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The difficulty in knowing if Iran did start making a nuclear bomb

It may become impossible to tell if Iran starts making a nuclear bomb,   https://www.newscientist.com/article/2202247-it-may-become-impossible-to-tell-if-iran-starts-making-a-nuclear-bomb/   By Debora MacKenzie, 10 May 19, 

The most ambitious effort ever to peacefully stop a country getting a nuclear bomb hangs by a thread this week. On 8 May Iranian president Hassan Rouhani announced that his country would start stockpiling low-enriched uranium and heavy water – a potential step towards building nuclear weapons.

The move was in response to US sanctions, despite Iran’s compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which aims to limit the country’s potential bomb-making nuclear activities.

JCPOA imposed an unprecedented inspections regime on Iranian nuclear plants, which has been testing novel monitoring technology that could severely limit the spread of the bomb.

The deal does not stop Iran making enriched uranium to fuel its nuclear power plant, or heavy water for a reactor it was building at Arak. But it prevents it stockpiling either or enriching uranium further towards weapons-grade, and says Arak must be re-designed to produce less of another bomb fuel, plutonium.

The incentive for Iran was a lifting of trade sanctions, imposed after it was found to have covertly enriched uranium in the early 2000s. Since then the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has judged Iran to be in compliance with the deal.

But one year ago, US president Donald Trump pulled out of the JCPOA, saying he was unhappy with the deal. The US re-imposed trade sanctions and threatened countries that did business with Iran with severe trade penalties. Since then Iran’s oil exports have since fallen from 2.5 to 1 million barrels a day.

Now, Rouhani’s pledge means Iran will stop exporting low-enriched uranium and heavy water, which was mandated by the JCPOA, so Iran could continue production without exceeding caps on stockpiles.

The build-up of the materials will not immediately violate the JCPOA. But Rouhani added that if European countries do not, in 60 days, find some way for banks and importers to do business with Iran without suffering US sanctions, Iran will start enriching uranium further – and build Arak to existing specifications. That will be the end of the JCPOA, as Iran resumes its path to a bomb.

We may not even know if it does. The JCPOA provides three levels of safeguards in Iran. It gets the standard inspections the IAEA does in all countries with nuclear plants; additional inspections agreed in 1997 and voluntary for IAEA member states; and extra, unprecedented inspections, including continuous monitoring using novel technology.

James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, says that without the JCPOA, Iran gets only the basic inspections – which it successfully evaded in the past. Without extra inspections the IAEA cannot draw credible conclusions about the absence of undeclared activities in Iran, says Acton.

In theory inspectors outside Iran could watch for krypton-85, a tell-tale gas emitted when plutonium is extracted from heavy water reactors. But Acton is not even sure Iran would attempt to keep that secret. The idea of having nuclear weapons is to deter attack – and as Dr. Strangelove observed, it isn’t much of a deterrent if no one knows you have it.

May 11, 2019 Posted by | Iran, politics international, Uranium, weapons and war | Leave a comment

China says it won’t take part in trilateral nuclear arms talks

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/china-says-it-won-t-take-part-in-trilateral-nuclear-arms-talks-11507850 BEIJING: China on Monday (May 6) dismissed a suggestion that it would talk with the United States and Russia about a new accord limiting nuclear arms, saying it would not take part in any trilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations.

US President Donald Trump said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed on Friday the possibility of the new accord that could eventually include China in what would be a major deal between the globe’s top three atomic powers.


Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said that the country’s nuclear forces were at the “lowest level” of its national security needs, and that they could not be compared to the United States and Russia.

“China opposes any country talking out of turn about China on the issue of arms control, and will not take part in any trilateral negotiations on a nuclear disarmament agreement,” Geng told a daily news briefing, when asked about Trump’s remarks.

China has always advocated the complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons, Geng added.


China believes that countries with the largest nuclear arsenals have a special responsibility when it comes to nuclear disarmament and should continue to further reduce nuclear weapons in a verifiable and irreversible manner, creating conditions for other countries to participate, he said.

The 2011 New START treaty, the only US-Russia arms control pact limiting deployed strategic nuclear weapons, expires in February 2021 but can be extended for five years if both sides agree. Without the agreement, it could be harder to gauge each other’s intentions, arms control advocates say.

May 7, 2019 Posted by | China, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear weapons companies doing very profitably out of governments

HOW TO DISMANTLE THE ABSURD PROFITABILITY OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS, The Intercept

Jon Schwarz

May 5 2019  THE BULLETIN OF the Atomic Scientists currently has its Doomsday Clock set to two minutes to midnight — the closest we’ve been to self-obliteration in nuclear history.

But nuclear weapons are more than just a terrifying threat to every living thing on earth. For decades, they’ve been a terrific way to make money.

A new report from PAX, a Dutch peace organization, both illuminates how profitable it can be for multinational corporations to manufacture Armageddon and provides a roadmap for taking the money out of mass death.

The PAX report identifies a total of $116 billion in current contracts between governments and the private sector to design, build, and maintain the world’s nuclear arsenals. The actual amount may be significantly higher, since all nine nuclear powers maintain some degree of opacity about their nuclear programs. “We know what we can trace,” says Susi Snyder, the report’s principal author, “but there’s definitely more out there.”

