Danger of nuclear war is rising. International tensions are growing, and Congress plans to spend billions to “modernize” our nuclear arsenal, including paying for weapons that will increase the chance of nuclear war–so-called “usable nukes” and vulnerable land-based missiles.
A nuclear exchange, begun by war, accident or cyber attack, would be devastating. Even a “small” nuclear war, using 3% of world nuclear arsenals, would kill over a quarter of the world’s population as clouds of debris block sunlight from food crops. War between the United States and Russia could extinguish life on Earth.
We can reduce our danger. We can contact Members of Congress and also support “Back from the Brink,” a national grassroots campaign working toward abolition of nuclear weapons and basic changes in U.S. nuclear weapons policy, such as seeking an agreement among nuclear powers to eliminate their nuclear arsenals, taking our weapons off hair-trigger alert and canceling the plan to “modernize” our nuclear arsenal.
Over 50 municipalities, four states, dozens of faith groups and many other organizations have passed resolutions endorsing this campaign. Such resolutions helped the Nuclear Freeze Movement of the 1980s to succeed. We can build strength to turn the tide of nuclear danger.
New nuclear power plants will cause irreparable loss to biodiversity and harm and destroy wild places and the creatures who live there. Existing nuclear power plants, uranium mines and proposed and actual radioactive waste sites do similar damage. Wildlife protection helped defeat the proposed new nuclear power plant in Wales. Can the same tactic work to stop other new reactor projects and nuclear waste dumps that threaten similar damage? And are renewables any less harmful? We’ll be asking these questions and more at our webinar– New Nuclear: What’s At Stake For Wildlife?
Join us on Thursday, October 7, 7pm-8:30pm UK time, 2pm-3:30pm US Eastern time. Our guests include Craig Bennett, CEO of The Wildlife Trusts; Juliet Davenport, founder of Good Energy; Jonathon Porritt, former directorof Friends of the Earth UK, and Diana Quick, actor and Stop Sizewell activist.
The discussion will be moderated by Beyond Nuclear’s Linda Pentz Gunter followed by questions from the audience. The event is co-hosted by Beyond Nuclear, Greater Manchester & District CND, Nuclear Free Local Authorities and Chernobyl Children’s Project UK. Register at the link below.
Peace activists to gather outside Ramstein Air Base for weeklong protest starting July 4 BY MARCUS KLOECKNER• STARS AND STRIPES • JUNE 30, 2021 KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — An annual peace protest outside Ramstein Air Base will start for about a week beginning Sunday, following last year’s cancellation due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The activists from the Stopp Air Base Ramstein Campaign will set up a “peace camp” near the base through July 11, the group said in a statement.
On July 10, about 150 people are expected to gather in Kaiserslautern at the main train station around 11 a.m., said Andreas Wildberger, a Landstuhl police spokesman. When the protest was last held in 2019, thousands were expected to participate, police said at the time.
The protest will move to a rally near the air base around 1 p.m., Wildberger said. Afterward, the demonstrators are planning to ride bicycles around the perimeter of the base………
Under their slogan “We are back again!” the group will protest what they say are illegal wars. They are demanding an end to what they say is the use of the air base to relay telemetry to drones that collect information on terrorist groups and attack designated targets. The attacks on suspected terrorists and militants are extrajudicial and have killed civilians, the group has said.//
Air Force officials have denied for years that any data is relayed through Ramstein for drone operations.
The 10th International Uranium Film Festival Rio de Janeiro remembers the still unsolved nuclear accident in Fukushima 10 years ago and the UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, which has been in force since January of this year. Due to the ongoing Covid-19 restrictions It will be the festival’s first online edition with support by the Cinematheque(link is external) of Rio de Janeiro’s prestigious Modern Art Museum (MAM Rio)(link is external).
The festival has selected 34 documentaries and movies by 26 filmmakers from 15 countries. The films will be screened for free online from May 20 to 30 at the MAM Rio platform. Two live online events complete the program.
