Beyond Nuclear International
A resounding rejection of ‘nuclearism’
Non-nuclear states gathered in New York are decidedly anti-nuclear in outlook and approach
By Tom Unterrainer, chair, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
The non-nuclear majority met in New York between 27 November and 1 December for the Second Meeting of States Parties (2MSP) to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). This coming together was not simply ‘non-nuclear’ but decidedly anti-nuclear in outlook and approach.
The TPNW represents many things: a ‘work in progress’, a part of international law, a mechanism for the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons and similar. What it represents politically, at the time of coming into force and since, is a full-frontal rejection of ‘nuclearism’ and a challenge to the nuclear-armed world. 2MSP saw discussion and decision making on how to embed this aspect of the Treaty.
Between 15 and 27 October 1953, the British government carried out ‘Operation Totem’ over an area in Southern Australia. Totem I and Totem II were atmospheric nuclear tests and together with five additional ‘non-critical’ tests, Britain delivered death and catastrophe on the First Nations people inhabiting the area.
These people “felt the ground shaking and the black mist rolling”, as Karina Lester put it on the floor of 2MSP. “We know our lands are poisoned”, she went on, clearly stating that “we want governments to recognise what they have done.”
What the British government did in 1953 was to consign a people and their land to death, destruction and continuing – intergenerational – harm.
The British government has refused to recognise or make recompense for what it did over seventy years ago and recently affirmed that it would not do so now. This roadblock to justice must be challenged, as should the other roadblocks to peace and justice that are erected by nuclear-armed states.
Read MoreDoes nuclear war as entertainment numb our fears?
Do movie heroes who stop nuclear war breed apathy about the real danger?
By Farah Sonde
(This article contains film plot spoilers)
As much as I love my job as a Communications Associate at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, there’s nothing more refreshing than taking a step back from the issues to pop on a film or a television show. However, art reflects the anxieties of the world around us, and as such I still find myself followed by nuclear weapons, whether it’s a throwaway comment or a major plot point.
In the wake of Oppenheimer, I decided to take a critical eye to films from around the world that found box-office success and contained nuclear weapons as a plot device. While Oppenheimer’s release has reminded us how films can draw more eyes to the nuclear field, we should be concerned about how blockbuster films from Hollywood to Bollywood subliminally encourage audiences to sit out of nuclear policy conversations.
Deus ex Machina
Tom Cruise seems to have an affinity for stopping nuclear disasters. At the climax of “Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” three nuclear bombs are primed to destroy the water supply of India, China and Pakistan. Superspy Ethan Hunt saves the day by wrestling a detonator from an impossibly handsome Henry Cavill, averting the nuclear poisoning plot.
More recently, “Top Gun: Maverick” also had a nuclear dimension somewhat obscured by the razzle-dazzle of supersonic jets. The ticking clock that drives Maverick’s plot is an unsanctioned uranium enrichment plant that needs to be eliminated before it becomes operational. The plant is destroyed and Maverick makes a daredevil escape, leaving questions on nuclear security unanswered and an audience in awe.
Nuclear weapons have long had their place in Hollywood, whether as a Macguffin or a deus ex machina, and it’s not hard to see why. At the height of the Cold War, films like “Dr. Strangelove” and “On the Beach” allowed audiences to critically engage with their worst anxieties.
When nuclear weapons seemed to leave the cultural zeitgeist, they still found a place in Hollywood as entertainment. What better way to raise the stakes for the heroes than to threaten a nuclear disaster?
Or if the writers painted themselves into a corner with an absurd plot, nuclear weapons offer a way out. Need to get aliens off of Earth? Take Will Smith’s example in “Independence Day” and nuke them away!