Many powerful corporations therefore have incentives to push governments to expand their nuclear stockpiles. At a recent investor conference, a managing director of the investment bank Cowen Inc. questioned the CEO of Raytheon, one of the nuclear contractors listed by PAX. “We’re about to exit the INF [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty] with Russia,” the managing director said, and excitedly asked if this means that “we will really get a defense budget that will really benefit Raytheon.” (The planet may be destroyed, but for a beautiful moment in time, they will have created a lot of value for shareholders.)

Snyder believes that President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the INF Treaty may be paying literal dividends for Raytheon already. She points out that over a period of three months after Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal last fall, Raytheon received an anomalous 44 separate missile contracts worth more than $500 million.

Moreover, corporate lobbying has already nudged the U.S. to commit to a nuclear “modernization” program — initiated under former President Barack Obama and expanded under Trump — that will cost an estimated $1.2 trillion over the next 30 years. And while modernization sounds good, what’s planned will actually make U.S. nukes much more deadly, something to which Russia is already planning to respond. The final result may be an extremely modern nuclear war.

PAX, however, does not counsel despair, but instead sees the intertwining of the private sector and nuclear weapons as a potential point of leverage.

The five largest known current beneficiaries of nuclear weapons spending are all U.S.-based multinationals: Huntington Ingalls Industries ($29.9 billion), Lockheed Martin ($25.2 billion), Honeywell International ($16.5 billion), General Dynamics ($5.8 billion), and Jacobs Engineering ($5.3 billion).

The report also identifies large nuclear contracts with companies elsewhere. Airbus, headquartered in the Netherlands, develops nuclear-armed missiles for France. A British company called Serco has a 25-year contract to help manage and operate the U.K. Atomic Weapons Establishment, the center of the United Kingdom’s nuclear program. Bharat Dynamics Limited in Hyderabad helps make two of India’s nuclear-capable missiles.

Among the hundreds of nuclear contracts are some gems of nuclear insanity. Boeing has received $16 million to develop a “Flight Termination Receiver” that would theoretically allow nuclear missiles to be destroyed after a mistaken launch.

This could change the U.S. nuclear calculus in an extremely dangerous way. There have been many false alarms in the past that Russian missiles were headed toward the U.S. We’re here now only because no president responded to the alarms, in part because they knew such a response would be irrevocable. If future presidents believe that they have an end of the world “take back,” they may be tempted to launch U.S. nuclear missiles in response to another false alarm. But of course, no technology is ever 100 percent effective — especially when it’s built by the company that brought us the 737 Max. And if just one missile failed to self-destruct, a full-out nuclear war would soon follow.

That’s the bad news. Here’s the qualified good news…………….https://theintercept.com/2019/05/04/nuclear-weapons-profits/

May 6, 2019 Posted by | 2 WORLD, business and costs, weapons and war | Leave a comment

ICAN’s strategy with Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

HOW TO DISMANTLE THE ABSURD PROFITABILITY OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS, The Intercept

Jon Schwarz. May 5 2019, “…………. PAX is a member of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. ICAN played a key role in the promotion of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, or TPNW, which was adopted that year at the United Nationsand therefore, opened for ratification by member states.

ICAN’s strategy with the TPNW is a sneaky one. They do not aim to begin by trying to persuade countries with nuclear weapons to abandon them. Rather, they aim to start by persuading non-nuclear countries to ratify the treaty. Such countries will then be prohibited from possessing nuclear weapons — and from allowing them to transit through them or permitting their production on their territory.

If all goes according to plan, this will create a slowly tightening noose around the nuclear weapons states. If the Netherlands were to ratify TPNW, Airbus could no longer help build France’s nuclear missiles. The Italian company Leonardo also lends a hand with France’s nuclear program and likewise could not do so if Italy ratifies the treaty.

But beyond legal restrictions, ICAN hopes that grassroots organizing for TPNW country by country will eventually create a societal taboo around nuclear weapons that will put severe pressure on private-sector corporations and eventually the current nuclear states. If this sounds utopian, it should be remembered that such taboos have been created around biological and chemical weapons, as well as land mines and cluster bombs. There are still holdout countries for each, but they’ve faced greater and greater opprobrium as time goes by, and it’s not impossible to imagine that there will be eventual complete compliance in each case.

PAX points out that the TPNW has already helped create enough stigma surrounding nuclear weapons that two enormous pension funds have divested from nuclear arms producers. The Norwegian Government Pension Fund, the second-largest pension fund on earth, has sold its investments in, among other companies, Huntington Ingalls, Lockheed Martin, Airbus, and Boeing. The Dutch civil service fund ABP is the world’s fifth-largest and has also divested from the nuclear arms industry. “Changes in society, also at an international level,” said an ABP executive, mean that “nuclear weapons no longer fit in with our sustainable and responsible investment policy.”

This perspective is now quietly making its way across the Atlantic. This January, a bill was introduced in the Massachusetts State Legislature that would require the state’s pension funds to divest from nuclear manufacturers. The city of Cambridge has already done so. Ojai, California, will not make any future investments in the makers or funders of nuclear weapons.

