is a set of bipartisan bills introduced by Representative Leger Fernandez (H.R. 5338) and Senator Mike Crapo (S.2798). These bills extend and make important improvements to these compensation programs.

My experience working with nuclear weapons and uranium workers has shown me that these programs continue to provide essential benefits to workers and their survivors, whose lives have been disrupted by participation in the nuclear weapons program. Both of these programs should be extended and improved. 

We owe that, at least, to those who have sacrificed their health in the service of the nation’s nuclear ambitions. 

February 3, 2022 Posted by | health, Legal, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel Simulated Attack On Iran’s Nuclear Facilities In Recent Drills


Israel Simulated Attack On Iran’s Nuclear Facilities In Recent Drills

The Israel Air Force has held a drill to simulate an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities with dozens of warplanes, as tensions remain high in the region.

According to an unsourced report by Israel’s public broadcaster Kan news on Tuesday, the classified military exercise was held some two weeks ago, with a US Air Force officer in attendance.

The drills that took place over the Mediterranean included various scenarios such as mid-air refueling, long-range strikes, and different responses to anti-aircraft missiles………………  https://www.iranintl.com/en/202202021753

February 3, 2022 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

After the hibakusha: the future of Japan’s anti-nuclear movement

Oka Nobuko age 16 in Nagasaki 1945

After the hibakusha: the future of Japan’s anti-nuclear movement  https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/1870/

Yoshida Mayu, NHK World Correspondent, 31 Jan 22,   Activists calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons have long relied on the powerful testimonies of atomic bomb survivors, or hibakusha, to grow their movement. But with ever fewer people to offer that testimony, both the hibakusha and activists know those days are running out. NHK World’s Yoshida Mayu speaks to different generations who have a common goal: a world without nuclear weapons.

Hellish memories

Oka Nobuko was in Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, the day the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city. For most of her life, she avoided talking about her experiences as the memories were too painful.

Last year she finally broke her silence to deliver a speech at the annual ceremony commemorating the date of the bombing.

“When I stood up, I was immediately knocked down and I lost consciousness,” she recounted. “When I woke up, I didn’t know where I was. Pieces of shattered glass were lodged in my body.”

Oka was a 16-year-old nursing student at the time and helped treat other victims at a first aid center.

“No treatment was possible in a lot of these cases,” she said. “There was flesh dangling from exposed bone. Some people jumped off buildings to kill themselves because they couldn’t endure the pain any longer.”

She described the scenes as “hellish” and said she suffered severe headaches every time the memories returned. For this reason, she always avoided going to the area where the first aid center was located.

Time to speak

In a letter to a close friend three years ago, Oka wrote of her worries that her memories and those of other hibakusha would soon be gone.

“The hibakusha are getting older and someday all of us will be gone,” she wrote.

Estimates put the number of living hibakusha at around 127,000, with an average age of 83.This sense that time was running out is what motivated Oka to finally share her story last August.

“We, the hibakusha, will continue to share our experiences and call for the abolition of nuclear weapons. We will fight for peace.”

Last November, three months after giving her speech, Oka died at the age of 93.

Inspiring other hibakusha Fukuda Hakaru, a 90-year-old Nagasaki hibakusha, says hearing Oka speak inspired him to share his own story. He wrote her a letter, saying how much her courage had moved him.

Fukuda had gone to the first aid center Oka was working at to get medicine for his father, who was severely injured in the blast.

“I can still hear the screams of the patients,” he says. “Doctors and nurses were running around to help them. It was a painful sight. It is very hard for me to talk about what I saw. The medical workers were the ones who saw up close the inhumanity of the atomic bombs.”

Fukuda was 14 at the time. He did not suffer any serious injuries, but his father, who was working close to ground zero, died a month later.”I’ll never forget how I felt. I had to pick up his remains after the cremation, but I have no idea how I managed. The world needs to know that this is the kind of pain that an atomic bomb causes. It cannot be allowed to happen again.”

Fukuda says he long felt he had a duty to share his story but avoided doing so because he was worried about the anti-hibakusha discrimination he and his family might face.

Many survivors and their families have had to deal with prejudice and discrimination over the years. Initially, little was known about the effects of radiation exposure, and some people incorrectly regarded it as contagious. The social stigma was especially serious when it came to marriage or work.

“The hibakusha continue to suffer today,” says Fukuda. “That’s yet another reason why we need to make sure this never happens again.”

Preserving Oka’s message

In December, a group of university students from Nagasaki hosted a virtual conference about the experiences of the hibakusha, speaking to high school classes about the stories they had heard from survivors.

One of these students was Kaji Misato, who spent a lot of time with Oka during her final days.

