Obama talked the talk on nuclear disarmament, but not walking the walk
Nuclear Weapons: Toward Abolition or Armageddon? By Yuki Tanaka
Global Research, May 26, 2014 People still clearly remember that on April 5, 2009 the U.S. President Barack Obama excited an audience in Prague by declaring that his government “will take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons.” As the only nuclear power to have ever used a nuclear weapon, he said, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. Indeed, the U.S. has not only moral responsibility but also legal responsibility for the victims as the nation that committed a crime against humanity by indiscriminately killing tens of thousands of people and causing lifelong radiation sickness to many survivors.
In his speech, Obama also added ‘this goal will not be reached quickly –- perhaps not in my lifetime.’ Clearly, this goal will never be reached if the U.S. continues to spend ever larger sums on nuclear weapons, overshadowing all other nuclear powers, as the Obama Administration has been doing since the speech in Prague.
On April 29 this year, at the Third Meeting of the Preparatory Committee for the 2015 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York, Under Secretary Rose Gottemoeller stated in her speech: ‘Indeed, it is the United States’ deep understanding of the consequences of nuclear weapons’ use – including the devastating health effects – that has guided and motivated our efforts to reduce and ultimately eliminate these most hazardous weapons.’
However, despite her claim of “deep understanding [of] the consequences of nuclear weapons’ use,” in the detailed budget for fiscal 2015 released in mid March this year Obama yet again asked for a substantial increase in funding to support nuclear weapons research and production programs under the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. The proposal includes a seven percent increase in the nuclear warhead budget from $7.7 billion in FY 2014 to $8.3 billion in FY 2015. This budget request sets a new record for DOE nuclear weapons spending, exceeding even the Cold War high point in 1985 under President Reagan’s military buildup. The plan, moreover, is to increase the military budget to an astounding $9.7 billion by FY 2019, 24 percent above FY 2014.
A large proportion of this budget is for “modernizing” nuclear weapons — both warheads and delivery systems. Among the priorities is the B61 Life Extension Program, designed to extend the life of B61 nuclear bombs by an additional 20 to 30 years. The Obama Administration is requesting $634 million, up 20 percent from FY2014, for this program, which has already catapulted from an original estimate of $4 billion to more than $10 billion. Currently 200 of the B61 bombs are located in Europe.
While rebuilding nuclear weapons at exorbitant expense, Obama proposes to slash the budget for dismantling these weapons by 45 percent, from an already paltry $54.2 million to $30 million. No additional funding has been allocated for a nuclear waste clean-up program, and the National Nuclear Security Administration’s $790 million in spending on nuclear nonproliferation programs is to be cut by 21 percent, or $152 million. Amongst these programs is the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, a program that plays a key part in the effort of preventing terrorists from acquiring nuclear and radiological materials that could be used as weapons of mass destruction.
According to the study entitled Projected Costs of Nuclear Forces 2014 -2023 issued in December 2013 by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, it would cost the U.S. government a total of $355 billion over the next decade to maintain and “modernize” the nuclear weapons stockpile, delivery systems and research and production complex. This would be almost 70 percent more than senior officials have predicted over the next decade. According to the report, The Trillion Dollar Nuclear Triad: U.S. Strategic Modernization Over the Next Thirty Years, published in January 2014 by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, ‘Over the next thirty years, the United States plans to spend approximately $1 trillion maintaining the current arsenal, buying replacement systems, and upgrading existing nuclear bombs and warheads.’
It is clear from this official data that the U.S. government has no intention at all to “take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons” despite repeated rhetoric on the reduction of nuclear weapons by Obama himself and his senior staff. Indeed this is the ultimate irony that cannot be ignored: the U.S., under the president who won the Nobel Peace Prize is holding piles of nuclear weapons, while demanding that North Korea and Iran give up their nuclear programs, threatening them with military might. It is not surprising, therefore, that other nuclear power nations such as Russia, China, England and France are also adopting similar policies to “modernize” their own nuclear weapons. In 2012 China officially replaced its “non preemptive nuclear strike” policy by one that permits “the use of nuclear weapons for the purpose of defense,” clearly indicating the possibility of conducting a preemptive nuclear strike………..
