Brave Russian naval officer who saved world from nuclear bomb during Cuban Missile Crisis should be as famous as US astronaut Neil Armstrong, Th Irish Sun,
Isn’t it amazing we have this man Vasili Arkhipov, who basically saved the world from annihilation, and virtually no one knows his name
By Mark May, 19th February 2019, “………. in real life on a Russian submarine in 1962.
A group of US Navy destroyers and an aircraft carrier enforcing the blockade against Cuba trapped a B-59 Russian submarine, which the US didn’t know was armed with nuclear weapons.
They began to drop depth charges to force the submarine to surface for identification.
The captain of the Russian sub Valentin Savitsky, believing that a war may have already started, prepared to launch a ten kiloton nuclear torpedo against the American warships.
According to a US National Security Archive report, Savitsky exclaimed: “We’re gonna blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all — we will not become the shame of the fleet.”
As is procedurally required, all the senior officers on board must agree before a nuclear bomb could be launched.
The captain and the political officer agreed to launch but Vasili Arkhipov, the second-in-command, disagreed. A heated argument ensued during which Arkhipov persuaded the captain to surface the ship and await orders from Moscow. It turned out there was no war.
A nuclear holocaust on an unimaginable scale was averted and countless lives were saved thanks to Arkhipov.
Thomas Blanton, of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, told the Boston Globe: “The lesson from this is that a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world.”
Arkhipov was not reprimanded by the Russian navy for his actions.
In fact, he was later promoted to rear admiral and went on to become the head of the Kirov naval academy and retired as a vice admiral.
What would a nuclear war look like? And how would anyone be able to help?
What would you choose? Live or die?
The future of humanity hangs in the balance’: Why the world could not handle a nuclear attack . The Journal I.e. Órla Ryan @orlaryan, orla@thejournal.ie, 17 Feb 19
An expert explains how we could be “headed for a nuclear arms race”. NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE probably talked about more nowadays that at any stage since the Cold War.
There are about 14,500 such weapons in the world, with nine countries owning them. The vast majority of the weapons are owned by the US (about 6,500) and Russia (about 6,800).
Tense relations between these two countries, as well as North Korea trying to increase its nuclear capability, has increased fears about a potential nuclear race.
US will not open door to Saudi Arabia building nuclear weapons, deputy energy secretary says CNBC David Reid| @cnbcdavy 17 Feb 2019
The Trump administration wants to sell its nuclear energy technology to cash-rich Saudi Arabia.
To prevent nuclear arms development, the U.S. wants to place tight controls on how the technology can be used.
Saudi Arabia has put the U.S. on a shortlist with China, Russia and others to bid for nuclear power projects in the country.
“………….The Saudis have so far refused to rule out their right to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, pointing to neighboring Iran’s ability to do so under the 2015 nuclear agreement that world powers struck with Tehran.
In an interview in March on CBS’s “60 Minutes” Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said the country wasn’t interested in developing weapons but would develop nuclear capability should Iran ever develop a working nuclear bomb.
On Sunday, Saudi Arabian Prince Turki Al-Faisal responded directly to Brouillette’s words, saying the country had more options than just U.S. technology.
“Well the nuclear energy market is open. It is not just the United States that is providing nuclear technology,” he told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble in Munich.
Nuclear Fears Haunt Leaders With U.S.-Russian Arms Pact’s Demise, Bloomberg, By Henry Meyer, Marc Champion, and Patrick Donahue, With assistance by Andrea Dudik, February 17, 2019
Arms-race specter raises alarm at global security conference
Looming standoff revives memory of 1962 Cuban missile crisis
President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of a landmark arms control treaty with Russia is turning the worst fears of a dangerous weapons race into reality.
The U.S. and its allies are laying the groundwork to deploy new intermediate-range missiles in Europe for the first time since they were banned in a 1987 treaty, a move that would prompt a tit-for-tat Russian response. With a second nuclear pact likely to expire in two years, the risks of confrontation are growing.
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s top civilian, cited recent Russian deployments and evoked a Cold War-style threat of nuclear destruction at a global conference of security and defense officials this weekend in Munich, the baroque German metropolis that’s one of Europe’s richest cities.
“These missiles are mobile, easy to hide and nuclear-capable,” Stoltenberg said. “They can reach European cities, like Munich, with little warning.”
As U.S. officials accused Russia of provoking the crisis by violating the accord, German Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced a sense of alarm that’s spreading in Europe as the two big powers trade blame.
