Beyond Nuclear International
Fatal fallout
What a secret report reveals about British nuclear weapons tests – veterans claimed they were harmed by the fallout, report Christopher R. Hill and Jonathan Hogg for The Conversation
“The Ministry of Defence has always maintained that it never rained,” said Ken McGinley, founder of the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association (BNTVA). “I’m sorry, you’re liars … I was there!”
McGinley, who was a royal engineer, gave this interview in January 2024, shortly before his death, as part of our Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project.
McGinley was present during the Grapple nuclear weapons test series, conducted by the UK on the central Pacific island of Kiritimati (also known as Christmas Island) in the late 1950s. At the time, this remote atoll was inhabited by 250 villagers as well as thousands of British servicemen.
For decades, many of those present during this and other above-ground British nuclear weapons tests have argued they were harmed by radioactive fallout. McGinley founded the BNTVA in 1983 to “gain recognition and restitution” for the veterans who took part in British and American nuclear tests and clean-ups between 1952 and 1965.
Rain became a key symbol in their argument as one of the only tangible signs of fallout taking place. The nuclear physicist Sir Joseph Rotblat described these alleged post-blast showers as “rainout”, a phenomenon whereby rain and mushroom clouds interact, leading to the contamination of rain droplets by harmful radionuclides.
In almost all cases, any link to subsequent health issues has been denied by the UK government because of lack of evidence of widespread radioactive contamination. However, a review of the evidence – written in 2014 by anonymous government scientists in response to freedom of information requests – was recently leaked by whistleblowers.
It reveals that post-blast radiation readings increased by a factor of up to seven on the island, compared with the normal background level. In our view, this would be more than enough to satisfy the “reasonable doubt” that tribunals require for veterans to receive a war pension due to illness or injury related to their service, as stated in the Naval, Military and Air Forces (Disablement and Death) Services Pension Order.
Read MoreA 90 million gallon nuclear tragedy
The uranium tailings spill at Church Rock, NM was the largest single release of radioactive contamination in US history
By Linda Pentz Gunter
This article is a republication of a Beyond Nuclear International article that was originally posted on July 16, 2018.
On July 16, 1979, the worst accidental release of radioactive waste in U.S. history happened at the Church Rock uranium mine and mill site. While the Three Mile Island accident (that same year) is well known, the enormous radioactive spill in New Mexico has been kept quiet. It is the U.S. nuclear accident that almost no one knows about.
Just 14 weeks after the Three Mile Island reactor accident, and 34 years to the day after the Trinity atomic test, the small community of Church Rock, New Mexico became the scene of another nuclear tragedy.
Ninety million gallons of liquid radioactive waste, and eleven hundred tons of solid mill wastes, burst through a broken dam wall at the Church Rock uranium mill facility, creating a flood of deadly effluents that permanently contaminated the Puerco River.
Flatteries and falsehoods
A multi-million dollar PR campaign can’t hide nuclear power’s ugly truth, writes Sharleen Leahey
Consider for a moment being a ‘fly on the wall’ silently viewing the goings-on among a bunch of NukeBros at a recent Holtec* Meetup. Andrew Zwicker, a New Jersey State Senator, is in attendance. Casually co-opting language from the environmental movement, a PR guy declares, “Our young people are increasingly embracing nuclear power as the key to a clean energy future!”
You have entered a room occupied by men who speak with forked tongues. No million dollar PR campaign can alter the awful truth: Nuclear power is not clean. It is not safe, not affordable, nor is it the solution to our climate crisis.
Nuclear power has shown itself over many decades to be a ticking time bomb. What the nuclear industry and its promoters do not want to discuss is the high-level radioactive waste generated by each and every nuclear reactor they plan to build. This waste has nowhere to go. It will be lethal for hundreds of thousands of years. The plain fact they cannot deny is that no permanent storage repository exists where high-level radioactive nuclear waste can be safely sequestered for thousands of generations into the future.
To State Senator Zwicker, also a Science Professor, I pose two simple questions: How can you ignore the mountain of scientific and historical evidence proving that nuclear power technology poses a grave danger to living beings and the environment? Why are you failing to “follow the science”?