We need a new international convention, a global consensus to make nuclear weapons illegal
Nuclear Weapons: Toward Abolition or Armageddon? By Yuki Tanaka Global Research, May 26, 2014 “………..The best way to confront such a perilous world situation plagued by nuclear weapons would be to make illegal both the use and possession of such weapons with the aid of a new international convention as soon as possible, and then assure implementation of phased elimination of all nuclear weapons. For the last several years, various NGOs campaigning against nuclear weapons have been promoting this idea at different international conferences, in particular at the Conference: Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, first held in March 2013 in Oslo, and then in February 2014 in Mexico. (In 2010, I proposed my own idea on this issue through HANWA, a Hiroshima-based anti-nuclear civil organization
Please see here.) During the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Initiative (NPDI) conference held in Hiroshima in April 2014 some NGOs also organized various events in the city and asked NPDI member nations to quickly adopt and promote the illegalization of nuclear weapons. However, some NPDI member nations including Japan and Australia continue to firmly support U.S. nuclear strategies, claiming that the U.S. nuclear deterrent is necessary to protect nations like theirs under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. This explains why official statements demanding nuclear arms reduction by the Japanese and Australian governments always end up using the same rhetoric as Obama and his senior staff. In particular, Japanese politicians like the current prime minister, Abe Shinzo, and the LDP Secretary General, Ishiba Shigeru, not only support the U.S. nuclear deterrent but strongly believe that Japan should maintain the capability to produce its own nuclear weapons by running its own nuclear reactors as a form of indirect nuclear deterrent.
The problem is that the idea of a nuclear deterrent is widely accepted as a defense policy by many people from both nuclear and non-nuclear power nations. Unfortunately, even some people with anti-nuclear sentiments reluctantly accept it as one of the gradual steps towards the abolition of nuclear weapons. At the same time, it can be said that there is now nearly global consensus that the use of nuclear weapons in any form is a crime against humanity. Needless to say, possession of a nuclear deterrent equates to preparation for the use of nuclear weapons to commit a crime against humanity. In accordance with the Nuremberg principle, a plan or preparation to commit a crime against humanity is a crime against peace. Therefore, the nuclear deterrent, that is, the possession of nuclear weapons is, in itself, a crime against peace in accordance with international law. In addition, the purpose of a nuclear deterrent is to provide a constant threat to other nations. Such an action is a clear violation of Article 2 of Chapter 1 of the UN Charter, which prohibits “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” In other words, it can be said that a nuclear deterrent is an act of terrorism. Accordingly, a person or nation who maintains a nuclear deterrent rather than participating in their phased destruction should be regarded as a terrorist.
In order to abolish nuclear weapons from this planet, it is necessary to introduce a new international convention prohibiting both the use and possession of nuclear weapons. To achieve this goal, we need global consensus on the above-mentioned idea that a nuclear deterrent is a crime against peace.
On April 24, 2014, the Republic of the Marshall Islands filed lawsuits in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to hold the nine nuclear-armed states accountable for flagrant violations of international law with respect to their nuclear disarmament obligations under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and customary international law. such international legal action is an effective way to promote and disseminate the concept of the criminality of nuclear deterrents throughout the world.
See also the James Corbett on GRTV on the threat of nuclear war.
Yuki Tanaka is Research Professor, Hiroshima Peace Institute, and a coordinator of The Asia-Pacific Journal. He is the author most recently of Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn Young, eds., Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth Century History and of Yuki Tanaka, Tim McCormack and Gerry Simpson, eds., Beyond Victor’s Justice? The Tokyo War Crimes Trial Revisited. His earlier works includeJapan’s Comfort Women and Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II. http://www.globalresearch.ca/nuclear-weapons-toward-abolition-or-armageddon/5384010
UK can lead the world to nuclear disarmament
States will have to review and change their security strategies, and recognise the dependence of their security on the health of the international system.