“If Lockheed Martin can stop making cluster bombs because they’re losing investors across Europe,” says Snyder, “we know corporations can be moved. … It takes a long time with businesses, but you can do it faster than with governments.”

And that’s the point of Pax’s report: It wasn’t created for passive consumption, but to put basic information in the hands of activists, so that they can exert the power of basic sanity. https://theintercept.com/2019/05/04/nuclear-weapons-profits/

May 6, 2019 Posted by | 2 WORLD, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Hibakusha continue their mission to eliminate nuclear weapons

A-bomb survivor continues mission for nuclear-free world,  https://japantoday.com/category/national/a-bomb-survivor-continues-mission-for-nuke-free-world, May 4  19 NEW YORK

Jiro Hamasumi, in utero when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, told the United Nations he and other survivors will persist with their efforts to spare future generations the suffering caused by nuclear weapons.

“The hibakusha, whose average age has exceeded 80 years old, have endeavored to create a world without nuclear weapons in our lifetime, so that future generations will be free from the fear of having another hell on earth,” he said in a speech.

He was speaking at the third and final session of the preparatory committee for the 2020 review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that got under way last Monday and ends next Friday.

The Japanese word “hibakusha” is used to describe those who were exposed to fallout from the atomic bombs. While the first bomb was dropped over Hiroshima on Aug. 6 in the closing days of World War II, three days later Nagasaki, a city in Kyushu, suffered the same fate.

As assistant secretary general of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, Hamasumi was speaking along with the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as an activist from the Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, known in Japanese as Gensuikyo, and other members of civil society.

Hamasumi recalled growing up looking at the portrait of his father, who had died in the initial blast, and the hardships his mother faced while raising seven children by herself.

He is among an estimated 7,200 hibakusha whom he said were exposed in utero through their mothers. Despite living with fears about his health and the welfare of his family, he has committed to pursuing a world free of nuclear weapons.

“We believe it is the mission of the hibakusha, as well as that of each and every one of the adults all over the world, to hand down the blue and clear sky free of nuclear weapons and wars to our children in the world,” he added.

The discussions are viewed as a critical step in setting the tone for what can be expected to be achieved at the five-year review of the NPT Treaty, lasting roughly a month.

Next year will be the 50th anniversary of the treaty, which came into effect in 1970. This year’s negotiations are taking place in an environment marred by heightened security challenges.

Against this backdrop, the United States and Russia in particular — the two countries with the largest nuclear arsenals — are increasingly at odds.

The situation was exacerbated in February when U.S. President Donald Trump announced Washington was withdrawing from its bilateral nuclear arms control treaty that dates back to 1987. The move was a response to alleged violations carried out by Moscow, stoking fears it may spark a new arms race involving other nations, such as China.

“We see disturbing trends, including the recent intention of the U.S. and Russia to terminate the INF Treaty,” warned Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui, who also spoke at the conference.

He voiced concerns about a global security system that remains based on the doctrine of nuclear deterrence and nuclear-armed states that keep modernizing their arsenals.

Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue raised concerns about the approximately 14,500 nuclear warheads in the world, and called on leaders of nuclear-armed states to do more to live up to the promise of reducing their arsenals.

“Please work in better faith for nuclear arms reductions in keeping with the promise you have with the world under the special status afforded you in the framework of the NPT,” he said, adding Moscow and Washington have a “responsibility to initiate a dialogue.”

After the session, Nagasaki survivor Sueichi Kido, secretary general of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, presented about a petition — calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons — with 9.4 million signatures to Malaysian Ambassador Syed Mohamad Hasrin Aidid, chair of the session.

Called the Hibakusha Appeal, it was last presented in the fall of 2018 by Kido and Hamasumi to an ambassador who chaired a committee tackling disarmament and international security. At that time there were more than 8 million signatures.

“Listening to the hibakusha you can somehow feel the pain, but it is not the same, so we hope that the delegates listen to what they have been saying and work towards a world free of nuclear weapons,” Aidid told Kyodo News after meeting hibakusha for the first time.

May 6, 2019 Posted by | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Listing the companies that make nuclear weapons

May 4, 2019 Posted by | business and costs, Reference, weapons and war | 1 Comment

The Blue Pacific and the legacies of nuclear testing 

The Strategist 1 May 2019| Patrick Kaiku States in the Pacific islands are small in landmass and population. Their limited terrestrial resources and lack of comparative advantage are compounded by their remoteness from global centres of commerce. This obviously has impacts on the costs of doing business and integration into global trade relations. Their invisibility in international relations means that small states must creatively frame their presence in the global community.It’s against this backdrop that the ‘Blue Pacific’, which is touted as an empowering worldview, should be understood. The core principles of the Blue Pacific must be read together with recent developments in the region. In 2017, Pacific Islands Forum leaders endorsed the concept as a ‘driving force’ connecting Pacific peoples ‘with their natural resources, environment, culture and livelihoods’. The Boe Declaration of 2018 formally recognised Pacific islanders’ stewardship over the Pacific Ocean.

While big states such as the US and China are competing for influence in the region, the Boe Declaration makes a case for prioritising the concerns of Pacific island communities. The strategic confrontations of big powers do not feature in the daily lives of Pacific peoples. What’s important to the survival of island states is their environment and the capacity of their resources to meet present needs and the needs of future generations. This logic is seen with the proposed Pacific Resilience Facility, which is a regional pool of resources to manage or mitigate the adverse effects of environmental challenges in the region.