“We’re stuck with the consequences,” she said Saturday. At the same time, “blind rearmament can’t be the answer.”
Cold War Echoes
The looming standoff puts Washington and Moscow on a path back to the era of the 1950s and 1960s when the two superpowers were rapidly building up their strategic forces. It risks destroying decades of arms control efforts under which the rivals accepted limits on their arsenals in the wake of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, which took them to the brink of a nuclear clash.
…………. Intercontinental Arsenals
The concerns about the potential for an armed build-up in Europe are amplified by the fact that New START, the last such arms control agreement still in place, looks set to expire in 2021.
Under New START, which followed from the 1991 START treaty and was signed in 2010, the Russian and U.S. arsenals are restricted to no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads on no more than 700 deployed strategic missiles and bombers. Each side can inspect the other’s arsenals 18 times a year.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Munich that Russia is ready to hold talks on extending New START for another five years, while complaining that the Trump administration is unwilling to have any “meaningful consultations” on the issue.
His deputy in charge of arms control, Sergei Ryabkov, warned that the collapse of the treaty “would be another extraordinary shock for the arms control system.”
Back to the ’70s?
“The most frightening thing is when in the absence of information, the two sides will have to go back to the logic of seeking a military advantage,” said Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the foreign affairs committee of the upper house of the Russian parliament. “It means we’ll have to spend vast resources and confront the risk for each other and the entire world of a direct armed clash.”
The INF treaty was a response to a regional arms race that began with the Soviet deployment of SS-20 missiles in the European theater in 1977. The U.S. responded by deploying Pershing II missiles with a similar range. At one point, almost 3,000 intermediate-range nuclear weapons were stationed in Europe and it took a decade to end the standoff.
Closer to Russia
With the Iron Curtain gone, the difference is that now the missiles would be deployed in eastern Europe or in former Soviet republics, closer to key Russian political, military and industrial facilities.
The U.S. has proposed replacing the INF with a broader treaty bringing in other military powers, including China. That’s considered unlikely: of China’s 501 land-based missile launchers, 431 would be covered by the INF treaty, so agreeing to a ban on intermediate-range weapons would require destroying 80 percent of this arsenal, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Losing the pact without any replacement would make it impossible for either side to know whether newly deployed missiles are nuclear or conventional, said Francois Heisbourg, a former French diplomat and Defense Ministry adviser.
Some history: Moffett says that “first use” ended World War II. That was hardly the principal cause of Japan’s surrender.
Most historians now attribute the end to the Soviet entry on Aug. 8. That immoral and illegal first use was also unnecessary. I’ve made the case in this paper many times, but I’ll merely quote Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme allied commander): “Japan was ready to surrender, and there was no need to use that awful thing.” Virtually all the top military leaders agreed.
But apart from its illegal and immoral despicability “common to Dark Age barbarians” (as Adm. William Leahy put it), that first use alienated our Soviet ally and started a long and dangerous Cold War.
What Moffett doesn’t say is that the first-use option, while not necessitating first use, does require preparation and willingness to do it. In a time of crisis, Nation X, knowing that Enemy Y has the first-use option and fearing imminent first use from Y, may pre-empt with the strike first – better to use ’em than lose ’em. This is equally dangerous with nukes kept on “hair trigger” alert, which first-use nuke nations do (but not the no-first-use nations: India, China and North Korea). It’s a recipe for an accidental nuclear launch.
–We’ve long held first use, even during the 1980s when the Soviets (and China) espoused a no-first-use policy. It was a main driver of the dangerous and often nearly catastrophic super power arms race. There were hundreds of nuclear accidents and near misses, some after the Cold War ended, as we now know from Eric Schlosser’s shocking 2014 book, Command and Control. By pure luck we survived decades of military inattention to nuclear safety and our (still ongoing) deference to the “we’re falling behind” cries of the dollar-seeking military-industrial-complex. (We are the world’s No.1 arms merchant, with many undemocratic customers.) For some frighteningly close calls see my review of Schlosser’s book: bit.ly/2SCQUO5.
First use has also been used by every president since Harry Truman as a threat to force concessions, as Daniel Ellsberg (nuke adviser to the Pentagon and several presidents in the 1960s and ’70s) has pointed out, with many examples in his recent Doomsday Machine.