“Oka was with her mother and brother at the time of the bombing,” Kaji said at the event. “As she stood up, she realized she was covered in blood.”Kaji spoke to Oka four times last year and recorded five hours of conversation. She said it was an eye-opening experience.

“The atomic bombing always felt like something in the past,” Kaji says. “But after hearing her story, I started to feel a greater sense of attachment. She told us the war had robbed her of her youth and she wanted peace so the same thing didn’t happen with the youth of today.”Every year on August 9, a siren rings out across the city at 11:02 AM, the exact time the atomic bomb exploded. Residents stop what they are doing to observe a minute of silence. But when Kaji visited the city center last year, she was shocked to see how few people were actually paying their respects.

About a month later, Oka was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Kaji met with her shortly after.

“She told me she was worried that once all the hibakusha are gone, their memories would fade as well,” Kaji says.

She took her words to heart and decided to share what she told her with people even younger. The high school students who attended the virtual session said it was an insightful experience.”Her vivid memories made me feel the horror of the atomic bomb,” said one student.

“We cannot take peace for granted,” said another. “We have to take care of the people who are close to us.”

This year promises to be a crucial one for the abolition movement. State parties to the UN nuclear weapons ban treaty are planning to hold their first meeting to try to agree on specific actions. In the meantime, young campaigners like Kaji are ensuring that the stories from those who witnessed the horrors of 1945 are documented and heard.

February 1, 2022 Posted by | Japan, opposition to nuclear, PERSONAL STORIES, Reference, weapons and war | Leave a comment

In 2022, compensation funds for the nuclear-affected ”Downwinders” are due to expire

Funds for those impacted by nuclear weapons tests set to expire in 2022 https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/national/funds-for-those-impacted-by-nuclear-weapons-tests-set-to-expire-in-2022 By: Bo Evans, , Feb 01, 2022

Raymond Harbert may not have the words to describe it.

“It is really hard to relay all the feelings you get from one of those megaton tests,”

But he never forgot the details of the detonation of a nuclear bomb well.

“If you can imagine, 40 miles away, and you can feel the heat when it arrives. It arrives at a separate time. It’s a prickly heat, and then the pressure wave coming—the brightness. The feeling when they finally say, you can take your glasses off. Those are memories that will stick with me for the rest of my life,” said Harbert.

In this 2005 interview conducted by the University of Nevada Las Vegas, Harbert lays out an experience shared by thousands of Americans exposed to radiation from nuclear weapons tests between 1945 and 1962.

The fallout has lasted for decades.

“People don’t realize over 200 above-ground tests were done between 1945 and 1962, and an additional 900+ were done after that below ground. Which exposed Nevadans, people in Utah, Arizona, Colorado, places that were downwind of these tests to fallout,” said Dr. Laura Shaw.

Shaw works with the Nevada Radiation Exposure Screening & Education Program or RESEP at UNLV to provide medical services and cancer screening to people who are known as downwinders.

We review their history, we look at their medications, we offer additional screenings that include colon cancer screening, lung imaging, labs that screen for diabetes, anemia, cholesterol, so we do a lot,” said Shaw.

It’s all paid for by the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act or RECA. The law was passed in 1990. The fund is set to expire in July 2022.

“These people have another 30, 40 years, hopefully, to live that were potentially exposed, so we need this program much, much longer,” said Shaw.

Some in Congress are attempting to extend and expand the fund.

“Tragically, for some, it is already too late. We’ve lost Idahoans Sheri Garmin, Teresa Valberg, and Srgt. 1st Class Paul Cooper to Cancer,” said Sen. Mark Crapo, (R) Idaho, in a congressional hearing.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Amendments of 2021 have been introduced in both the House and Senate and have been referred to committees.

Dr. Shaw remains hopeful it will pass.

“Cancer is still going to happen. These people are going to develop problems associated with their previous exposure. Cancer can happen years later, and it’s not going to pay any attention to any deadlines,” she said.

February 1, 2022 Posted by | health, Legal, Reference, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear weapons plutonium pits development planned for Los Alamos National Laboratory, but there’s strong opposition on safety grounds.

Nuclear weapons development coming soon to Los Alamos National Laboratory amid safety concerns https://www.currentargus.com/story/news/local/2022/01/29/los-alamos-national-lab-prepares-nuclear-weapons-development/6562490001/, Adrian Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus

A main component of nuclear weapons was poised to be built in New Mexico after federal regulators granted approval for a plan to prepare Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for the work.

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), an arm of the U.S. Department of Energy, announced earlier this month it approved LANL’s project to prepare areas of the lab to be used in plutonium pit production – a project known as LAP4.

Plutonium pits are hollow spheres of plutonium that when compressed using explosives cause a nuclear detonation, per a DOE report.