….. a  sticky issue in the region is the potential effects of nuclear contamination of the Pacific Ocean. The legacies of nuclear tests in the Pacific islands include highly radioactive waste materials stored on vulnerable atolls.

In the 1950s, the Pacific Ocean was considered an empty space by the Euro-American powers. With the onset of the arms race during the Cold War, some of the colonial powers used the Pacific as a testing ground for their nuclear weapons. More than 300 nuclear tests were conducted in the Pacific Ocean. Atolls in the Marshall Islands, Johnston Island, Christmas Island and French Polynesia were used as nuclear test sites, casting long shadows into the present.

On one low-lying Pacific island atoll, the toxic legacy of the nuclear tests remains. In 2017, Mark Willacy from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation investigated the nuclear-waste storage facility on the remote atoll of Enewetak in the Marshall Islands. It was there that the US conducted its series of tests of nuclear weapons, including the first full-scale hydrogen bomb. Before it abandoned its nuclear testing program in the 1970s, the US buried contaminated material on Runit Island.

An estimated 85,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste is buried on Runit Island, including some of the world’s most toxic materials. It will take more than 24,000 years for the waste to disintegrate. It’s buried in porous coral and sand and capped by a concrete dome. Marshallese and international non-government organisations are concerned that sea-level rise and major typhoons will destroy the dome, resulting in the contamination of not only the Marshall Islands but the wider Pacific Ocean. Since the sea is a free-flowing matrix of currents and borderless movements of water, a Pacific-wide disaster is a plausible scenario…….

The Pacific island states have an illustrious record in employing collective diplomacy to tackle difficult issues. Since the 1980s, the high-water marks of collective diplomacy have been the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982, the 1985 Rarotonga Treaty and the global moratorium on drift-net fishing. Currently, small states in the Pacific islands are actively engaged in framing the narrative on global cooperation to deal with climate change challenges.

The Blue Pacific is a timely framework, emphasising a Pacific islands worldview, and is an alternative to the zero-sum confrontations of big powers in the region. More importantly, it stresses the importance of cooperation on Pacific terms in dealing with transnational challenges. The various major powers embroiled in their great-power confrontations in the Pacific ought to be educated about the significance of the Blue Pacific and their participation in advancing the goals of that paradigm. After all, the Pacific Ocean connects all the large landmasses on the Pacific Rim. The state of affairs in the islands is a microcosm of the planet’s chances of surviving global environmental challenges.

Patrick Kaiku is a teaching fellow in the political science department at the University of Papua New Guinea.  https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-blue-pacific-and-the-legacies-of-nuclear-testing/

May 4, 2019 Posted by | OCEANIA, wastes, weapons and war | Leave a comment

 Senator Chris Van Hollen on Gorging at the Nuclear Buffet Table

REMARKS: Gorging at the Nuclear Buffet Table  Arms Control Association,   May 2019
By Sen. Chris Van Hollen  “…….we gather here at another urgent moment. It has been important work all along, but we are in an urgent moment now. Because with the Trump administration, all signs indicate that we’re jettisoning, we’re abandoning what has been a bipartisan tradition of recognizing that we need to modernize our nuclear forces, we need to modernize our triad, we need to make sure its survivable and resilient, but that we should do it within the framework of an arms control architecture that leads to predictability, stability, and transparency. That has been an important formula even as relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, now Russia, have gone up and down. We have still maintained that conversation, we have still maintained that structure, and that structure has helped keep the peace.

Now with this new administration, with [National Security Advisor] John Bolton in the White House, we are in a very different world. He has not found a nuclear arms agreement or, as far as I can tell, any multilateral agreement or international agreement that he likes.

But when it comes to arms control, despite his being a foe, he has never explained how an unconstrained nuclear arms race would actually make us any safer. He can never answer that argument. He just tells us what he doesn’t like, but he doesn’t tell us what is better, that would make us more stable.

That’s where we are right now. The tearing up of the INF Treaty was an early indication of where this administration is going……

The notion that we should therefore just proceed with developing not just one, but multiple noncompliant INF missiles makes no sense. We already have a robust capability when it comes to responding to anything in the European theater. We already have dual-capable bombers with gravity bombs, we have air-launched cruise missiles, we have a range of weapons that already serve as a deterrent. So, just building more for the sake of building more doesn’t do us any good, and it creates more instabilities.

In addition, I don’t buy the argument that we need to have an intermediate-range missile on Guam with the purpose of holding the Chinese in check. There are lots of things we need to be doing in that region, but I don’t think a missile on Guam does the job. As you know, our other allies, Japan and South Korea, have made it very clear they won’t deploy this kind of missile.

There is really no good argument for rushing to tear up the agreement. …….

The other issue I want to focus on has to do with the overall nuclear posture that this administration is pursuing when it comes to nuclear weapons. I think we all agree that we need to modernize our nuclear forces, but we don’t need to add on every single, conceivable new capability.

It’s like showing up at a buffet and, instead of having a balanced meal, you say, “I will just gorge on every single capability that is out there.” When you only need a balanced meal to do the job, you don’t need to eat everything at the nuclear buffet table, including offensive and defensive weapons.