Moffett also says Ronald Reagan showed “wisdom” by retaining the first-use option. Eventually Reagan wised up, but not until Mikhail Gorbachev (Nobel Peace Prize, 1990) came along in the mid-1980s. Earlier Reagan had little understanding of nukes. In fact he and his vice president, George H.W. Bush, were both insisting that a nuclear war was survivable and winnable.
By 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev, at their first summit, nearly agreed to the abolition of all nukes. But Reagan’s “Star Wars” (a proposed anti-ballistic missile system then outlawed by treaty and thought to be “pie in the sky”) killed the deal. But in 1987 we fortunately got the INF Treaty destroying 3,000 medium-range missiles – a treaty the United States is threatening to leave.
Moffett said our local leftists should “leave defense policy to national security and military experts.”
Surely Moffett knows that many such experts are today advocating exactly what the “local leftists” are – urging our state Legislature to urge Congress and the president to adopt no first use and halt funds for new low-yield nukes. They include: Gen. Lee Butler (Air Force), commander of Strategic Air Command (1984-1991) and first of the Strategic Command (1991-1994); Gen. James Cartwright (USMC), commander of the Strategic Command (2004-07) and vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (2007-2011); Secretary of State George Shultz (under Reagan); and Secretary of Defense William Perry (under Bill Clinton).
There are moral problems with nukes and even with nuclear deterrence of any form. Even deterrence (with no first use) requires the preparation for possible use and a willingness to use nukes “if necessary.” As such, all nuclear deterrence runs the risk of nuclear war and the killing of millions of innocent human beings or worse, given the possibility of nuclear winter. As science knows, but apparently not the Pentagon, even a small nuclear exchange – for example, India versus Pakistan, each firing 50 low-yield weapons – could bring on a 10-year nuclear winter and global famine killing over a billion people (2014 study by Physicians for Social Responsibility). Such a risk is morally unacceptable – a concern central to creating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968 – now with 189 parties and as important as ever.
The Non-Proliferation Treaty (Art. 6) requires a swift end to the nuclear arms race and the bringing to conclusion a treaty for “general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” In 1996 the World Court rendered an opinion on the legality of nuclear weapons, saying: “The threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict.”
Meeting our treaty obligations will be a very long and difficult journey. But we must recover the progress that slowed soon after the end of the Cold War and recently threatens to stop – or worse.
In the meantime, the United States can encourage the non-proliferation treaty’s many non-nuke parties to show that the United States is still serious about its treaty obligations. We N.H. folks – as many other states are doing – can and should take the small but positive steps to support our state government to urge Congress and the president to adopt a no-first-use pledge, and to decline funding for any new costly and “more usable” low-yield nukes.
(Ray Perkins Jr. of Concord is professor of philosophy, emeritus, at Plymouth State University and vice chairman of the Bertrand Russell Society board of directors.)
Billions Dead: That’s What Could Happen if India and Pakistan Wage a Nuclear War, This is the real nuclear crisis the world is missing. National Interest, by Zachary Keck 14 Feb 19, Armed with what they believe is reasonable intelligence about the locations of Pakistan’s strategic forces, highly accurate missiles and MIRVs to target them, and a missile defense that has a shot at cleaning up any Pakistani missiles that survived the first strike, Indian leaders might be tempted to launch a counterforce first strike.
With the world’s attention firmly fixated on North Korea, the greatest possibility of nuclear war is in fact on the other side of Asia.
That place is what could be called the nuclear triangle of Pakistan, India and China. Although Chinese and Indian forces are currently engaged in a standoff, traditionally the most dangerous flashpoint along the triangle has been the Indo-Pakistani border. The two countries fought three major wars before acquiring nuclear weapons, and one minor one afterwards. And this doesn’t even include the countless other armed skirmishes and other incidents that are a regular occurrence.
At the heart of this conflict, of course, is the territorial dispute over the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, the latter part of which Pakistan lays claim to. Also key to the nuclear dimension of the conflict is the fact that India’s conventional capabilities are vastly superior to Pakistan’s. Consequently, Islamabad has adopted a nuclear doctrine of using tactical nuclear weapons against Indian forces to offset the latter’s conventional superiority………https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/billions-dead-thats-what-could-happen-if-india-and-pakistan-wage-nuclear-war-44682
Zimbabwe ratifies global nuclear treaty, https://www.newtimes.co.rw/africa/zimbabwe-global-nuclear-treaty, 15 Feb 19, Zimbabwe on Wednesday ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, becoming the world’s 168th country to adopt the treaty that prohibits all nuclear weapon explosions including tests.
Endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 10, 1996, the treaty nearly gained universal adherence, with 184 states having signed and 168 having ratified. However, it has not yet entered into force.
After ratifying the treaty, Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa said the country’s ratification was a sign of the changing times. “Zimbabwe has now today deposited its instruments for ratification after a period of 20 years.”
Mnangagwa said the decision was made due to a new dispensation in the country. “The environment is different and we think it is proper that Zimbabwe sides with those 167 other nations who have ratified against nuclear proliferation.”
Zimbabwe’s ratification was an important milestone, said Lassina Zerbo, executive secretary of the Preparatory Commission for the the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization.
“Zimbabwe is an important country in Africa. Like what the president said, it is a new time, new era. Things are moving, and Zimbabwe is showing to the international community that things are changing,” he said.
Zimbabwe was also the 46th African state to ratify the treaty. Countries on the continent that are yet to ratify the treaty include the Comoros, Equatorial Guinea, the Gambia and Sao Tome and Principe, while Mauritius, Somalia and South Sudan are yet to sign the treaty.
Is there a way to save the ‘fraying’ nuclear consensus in Congress? Defense News By: Aaron Mehta 15 Feb 19, WASHINGTON— Following the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, which called for long-term investment in modernizing America’s nuclear arsenal, Congress seemed to strike a general consensus on nukes: New investments in weapons would go hand in hand with arms reduction efforts such as the New START treaty.
It wasn’t perfect, and not everyone was on board. But on the whole, the balance allowed the investments in new bombers, nuclear warheads, long-range missiles and intercontinental ballistic missiles to go through with little challenge from Democrats, while ensuring New START would receive support from Republicans.
Years later, the landscape looks very different, which could have major consequences as the Trump administration attempts to push its own priorities from the Nuclear Posture Review through a Democratic-controlled House………
The nuclear consensus was rocked early in the Trump administration, with President Donald Trump declaring after less than a month in office that the agreement was “a one-sided deal” and a “bad deal,” and pledged that “if countries are going to have nukes, we’re going to be at the top of the pack.”
The situation only got rockier with the January 2018 release of the Nuclear Posture Review, which called for the creation of two new nuclear capabilities — a low-yield warhead for submarine-launched ballistic missiles and a submarine-launched nuclear cruise missile — that Democrats quickly denounced as the start of a new arms race.
The situation doesn’t appear to have improved for advocates of nuclear spending in the wake of November’s elections, which saw Democrats take the House and several veteran members of the Senate Armed Services Committee be replaced.
John Harvey, who as principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs from 2009-2013 was one of the key authors of the 2010 NPR, said at the summit that he sees little change in the SASC’s stance toward modernization, as new members are largely in favor of the development plan. ………
The Strategist , 15 Feb 2019|Ramesh ThakurThere are substantially fewer nuclear weapons today than at the height of the Cold War. Yet the overall risks of nuclear war—by design, accident, rogue launch or system error—have grown in the second nuclear age. That’s because more countries with fragile command-and-control systems possess these deadly weapons. Terrorists want them, and they are vulnerable to human error, system malfunction and cyberattack.
The site of great-power rivalry has shifted from Europe to Asia with crisscrossing threat perceptions between three or more nuclear-armed states simultaneously. With North Korea now possessing a weaponised ICBM capability, the US must posture for and contend with three potential nuclear adversaries—China, Russia and North Korea.
The only continent to have experienced the wartime use of atomic weapons, Asia is also the only continent on which nuclear stockpiles are growing. The total stockpiles in Asia make up only 3% of global nuclear arsenals, but warhead numbers are increasing in all four Asian nuclear-armed states (China, India, North Korea and Pakistan). None of them has yet ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, although China is a signatory. Asia stands alone in nuclear testing in this century.
The Cold War nuclear dyads have morphed into interlinked nuclear chains, with a resulting greater complexity of deterrence relations between the nuclear-armed states. Thus, as I’ve previously argued, the tit-for-tat suspensions of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty by the US and Russia has a significant China dimension. The nuclear relationship between India and Pakistan is historically, conceptually, politically, strategically and operationally deeply intertwined with China. While Pakistan’s nuclear policy is India-specific, the primary external driver of India’s policy has always been China.