Read MoreThe new nuclear madness is climate criminality
From reviving ‘dead’ reactors to building new ones large and small, an atomic epidemic is running rampant, writes Linda Pentz Gunter
Many of us have been asking ourselves the same question recently. Why does there seem to be a collective taking leave of all senses gripping politicians everywhere when it comes to nuclear power?
And why is the media lapping up the nonsense and hype and repeating the plethora of false promises (to put it politely) being spewed by nuclear companies — new and old?
Here’s an example from Last Energy, a US nuclear startup hoping to build 20 megawatt pressurized water reactors. According to Nation Cymru, who receives Last Energy’s press materials, a statement on the company’s website reads: “We build, own and operate micro modular nuclear power plants.”
No, they don’t. Last Energy has never built, owned or operated any sort of nuclear power plant, micro, modular or otherwise. But claims such as these simply aren’t questioned by politicians and the media. Rather, they are repeated.
Last Energy — brilliant name, as it will be “last”, if it even goes forward at all — was created by Titans of Nuclear podcaster Brent Kugelmass. They have a pilot project underway in Texas for a 5 megawatt version of the four 20MW “micro-reactors” they want to build in a small community in South Wales, where I am speaking this week.
Climate change matters
Environmental laws should be adhered to not abolished, says Diane Curran
For 45 years, I have represented environmental organizations and state and local governments in US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing and enforcement proceedings, as well as in federal court. Today, more than ever, we need to talk about climate change.
I currently represent Beyond Nuclear and the Sierra Club in a case challenging the NRC’s refusal to consider how climate change may affect the safety and environmental integrity of nuclear reactors in initial licensing and license-renewal proceedings. The case has been briefed and argued in the D.C. Circuit, and we are awaiting a decision.
Climate change must be accounted for in reactor licensing because it challenges the NRC’s ability to ensure safe operation over the decades of a reactor’s operating license term. Weather-related hazards—including floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, derechos, wildfires, drought, and extreme heat and cold—are becoming more severe and more frequent. Assessing how those risks are likely to evolve over the operating life of a reactor is difficult, but it is essential to protecting public safety and environmental integrity. It is also essential to ensure reliability of the electricity supply.
Unfortunately, even before the Trump administration took office, the NRC has consistently declined to take a systematic approach to how climate change could affect the future safety of new and existing reactors undergoing licensing review. Instead, the agency has generally looked backward—preparing for the worst weather events in the historical record rather than assessing how climate-related risks may change over time. With respect to those prospectively changing risks, the NRC simply says that its safety oversight includes “large margins of error” and “defense-in-depth.”
Read MoreWon’t get fooled again
Take a bow to the renewable revolution. The nuclear renaissance that never was is already fizzling, writes Linda Pentz Gunter
These days the mainstream media routinely parrot the nuclear industry party line that it is enjoying a “global renaissance.” These meek media sycophants don’t stop to question the veracity of this claim at all, or to notice that the rhetoric does not appear to match reality.
But if we are really living through a “nuclear renaissance”, which one is it? The old nuclear renaissance of 2006? Or a new re-renaissance? And where is their Michelangelo? Bill Gates appears to have made billions, but he hasn’t made masterpieces.
You have to wonder about the nuclear industry’s marketing mavens, though. Why on earth would they rebrand what they are trying to suggest is the new world dominance of nuclear power as an essential energy source by giving it the same name as their most abject failure?
Meet the new nuclear renaissance. Same as the old nuclear renaissance. All promise and, so far, no delivery.
That first nuclear renaissance wasn’t a renaissance at all, it was a stillbirth. And as a student of Italian, I have to say it peeves me that the nuclear industry dares to use the name at all.
The actual renaissance, which began in Italy, fully blossomed across Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was an extraordinary simultaneous flowering of culture, intellectualism, art, music, science, economics and technology, a genuine “rebirth” after the relatively primitive Middle Ages.
Read More
Beyond Nuclear International 
