Beyond Nuclear International
A Nobel in the nick of time
Japan’s Hibakusha are aging and diminishing, but they were finally awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, writes Elizabeth Chappell
The 2024 Nobel peace prize has been awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese grassroots organisation created by survivors of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Nihon Hidankyo has provided thousands of witness accounts and public appeals by survivors, who are known as hibakusha, and has sent annual delegations to the UN.
Their work was commended by the Nobel committee, who decided to award the prize to Nihon Hidankyo “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating that nuclear weapons must never be used again”.
Nihon Hidankyo’s co-chair, Toshiyuki Mimaki, said: “I never expected we would win the Nobel peace prize. Now we want to go further and appeal to the world to achieve lasting peace. We are old, but we never give up.”
There are an estimated 106,000 hibakusha still living in Japan, with many more alive around the world. There are also survivors – and their descendants – of the more than 2,000 nuclear tests that have taken place worldwide since 1945. Some of these people use the term hibakusha to describe themselves.
This was not the first time the prize had been awarded to a nominee for their efforts towards nuclear disarmament. And it probably won’t be the last.
In 1985, the prize was awarded to an organisation called the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. And then, in 1995, the prize was won by Joseph Rotblat, the only scientist to have left the Manhattan Project – the US government’s research project to produce the first atomic bomb – on moral grounds.
Barack Obama was next in 2009, for his “vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons”. His administration made efforts to renew the strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia, and Obama became the first US president to visit one of the atomic bombed cities when he made a special trip to Hiroshima in 2016.
The following year, the prize was won by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) for its “groundbreaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of nuclear weapons”. This was a reference to the UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, which from 2017 has outlawed states from participating in any nuclear weapon activities.
Read MoreBritain to hand back Chagos
Decolonization of the British Indian Ocean Territory poses new challenges for Africa’s nuclear weapons-free zone, writes David Fig
On 3 October 2024, the recently elected British government announced that it would be dismantling its colony, the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), which is comprised of the Chagos Islands, and returning its sovereignty to the Republic of Mauritius.
In March 1968 Mauritius won its independence from Britain, but in the run up to this event, Britain decided to detach the Chagos Islands from Mauritian jurisdiction, in exchange for a compensation settlement of 3 million pounds, worth 65.2 million pounds today. Its rationale was to turn one of the islands, Diego Garcia into a strategic military base, which it rented to the United States. From Diego Garcia, US fighter jets could reach both the Gulf region and China.
During the Gulf Wars, the base was used for the ‘rendition’ of Iraqi prisoners, and it became a waystation for their secret delivery to Guantanamo and other prisons.
As a precondition for the creation of the base, the US insisted that Britain remove all the inhabitants of the archipelago. The depopulation resulted in the dumping of the Chagossians as refugees on Mauritius, the Seychelles and the UK.
For many years, the islanders, with the backing of Mauritius and many African countries, have been challenging the illegalities of creating the BIOT, deporting its population, and preventing a just return. The case reached the General Assembly of the UN, and the UN’s International Court of Justice. In both fora, Britain’s behavior was declared illegal. This was also confirmed in domestic cases brought by the islanders. Each time Britain lost, it invoked ‘royal prerogative’ to claim that its national security interests overrode the judgments of the courts.
Read MoreLeaked tritium reached the Mississippi
False assurances by Xcel Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have now been retracted by the regulator, reports John LaForge
In April, I reported on false assurances made by Xcel Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regarding the November 2022 leak from the Monticello, Minnesota nuclear reactor of some 829,000 gallons of cooling water containing a huge concentration of radioactive tritium (technically, 5.2 million picocuries per liter).
In eye-opening remarks at the Monticello Community Center on May 15, NRC Senior Environmental Project Manager, Stephen J. Koenick, apologized for the commission staff’s often-repeated claims that leaked tritium from the 53-year-old reactor had not reached the Mississippi River — drinking water source for 20 million people, including the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area.
In his underreported apology, Koenick said, “I would like to take a moment to address and clarify some miscommunication regarding the presence of detectable tritium in the Mississippi River. I know we … reported there were no indication[s] of [a] tritium leak [which] made it to the Mississippi.
“However, … in our Draft Environmental Impact Statement, we … conclude there were some very low concentrations of tritium in the Mississippi River.” Koenick went on to say, “So we apologize for this miscommunication.”
The weekly Monticello Times reported on the vanishingly rare public confession and its crucial admission that radioactive tritium from the massive 2022 leak had contaminated the Mississippi. The paper published a report on the front-page on Jun. 6, under the headline: “NRC apologizes, changes its stance on tritium leak: Now says low concentrations got into Mississippi River.”