Unlike a dinner buffet where it’s “all you can eat at a fixed price,” the nuclear buffet table requires you to pay for everything. With the current spending plan, that is right now estimated to be $1.7 trillion over the next 30 years by the Congressional Budget Office. If you add on all the other capabilities this administration apparently wants to add on, you’re talking about an even bigger price tag.

So, in addition to having a big price tag, you’re also talking about building additional capabilities that are not only unnecessary, but can be very destabilizing. That is especially true when it comes to the administration considering two new capabilities with submarine-launched ballistic missiles, putting a low-yield warhead on some, as well as resuscitating the nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile.

I think that if you look at the direction we’re going, it is very worrisome from a price tag perspective when we have so many other national requirements and priorities. But also, we are going to be spending taxpayer money on something that actually makes us less, not more, safe by lowering the threshold of use of nuclear weapons. Therefore, we’re increasing the risks of an all-out
nuclear war…….. https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2019-05/features/remarks-gorging-nuclear-buffet-table?fbclid=IwAR1vuIj-ArO29ADKtaUGtH990DcT5OYD97SvRnZ3tuwBopgnFbQaX5iMX4k

May 4, 2019 Posted by | election USA 2020, politics, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Particles From Cold War Nuclear Bomb Tests Found in Deepest Parts of the Ocean

Particles From Cold War Nuclear Bomb Tests Found in Deepest Parts of the Ocean

Crustaceans in the Mariana Trench and other underwater canyons feed on food from the surface laced with carbon-14 from Cold War bomb tests, By Christopher Crockett, smithsonian.com , May 1, 2019 

Crustaceans in the Mariana Trench and other underwater canyons feed on food from the surface laced with carbon-14 from Cold War bomb tests
The first test of a thermonuclear weapon, or a hydrogen bomb, codenamed Ivy Mike and conducted by the United States in 1952 over the island of Elugelab in Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. (Public Domain)……… Crustaceans in the Mariana Trench and other underwater canyons feed on food from the surface laced with carbon-14 from Cold War bomb tests

No place on Earth is free from human influence—not even the bottom of the deepest trenches in the ocean.

Shrimp-like critters from three West Pacific ocean trenches were found to munch on food that sinks down from the surface, leaving a unique chemical signature from decades-old nuclear bomb tests in the bodies of the deep-sea crustaceans. The findings, published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, not only help marine scientists figure out how these bottom dwellers survive, but also underscore the depths to which humanity’s influence can penetrate………

In those dark depths, one of the most common critters is the shrimp-like amphipod, a family of crustaceans that scavenge the ocean floor for food. Where that food comes from is a matter of debate. Potential sources include morsels that percolate up from Earth’s interior, nutrient-rich sediment that slides down steep trench walls, or tasty detritus that wafts down from the surface.

A recent haul of deep-sea amphipods offered Sun and colleagues a chance to solve this marine mystery. Using baited traps, two Chinese research vessels in 2017 harvested amphipods from three trenches in the West Pacific, including the famous Mariana Trench. Sun’s team chemically analyzed the amphipods’ muscle tissue and gut contents and found elevated levels of carbon-14, a heavy variant of carbon. The levels closely matched abundances found near the surface of the ocean, where the amount of carbon-14 is higher than usual thanks to nuclear bomb tests conducted more than half a century ago.

Carbon comes in a few different varieties based on how many neutrons are stuffed into its atomic nucleus. About one out of every trillion carbon atoms on Earth has two extra neutrons. This form, known as carbon-14, occurs naturally thanks to high-speed atomic particles from deep space whacking into nitrogen atoms. But in the middle of the 20th century, humans doubled the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, from 1945 to 1963 the United States and the Soviet Union (with a little help from the United Kingdom and France) detonated nearly 500 nuclear bombs, 379 of which exploded in the atmosphere. These tests dramatically increased the amount of carbon-14 on our planet. The Test Ban Treaty of 1963 put a stop to most atmospheric and underwater tests, and carbon-14 levels in the atmosphere started a slow return to normal—though they are still higher than pre-nuclear levels—as ocean waters and land-based life absorbed carbon from the air.

………While the nuclear bomb signature has been recorded a couple miles down in the West Atlantic, no one has seen it as these depths before. “This is just interesting as all get out,” says Robert Key, a Princeton oceanographer who was not involved with this study. He points out that starting about a mile below the surface of the North Pacific, carbon-14 levels closely match what the atmosphere looked like before the bomb tests. “The high carbon-14 [in the amphipods] could only come from food that’s come down from the top,” he says.

The abundance of material created in nuclear bomb tests high in the sky found in the bodies of deep-dwelling amphipods underscores a very intimate connection between human activity and the most isolated reaches of the sea…………. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/particles-cold-war-nuclear-bomb-testing-found-amphipods-mariana-trench-180972078/

May 2, 2019 Posted by | oceans, wastes, weapons and war | Leave a comment

UK’s nuclear weapons programme could cost £172bn

UK Defence Journal 30th April 2019 , A new report has warned that the UK’s nuclear weapons programme could cost £172bn between now and 2070, and suggests the government should
review the UK’s possession of nuclear weapons. The report, published
today by the Nuclear Information Service (NIS), states that the UK must
make a choice in the near future: increase the overall defence budget,
reduce spending on conventional weapons in order to fund nuclear weapons,
or reducing spending on/scrapping the nuclear weapons programme. NIS also
argues that the UK should work to “achieving a nuclear free world”, and
must “re-examine” the case for nuclear disarmament.