And they will need to understand the complex trade-off between national capabilities and the need to reduce arsenals worldwide – to everyone’s benefit.
Nuclear disarmament – the UK can lead the world, Ecologist, Paul Ingram 23rd May 2014 The belief that unilateral reductions in the UK’s nuclear weapons arsenal would bring no international benefits is deeply engrained in officialdom, writes Paul Ingram. Deeply engrained – and profoundly mistaken. The very quiet failure of this year’s Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Preparatory Committee to agree any final document, and the daunting challenge of the treaty Review Conference next year, mean that frustration is growing about the pace of progress by the nuclear-weapons states to disarm.
In fact, progress is so slow it feels like we are going backward. Continue reading
North Korea warned by China against conducting 4th nuclear test
China warns North Korea against fourth nuclear test, Australia Network News, 20 May 14 China has used diplomatic channels to warn North Korea against conducting a fourth nuclear test after the reclusive state renewed its threat of “counter-measures” against perceived US hostility.
North Korea, which regularly threatens the South and the United States with destruction, is already under heavy sanctions imposed by several UN resolutions beginning in 2006 but has defied pressure to abandon its missile and nuclear programs.
It last conducted a nuclear test in February 2013.
“China has told North Korea that there is no justification for a new nuclear test and that they should not do it,” a Western diplomat who was briefed by Chinese officials said.
The sources said China had used diplomatic channels in Beijing and Pyongyang to convey its anxiety about the possibility of a fourth test to the North……http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-20/an-china-warns-nkorea/5463466
“Tactical” nuclear weapons useless and dangerous
Nothing tactical about nuclear weapons Express Tribune, By Zahir Kazmi May 17, 2014 The term ‘tactical nuclear weapon’ is a Cold War relic not applicable to the subcontinent. There is nothing tactical about these weapons, as their use would have strategic fallouts. Their ideal purpose should be to deter adversaries from contemplating actions that can lead to crises, conflicts and wars. For nuclear-armed states, the key would then be to exercise self-deterrence and avoid triggering conflicts.
A potential nuclear war between India and Pakistan would be a chain of unfortunate events, possibly triggered by another spectacular terrorist attack in India by Pakistan-based quasi-state extremists. India would trade the ‘Gandhian restraint’ for a dance of destruction to punish Pakistan without activating a nuclear response.
In times of defence, Pakistan’s hand would be forced to defeat advancing Indian forces either by conventional forces or by using low-yield nuclear weapons. India threatens a massive retaliation against limited nuclear use, discounting assured Pakistani quid pro quo. There will be no winners in a nuclear war.
Escalating a crisis on the grave assumption that Pakistan would be involved in a future terrorist attack is a commitment trap. The rational choice of investigating such an event with Pakistani help would be an easy option. Fighting terrorism in all its forms is essential. Having a military-to-military joint intelligence sharing mechanism in times of peace would be another ideal worth considering. Pakistan had made such an offer after the Mumbai incident.
Likewise, relying on a massive nuclear retaliation threat in hopes to deter Pakistani response to limited war strategy is a naive assumption at best.
The two risky extremes seem impervious to the certainty that there is no way both sides would be able to guarantee either to dominate or control a crisis from escalating. ……http://tribune.com.pk/story/709277/nothing-tactical-about-nuclear-weapons/
As weapons companies make money, depleted uranium destroys lives
Uranium Weapons Still Making Money, Wreaking Havoc http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/15/uranium-weapons-still-making-money-wreaking-havoc/ by JOHN LAFORGE The US Army has awarded General Dynamics a $12 million contract to deconstruct and dispose of 78,000 depleted uranium anti-tank shells. The Pentagon’s May 6 announcement calls for “demilitarization” of the aging shells, as newer depleted uranium rounds are added to the US arsenal.