Nuclear watchdogs warn against blurring energy, military uses at Ohio fuel plantNuclear watchdogs warn against blurring energy, military uses at Ohio fuel plant, Energy News, BY Kathiann M. Kowalski, 13 Feb 19,
Combining the capability to make fuel for nuclear reactors and material for weapons undercuts nonproliferation efforts, critics say.
A planned nuclear fuel plant in Ohio could help enable the nation’s next wave of carbon-free electricity, a fleet of small reactors providing continuous power to the grid.
The U.S. Department of Energy fuel facility would be unique in part because it could also produce material for use in nuclear weapons. That crosses a potentially dangerous line, nuclear watchdog groups say — one that could undercut efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
The Department of Energy announced plans last month to contract with Centrus Energy Corp.’s American Centrifuge Operating subsidiary to reopen a nuclear fuel plant in Piketon, Ohio, about 70 miles south of Columbus where Appalachia’s foothills start rising from sprawling farmland.
The new project would likely resemble an earlier pilot program there that ended in 2015, but with various updates and technical fixes. It would also require U.S.-only sources, in lieu of some foreign components and technology.
Dual uses envisioned
DOE is proposing the company as the sole source for the work, and the agency’s notice suggests the demonstration project’s fuel could be used for both civilian and military purposes.
On the civilian side, the project’s fuel would be used for research and development of next-generation nuclear reactors. Designs for those smaller reactors call for fuel known as HALEU, which stands for high assay low-enriched uranium.
HALEU can have between 5 and 20 percent of uranium’s U-235 isotope. That’s the form that undergoes fission readily. In contrast, most U.S. commercial reactors use fuel with 3 to 5 percent U-235. Natural uranium is about 99 percent U-238.
On the defense side, HALEU could be used for small mobile reactorsto power on-the-go military operations. Beyond that, DOE’s requirement for U.S.-only technology could also let the plant’s fuel be used to make tritium. That radioactive isotope of hydrogen is used innuclear weapons.
Foreign policy fears
The possible crossover uses for the Piketon plant’s fuel could conflict with the country’s positions on nuclear nonproliferation.
The United States signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in1968 in hopes of curbing the risk of global nuclear war. The treaty recognizes the rights of countries to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes but forbids countries that didn’t already have nuclear weapons from building or obtaining them. Supplemental treaties apply to transfers of goods and technology and other matters.
Those treaties account for the “U.S.-only” requirement for any facility or technology that would produce nuclear fuel that could be used for the country’s nuclear weapons program. But critics see a problem in blurring the lines of civilian and military uses of Piketon’s fuel.
“Our entire nonproliferation endeavor where our reactors are concerned has been to prevent our civilian programs from being used in support of military bomb-making programs,” said Peter Bradford, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who later taught at Vermont Law School. “One of the pillars of that undertaking has been to keep them separate in the U.S.”
A dual use for the Piketon plant would expand the fuel supply for those or similar operations. But it would also add another site blending civilian and military uses of nuclear technology…………
Conceptually, I think that is a very bad image for the U.S. to project at this point when the U.S. is trying to dissuade other countries from building their own facilities,” said Edwin Lyman, acting director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Nuclear Safety Project. ……
“The proposed demonstration is very good news for the entire U.S. nuclear industry,” said Centrus Energy spokesperson Jeremy Derryberry. “If America wants to be competitive in supplying the next generation of nuclear reactors around the world, we need an assured, American source of high-assay low-enriched uranium to power those reactors. We stand ready to work with the department to get the proposed project underway as quickly as possible.” The Nuclear Energy Institute likewise hailed the news. …….
However, Piketon isn’t the only option for supplying smaller, new nuclear reactors. “There is actually an enrichment facility in the United States in New Mexico that would be capable of supplying any civilian nuclear power plant,” said Lyman at the Union of Concerned Scientists……..
That “midnight-hour resurrection” of production at Piketon raises “a lot of questions about not only the viability of the project, but the need for it, and the consequences of getting it restarted at this point after this has been shut down for three years,” Lyman said.
THE Soviet Union used its own population as “guinea pigs” to tests the effects of its secret nuclear weapons as tensions rose with the United States, a former member of the European Parliament for Scotland revealed. By CALLUM HOARE, Feb 13, 2019 The Semipalatinsk Test Site, also known as The Polygon, was home to at least 456 nuclear tests between 1949 and 1989, during the height of the Cold War. These top-secret missions were carried out with little regard for human or environmental impact in the surrounding area, just 11 miles away. Locals were told their area had been selected to help counter the threat from the US but were not aware of the full extent of the radiation damage.