On May 20 (7 pm Rio time)(link is external) the festival opening features three atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima, who live in Brazil, and Akira Kawasaki, coordinator of the Peace Boat Foundation. And on May 24th (4 pm Rio time)(link is external) the festival’s live online guests will be former Brazilian Ambassador Sérgio de Queiroz Duarte who has dedicated his life as a diplomat to end the nuclear threat and Cristian Ricardo Wittmann, member of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
The video greetings (link is external)for the opening of the online film festival come from Biologist and parliamentarian Klaus Mindrup(link is external), member of the German Bundestag of the Committee for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, and from Manfred Mohr(link is external), Professor of International Public Law, spokesman for the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW), founding member of the International Association of Lawyers against Nuclear Weapons (IALANA) and ICAN-member.
The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) will hold a two-day virtual conference on May 25-26, 2021 on “Nuclear Risk: Across Technologies and Domains.” The meeting is 14:00-16:20 Central European Summer Time each day (8:00-10:40 am EDT).
The second session on May 25 is a panel discussion on “Space and Nuclear Weapons Systems.” No time is specified but about halfway through is a logical estimate, so about 9:00 am EDT.
Participants are:
Raji Rajagopalan, Director, Centre for Security, Strategy & Technology (CSST), Observer Research Foundation (ORF), New Delhi (moderator)
Paul Meyer, Adjunct Professor of International Studies, Simon Fraser University and member Outer Space Institute
Victoria Samson, Washington Office Director, Secure World Foundation
FUKUSHIMA 2021, International Uranium Film Festival
March 11, 2021. Ten Years Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: Rio de Janeiro International Uranium Film Festival Free Online Screening and Debate.
The first International Uranium Film Festival event 2021 is scheduled for Thursday, March 11, to remember the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster. A free seven day online screening in cooperation with the Cinematheque of Rio de Janeiro’s Modern Art Museum (MAM Rio)(link is external). We will show two awarded documentary movies about the Fukushima nuclear accident: a poetic short film by photographer Alessandro Tesei and a feature documentary by science journalist Ranga Yogeshwar. The films can be watched online from March 11 to March 17.
After the screening the audience can chat with Fukushima expert, Professor Dr. Alphonse Kelecom from the Laboratory of Radiobiology and Radiometry of the Institute of Biology at Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro. Since March 2011, Kelecom visited several times Fukushima. Of course non portuguese speakers are also invited. Prof. Alphonse Kelecom speaks Portuguese, English and French as well. Moderator is Márcia Gomes de Oliveira, director of the International Uranium Film Festival who visited Fukushima in 2015 by invitation of Peace Boat Foundation.
The National 16th Jan 2021, HELENSBURGH CND’s Beyond Nuclear conference was postponed twice last year due to the pandemic. But the event will now be taking place virtually on January 31, from 11am to 4.30pm. To be staged by virtual event group
Cameron, Beyond Nuclear is designed to answer the question: “Why would we in Scotland want or need to have nuclear power stations when we have almost
unlimited potential for clean, renewable energy production?” The
conference will be in two parts; the first an examination of the negatives
involved in nuclear power production, contrasting with the positives of
clean renewable energy in the second.
Celebrations in Aotearoa New Zealand to mark the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will begin on Thursday 21 January with ICAN Aotearoa New Zealand’s Wellington and online event, and continue on Friday 22 January. Continue reading →
January 10, 2021 by Source of the Spring Staff, The City of Takoma Park is commemorating its status as a Nuclear-Free Zone by hosting a virtual screening of the documentary film ‘The Nuns, The Priests, and The Bombs’ on January 25th.