Read MoreA nuclear assault on freedoms in South Africa
Industry shows contempt for democratic processes and civil society groups
By Gerard Boyce
A considerable number of pro-nuclear articles penned by supposedly impartial nuclear experts or professed nuclear industry lobbyists have appeared in the South African media of late. The flurry of pro-nuclear activity has been so noticeable that the cynic would be forgiven for thinking that this outpouring of pro-nuclear sentiment was not random but part of a concerted campaign to push a pro-nuclear agenda that coincided with some specific event or cause.
One possibility could be that it was aimed at delegates attending this summer’s BRICS summit, an alliance of countries whose members (both current and invited) are all pro-nuclear, that was held in Johannesburg during August.
Alternatively, observers of South Africa’s nuclear industry might attribute this activity to Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe’s still delayed address to Cabinet on what he has dubbed an ‘updated Integrated Resource Plan’ that will reportedly include an allocation for nuclear power even though the Presidential Climate Commission concluded in its recently released final report into South Africa’s energy transition that there was no place for nuclear power in the country’s least costly energy plans.
Seen against this backdrop, it is relatively easy to ignore most of these articles or dismiss them as propaganda produced by the nuclear lobby as part of its ongoing and seemingly futile bid to have government expand nuclear power output.
It is difficult, however, to dismiss a specific recent article that appeared in a nationally syndicated business news supplement that is distributed along with daily newspapers belonging to the Independent Online (IOL) media group; a large South African newspaper group that is owned by embattled holding company Sekunjalo Investment Holdings.
Read MoreJoy and gratitude grounded in hope
Lack of fear was one of Daniel Ellsberg’s superpowers, son says
As we prepare to celebrate Daniel Ellsberg posthumously with the Nuclear-Free Future Award’s Lifetime Achievement honor, we reproduce the eulogy written by his son, Robert, and published on Common Dreams. Robert will accept the Nuclear-Free Future Award on his father’s behalf. It will be presented by Democracy Now! host, Amy Goodman. The three activist Nuclear-Free Future Awards go to Tina Cordova, Benetick Kabua Maddison and Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross (see our earlier article for details.) The Awards take place at the Blue Gallery in New York City on November 28, beginning with a reception at 6pm followed by the awards ceremony. Everyone is encouraged to attend. The event is free and open to the public.
By Robert Ellsberg
Peacemaker and whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg died on June 16, 2023, four months after his diagnosis with inoperable pancreatic cancer. In March, he shared news of his prognosis with friends and supporters in the peace movement in a letter posted on Common Dreams. On October 22 his family hosted an online Celebration of Life which featured testimonials by his wife, Patricia, his children, Robert, Mary, and Michael, his grandchildren, and a wide range of friends, fellow peacemakers, and whistleblowers, including Edward Snowden, Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand, Rev. John Dear, Norman Soloman, Rep. Barbara Lee, Gov. Jerry Brown, Tom Reiffer, Richard Falk, and Randy Kehler. Dan’s son Robert, the Publisher of Orbis Books, delivered this opening eulogy:
During a phone call in February, Dad mentioned—almost as a side note—“If I had a potentially serious condition, would you want to know about it?” I answered with words to the effect: Hell yes! Thus, I learned of a possible mass on his pancreas, which was later confirmed to be pancreatic cancer and was deemed inoperable. He was told he had three to six months to live. He lived for four.
I had known that Dad was never particularly worried or anxious about the prospect of his own death. Since surviving the car accident that killed his mother and sister when he was 15, I think he had always felt he was living on borrowed time. He admitted to me that this probably accounted for his ability to take risks that others might have feared—some of them, arguably reckless, such as driving through the countryside of Vietnam in his Triumph Spitfire. Others, like his willingness to risk life in prison for releasing the Pentagon Papers, served a higher purpose. That lack of fear was one of his superpowers.