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/report-warns-of-spiralling-costs-of-uk-nuclear-weapons-programme/

May 2, 2019 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

UK Cold War exhibition tries to gloss over the effects of nuclear testing on indigenous people

Cold War exhibition tries to airbrush Britain’s dark history of nuclear testing, The Conversation, Sue Rabbitt Roff, Researcher, Social History/Tutor in Medical Education, University of Dundee, May 2, 2019  A new exhibition about the Cold War recently opened at the UK National Archives at Kew in south-west London. Protect and Survive: Britain’s Cold War Revealed seeks to tell the story of how the years of high nuclear tensions affected the UK, from spy paranoia to civil defence posters to communications at the heart of government. …..

an extremely important facet of Britain’s Cold War has been almost entirely airbrushed from the story. There is barely anything in the exhibition about the 45 atomic and nuclear weapons detonations carried out by the British: 12 in Australia from 1952-57, nine in the central Pacific in 1957-58, and a further 24 alongside the Americans in the Nevada desert until as recently as 1991. The effects on the health of all this testing on indigenous people and some 22,000 British servicemen who were sent as observers is still being researched.
The Cold War exhibition includes three photos showing the atmospheric effect of the 1952 detonation off the Montebello Islands off north-western Australia. There is one additional picture of the hydrogen bomb that was exploded near Christmas Island in May 1957, the first of the central Pacific series, which persuaded the US to resume nuclear collaboration with the UK. And that’s about it. Worse, the exhibition includes a map of the global impact of the nuclear era in which the test locations in Australia are obscured by lettering – not least Maralinga, an important Aboriginal area in which seven detonations took place.

Files under review

My understanding is that decisions about the content of the exhibition were finalised late last year. Interestingly, this was around the same time as the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, the public body with ultimate responsibility for the UK’s nuclear legacy withdrew recordsfrom the National Archives relating to 1950s nuclear weapons tests that had been declassified decades ago, pending a “security review” by the Ministry of Defence and Atomic Weapons Establishment. Specialists in this field have long complained about the many files concerning British testing that have remained secret, which makes the withdrawal of declassified files all the more unsettling………

Remembrance, The omissions at the London Cold War exhibition are a reminder about the UK’s low-key approach to its weapons testing history. The story doesn’t only need to be properly told at this exhibition, it needs a permanent public space. Yet no existing museum dedicated to Britain’s wars is interested in giving it house room – not even the records and memorabilia of all the military personnel sent to observe the tests. A number of years ago I was quietly told while walking down a corridor in one major institution not to offer it my own records because “they will end up in the skip”.

My years working in this field indicate to me that successive governments seem to want the story of British nuclear testing to die off naturally. But surely, at the very least, the point of the National Archives is to preserve the records to ensure that it is never allowed to be forgotten. https://theconversation.com/cold-war-exhibition-tries-to-airbrush-britains-dark-history-of-nuclear-testing-116237

May 2, 2019 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Rocketing costs of Britain’s nuclear weapons projects

Cost of MoD nuclear projects is rocketing   The Times, 29 Apr 19, The government’s defence nuclear enterprise will cost 26 per cent more than previously forecast over the next three years, a report says.

The Ministry of Defence is facing a funding gap of up to £14 billion in its ten-year equipment plan. In the report, out tomorrow, the Nuclear Information Service (NIS), a campaign organisation that monitors the nuclear defence industry and promotes transparency, also raises concerns that five upgrade projects within the programme are experiencing financial difficulties. Four upgrade projects have already been scrapped, it says.

The three big upgrade projects for which information is released are rated either “amber/red” or “red”, meaning that delivery of the projects is either under threat or appears impossible.

The report says: “There is serious potential for delays to…(subscribers only)  https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cost-of-mod-nuclear-projects-is-rocketing-7t2mjl62d

April 30, 2019 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

United Nations’ Ms. Izumi Nakamitsu offers optimism, in the cause of nuclear disarmament

Hopes for Nuclear Disarmament from Tokyo,  https://allthingsnuclear.org/gkulacki/hopes-for-nuclear-disarmament-from-tokyo, GREGORY KULACKI, CHINA PROJECT MANAGER AND SENIOR ANALYST | APRIL 27, 2019, The so-called “great powers” are not so great when it comes to nuclear disarmament. Forty-nine years ago they entered into a legally binding commitment, known as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to “pursue negotiations in good faith … on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” It’s hard to argue, though the great powers try to do so, that spending trillions to maintain and modernize their nuclear arsenals is an act of good faith.

Optimism in the face of that kind of hypocrisy can be hard to find, but it made an appearance this week on the campus of the United Nations University in Tokyo. Ms. Izumi Nakamitsu, the UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, spoke convincingly to a conference room packed with concerned academics, students and activists about improving prospects for progress in nuclear disarmament.