“They were not told these weapons were nuclear and there would be the question of radioactive fallout that would affect all of them.
“The KGB doctors would wait until the wind was blowing towards the villages, then detonate the bombs and spend days afterwards checking the effects on the locals.
“They were being used as human guinea pigs.”
Mr Stevenson claimed the KGB manipulated locals so they could test the full potential of their nuclear weapons.
He continued: “The KGB ordered them to pack books and bedding behind the windows of their houses and actually stand outside.
“The women were there holding their babies and the KGB told them ‘you will witness the might of Soviet technology’ and they were actually celebrating this massive bomb, not knowing it would make them severely ill.
“Igor Kurchatov and Andrei Sakharov were the fathers of the Soviet nuclear weapons.
“[Joseph] Stalin gave an order that if the bomb did not explode, the professors and all their team would be executed.”
In 1989, the anti-nuclear movement was started in Kazakhstan called “Nevada Semipalatinsk”, led by poet Olzhas Suleimenov.
The site was officially closed by the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev on 29 August 1991, denuclearising the country.
It has now become the best-researched atomic testing site in the world and is open to the public to visit.
Final mission: Keep anti-nuke message at site of Tsukiji market, http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201902130004.html, By NAOMI NISHIMURA/ Staff Writer, February 13, 2019 Busy construction workers and fast-walking passers-by pay little notice to a metal plate that symbolizes one of the darker periods in the postwar history of the now-closed Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo.
The continuing dismantling work and the future of the iconic former market has gained much of the public’s attention. The plate, measuring 42 centimeters tall and 52 cm wide, will remain on a fence surrounding the site at least until the project is complete.
The plate, marking the fallout of nuclear bomb tests carried out in the 1950s, carries a message that many people hope will remain in one form or another at the site.
“We have set up this plate out of the wish that there will be no suffering again from nuclear weapons,” the plate says in part.
A Tokyo metropolitan government official said “nothing has been decided on what objects will be installed” afterward at the Tsukiji site.
The plate is witness to the “A-bomb tuna” that arrived 65 years ago at the Tsukiji market in the capital’s Chuo Ward.
“Nearly 460 tons of contaminated fish were found from more than 850 fishing boats across Japan … and fish consumption dropped sharply,” another part of the plate’s inscription reads.
The radioactive “A-bomb” fish were actually exposed to radiation from hydrogen-bomb tests.
The text on the plate refers to the Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon No. 5), a fishing vessel caught in the fallout of a U.S. H-bomb test near the Bikini Atoll in March 1954.
Some of the tuna and other fish caught by the Daigo Fukuryu Maru ended up at the Tsukiji market.
“There was a real panic” when the haul tested positive for radiation, said Takuji Adachi, 92, who was a metropolitan government official at the time in charge of hygiene on the market grounds.
Radiation was also found in other tuna hauls that arrived later from different parts of the country.
Workers sat up all night testing fish with radiation detectors borrowed from a university lab and elsewhere before their early-morning auctions, sources said.
Tuna lost half to two-thirds of their prices, and the values of other fish species also dropped. The radiation tests continued through the year-end, with 3,000 tuna going to waste.
The names of 856 Japanese fishing boats were identified as having been contaminated by radioactive fallout from a series of hydrogen-bomb tests conducted between March and May 1954, according to officials of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru Exhibition Hall.
The plate was installed at the Tsukiji fish market 45 years later.
PETITION FOR RELOCATING STONE MONUMENT
Matashichi Oishi, who was a crew member on the Fukuryu Maru involved in freezing the catch, wanted to set up a physical testimony to peace.
The now 85-year-old had asked the Tokyo metropolitan government to allow the installation at Tsukiji of a stone monument engraved with “Maguro Zuka” (tuna memorial).
He called for donations in units of 10 yen ($0.09) each time he gave a public speech. He ended up collecting 3 million yen, and the stone monument was completed.
However, opinion was divided at the time over whether the Tsukiji market should be relocated or redeveloped on the same site. Authorities said there was no space available for the stone monument, but they allowed the plate to be attached by the side of the main gate.
The stone monument currently stands in an open space on the grounds of the exhibition hall in Tokyo’s Koto Ward, where the hull of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru remains preserved.
The plate has since served as a memento for about two decades, but the Tsukiji market was relocated to the Toyosu district of Koto Ward in October last year.