The pits were first used in the 1940s during the Manhattan Project, the report read, used to detonate atomic bombs tested at the Trinity Site in south-central New Mexico and then in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki in Japan – largely credited with ending World War II.

Since the war ended, Los Alamos’ pit production was limited to research purposes, and from 2007 to 2011 the lab produced pits to replace those in 31 warheads carried on U.S. military submarines.

Between 1952 and 1989, most of the plutonium pits in the U.S. were generated at the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver amid the Cold War with a peak nuclear stockpile of 31,225 weapons outfitted with the pits reported in 1967, read the report.

Rocky Flats was shut down in 1989, and after concerns that the pits produced since the 1980s or earlier would begin to deteriorate over time, Los Alamos was called to make new ones.

The DOE called on Los Alamos to increase efforts at the lab to produce 30 pits a year by 2026, and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina was tasked with producing 50 pits annually by 2030.

That means that by that year, the U.S. would be producing 80 pits per year.

But to prepare LANL for the work, a project to remove existing equipment and glove boxes was needed to make way for pit manufacturing equipment.

That work was intended to begin this spring via a project known as the Decontamination and Decommissioning Subproject, the first of five operations to get the site ready.

equipment and infrastructure needed to safely manufacture pits for the nuclear stockpile,” said Summer Jones, NNSA assistant deputy administrator for production modernization at LANL.

“LAP4 is a complex, challenging endeavor, and getting the approval to begin the D&D subproject is a big step toward restoring this important capability.”

Opponents call for environmental review of plutonium operations 

The effort to resume producing plutonium pits and thus nuclear weapons at the New Mexico lab and in South Carolina as met with controversy from government officials and watchdog groups in both states opposing the projects.  

Santa Fe City Councilors passed a resolution last year calling for a “site-wide” environmental impact statement to be conducted and any safety issued be resolved and certified by the federal government before pit production was increased.

“The Governing Body (Santa Fe City Council) requests that the National Nuclear Security Administration suspend any planned expanded plutonium pit production until all nuclear safety issues are resolved, as certified by the independent Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board,” read the resolution.

Nuclear Watch New Mexico and Savannah River Site Watch subsequently in June 2021 filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina’s Aiken Division against the DOE and NNSA, arguing pit production should not be increased until site-wide environmental analysis were conducted at both facilities.

“The drastic expansion of plutonium pit production and the utilization of more than one facility to undertake this production are substantial changes from the Defendants’ long-standing approach of producing a limited number of pits at only one facility,” the suit read.

The suit argued the increased pit production was not only intended for replacing existing warheads but to develop a new warhead known as the W87-1.

This project was developed with proper environmental analysis, the suit read, or proper planning for where associated nuclear waste would be disposed of.

“The drastic expansion of plutonium pit production and the utilization of more than one facility to undertake this production are substantial changes from the Defendants’ long-standing approach of producing a limited number of pits at only one facility,” read the suit.

In southeastern New Mexico is the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a repository for low-level transuranic (TRU) nuclear waste – clothing materials and equipment irradiated during nuclear activities.

But the litigants argued WIPP was already at limited capacity and its current permit with the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) specified the repository would have to cease waste disposal by 2024 and begin the decommissioning process.

The DOE last year submitted a permit renewal application to NMED that removed the 2024 closure date, leaving WIPP’s lifetime largely open ended.

Still, the suit alleged the DOE failed to address the need for waste disposal.

“As a National Academy of Sciences has concluded, the WIPP is already oversubscribed for future waste from multiple sites and will overextend its capacity from this increase in TRU production from the pit project and other DOE projects set to generate large amounts of TRU waste,” read the suit.

“The Defendants have failed to meaningfully address this critical waste disposal question.”

February 1, 2022 Posted by | - plutonium, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear-armed North Korea tests long range missile. 


Nuclear-armed North Korea tests long range missile, Canberra Weekly, January 30, 2022   Nuclear-armed North Korea has conducted what would be its largest missile test since 2017, sending a suspected intermediate-range ballistic missile soaring into space and sparking condemnation from the United States and its allies.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff reported that a projectile believed to be a single ballistic missile was launched about 7.52am on Sunday from North Korea’s Jagang Province towards the ocean off its east coast.

South Korea’s National Security Council, which convened a rare emergency meeting presided over by President Moon Jae-in, said the test involved an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), which North Korea has not tested since 2017.

January 31, 2022 Posted by | North Korea, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Map shows the horrible impact a nuclear bomb would have on Coventry

Map shows the horrible impact a nuclear bomb would have on Coventry

We used NUKEMAP to find out the effects nuclear bombs would have on Coventry, Coventry Live, ByJaspreet Kaur,  30 Jan 22, t’s a chilling thought – but have you ever wondered what would happen if a nuclear bomb was suddenly detonated in Coventry as part of an attack on the UK?