International Norms Still Matter

One prerequisite for progress is a high level of commitment among UN member states to international law and organization. Nakamitsu said that although politicians from the United States and other nations are mobilizing nationalist resentments against the accelerating social and economic developments knitting the planet together, public officials in the rest of the world are responding with “a renewed commitment to multilateralism.” She emphasized, repeatedly, that the United Nations cannot force the nuclear weapons states to disarm. But it can help create the conditions for progress.

An important bellwether is the NPT itself.  The third meeting of the preparatory committee for the NPT review conference in 2020 is being held in New York. In advance of the meeting even President Trump, who revels in undermining the United Nations, is talking about the need for nuclear arms control. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo opened the door to deep nuclear cuts by suggesting that the United States and Russia should join China, which has a small nuclear arsenal of several hundred weapons that it keeps off alert, in the negotiation of a new strategic arms limitation treaty.

Despite these public statements–and time will tell if they are sincere–the Trump administration is asking Congress for new funds to rapidly modernize and expand the US nuclear arsenal. It also refused to endorse President Reagan’s statement that “A nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought.” But even Trump and his assemblage of nuclear hawks feel the need to at least pretend, at a moment when the world is gathering to sure up the NPT, that international nuclear arms control is a solemn US obligation.

Looking Forward

Nakamitsu was enthusiastic about the new UN Agenda for Disarmament launched by UN Secretary General António Guterres last May. She reminded her audience the very first UN General Assembly resolution established the international community’s right and responsibility to “enquire into” and “make recommendations” that would lead to “the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons.” She said one of the most exciting initiatives on the agenda is to engage new constituencies that can support the United Nations in the fulfillment of that mandate.

The most consequential may be the global scientific community, which is much larger, more diverse and more capable than it was in 1946. Nakamitsu spends a lot of time with scientific groups all over the world and notes that many scientists never thought about nuclear disarmament, much less how they might participate in the process. At first blush that may seem discouraging but it is actually a cause for hope. The global discussion of nuclear disarmament is currently dominated by a small clique of experts closely associated with the nuclear weapons states. Expanding that discussion to include more diverse and scientifically competent voices is a task ideally suited for the United Nations. Nakamitsu’s outreach is already leading to some interesting conversations.

For example, she recalled a meeting with IT engineers at a major global corporation where she sought advice on the potential impact of artificial intelligence on nuclear weapons command and control systems. The discussion started with a recitation of familiar concerns about machinesdeciding to launch nuclear weapons with no human oversight. But it ended with the speculation that it might be possible to encode all modern weapons systems with an algorithm that allowed the machines to understand, interpret and apply international humanitarian law. As I sat there listening to the undersecretary I imagined a pilot about to launch a missile strike getting a warning stating, “System analytics have determined your action will result in the commission of a war crime. This incident will be recorded and filed with the United Nations War Crimes Commission.”

This is just one of the many thought-provoking encounters Nakamitsu experienced after the new agenda was launched. She believes they’re creating greater global interest in advancing nuclear disarmament.

Power to the People

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the undersecretary emphasized history suggests greater public engagement forces national decision-makers to pursue international nuclear arms control. She recalled the role of the Japanese women who helped ignite the worldwide public campaign that led to the signing of the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT), which prohibited the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, outer space and under water.

The UN’s new disarmament agenda also calls for the unprecedented use of the offices and resources of the United Nations to reach out to women and other constituencies sidelined by the male-dominated conversations about nuclear disarmament that occur between officials and experts from the nuclear weapons states. Nakamitsu related her own efforts to engage much younger audiences, and patiently fielded questions from the students and educators who attended her presentation. She reminded the older members of the audience, like me, that while complete and total nuclear disbarment is unlikely to occur in our lifetimes, the hope for our future lies in engaging young people and arming them with the information they need to carry on the struggle.

April 29, 2019 Posted by | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Anglican Church angry about ‘Thanksgiving’ service for nuclear weapons at Westminster Abbey

International outcry at ‘Thanksgiving’ service for nuclear weapons at Westminster Abbey ww.ekklesia.co.uk/node/28146, By agency reporter. APRIL 28, 2019, The international Anglican Communion has expressed widespread concern about the upcoming ‘National Service of Thanksgiving’ for nuclear weapons, which is being held at Westminster Abbey on Friday 3 May 2019.

More than 175 Anglican clergy members have signed a statement, coordinated by the Christian Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (Christian CND), calling for the service to be stopped. The signatories to the statement come from the United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. They include eight current or former bishops.Christian CND commended the Church of England for overwhelmingly passing a motion at General Synod in 2018 which noted that nuclear weapons have “indiscriminate and destructive potential” which urges Anglicans to “work tirelessly for their elimination across the world”.

Martin Tiller, Co-Chair of Christian CND said, “Christians around the world will find this service, described by the Royal Navy as a ‘celebration’, to be completely inappropriate. For centuries, Christians have been praying for peace, and we simply do not accept that a so-called ‘nuclear deterrent’ is God’s answer to that prayer. The huge support for our The international Anglican Communion has expressed widespread concern about the upcoming ‘National Service of Thanksgiving’ for nuclear weapons, which is being held at Westminster Abbey on Friday 3 May 2019.