In the perpetually profitable business of war production, General Dynamics originally produced and sold some of the 120-millimeter anti-tank rounds to the Army. One of the richest weapons builders on earth, General Dynamics has 95,000 employees and sells its wares in 40 countries on six continents.
The International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons in Manchester, England, reports the armor-piercing shells to be disassembled are thought to be the large 105-millimeter and 120-millimeter anti-tank rounds. Depleted uranium, or DU, weapons are made of extremely dense uranium-238. More than 700,000 tons of DU has been left as waste in the US alone from the production of nuclear weapons and nuclear reactor fuel rods. The urankum-238 is left when fissionable uranium-235 is separated for H-bombs and reactor fuel. DU is only ‘depleted’ of this U-235. It is still a radioactive and toxic heavy metal. A tax and ecological liability, DU is given away free to weapons builders.
The Pentagon is replacing older DU shells in spite of international appeals for a moratorium on their use. The military is set to buy 2,500 large anti-tank rounds just this year at a cost of $30 million or over $10,000 each from Alliant Tech Systems, formerly of Minneapolis.
In 1991, during its 40-day, 1,000-sorties-per-day bombardment, between 300 and 800 tons of DU was blasted into Iraq by US forces. Another estimated 170 tons were used in the 2003 bombing and annexation. Toxic, radioactive contamination left from the use of these weapons (the DU burns and turns to dusty aerosol on impact) has been linked to the skyrocketing incidence of birth abnormalities in southern Iraq and to the Gulf War Syndrome among tens of thousands of US combat veterans.
After the US/NATO bombardment of Kosovo in 1999, our DU weapons were discovered to be spiked with plutonium and other isotopes. This news created a political uproar in Europe and led to the admission by the US Energy Department that “the entire US stock of depleted uranium was contaminated” with plutonium, americium, neptunium and technetium. United Nations investigators in Kosovo found sites hit with DU to be poisoned with all four isotopes. The Nation magazine reported that about 150,000 tons uranium-238 was dirtied with plutonium-239 and neptunium-237 and that “some apparently found its way to the Persian Gulf and Balkans battlefields.” (Robert Alvarez, “DU at Home,” The Nation, April 9, 2001, p. 24)
European papers shouting “Plutonium!” in headlines saw US and NATO officials rushing to microphones to claim with straight faces that their shells contained “mere traces of plutonium, not enough to cause harm,” and that the highly radioactive materials “were not relevant to soldiers’ health because of their minute quantities.” But plutonium is 200,000 times more radioactive than U-238 and ingesting less than 27 micrograms of plutonium-239 a millionth of an ounce — will cause lung cancer.
(One indication of just how poisonous these weapons are is that in 30 years of resisting nuclear weapons and the war system, the only ‘not guilty of trespass’ verdict I ever won from a jury followed a protest at Alliant Tech over its DU program. The jury agreed with four of us that since poison weapons are banned by the Geneva and Hague Conventions our action was an attempt at crime prevention.)
Long-term disposal plans for the uranium from 78,000 shells were not outlined by the Army. Uranium in the shells is often alloyed with titanium or molybdenum, and if these metals are not recycled, they could become part of our vast stockpile of DU, requiring indefinite storage as intermediate-level radioactive waste. Other parts of the munitions are currently disposed of as low-level rad’ waste in spite of the plutonium content.
Pay cut for US nuclear weapons managers? – Heaven forfend!
Nuclear Weapons Complex Reform Could Mean Pay Cut For Contractors Government Executive, By Douglas P. Guarino Global Security Newswire 15 May 14 The for-profit companies that run the U.S. nuclear weapons complex might have a pay cut in their future, though by how much and exactly when is still unclear.For decades the complex — which includes the national laboratories and other facilities responsible for developing and maintaining the nation’s atomic arsenal — operated on a non-profit basis. Taxpayer dollars sunk into it went directly toward scientific work related to weapons development and nonproliferation efforts.