CoventryLive has used specialist research to find out what would happen if a nuclear bomb hit the city.

The website NUKEMAP calculates the effects of the detonation of a nuclear bomb. And although of course none has ever hit the UK before, they were used to terrible effect in Japan at the end of the Second World War.

And of course our city faced dreadful destruction in Nazi bombing raids.

The website that now looks into the horrifying impact a nuclear disaster could have was created by Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science who specialises in the history of nuclear weapons and nuclear secrecy.

He created Nukemap in February 2012, and it has been used by over 25 million people globally since its launch.

In one experiment, we looked at what happened if ‘Davy Crockett’ detonated in our city – one of the smallest nuclear bombs ever built in the United States……………

all-in-all the impact of the smallest US bomb is very bad in real terms, but relatively small for a nuclear attack. Wr then looked at a much larger bomb.

And chillingly, the ‘Gadget’ bomb was found to have a much more awful impact.

If detonated in Coventry city centre this particular bomb would cause thermal radiation to several Coventry areas, including Earlsdon , Cheylsmore , Ball Hill and Daimler Green .

It would also cause moderate blast damage to areas further afield, such as Radford , Coundon , Whitley and Styvechale .

In total, the number of estimated injuries would rise significantly to 48,060 with 23,900 estimated fatalities. Which is terrifying.

The test may seem arid – but the threat of nuclear war hung over the world for decades during the Cold War.
There are still around 3,750 active nuclear warheads and nearly 14,000 total nuclear warheads in the world today……………………………   https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/map-shows-horrible-impact-nuclear-22918995

January 31, 2022 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Russia proposes US returns American nuclear weapons from NATO countries close to Russia

Russia proposes US returns American nuclear weapons from NATO countries stateside https://tass.com/politics/1394065
According to Vladimir Yermakov, “currently there are about 200 American nuclear air bombs of the B61 family” in five non-nuclear NATO countries

MOSCOW, January 27. /TASS/. Moscow proposed to Washington to return all American nuclear weapons from NATO countries to US territory in the context of reviewing security guarantees, Director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for Nonproliferation and Arms Control Vladimir Yermakov said in an interview with TASS.

“We insist that NATO’s ‘joint nuclear missions’ should be stopped immediately, all the American nuclear weapons be returned to US national territory and the infrastructure that allows their rapid deployment should be eliminated. This aspect is one of the elements of the package of measures proposed by us to Washington in the context of considering the issues of security guarantees,” he said.

According to the diplomat, “currently there are about 200 American nuclear air bombs of the B61 family” in five non-nuclear NATO countries. Thus, the alliance is capable of rapidly deploying nuclear weapons able to reach strategic targets on Russian territory. “[NATO countries] also retain the infrastructure ensuring rapid deployment of these [nuclear] weapons capable of reaching Russian territory and striking a wide range of targets, including strategic ones,” he pointed out.

At the same time, NATO engages non-nuclear countries in training for using American nuclear weapons against Russia. “Interaction between NATO member countries in joint nuclear planning is underway. NATO ‘joint nuclear missions’ take place with non-nuclear alliance members involved in training on the use of American nuclear weapons against us,” the diplomat stressed.

He noted that the US is modernizing its nuclear arsenal with a view of the increased applicability of such weapons in real conditions, above all, in Europe. “As for modernization, the US is consistently implementing a campaign on the renovation of practically all the components of the nuclear arsenal. The B61 air bombs in their newest B61-12 modification will have a decreased or variable yield but increased precision. This raises the question, which containment scenarios justify such ‘calibration?’ This clearly means betting on a ‘higher applicability’ of such weapons under real conditions, first of all, in Europe,” the diplomat stated.

On December 17, 2021, the Russian Foreign Ministry published draft agreements between Moscow and Washington on security guarantees and the measures of ensuring the security of Russia and NATO member states. The proposed measures include guarantees that NATO will not advance eastward, including the accession of Ukraine and other countries into the alliance, as well as the non-deployment of serious offensive weapons, including nuclear ones. On January 26, the US and NATO submitted to Russia their written response to Moscow’s proposal on security guarantees.

January 29, 2022 Posted by | EUROPE, weapons and war | Leave a comment

NATO practices nuclear missile sorties near borders of the Russia-Belarus Union

NATO practices nuclear missile sorties near Union State borders — Belarus’ security chief

A breach of international norms and elementary rules of good neighborly relations by neighboring countries is already turning into an alarming trend, Alexander Volfovich stated

MINSK, January 28. /TASS/. The NATO Air Force is practicing sorties with cruise missiles, including with nuclear warheads, near the borders of the Russia-Belarus Union State, State Secretary of the Belarusian Security Council Alexander Volfovich said on Friday.