Classified! The secret radiation files
Health physicists fear lawsuits more than nuclear accidents
By Kate Brown
In 1987, a year after the Chernobyl accident, the US Health Physics Society met in Columbia, Maryland. Health physicists are scientists who are responsible for radiological protection at nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons plants, and hospitals. They are called on in cases of nuclear accidents. The conference’s keynote speaker came from the Department of Energy (DOE); the title of his talk drew on a sports analogy: “Radiation: The Offense and the Defense.” Switching metaphors to geopolitics, the speaker announced to the hall of nuclear professionals that his talk amounted to “the party line.” The biggest threat to nuclear industries, he told the gathered professionals, was not more disasters like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island but lawsuits.
After the address, lawyers from the Department of Justice (DOJ) met in break-out groups with the health physicists to prepare them to serve as “expert witnesses” against claimants suing the US government for alleged health problems due to exposure from radioactivity issued in the production and testing of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. That’s right: the DOE and the DOJ were preparing private citizens to defend the US government and its corporate contractors as they ostensibly served as “objective” scientific experts in US courts.
Health physics is an extremely important field for our everyday lives. Health physicists set standards for radiation protection and evaluate damage after nuclear emergencies. They determine where radiologists set the dial for CT scans and X-rays. They calculate how radioactive our food can be (and our food is often radioactive) and determine acceptable levels of radiation in our workplaces, environments, bodies of water, and air. Despite its importance, as it is practiced inside university labs and government organizations, health physics is far from an independent field engaged in the objective, open-ended pursuit of knowledge.
Compromised Science
The field of health physics emerged inside the Manhattan Project along with the development of the world’s first nuclear bombs. From the United States, it migrated abroad. For the past seventy-five years, the vast majority of health physicists have been employed in national nuclear agencies or in universities with research underwritten by national nuclear agencies. As much as we in the academy like to make distinctions between apolitical, academic research and politicized paid research outside the academy, during the Cold War those distinctions hardly made sense. From the end of World War II until the 1970s, federal grants paid for 70 percent of university research. The largest federal donors were the Department of Defense, the US Atomic Energy Agency, and a dozen federal security agencies.
Historian Peter Galison estimated in 2004 that the volume of classified research surpassed open literature in American libraries by five to ten times. Put another way, for every article published by American academics in open journals, five to ten articles were filed in sealed repositories available only to the 4 million Americans with security clearances. Often, the same researchers penned both open and classified work. Health physics benefited from the largesse of the Pentagon and the Atomic Energy Commission, which produced nuclear weapons for US arsenals. Correspondingly, the field suffered from a closed circle of knowledge that has had a major impact on our abilities to assess and respond to both nuclear emergencies and quotidian radioactive contamination.
Read MoreThe Dann sisters blazed a trail
Right Livelihood Award winners stood up for Indigenous ways, their lands and their rights
By Linda Pentz Gunter
In the world of anti-nuclear activism — against both nuclear power and nuclear weapons — hope can sometimes feel illusory; victories almost impossible. A moment of glory, such as the passage of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, is tempered by the recognition that the nuclear powers won’t sign it. Worse, they work actively to derail it.
We sound the warnings about the dire risks of a nuclear power plant embroiled in the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the UN watchdog agency seemingly intent on preventing a nuclear disaster there, is at the same time assuring its certainty, in Ukraine or elsewhere, by continuing to promote nuclear power.
Those battling the stubborn resistance to do the right thing on global warming must confront — and overcome — “climate despair”. We face a similar challenge to our wellbeing and psyche, perpetual Cassandras who can foresee the Armageddon of nuclear war or the looming catastrophe of another Chornobyl, but who are unable to shake our leaders awake to avert such outcomes.
The Dann sisters on their ranch. Photos ©Ilka Hartmann/IlkaHartmann.com
But, miraculously, one thing remains immutable in our movement — the steadfast dedication of its members to avert the worst. We fail to mention them enough. When we do get a win, we sometimes forget to celebrate.
While our movement has won the Nobel Peace Prize, twice, (IPPNW in 1985, ICAN in 2017) we must also fete our own. So we have the Nuclear-Free Future Awards, established in 1998 and whose 2023 winners you can read about here.
Read More
Beyond Nuclear International 