Since the early 2000s, however, the sites have been run by for-profit, limited liability companies. A portion of the annual budget for each facility is set aside as an “incentive fee.” The better the job a contractor does managing a facility’s work in a given year, the larger the percentage of the total available incentive fee the company gets to take home.
Lately these contracts have been under increased scrutiny due to repeated cost overruns, delays and security failures across the nuclear weapons complex. In one of the most dramatic examples, an 82-year-old nun and two other peace activists in 2012 were able to infiltrate the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., where bomb-grade uranium is stored.
Associate Deputy Energy Secretary Bruce Held has been questioning whether what he describes as “large fees” currently paid to manage the weapons sites are the best way to motivate all players involved.
- Performance at the national labs might actually improve, the former CIA officer says, if less money went toward the fees meant to motivate the management companies that run the sites, and if more funds went directly to the scientific work that the facilities conduct…..One significant change that appears to be in the works is an effort to make the maximum fee potentially available to the contractor smaller, and to have much of that fee be based on a fixed amount…….
- “But when you’re doing manufacturing and managing huge programs — [those are] not things that universities are very good at.”So that means you have to get the corporate world involved, and when you bring the corporate world in, they have shareholders they have to accommodate,” http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2014/05/nuclear-weapons-complex-reform-could-mean-pay-cut-contractors/84475/?oref=river
Militarising the Pacific – “island people are better radiation test subjects than mice are”
In a 1956 Atomic Energy Commission meeting, Merril Eisenbud, director of the AEC Health and Safety Laboratory, described the Marshallese thus: “While it is true that these people do not live, I would say, the way Westerners do, civilized people, it is nevertheless also true that these people are more like us than the mice.”.
The Militarized Pacific: An Anniversary Without End 14 May 2014 By Jon Letman, Truthout | Op-Ed March 1, the 60th anniversary of the Castle Bravo test – a nuclear detonation over a thousand times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima – has come and gone. Predictably, major decadal events, like a 15-megaton explosion over a Micronesian atoll, garner fleeting attention, but it’s all the days between the anniversaries that tell the real story of those who live with the impacts.
For the people of the Marshall Islands, where Enewetak, Bikini and neighboring atolls were irradiated and rendered uninhabitable by 67 nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958, the brief anniversary recognition only underscores what little attention the Marshallese and, in a broader sense, millions of peoples of the Asia-Pacific are given by the US government and public……..
places like the US-backed naval base being built on South Korea’s Jeju island and the enormous military testing and training ranges in the Northern Mariana Islands (larger than much of the western United States) receive almost no attention. Names like Pagan, Rongelap and Kwajalein are scarcely known in the country that uses these islands for its own military testing……..
increased levels and types of cancers in the Marshall Islands, based on National Cancer Institute (NCI) research and firsthand accounts by Marshallese, are the result of nuclear testing. Continue reading
USA follows Russia in a massive nuclear weapons drill
The US Is Conducting A Massive Nuclear Arms Drill Days After A Russian Nuclear Exercise Business Insider Australia, JEREMY BENDER 13 May 14 The B-2 stealth bomber is taking part in Exercise Global Lightning 14.
U.S. Strategic Command will be conducting a massive “deter and detect” nuclear drill from May 12 to May 16, just four days after a similar Russian exercise. The U.S. drill, known as Exercise Global Lightning 14, is set to include ten B-52s and six B-2 bombers in an attempt to demonstrate U.S. military flexibility and responsiveness.