“The head of state drew attention to intensified flights by US strategic bombers near the borders of the Union State,” the BelTA news agency quoted Volfovich as saying.

“In our assessments, this means that the NATO Air Force is practicing employing cruise missiles, including those with nuclear warheads,” he said……………..  https://tass.com/defense/1394647

January 29, 2022 Posted by | Belarus, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

”All options on the table” to punish Moscow -could bring about a nuclear conflict.

Repeated assertions that “all options are on the table” to punish Moscow should it reinvade Ukraine are seen as particularly troubling.

“In the nuclear age, ‘all options on the table’ in a conflict involving nuclear powers could be understood to mean the potential use of nuclear weapons, even if that wasn’t the intention in this instance,

Nuclear fears mount as Ukraine crisis deepens,

Officials and experts are warning that a Russian invasion could inadvertently trigger a nuclear exchange with the U.S. Politico  By BRYAN BENDER, 01/27/2022,    As Russian troops bear down on Ukraine and the United States prepares its own military buildup in Eastern Europe, concerns are growing across the ideological spectrum that the standoff could inadvertently escalate into the unthinkable: nuclear war.

President Joe Biden has insisted that he will not use American forces to directly defend Ukrainian territory against a possible Russian invasion. But that is no guarantee that the two sides won’t come to blows.

The world’s two largest nuclear powers could even stumble into nuclear confrontation if the situation spins out of control, current and former officials and experts on both sides of the Atlantic worry.

“At the point you unleash war in the modern environment, the one thing that is certain is the law of unintended consequences,” Des Browne, a member of the British Parliament and a former secretary of state for defense, told POLITICO. “If you are talking about a nuclear-armed environment, which is already fragile … then you are living in an environment [where] things could escalate quite quickly, by accident or miscalculation.”

“Nobody thinks any of these weapons are going to be used deliberately, but miscalculation is a significant chance,” added Browne, who chairs the Euro-Atlantic Security Leadership Group.


It’s a concern shared by current and former nuclear security officials who usually don’t agree on much — from disarmament advocates to nuclear hawks.

“I think the Ukraine conflict is demonstrating that the nuclear escalation scenario we’re worried about is not out of sight,” said Patty-Jane Geller, an expert on nuclear strategy at the hawkish Heritage Foundation.

Last week, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists cited the Ukraine conflict as contributing to its decision to keep the “Doomsday Clock” at 100 seconds to midnight, an indication of how close it assesses that the human race is to potential self-annihilation.

“Ukraine remains a potential flashpoint, and Russian troop deployments to the Ukrainian border heighten day-to-day tension,” it noted in citing the threat of a nuclear conflict.

A primary concern, according to Geller and others, is Russia’s arsenal of thousands of battlefield nuclear weapons, which are central to its military strategy.

“The Russians have something like 4,000 [tactical nuclear weapons] and they have an ‘escalate to win’ nuclear doctrine, which says ‘we use nuclear weapons first if the conventional conflict starts to spin out of our favor,’” said a former senior GOP government official who still works on nuclear security issues.

One Russian diplomat last month went so far as to publicly threaten the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in the crisis.

The weapons have a lower “yield” than traditional atomic bombs and are designed to be used against conventional forces in battle. But they still have enormous explosive power and are considered particularly destabilizing to deterrent strategy.

The United States has reportedly been flying dedicated spy missions over in recent weeks to determine if Russia has deployed any of its tactical nuclear weapons along the border with Ukraine.

There’s also concern among Russian nuclear experts about the potential that the Ukraine crisis could escalate, according to former U.S. Ambassador Richard Burt, who negotiated arms control treaties with the Soviet Union…………

The situation is exacerbated by the growing number of U.S., NATO, and Russian military forces in close proximity, Burt said.

“One thing I think is useful to remember is people are not just putting their forces on alert in and around Ukraine, but you’ve got nuclear-capable naval forces in the Black Sea and in the Mediterranean,” he said. “In the Baltic Sea there also has been an intensification of activity as well. You have a lot more aircraft flying overflights.”………….

Others have taken issue with American rhetoric that they see as sowing unnecessary confusion about what military options might be under consideration to prevent a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Repeated assertions that “all options are on the table” to punish Moscow should it reinvade Ukraine are seen as particularly troubling.