More than 175 Anglican clergy members have signed a statement, coordinated by the Christian Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (Christian CND), calling for the service to be stopped. The signatories to the statement come from the United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. They include eight current or former bishops.Christian CND commended the Church of England for overwhelmingly passing a motion at General Synod in 2018 which noted that nuclear weapons have “indiscriminate and destructive potential” which urges Anglicans to “work tirelessly for their elimination across the world”.

Martin Tiller, Co-Chair of Christian CND said, “Christians around the world will find this service, described by the Royal Navy as a ‘celebration’, to be completely inappropriate. For centuries, Christians have been praying for peace, and we simply do not accept that a so-called ‘nuclear deterrent’ is God’s answer to that prayer. The huge support for our petition and clergy statement demonstrates that many, many other Christians agree with us.”

The Rt Rev Andrew Hedge, Bishop of Waipu, New Zealand said,”New Zealand has a proud record of being opposed to nuclear weapons and has already ratified the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. I welcome the motion passed by Church of England General Synod in support of the Treaty, and believe that the witness of the church needs to be invested in working to bring about a nuclear weapons-free world. Recognition of the long-standing commitment of the naval submariners to vigilant patrol is laudable; however, the idea of aligning that celebration with the threat of potential indiscriminate destruction through the use of nuclear weapons is completely counter to the witness of the Church in the proclamation of the gospel.”

Christian CND will be taking part in an alternative witness outside Westminster Abbey on Friday 3 May, gathering at 11:30 for reflection and prayer before the witness begins at 12 noon. The witness will be inter-denominational with Methodist, Quaker, Catholic and Anglican representation. The witness is being supported by the Network of Christian Peace Organisations, Pax Christi, the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship, the National Peace and Justice Network, Church and Peace and the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

* Read the statement and a full list of signatories here

* Christian Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament http://christiancnd.org.uk/

April 29, 2019 Posted by | Religion and ethics, UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Britain’s costly nuclear submarines – dead but not buried

The Royal Navy Can’t Seem to Figure Out How to Dispose of Old Nuclear Submarines,  National Interest  by Michael Peck 228 Apr 19,

Not an easy problem to solve.  “………Britain has retired twenty nuclear submarines since 1980. None have been disposed of, and nine still contain radioactive fuel in their reactors, according to an audit by Britain’s National Audit Office. These subs spent an average of twenty-six years on active service—and nineteen years out of service.  

“Because of this, the Department [Ministry of Defense] now stores twice as many submarines as it operates, with seven of them having been in storage for longer than they were in service,” the audit states.

Even worse is the price tag. Britain has spent 500 million pounds ($646.4 million) maintaining those decommissioned subs between 1980 and 2017. Full disposal of a nuclear sub would cost 96 million pounds ($112.1 million). As a result, the total cost for disposing of the Royal Navy’s ten active subs and twenty retired vessels would be 7.5 billion pounds ($9.7 billion), NAO calculated.

Dismantling and disposing of a nuclear sub is a complex process. The nuclear fuel must be carefully removed from the reactor using special facilities. Then the submarine itself must be dismantled, again with extra care paid to removing the radioactive parts of the vessel. Just one contractor—Babcock International Group PLC—is “currently the Department’s sole supplier capable of undertaking most of the Department’s defueling and dismantling requirements,” noted NAO. “It owns the nuclear-licensed dockyards and facilities in both Devonport and Rosyth, and also provides aspects of the related projects.”

Fuel removal ceased in 2004 after British nuclear regulators found the removal facilities didn’t meet standards. Yet the Ministry of Defense still lacks a fully-funded plan for defueling.

All of this is taking a toll on a Royal Navy already underfunded and struggling to fund new ships. “The Department pays an estimated £12 million [$15.5 million] a year to maintain and store the nine fueled submarines currently stored in Devonport,” NAO found. “Maintaining fueled, rather than unfueled, submarines also presents additional technical uncertainties and affects dock availability.  ….

Until submarines are prepared, the Department must keep them partially crewed, potentially affecting the Department’s ability to redeploy its personnel.”The plan is to begin defueling subs, beginning with HMS Swiftsure, in 2023. But even then, the Ministry of Defense will have to deal with different subs that have different disposal requirements. “At present, the Department does not have a fully developed plan to dispose of Vanguard, Astute and Dreadnought-class submarines, which have different types of nuclear reactor,” NAO pointed out. “For the Vanguard and Astute-class it has identified suitable dock space which, if used, will need to be maintained.”

Interestingly, the British military gets an exemption when it comes to nuclear waste. “Within the civil nuclear sector, organizations must consider nuclear waste disposal during the design stage of power stations and nuclear infrastructure. The Department does not have a similar obligation.”

Britain isn’t the only nation that has problems disposing of nuclear warships. The Soviet Union sank nineteen nuclear vessels, and fourteen shipborne nuclear reactors, at sea, sparking fears of an environmental catastrophe. Even the U.S. Navy is struggling with how to dispose of nuclear subs and aircraft carriers, such as the decommissioned carrier USS Enterprise.  https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/royal-navy-cant-seem-figure-out-how-dispose-old-nuclear-submarines-54322

April 29, 2019 Posted by | UK, wastes, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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