The drill, which is meant to simulate a scenario in which the U.S. would have to protect itself and its allies in the event of a “strategic attack,” is being touted as a chance to incorporate modern technology into U.S. drills…….http://www.businessinsider.com.au/us-conducting-a-massive-nuclear-arms-drill-2014-5
Former IAEA chief demands that Isrel come clean opn its nucl;ear weapons
Israel possesses nuclear weapons: Former IAEA head http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/05/12/362349/israel-possesses-nuclear-weapons/ Former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said in an exclusive interview with Press TV that he is convinced Israel possesses nuclear weapons.
Hans Blix demanded that Israeli officials join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
He underlined that Tel Aviv’s refusal to sign international nuclear treaties and its deliberate ambiguity policy with regards to its nuclear program are because of support from Washington.
The Israeli regime is widely believed to be the only possessor of nuclear arms in the Middle East. The regime reportedly maintains between 200 and 400 atomic warheads.
Furthermore, the Israeli regime has never allowed any inspection of its nuclear facilities and continues to defy international calls to join the NPT.
Blix cautioned that all countries in possession of nukes pose a threat to global security, adding that the world has enough bombs to wipe out the Earth several times.
He also accused the US of spying on him following his revelations that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction.
Under the pretext that former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction, the US and its allies invaded Iraq in March 2003.
Iraq is currently witnessing a wave of attacks unprecedented in recent years. Based on official figures, over 1,000 people, mostly civilians, lost their lives in attacks across Iraq in April
Hawkish orders from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Nuclear talks in jeopardy: Khamenei orders Rev Guards to mass-produce missiles – regardless DEBKAfile Special Report May 11, 2014, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threw a large spanner in the works of nuclear diplomacy Sunday, May 11. Less than a week before the next round of talks with the six powers, he said: “The Revolutionary Guards should definitely… not be satisfied with the present level [of missile production]. They should mass produce.”
Referring to Western concerns that Iran is designing missiles able to carry nuclear warheads, Khamenei said: “They [the West] expect us to limit our missile program while they constantly threaten Iran with military action. So this is a stupid, idiotic expectation.”
Khamenei spoke during a visit to the aeronautics fair organized by the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), which are responsible for Iran’s missile and nuclear programs………
“Hibakusha” thinking will lead us to nuclear free world
Citizens need hibakusha ‘minds’ To attain a genuine nuclear-free world, we should think like A-bomb survivors: Peru diplomat 11 May 14, JAPAN TIMES, NEW YORK – THE WORLD MUST FULLY UNDERSTAND THE HUMAN TOLL OF THE TWO ATOMIC BOMBS DROPPED ON JAPAN TO END NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION AROUND THE GLOBE, THE CHAIRMAN OF A U.N. NUCLEAR CONFERENCE SAID FRIDAY.
“I think the only way to get the world free of nuclear weapons is if every citizen of this world becomes a hibakusha in the mind,” Enrique Roman-Morey, the chairman of the final meeting before the 2015 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference, told reporters.
The Peruvian diplomat used the Japanese word to describe the A-bomb survivors.
Having been born right after the bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, he emphasized the importance of listening to the personal stories of rapidly aging survivors in order to understand the humanitarian cost of the nuclear devices.
“I have been there (to Japan) and I have listened to the hibakusha,” he explained.
The issue of recognizing the humanitarian and environmental cost of the atomic bombs generated discussion in the two-week preparatory meeting that ended Friday………..
While Roman-Morey admits the goal of totally eliminating nuclear weapons is a difficult one to realize, he is passionately pursing that end by striving to work with countries to press for qualitative, not just quantitative, disarmament.
“The only thing that I can say is that we should never stop fighting (for total elimination),” he said.