“In the nuclear age, ‘all options on the table’ in a conflict involving nuclear powers could be understood to mean the potential use of nuclear weapons, even if that wasn’t the intention in this instance,” two leading arms control advocates wrote last week.…..https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/27/nuclear-fears-mount-ukraine-crisis-deepens-00003088

January 29, 2022 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear-Testing ‘Downwinders’ Speak about History and Fear

Nuclear-Testing ‘Downwinders’ Speak about History and Fear. An archival project aims to document the experiences of people who suffered from U.S. nuclear weapons testing, Scientific American , By Sarah Scoles on January 27, 2022  When Sandra Evans Walsh was growing up in Parowan, Utah, her class would sometimes trek outside to a row of trees. They were about to watch history in the making, the teacher would tell them. The kids would then stare as an orange shroud spread across the sky. “I remember the clouds coming over our town and writing our names in the dust,” she said in an interview with Justin Sorensen, a geographical information systems (GIS) specialist at the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library.

That dust had traveled around 200 miles, all the way from what is now called the Nevada National Security Site, where scientists once tested nuclear weapons.   Between 1945 and 1962, U.S. researchers detonated around 200 bombs aboveground—100 of them in Nevada. Fallout from the nuclear tests—radioactive particles that were swept into the atmosphere and fell back down to the earth—found their way into crops and livestock, whose radioactivity humans took on when they consumed milk, meat and produce. Fallout takes many different chemical forms, one of which is iodine-131: an isotope, or version, of iodine that has the usual 53 protons but 78 neutrons instead of the standard 74. Inside the body, the thyroid gland will absorb iodine-131, which eventually decays to produce radiation that can cause thyroid cancer and other problems.

People, such as Walsh, who lived “downwind” of nuclear development and open-air explosions are now called “downwinders.” Mary Dickson, another downwinder, told Sorensen and one of his colleagues that she thought the attitude toward those in Utah who were affected by nuclear testing was, “you know, ‘They were Mormons and cowboys and Indians—who cares?’ In general, she added, “they test where they think there are populations that don’t matter.”

Sorensen and his team spoke to both women and dozens of other people for a project called the Downwinders of Utah Archive. Hosted by the J. Willard Marriott Library, the archive is an attempt to qualify, quantify and make accessible people’s experiences of, and effects from, the American legacy of nuclear weapons testing. In 2011 the Senate unanimously designated January 27 as the National Day of Remembrance for Downwinders. “The downwinders paid a high price for the development of a nuclear weapons program for the benefit of the United States,” stated the resolution establishing the designation.

But when the tests were conducted, no one had done the research necessary to truly calculate what that price would be. Wanting to understand the potential link between regional health issues and fallout from nuclear tests, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) undertook a study on Americans exposed to iodine-131 from the Nevada tests. The results were released in 1997 in a report entitled “Estimated Exposures and Thyroid Doses Received by the American People from Iodine-131 in Fallout following Nevada Atmospheric Nuclear Bomb Tests.” It was this document that first led Sorensen to the archival project.   “We were just kind of wondering, originally, ‘What does this data look like if you put it on a map?’” he says, “because a spreadsheet doesn’t really tell you a lot.” Sorensen’s background is in GIS and cartography, so he took the NCI’s fallout data and overlaid them onto his home state. “It just really grew from there,” he says. “We started seeing there’s a story to be told.”……………………..

Although no single illness can be conclusively tied to a test-site cause, investigations by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, among others, have established links between radiation exposure and cancer occurrence. In the early 2000s a report by NCI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that fallout could have led to around 11,000 excess deaths. The NCI has also created a calculator that allows users to calculate their thyroid dose and risk of developing thyroid cancer from fallout.   “We can’t know any individual’s cancer was caused by radioactivity,” explains Scott Williams, former executive director of HEAL Utah, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on the environment and public health, “but we do know that some people’s cancer risk was increased by radioactivity.”

Since 1990 the federal government has offered some recompense to downwinders and others affected by nuclear testing through the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA). Set to expire this summer unless a bill is passed to renew (and expand) it, RECA pays downwinders, test participants and uranium workers between $50,000 and $100,000—if they have specific ailments and can prove (with decades-old evidence that is sometimes hard to come by) they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. “We left a burden on unwitting citizens across the country without ever informing them,” Williams says. “We need to do the honorable thing and own the problem and not create these problems again.”

The Downwinders of Utah Archive is always expanding, and though Sorensen paused interviews during the pandemic, he plans to light the fuse again soon. He also hopes to expand the project to other Western states to preserve their history, too.

Making sure that information remains accessible is part of the point of the Downwinders of Utah Archive. The day of remembrance is, in its own way, an isotope of that openness. “Those kind of markers are really important…,” Dickson told Sorensen and his colleague. “Otherwise, you know, time marches on, and it’s like dipping a big spoon in the water. The rest of the water just fills in, and it’s like it was never there.”