With the future of the plate unknown, Oishi has collected 5,622 signatures over three years for a petition to have the stone monument relocated to a corner of the former Tsukiji market.
“Words engraved in stone will stay 50 years and 100 years down the road,” Oishi said last September during a meeting on the possible uses of the stone monument. “History could be repeated unless someone keeps talking about the horror of nuclear weapons.”
He said he hopes to hand the signatures to Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike to coincide with the March 1 Bikini Day, the anniversary of the Fukuryu Maru’s nuclear exposure.
Oishi said setting a path for the stone monument’s relocation is his “final mission in life.”
“The Fukuryu Maru later symbolized calls for eliminating nuclear weapons,” he said. “Tsukiji must also have the role of being a witness to the nuclear exposure incident.”
The Red Cross shared an anti-nuclear weapons video on social media on Monday. “We do this to get more awareness about nuclear weapons”, spokesperson Iris van Deinse explained to the broadcaster. “And especially of the effect of such a nuclear weapon.”
The video focuses on the question: Would you rather die in a nuclear attack, or survive it? “It’s certainly an intense video. But the effects of a nuclear weapon are also very intense. It is something you sometimes do not realize, if that’s what the discussion is about. We therefore find it important to show it. Our relief workers in Japan are still helping people after the nuclear disaster in 1945. Because they get cancer, or children are born with mutations. Help remains necessary.”
According to Van Deinse, providing aid after a nuclear attack is virtually impossible. People in a wide area are affected by extreme heat, shock waves and radiation. “We can not help in such a catastrophe. Relief workers can’t even go there because of radiation.” The aid organization also points out the environmental consequences of a nuclear attack – the large amounts of soot that end up in the atmosphere can lead to failed crops, falling temperatures and starvation.
Earlier this month both te United States and Russia withdrew from the INF treaty dating from the Cold War. The treaty, signed in 1987, bans the development of cruise missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. Shortly before the two countries withdrew from this treaty, the Dutch government’s advisory council for international affairs AIV said that the number of new nuclear weapons and the increased tensions between countries that own such weapons pose a major risk for international security. The AIV advised the Netherlands to raise this issue with the UN.
Secret Underground Nuclear City In The Arctic | A Potential Threat
WW3 FEARS: Pentagon’s secret underground tunnels of MOBILE NUCLEAR bases REVEALED THE US government built a fully-functioning mobile nuclear base below the ice ofGreenland in preparation for war, it was revealed during a documentary. https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1084951/ww3-fears-pentagon-mobile-nuclear-base-greenland-sptIn 1960, the United States ran a highly publicised project known as Camp Century on the island to study the feasibility of working below the ice. However, declassified files show it was actually a cover-up for a top-secret Cold War programme. Project Iceworm was the code name for the United States Army’s mission to build a network of mobile nuclear missile launch sites.
The ultimate objective was to place medium-range missiles under the ice — close enough to strike targets within the Soviet Union.
YouTube series “The Real Secrets of Antarctica” revealed how the project came to light in January 1995.
The 2017 documentary detailed: “Some very interesting disclosures were declassified about US military installations in Greenland which took place in the 1960s.
“They fed the American people a highly publicised story about advances in research and building an underground city below Greenland called Camp Century.
Only later did the truth about Project Iceworm surface.
“The Pentagon was attempting to put in place mobile nuclear launching sites to utilise thousands of miles of tunnels.”
Project Iceworm was to be a system of tunnels 2,500 miles in length, used to deploy up to 600 nuclear missiles, that would be able to reach the Soviet Union in case of nuclear war.
The missile locations would be under the cover of Greenland’s ice sheet and were supposed to be periodically changed.
A total of 21 trenches were cut and covered with arched roofs within which prefabricated buildings were erected.
These tunnels also contained a hospital, a shop, a theatre, and a church and the total number of inhabitants was around 200.
From 1960 until 1963 the electricity supply was provided by means of the world’s first mobile nuclear reactor, named PM-2A.
Water was supplied by melting glaciers and tested to determine whether germs were present, including tests for the plague virus.
However, just three years after it was built, ice core samples taken by geologists demonstrated that the glacier was moving much faster than anticipated and would destroy the tunnels and planned launch stations in about two years.
The facility was evacuated in 1965, and the nuclear generator removed.
Project Iceworm was canceled, and Camp Century closed in 1966.
nuclear-news 