Drawing on his roots as the son of a military man growing up in the post-World War II era, he still remembers his father’s words “never again” (to another Hiroshima) and the sentiment seems to guide him to this day. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/05/10/national/citizens-need-hibakusha-minds/#.U3GBJ4FdWik
Depleted uranium pollution of Hawaii by Pentagon’s dirty bombing
The Pentagon’s Dirty Bombers: Depleted Uranium in the USA, Aletho News By David Lindorff – 10/26/2009 The Nuclear Regulator Commission is considering an application by the US Army for a permit to have depleted uranium at its Pohakuloa Training Area, a vast stretch of flat land in what’s called the “saddle” between the sacred mountains of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea on Hawaii’s Big Island, and at the Schofield Barracks on the island of Oahu. In fact, what the Army is asking for is a permit to leave in place the DU left over from years of test firing of M101 mortar “spotting rounds,” that each contained close to half a pound of depleted uranium (DU). The Army, which originally denied that any DU weapons had been used at either location, now says that as many as 2000 rounds of M101 DU mortars might have been fired at Pohakuloa alone.
But that’s only a small part of the story.
The Army is actually seeking a master permit from the NRC to cover all the sites where it has fired DU weapons, including penetrator shells that, unlike the M101, are designed to hit targets and burn on impact, turning the DU in the warhead into a fine dust of uranium oxide. Hearings on this proposal were held in Hawaii on Aug. 26 and 27.
Uranium particles, whether pure uranium or in an oxidized form, are alpha emitters, and can be highly carcinogenic and mutagenic if ingested or inhaled, since they can lodge in one part of the body—the kidney or lung or gonad, for example—and then irradiate surrounding cells with large, destructive alpha particles (actually helium atoms), until some gene is compromised and a cell become malignant.
Among the sites identified by the NRC as being contaminated with DU are:
Ft. Hood, TX
Ft. Benning, GA
Ft. Campbell, KY
Ft. Knox, KY
Ft. Lewis, WA
Ft. Riley, KS
Aberdeen Proving Grounds, MD
Ft. Dix, NJ
Makua Military Reservation, HI
Other locations identified as having DU weapons contamination are:
China Lake Air Warfare Center, CA
Eglin AFB, Florida,
Nellis AFB, NV
Davis-Monthan AFB
Kirtland AFB, NM
White Sands Missile Range, NM
Ethan Allen Firing Range, VT
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
An application for a 99-year permit to test DU weapons at the NM Inst. Of Mining and Technology claimed that that site’s test area was “so contaminated with DU… as to preclude any other use”!
DU weapons have also been used by the Navy at Vieques Island off Puerto Rico (the Navy claimed it was a “mistake.”)………. http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2014/05/09/the-pentagons-dirty-bombers-depleted-uranium-in-the-usa/
The Pentagon in denial about the harmful effects of depleted uranium
The Pentagon’s Dirty Bombers: Depleted Uranium in the USA, Aletho News By David Lindorff – 10/26/2009 “……The Pentagon continues a long history of claiming that DU–which is the uranium that is left after the fissionable isotope U-235 is removed to make nuclear fuel and bombs–is not dangerous, although this official stance is belied by the warnings it has given to its troops (though not to civilians in battle zones), to stay well clear of tanks and other equipment destroyed by US tanks, which used DU weapons as the ordnance of choice in both the Gulf War and the current Iraq War. During both wars, DU ammunition was used by Army and Marine tanks, by the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the A-10 ground support jet, the Marine Harrier jet, and specially equipped F16 fighter jets. The Navy also switched from DU ammunition to tungsten ammunition in its Phalanx anti-missile ship defense system because of health and environmental concerns with the DU ammo.
In both wars, a high percentage of troops have returned with many physical ailments–auto-immune problems, cancers, and later, birth defects in offspring–which have been referred to as Gulf War and now Iraq War Syndrome. As many as a quarter of returning vets from the Gulf War have reported strange illnesses and cancers and the numbers are rising for Iraq War vets. As well, statistics from the National Institutes of Health show that counties hosting bases and test facilities where DU has been uses also show high cancer rates. This is certainly true for Hawaii’s Big Island, which has the highest cancer rates for the Hawaiian archipelago. Meanwhile, the lung cancer rate for the Ft. Knox area is 105-127 per 100,000 for the 2001-2005 period, high by state and national standards. The rate is among the highest in the state of Washington for Pierce County, where Ft. Lewis is located.