This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Howard G Buffett Fund for Women Journalists.   https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-testing-downwinders-speak-about-history-and-fear/

January 29, 2022 Posted by | health, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Momentum building for nuclear ban treaty, with hopes that Japan will participate


Advocates of nuclear ban treaty try to build momentum for change,  Koyama Shoko, NHK General Bureau for Europe Correspondent, Yoshida Mayu,   28 Jan 22   ”………………………….. The agreement entered into force on January 22, 2021, after securing 50 ratifications. That number has risen to 59 now, though it includes none of the countries that possess the weapons.

Delegates from states that are party to the treaty plan to hold a first meeting from March 22 to 24 in Vienna, although the schedule may change due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, nine countries have notified the United Nations they will attend as observers. Some NATO members, including Germany and Norway, say they may attend too.

The chair hopes Japan will participate

The head of the Austrian Foreign Ministry’s disarmament department, Alexander Kmentt, will preside over the meeting, which he says will be “crucial in setting the future direction for the new treaty.”

Kmentt said support for victims of the weapons was one of the major items on the agenda, so he is hoping Japan will participate, as the only country to have experienced nuclear attacks.

“Whether or not to participate is for the Japanese government to decide,” he said. “But I hope that many states that have yet to ratify the TPNW will come to the meeting as observers.”

Hibakusha played a crucial role in the treaty

Elayne Whyte Gomez is a Costa Rican diplomat who was the chair of the negotiating conference for the prohibition treaty.

One of her first moves was to open the debate up to civil participation, allowing people not connected to governments or international organizations to attend the conference. She says the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, known as hibakusha, played a critical role in this process.

Let me put it this way, it’ll be very hard for me to envision that the treaty that prohibits nuclear weapons could have been achieved without the voices and the living testimonials of the survivors.”

International tensions heightening nuclear risk……….

Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), an organization that played a major role in putting the prohibition treaty together, says the two agreements should not be considered mutually exclusive.

It’s just not true that the TPNW weakens the NPT,” she says, “and they are perfectly fine to coexist. The NPT is doing fine. The TPNW doesn’t harm the NPT. The only thing that harms their NPT is that the nuclear armed states refuse to implement the disarmament obligations, and that has nothing to do with the TPNW. Now that has to do with a nuclear armed state. So when the UK government increases their nuclear arsenal, there is a direct violation of the NPT. That’s harmful. When China increases its nuclear arsenals, it’s a direct violation of the NPT and it’s harming and undermining the NPT.”

Citizen activists have crucial role to play

ICAN has been urging nuclear-weapon states that have not ratified the prohibition treaty to attend the meeting in Vienna in March………..

Japanese youth play their part

In Japan, the hibakusha are inspiring some young people to get involved in the nuclear abolition movement……..    https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/1879/

January 29, 2022 Posted by | Japan, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Full scale war in Ukraine? With its 15 nuclear reactors – no more Ukraine, no more Europe


Ukraine diplomat sees little chance of war ‘in country with 15 nuclear reactors’ https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/ukraine-diplomat-sees-little-chance-of-war-in-country-with-15-nuclear-reactors/

EURACTIV.com with Reuters, 26 Jan 22, Ukraine is committed to seeking a diplomatic solution to the current tension with Russia, its ambassador to Japan, Sergiy Korsunsky, said on Wednesday (26 January), adding that he saw little chance of all-out war, although there might be smaller conflicts.

nuclear reactors would bring about a devastating regional impact on Europe.

“I believe that full-scale war is very, very, very difficult to expect, but we may see more localised conflict,” Korsunsky told a news conference in the Japanese capital Tokyo.

If war is going to happen, that will be the first ever in the history of mankind, war against a country which has on its territory 15 nuclear reactors, which has 30,000 km of gas and oil pipelines, full with gas and oil,” said Korsunsky.

“If all these infrastructure is destroyed, there is no more Ukraine. But this is just one consequence. There is no more central Europe and probably western Europe would be affected, too.”

An accident at the Chernobyl reactor, located in what is now Ukraine, spewed tonnes of nuclear waste into the atmosphere in 1986, spreading radioactivity across swathes of the continent and causing a spike in cancers in the more immediate region.

Russia’s Ambassador to Australia, Alexey Pavlovsky, said on Wednesday that Russia did not plan to invade Ukraine.

We don’t intend to invade at all,” Pavlovsky told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio.

“Our troops on the border…These troops are not a threat, they are a warning. A warning to Ukraine’s rulers not to attempt any reckless military adventure,” he said.

As to the sanctions, I think that by now everybody should understand that it is not the language which should be used when talking to Russia. The sanctions just don’t work.”

