Beyond Nuclear International
A response to the oblivion and impunity of Palomares
The importance of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
By Maribel Hernàndez (Translation from the original Spanish by DeepL)
It has been 58 years since the day that changed the history of Palomares, that small hamlet of Cuevas de Almanzora which, since January 17, 1966, has been living with the aftermath of one of the most serious nuclear weapons accidents of the Cold War.
That morning, a U.S. B-52 bomber collided with the mother plane that was refueling it during a refueling maneuver. As a result of the collision, the four thermonuclear bombs it was carrying fell, each of them 70 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, with the good fortune that, since they were not armed, no nuclear explosion occurred. But two of the bombs fell without parachutes and, as a result of the impact, dispersed their plutonium charge, contaminating Palomares.
The story that followed is well known and, as usually happens in the relationship between power and nuclear armament, is one of machismo. Thus in the midst of Franco’s dictatorship, the narrative starred then Minister of Tourism and Information, Manuel Fraga. “Palomares, clean waters”, read the front page of ABC just two months after the accident. But the problem of plutonium was not in the water, but in the ground, from where it is inhaled in the form of invisible dust and where it remains almost six decades later.
The population was not evacuated nor were they informed of the danger of radioactivity, just as the nuclear powers did with the Indigenous populations of the places they chose to test their atomic bombs, such as the Marshall Islands, Nevada or the Australian Aboriginal lands, among others. Expendable populations far from the centers of power.
Read MoreUna respuesta al olvido y la impunidad de Palomares
L’importancia del Tratado sobre la Prohibición de las Armas Nucleares
Par Maribel Hernàndez
Hace 58 años del día que cambió la historia de Palomares, esa pequeña pedanía de Cuevas de Almanzora que, desde el 17 de enero de 1966, convive con las secuelas de uno de los accidentes con armas nucleares más graves de la Guerra Fría.
Aquella mañana, un bombardero estadounidense B-52 chocó contra el avión nodriza que lo abastecía de combustible en una maniobra de repostaje. A consecuencia de la colisión, cayeron las cuatro bombas termonucleares que portaba, cada una de ellas 70 veces más potente que la de Hiroshima, con la suerte de que al no estar armadas no se produjo ninguna explosión nuclear. Pero dos de las bombas se precipitaron sin paracaídas y, a consecuencia del impacto, dispersaron su carga de plutonio contaminando Palomares.
La historia que siguió es conocida y no faltó, como suele suceder en la relación del poder con el armamento nuclear, el relato de la “hombría” que, en pleno franquismo, protagonizó el entonces ministro de Turismo e Información, Manuel Fraga, con su mediático baño. “Palomares, aguas limpias”, rezaba la portada de ABC apenas dos meses después del accidente. Con ella se daba carpetazo al tema, había que salvar los muebles y pasar página, pero el problema del plutonio no estaba en el agua, sino en la tierra, desde donde es inhalado en forma de polvo invisible y donde permanece casi seis décadas después.
La población no fue evacuada ni se les informó del peligro de la radiactividad, del mismo modo en que procedían las potencias nucleares con las poblaciones autóctonas de los lugares que elegían para probar sus bombas atómicas como Islas Marshall, Nevada o las tierras aborígenes australianas, entre otros. Poblaciones prescindibles lejanas a los centros de poder.
Read MoreWhat a turkey
Hinkley Point C costs hit a new high but nuclear plant still isn’t roasting Christmas turkeys
By Linda Pentz Gunter
The Great Mosque of Mecca is considered the most expensive building in the world at $115.2 billion. Right behind it comes….a nuclear power plant! The two-reactor 3,260MW Hinkley Point C nuclear site still under construction in the UK will now cost at least £46 billion ($59 billion) according to the latest figures released by its developer, the French energy giant, EDF.
As such, Hinkley Point C has now earned the dubious honor of becoming the second most expensive building in the world. And it’s not even finished. The price could soar still higher.
EDF originally bragged that Britons would be baking their Christmas turkeys powered by Hinkley Point C by 2017. The completion date has now been pushed to “after 2029”.
The nuclear power industry is very good at tripling things. Perhaps not global nuclear installations by 2050 as it bragged would happen during an announcement at the COP28 climate summit last December. But the price tag for a new reactor? Timelines for new reactor construction? Straight A grades all around!
That’s almost what’s happening at Hinkley Point C where the new price is more than double the original estimated cost of £18 billion ($23 billion). Getting to triple the cost still seems eminently achievable given the new completion date.
This not-so-shocking news, given nuclear power’s track record, comes after the recent, overblown announcement by Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government that Britain would launch its “biggest expansion of nuclear power for 70 years to create jobs, reduce bills and strengthen Britain’s energy security.” The plan will of course achieve none of these things.
Read MoreTime stands still
Hands of the Doomsday Clock remain at 90 seconds to midnight
By Linda Pentz Gunter
Recently an American colleague in the nuclear disarmament movement wrote in an email that “I’m sorry to say that Marianne Williamson is unlikely to be elected President of the United States, but if she were to be elected, she promised today that she would sign the TPNW.”
The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), is a comprehensive nuclear ban that includes undertakings not to develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons. It entered into force on January 22, 2021. It has been ratified by 70 countries to date.
Williamson is a Left Democrat making her second bid for the US presidency (she also ran in 2020). “Unlikely” was a considerable underestimate of her prospects in a system stacked against non-establishment candidates. Williamson has as much chance of becoming US president as I do, and I’m not even running.
Signing the US onto the TPNW, as Williamson pledged, would mean a commitment to unilateral disarmament. In reality, the opposite is happening, and this was one of the chief concerns that influenced the position of the hands on the Doomsday Clock, which was re-set on January 23.