The documentary “follows a community of peace activists, including two Catholic nuns and a Jesuit priest in their eighties, who are willing to go to prison, and even risk death, because of their deeply held conviction that nuclear weapons are immoral and violate international humanitarian law,” according to the film’s website:
Since 1980 activists in lay and religious life have undertaken dramatic Plowshares protests in an effort to raise public consciousness on the growing threat posed by the world’s nuclear weapons. Through their actions the activists seeks to invoke the biblical injunction, “They Shall Beat Their Swords into Plowshares”. This film follows two federal criminal cases against the activists for their protests: the July 2012 break-in at Y-12 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, home of the largest U.S. stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and the 2009 break-in at the Kitsap Bangor U.S. naval base near Seattle. The film follows the activists’ legal efforts to justify their actions under international law and documents efforts at the United Nations to enforce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and negotiate the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
The City of Takoma Park passed its Nuclear-Free Zone legislation in December of 1983, and later established the Nuclear-Free Takoma Park Committee: “The Act prohibits work on nuclear weapons, including transportation and storage of such weapons within the City, and prohibits the City from doing business with companies that produce nuclear weapons or their components, with very narrow exceptions.”
According to The Washington Post, in 2012 Takoma Park City Council unanimously voted to grant a waiver to purchase computers from Hewlett-Packard, the first time that a waiver was opposed by the Nuclear-Free Takoma Park Committee. “Updated research indicates that Hewlett-Packard (HP) continues to conduct business with the Department of Defense and other federal agencies for cloud services capable of the development, deployment, security, and utilization of nuclear weapons,” the committee stated in its meeting minutes.
A Q&A with filmmaker Helen Young will follow the film screening, which will start at 7 p.m. on January 25th.
Tomorrow, December 16th, at 5:00 PM, the East Bay Community Energy (EBCE) board will vote on whether or not to accept nuclear energy from PG&E, with the aim of re-selling it to a third party.
EBCE, Alameda County’s public power agency, exists to provide more renewable energy to its customers and reinvest its earnings back into the community to create local green energy jobs, local programs, and clean power projects.
Nuclear energy is not safe or clean. The Sierra Club remains unequivocally opposed to nuclear energy and encourages the decommissioning of nuclear power plants. We oppose even the buying and selling of nuclear power.
Time and time again we’ve fought to keep nuclear out of EBCE’s power content. Simply promoting nuclear in another form does not make it acceptable — even for slight financial gains.
We urge you to join us in asking the Board to reject this latest proposal. Let’s make sure EBCE stays cleaner and greener than the incumbent utility.
The meeting agenda, speaker sign up, and Zoom link will be posted and updated here. Sometimes these meetings can be long. If you would like us to text you when the agenda item is being discussed, please message Melissa Yu at melissa.yu@sierraclub.org.
Nuclear weapons and nuclear power share several common features. In fact, the UK’s first nuclear power stations were built primarily to provide fissile material for nuclear weapons during the Cold War.
The development of both the nuclear weapons and nuclear power industries is mutually beneficial. And now it appears that the government is using the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to subsidise Trident, Britain’s nuclear weapons system.
As part of a Parliamentary investigation into the Hinkley project, it emerged that without the billions of pounds earmarked for building this new power station in Somerset, Trident would be ‘unsupportable’. Professor Andy Stirling and Dr Phil Johnstone argued that the nuclear power station will ‘maintain a large-scale national base of nuclear-specific skills’ essential for maintaining Britain’s military nuclear capability.
Join CND for an online discussion with Professor Stirling and Dr Johnstone about these connections.
DONALD TRUMP: Please Guarantee the November, 2020 Election Will Proceed
Campaign created by
Harvey Wasserman
We want Mr. Trump to guarantee that he will not attempt to cancel the November, 2020 election, and that he will guarantee that even if we are still in a pandemic, the necessary steps will be taken to make sure the nation can exercise its right to vote.
Why is this important?
Nothing is more sacred to American democracy that our right to free and fair elections. A major dialogue is under way as to how to conduct this fall’s election even if the Pandemic still rages (see http://www.solartopia.org. Please join us. Thank you.