January 27, 2022 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | 8 Comments

The threat of nuclear winter hangs over our warming planet

The threat of nuclear winter hangs over our warming planet, Pearls and Irritations By Andrew GliksonJan 26, 2022  Even a limited nuclear war would inject enough smoke and dust into the atmosphere to threaten the survival of our species.

The impact of the Cretaceous-Paleocene asteroid 66 million years ago released enough dust and debris to cloud large parts of the planet, causing the mass extinction of some 80 per cent of animal species. When Turco et al. (1983) and Carl Sagan (1983) warned the world about the climatic effects of a nuclear war, they pointed out that the amount of carbon stored in a large city was sufficient to release enough aerosols, smoke, soot and dust to block sunlight over large regions, leading to a widespread failure of crops and extensive starvation.

The current nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia could potentially inject 150 teragrams of soot from fires ignited by nuclear explosions into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (Coupe et al., 2019), lasting for a period of 10 years or longer, followed by a period of intense radioactive radiation over large areas.

Even a “limited” nuclear war, such as between India and Pakistan, would release enough aerosols to affect large regions, killing millions or billions through starvation. As stated by Robock et al. (2007):

“The casualties from the direct effects of blast, radioactivity, and fires resulting from the massive use of nuclear weapons by the superpowers would be so catastrophic … the ensuing nuclear winter would produce famine for billions of people far from the target zones.”

With the global arsenal of nuclear warheads at around 13,000 – 90 per cent of which are held by Russia and the US – a regional conflict such as in Ukraine or Taiwan would threaten to spill worldwide. As the clock of atomic scientists is set at 100 seconds to doomsday, the rising probability of an intended or inadvertent nuclear war, against the background of rising global warming, indicates an hour of truth for our species – a choice between the defence of life on earth and global suicide……………………. https://johnmenadue.com/the-threat-of-nuclear-winter-hangs-over-our-warming-planet/

January 27, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, climate change, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Democrats urge Biden to keep pledge to limit nuclear weapons

Democrats urge Biden to keep pledge to limit nuclear weapons,  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/26/biden-democrats-white-house-nuclear-weapons Julian Borger in WashingtonThu 27 Jan 2022 

Letter by 55 senators and members of Congress comes amid reports Biden will make only minor changes to nuclear posture review

Leading Democrats have written to Joe Biden appealing to him to stick to his promise to reduce the US reliance on nuclear weapons for its defence and to revive arms control.

The letter, signed by 55 senators and representatives, was sent on Wednesday while the White House was making final decisions on the US nuclear posture review (NPR), amid reports that Biden will make only minor adjustments to the vast nuclear modernisation plans inherited from his predecessors.

“Your NPR represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to ensure that US nuclear doctrine reflects your recognition that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” the letter said

During the election campaign, Biden said the US “does not need new nuclear weapons” and pledged that his administration would “work to maintain a strong, credible deterrent while reducing our reliance and excessive expenditure on nuclear weapons”.

The campaign also said it would make deterring and responding to a nuclear attack the sole purpose of the US nuclear arsenal. The current nuclear posture envisages its potential use against a range of threats, including an overwhelming cyber-attack.

Despite Biden’s campaign rhetoric, an advocate for restraint in nuclear weapon modernisation and arms control was removed last year from her Pentagon post overseeing the drafting of the NPR, after a campaign against her by hawks in the defence department and in Congress.

The draft NPR produced by the Pentagon is believed to be a conservative document, endorsing the existing modernisation plans, expected to cost well over $1tn.

Meanwhile, allies led by France have lobbied the Biden administration not to introduce a “sole purpose” policy, concerned about the global pressure it would bring on them to change their own doctrines. The White House insists that the president will have the last word in shaping the policy.

The Democrats behind the letter urged Biden to make the “sole purpose” policy part of the NPR and to scrap two new weapon variants introduced by Trump: a low-yield warhead for Trident missiles, and a planned nuclear sea-launched cruise missile, saying the moves “would further signal that the United States believes that deterrence, not war-fighting, is the sole purpose of nuclear weapons”.

Your forthcoming NPR should reflect your administration’s views, not embrace President Trump’s nuclear weapons programs,” the letter said. It was written by the two leading voices in the Senate for arms control, Ed Markey and Jeff Merkley, and their co-chairs of the Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group from the House, Donald Beyer and John Garamendi.

Failure to change the status quo would fuel a cold war-style arms race with Russia and China, the letter warned, arguing: “A clean break with President Trump’s policies can send a strong signal to Russia and China that the United States believes restraint and nuclear arms reduction are measures of a country’s great power status, not nuclear weapons overkill.”

January 27, 2022 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

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