The Doomsday Clock, established in 1947 by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, assesses how close humanity stands to the brink of annihilation, largely due to the threat of nuclear war. It is set each year by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 11 Nobel laureates.
In 1947 the Clock was at seven minutes to midnight. By 1949 it was at three minutes. In 1991, as the Cold War ended, it went as far back as 17 minutes to midnight. But in 2023, the hands moved ominously to 90 seconds to midnight, the closest we have ever come to doomsday.
Read MoreThe unthinkable looms
Nuclear-armed Israel is at war. What might this mean?
Editor’s note: Beyond Nuclear encourages constructive dialogue and a full understanding of the nuclear weapons danger. In light of the January 23 announcement that the Doomsday Clock remains at 90 seconds to midnight (the closest ever), in part due to the war in Gaza, we agreed, editorially, that despite the many opinions about the war itself, it was important to present a factual analysis of the specific threat posed by a nuclear-armed country engaged in war — in this case, Israel. (We have similarly evaluated threats to use its nuclear weapons made by Russia during the war in Ukraine and a possible US response.)
Beyond Nuclear’s position, in line with the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, is that we are opposed to the development, testing, production, acquisition, possession, stockpiling, use or the threat to use nuclear weapons under any circumstances by any country.
Both Russia in its war in Ukraine, and Israel in its war in Gaza, possess and have threatened to use nuclear weapons. Regardless of the much debated root causes of either war, this reality alone heightens the possibility of a nuclear war.
As with all contributions to our pages, the opinions of the contributors are their own and are not necessarily endorsed by Beyond Nuclear. Please see the disclaimer at the foot of this article.
By Kate Hudson
The attack on Yemen by US, Britain and other forces is a dangerous escalation of the war in the Middle East. The attack is intended to halt the Houthi support for the people of Gaza that has taken the form of attacks on Israel-bound shipping. But as the Houthis have made clear, the attacks will not end their support for the Palestinians.
The only way to stop this unfolding and escalating conflict in the Middle East, is to stop the war on Gaza: to implement an immediate and permanent ceasefire and to ensure freedom and sovereignty for Palestine, as enshrined in UN resolutions and international law.
The alternative to this course of action is the further spread of war, to Yemen, Lebanon, and even to Iran. This is the most dangerous time for more than two decades in the Middle East and it clearly raises the spectre of nuclear weapons use.
Because not only is Israel heavily armed with the most up-to-date conventional weaponry, it is also heavily armed with nuclear weapons. Its nuclear arsenal, which it refuses to formally acknowledge — its policy of “nuclear ambiguity” — comes under no international controls or inspections. Yet it has an enormous killing capacity — and Israel is the only nuclear weapons state in the Middle East.
Recent rhetoric from a number of Israeli politicians suggests a willingness to use their nuclear weapons; if the conflict were to extend to Iran, who can say that Israel would not use its nuclear weapons on non-nuclear Iran?
So what does the Israeli nuclear arsenal look like? Israel’s lack of transparency means that figures are uncertain, but the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) outlines estimates between 90 and 300 nuclear weapons. Sipri also reports that since 2021, according to commercial satellite imagery, there has been significant construction taking place at the Negev Nuclear Research Centre near Dimona, in southern Israel.
Some may remember that the great Israeli nuclear whistle-blower, Mordechai Vanunu, worked as a technician at Dimona, before revealing details of the secret Israeli nuclear programme to the British press in 1986. The purpose of the recent works isn’t known.
Read MoreBig costs sink flagship nuclear project
And they’ll sink future small modular reactor projects too
By Susan O’Donnell and M.V. Ramana
The major news in the world of nuclear energy last November was the collapse of the Carbon Free Power Project in the United States. The project was to build six NuScale small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). Given NuScale’s status as the flagship SMR design not just in the U.S. but even globally, the project’s cancellation should ring alarm bells in Canada. Yet SMRs are touted as a climate action strategy although it is becoming clearer by the day that they will delay a possible transition to net-zero energy and render it more expensive.
The NuScale project failed because there were not enough customers for its expensive electricity. Construction cost estimates for the project had been steadily rising—from USD 4.2 billion for 600 megawatts in 2018 to a staggering USD 9.3 billion (CAD 12.8 billion) for 462 megawatts. Using a combination of government subsidies, potentially up to USD 4.2 billion, and an opaque calculation method, NuScale claimed that it would produce electricity at USD 89 per megawatt-hour. When standard U.S. government subsidies are included, electricity from wind and solar energy projects, including battery storage, could be as cheap as USD 12 to USD 31 per megawatt-hour.
A precursor to the failed NuScale project was mPower, which also received massive funding from the U.S. Department of Energy. Described by The New York Times as the leader in the SMR race, mPower could not find investors or customers. By 2017, the project was essentially dead. Likewise, a small reactor in South Korea proved to be “not practical or economic”.
Ignoring this dire economic reality, provincial governments planning for SMRs – Ontario, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Alberta – published a “strategic plan” seemingly designed to convince the federal government to open its funding floodgates. Offering no evidence about the costs of these technologies, the report asserts: “The power companies assessed that SMRs have the potential to be an economically competitive source of energy.”
For its part, the federal government has coughed up grants totalling more than $175 million to five different SMR projects in Ontario, New Brunswick, and Saskatchewan. The Canada Infrastructure Bank loaned $970 million to Ontario Power Generation to develop its Darlington New Nuclear project. And the Canada Energy Regulator’s 2023 Canada’s Energy Future report envisioned a big expansion of nuclear energy based on wishful thinking and unrealistic assumptions about SMRs.
Read More
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