The Pentagon denies that it uses depleted uranium in bombs, missiles and cruise missile warheads, but military personnel have reported their use in all three delivery systems, and reports exist of DU bunker-buster bombs, DU-tipped penetrator warheads on Tomahawk cruise missiles and on some air-to-ground missiles.
It’s a good bet that all US munitions containing DU have been widely tested at various US military bases and testing grounds.
The bottom line is that at the same time that US government is continuing to warn about the danger of terrorists acquiring the materials to make a “dirty” bomb that could spread radioactive material in the US, the US military has for years been doing exactly that, and continues to do so, with no intention to clean up its messes, many of which are allowing depleted uranium to percolate into ground water or flow down streams to more populated areas.
Of course, it could have been worse. The M101 mortar that litters Pohakuloa was actually designed as a range-finder for the Davy Crocket mortar, which back in the late 1950s and the 1960s, and up until 1971 was designed to allow infantry troops to fire a small “tactical” nuclear mortar shell at targets just one to two miles distant. Some 700 of these “little nukes”, that had a power of “just” several kilotons or less, were made and actually made their way into the arsenals of troops in Europe and elsewhere during the Cold War. Fortunately there are no reports of any of them having been fired off at any of the military’s firing ranges–especially given that their radiation effect radius was larger than their firing range, meaning that launching one was an automatic suicide mission.
(Actually firing it would have been suicide.)
Then again, the Pentagon doesn’t exactly have a sterling record about telling the truth where nuclear weapons and DU weapons are concerned. (You start to notice as you look into this stuff that with uranium weapons, the military’s attitude towards troop safety is not a whole lot better than its attitude towards the people at the downrange end of the line.)
Nor is the NRC to be relied on to protect the American public. As an administrative judge wrote in a ruling on a case involving DU contamination at Jefferson Proving Ground in Indiana, the NRC exhibited a “more than casual attitude with regard to decommissioning of sites on which radioactive materials remain as a potential threat to public health and safety and to the environment.”
In another case, involving cleanup of the ShieldAlloy Metallurgical Corp.’s site in Newfield, NJ, where DU weapons were made, a judge said, “at the very least, the (NRC) staff has countenanced…a situation that will leave the citizens in the area surrounding the activity site in doubt for close to two decades regarding what measures will ultimately be taken for their protection.” http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2014/05/09/the-pentagons-dirty-bombers-depleted-uranium-in-the-usa/
US Democrats lose bid to monitor costs of nuclear weapons
House Democratic Bid to Question Nuclear Weapons Plan Fails in Panel Vote National Journal, By Douglas P. Guarino, 8 May 14 House Democrats on Wednesday sought to include in the annual defense authorization bill requirements for formal studies and reports on the necessity of various nuclear weapons and how much it would cost to maintain them.
The minority party in the House Armed Services Committee, however, had to settle for more narrow provisions requiring only less formal, oral briefings from the Obama administration on these issues. The Republican majority rejected Democratic amendments that went any further.
The Democratic effort followed a January report by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies that asserted the current U.S. plan for modernizing the nation’s nuclear arsenal is so expensive that it could not realistically be implemented.
Congress and the executive branch do not yet fully know the cost of the plan’s various components, said the report. Its sole recommendation was for lawmakers to require the administration “to annually produce an integrated nuclear deterrence budget” that projects the full cost of each system in the nuclear arsenal.
The version of the defense authorization bill that the House committee approved on Wednesday does not include provisions that would require anything so broad and detailed, though……..http://www.nationaljournal.com/global-security-newswire/house-democratic-bid-to-question-nuclear-weapons-plan-fails-in-panel-vote-20140508
1 This Month
23-25 October – on Zoom – World BEYOND War’s annual global conferenc
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
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Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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