Coronavirus Halts Street Protests, but Climate Activists Have a Plan, NYT, 20 Mar 20, Greta Thunberg, protesting in Brussels this month, is now calling for digital strikes. The coronavirus outbreak has prompted climate activists to abandon public demonstrations, one of their most powerful tools for raising public awareness, and shift to online protests.
This week, for example, organizers of the Fridays for Future protests are advising people to stay off the streets and post photos and messages on social media in a wave of digital strikes.
“We are people who listen to the scientists and it would be hypocritical of us to not treat this as a crisis,” said Saoi O’Connor, a 17-year-old Fridays for Future organizer from Cork, Ireland.
Greta Thunberg, the 17-year-old Swedish activist who inspired the Friday youth protest group, last week stayed at home and tweeted a photo of herself and her two dogs, with a message calling on protesters to “take it online.”
Similarly, a coalition of climate movements had planned huge protests around commemorations for the 50th annual Earth Day in April. Those have now been canceled or moved online. One group, Earth Initiative and March for Science New York City, plans to live-stream speakers and performers at an online event.
Dominique Palmer, 20, a Fridays for Future organizer in Britain, acknowledged the challenges of protesting online. Hashtags and snappy videos are good, she said, but really making an impact will require more work. Twitter protests in which activists send out messages aimed directly at selected officials, and phone-banking, in which they telephone them en masse, are two of the ideas under consideration.
It also comes at a crucial time. With a presidential election in the United States this year, activists had hoped to raise the profile of climate change on the public agenda. And, just days after the election, world leaders are scheduled to gather in Glasgow for United Nations-led climate talks where presidents and prime ministers will face pressure to get more ambitious about reining in greenhouse gas emissions. ….. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/climate/coronavirus-online-climate-protests.html
Four New Mexico Count the Nuclear Weapons Money Events, http://nuclearactive.org/October 17th, 2019 In less than seven days, CCNS will join with other peace, disarmament, climate and social justice activists across New Mexico to count out one trillion dollars in one million dollar bills at four planned events in Taos, Santa Fe, Socorro, and Los Alamos as part of the global Count the Nuclear Weapons Money campaign. One trillion dollars is the amount proposed for the U.S. nuclear weapons budget over ten years.
The campaign’s goal is to demonstrate the scale of a one trillion dollar investment and how it could be devoted to peace and humanitarian needs, rather than the threat of nuclear annihilation. The scale will be profound in terms of time, the number of bills, the number of people counting the money by hand, and the impact of seeing people around the world counting the money. The events will be live-streamed so people can learn what benefits this money could bring if re-directed to climate protection, just transitions, and sustainable development goals.
The campaign will begin on Thursday, October 24th and continue through Wednesday October 30th, during the United Nations’ Disarmament Week. Volunteers are needed! To sign up, contact CCNS at ccns@nuclearactive.org or by phone at 505 986-1973.
On Thursday, October 24th, New Mexico’s Opening Ceremony will take place in Taos from 3 to 5 pm. It will coincide with the Opening Ceremony in New York City. For more information and to volunteer, please contact Suzie at (575) 770-2629.
On Friday, October 25th, we will gather at the State Capitol to bring attention to two existential threats – the climate crisis and nuclear weapons. There will be a counting event and an opportunity to present a letter to Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham.
On Saturday, October 26th, we will gather in the Socorro Plaza Gazebo from 2 to 4 pm to count 2.4 billion dollars – the amount provided to Downwinders and Uranium Workers under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act since 2000. Despite being overexposed to radiation from the first atomic test at the Trinity Site on July 16, 1945, the Trinity Downwinders have never been included in the compensation program. https://www.trinitydownwinders.com/home
On Monday, October 28th, we will gather in Los Alamos from 2:30 to 4:30 pm to count 13 billion dollars, the amount proposed to modernize the nuclear weapons complex at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The event will coincide with colleagues counting outside of major banking institutions invested in nuclear weapons work. Participants will urge divestment.