What Koenick meant by “miscommunication” were false assurances made to the press that no tritium had been found by Xcel’s testing of the river. On Mar. 18, 2023, NRC spokesperson Viktoria Mitlyng even told the press, “There is no pathway for the tritium to get into drinking water.”
As recently as May 7, 2024, NRC presenters at a separate NRC-sponsored public hearing, also held in Monticello, said that Xcel had found “no detectable levels” of tritium in the river.
Read MoreBig tech, bigger lies
Microsoft, Google and Amazon are bragging they will use nuclear energy to power their energy needs, but it’s mainly hype or worse, writes M.V. Ramana
In the last couple of months, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, in that order, made announcements about using nuclear power for their energy needs. Describing nuclear energy using questionable adjectives like “reliable,” “safe,” “clean,” and “affordable,” all of which are belied by the technology’s seventy-year history, these tech behemoths were clearly interested in hyping up their environmental credentials and nuclear power, which is being kept alive mostly using public subsidies.
Both these business conglomerations—the nuclear industry and its friends and these ultra-wealthy corporations and their friends—have their own interests in such hype. In the aftermath of catastrophic accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima, and in the face of its inability to demonstrate a safe solution to the radioactive wastes produced in all reactors, the nuclear industry has been using its political and economic clout to mount public relations campaigns to persuade the public that nuclear energy is an environmentally friendly source of power.
Tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, too, have attempted to convince the public they genuinely cared for the environment and really wanted to do their bit to mitigate climate change. In 2020, for example, Amazon pledged to reach net zero by 2040. Google went one better when its CEO declared that “Google is aiming to run our business on carbon-free energy everywhere, at all times” by 2030. Not that they are on any actual trajectory to meeting these targets.
Why are they making such announcements?
Read MorePoodles and puppet masters
The Mutual Defence Agreement now permanently ties British nuclear weapon dependency to the United States, writes Linda Pentz Gunter
Remember the pet poodle that used to belong to US President George W. Bush? “I must correct you,” I hear you say. It was Scottish terriers that W had, not poodles.
Yes, but I refer here not to Barney and Beazley but to Bush’s third dutiful dog, Blair, as in Tony Blair, the contemporaneous British prime minister, who was routinely featured in cartoons as the compliant canine — specifically a poodle — glued to W’s side.
“I will be with you, whatever,” Blair had written to Bush in a confidential note eight months before the ill-fated invasion of Iraq, launched on the basis of exaggerated and downright false information.That declaration and other professions of poodlish loyalty, were revealed in the 2016 report issued by the Chilcot Commission examining events around the ensuing Iraq war.
“I express more sorrow, regret, and apology than you can ever believe,” was Blair’s response to the report’s findings. Based on his activities since then —which include serving as a well-paid advisor to corporate financial institutions, charging speaking fees as high as $300,000 a pop, and amassing a net worth of at least $60 million — no, we won’t ever believe it.
Perhaps Sir Keir Starmer, whose popularity continues to plummet, is also eagerly awaiting such post-prime ministerial plentitude. At least then, he will be able to pay for his own suitable suits.
But after winning the UK general election in July and duly ascending to US poodlehood, Starmer knew he needed to quickly mark some territory before the departure of the gray-muzzled mutt then occupying both the dog house and the White House.
Read MoreIn a progressive US state, more nukes?
Maryland must not incentivize more nuclear power, write Jorge Aguilar and Tim Judson
In the next few weeks, Maryland officials are expected to deliver comprehensive plans for how state agencies will tackle the growing climate crisis and deliver on Gov. Wes Moore’s promise to achieve zero emissions across all of the state’s key sectors in the next two decades.
In June, Moore issued an executive order that set a Nov. 1 deadline for these detailed implementation plans as the next phase of a 2023 report called the Climate Pollution and Reduction Plan (CPRP). From agriculture to building codes to transportation, the CPRP made hundreds of recommendations that now await the rollout of actionable plans by the governor and state leaders.
Unfortunately, the one idea that seems to be gaining the most traction in recent months is an expansion of dangerous nuclear power for electricity generation. News reports have indicated that state legislators and administration officials are warming up to the radioactive idea of bringing in expensive new nuclear reactors to Maryland.
Marylanders should be very wary of this push and the perverse notion that nuclear industry backers are using to siphon off taxpayer money for these reactors. They argue that, because nuclear power plants do not burn fossil fuels, they should be counted as “clean energy.”
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