For more information and to volunteer to count the money, please contact CCNS at (505) 986-1973.
One of the world’s oldest uranium mining regions becomes venue of the International Uranium Film Festival 2019 in Portugal. From 13 to 15 September 2019, the International Uranium Film Festival will take place for the second time in Portugal. But this time, the festival did not choose Lisbon as the venue, but one of the oldest uranium mining regions in the world: Urgeiriça (Nelas) in the center of Portugal.
If you hear or read about „uranium mining“ most people think on the huge open pit mines in Australia, Canada, USA or in Namibia. However one of the oldest uranium mines on earth is in fact located on the „old continent“ in central Portugal, about 300 km north of Lisbon in the district of Viseu. Mining started here in Urgeiriça more than a hundred years ago in 1913 to export the radioactive minerals radium and uranium to nuclear scientist Marie Curie in Paris.
A few decades later, uranium from Urgeiriça was exported to England and USA to fuel the Manhattan project and to make Britain’s first nuclear Bomb, that exploded 1952 in the Monte Bello Islands off Western Australia.
Finally, in 2001, uranium (yellow cake) production in Portugal ceased altogether, but it had left behind a deadly legacy of hazardous ore tailings and a contaminated environment. In 2005 started the Clean-up process (also called decommissioning or remediation) financed by the European Union.
Much of the rehabilitation work in Urgeiriça has been completed, and the region is preparing for a new economic future: sustainable tourism and the establishment of a museum center for uranium mining.
This is one of the reasons why the International Uranium Film Festival takes place here in the historic uranium mining region for the first time now in September 2019. Uranium Film Festival partner and local organizer is the association of former uranium miners of Portugal (ATMU), who fought for years for compensation of the victims and remediation of the more than 60 abandoned portuguese uranium mines and its tailings.
From 13 to 15 September, the world’s most unique film festival will feature a dozen films on uranium mining, nuclear power and radioactive risks in Urgeiriça and the neighboring mining towns of Viseu and Mangualde. All screenings are free, and panel discussions with filmmakers, uranium experts, scientists, former uranium miners and activists complete the program.
Beside of that participants are invited to visit the closed uranium mine and the clean-up process. “You Won’t Leave Here Like You Came.” „The Uranium Film Festival in Portugal this year will not yet be a huge film festival like we use to organize it annually in Rio de Janeiro or Berlin“, says festival director and founder Norbert G. Suchanek, “but it’s the beginning of a hopefully long partnership with Portugal.”
Nonetheless, the Festival Director is confident that the Urgeiriça Uranium Film Festival will be an important and interesting event for both the local population, which has been suffering from uranium mining for decades, as well as for uranium mining and nuclear experts, filmmakers and environmental activists. And even without the Uranium Film Festival, a visit to Urgeiriça would certainly be interesting and valuable for anyone involved in nuclear energy, uranium mining and its consequences. . Suchanek: “In Urgeiriça you can experience the history of uranium mining, its consequences and the attempt to rehabilitate the environment damaged by uranium mining and the clean-up of the radioactive tailings first hand. I am pretty sure: You won’t leave here like you came.”
In addition, just a two hours drive from Urgeiriça you find the medieval town Nisa, another important, but very different example of uranium history and anti-uranium movement in Portugal. Just outside the ancient walls of Nisa build by the crusaders lies one of the largest, yet unexploited uranium deposits in Portugal in the ground. But instead of exploring it, the people of Nisa and its local politicians decided a few years ago, in 2008, just the opposite and banned any uranium mining in their region! The people of Nisa opted for a sustainable income from local natural resources such as extensive sheep and goat farming and the production of cheese and meat instead of the production of yellow cake (uranium oxide). For that, Nisa and his movement against uranium mining MUNN (Movimento Urânio Em Nisa Não) has received in 2012 the Nuclear-Free Future Award.“ Hope to see you in Portugal next September! uraniumfilmfestival.org/en/uranium-fil…
