Beyond Nuclear International
Why citizen scientists and public information are so crucial
Russian activist Andrey Ozharovskii, who was detained in Mongolia for radiation testing, must be restored full rights, urges Nuclear Transparency Watch
Editor’s note: The letter and call to action below were originally made in August 2025 after Andrey Ozharovskii was first detained and then deported back to Russia from Mongolia. To date, his passport has not been returned. However, his story is also an excellent illustration of the need for independent citizen scientists working in the field to provide the public with accurate and unbiased information about the levels of radiation they may be being exposed to on a daily basis. And of course, it speaks to larger issues of freedom as well.
Nuclear Transparency Watch, including our colleague Jan Haverkamp, has published an open letter regarding the arrest of physicist and environmentalist Andrey Ozharovskii in Mongolia.
Andrey Ozharovskii was detained by Mongolian authorities while measuring radiation levels with a personal dosimeter near uranium mining sites operated by the French company Orano. Although released, his passport has not been returned, and he faces uncertainty about his freedom of movement.
Ozharovskii’s activities form part of a long-standing European tradition of “citizen science” in the nuclear field: independent experts and local communities taking radiation measurements to help ensure transparency, safety, and accountability. Nuclear Transparency Watch and its members have supported such initiatives across Europe in cooperation with regulators, laboratories, and NGOs.
The principle at stake is simple but crucial: environmental information, including radiation data, must be accessible to the public. This is at the heart of the Aarhus Convention, the international treaty guaranteeing the rights of access to information, public participation in decision-making, and access to justice on environmental matters. Under its Article 3(8), people exercising these rights must not face persecution or harassment.
Mongolia is currently considering accession to the Aarhus Convention. This incident highlights why such commitments matter: ensuring that those who act to protect the public and the environment can do so without fear. At this moment, Andrey Ozharovskii should regain access to his ability to travel freely.
Read MoreHuman security is climate security
The COP30 climate summit is about more than carbon, it’s about conscience, writes Dr. Ghassan Shahrour
Health professionals have long warned that climate change is a public health emergency. But it is also a moral emergency. At COP30, we must demand that climate action include disarmament, equity, and protection for the most vulnerable. As a physician and humanitarian, I have witnessed how environmental degradation and human suffering are inseparable — from war-torn landscapes to drought-stricken communities. This is not just about carbon. It is about conscience.
A personal journey toward environmental conscience
My relationship with the environment didn’t begin with declarations or data. It grew through lived experience and shared struggle. I first encountered the environmental toll of war not in theory, but in the field: the long- and short-term damage caused by landmines, cluster munitions, and other remnants of conflict. These realities were central to the discussions I joined in Damascus, Sharjah, the Dead Sea, Cartagena, and Beirut. Each meeting deepened my conviction that environmental justice is inseparable from human dignity.
In 2012, while coordinating the Arab Human Security Network, I participated in the National Meeting of Environmental Societies in Syria. There, I proposed that our active local organizations be part of the global environmental movement — one that began in earnest with the 1972 Stockholm Conference, the first to place the environment at the heart of international concern. I do not speak as an expert above others, but as someone who has witnessed how human suffering and environmental neglect are one and the same. In conflict zones, the air is poisoned not only by smoke but by silence. The soil is not only depleted but denied its right to renewal.
Belém: A test of global conscience
On November 10, 2025, COP30 opened in Belém, Brazil — the beating heart of the Amazon. This is not just a symbolic location; it is a living reminder of what’s at stake. A decade after the Paris Agreement, and amid worsening climate disasters and broken promises, we must recognize that this moment is not merely environmental. It is ethical. It is human.
Embroiled in war and embattled at home
Can president Zelensky survive a kickback scheme involving the state nuclear company that enriched associates and possibly even ministers in his own government, asks Linda Pentz Gunter
If you live in Ohio, and possibly even in Illinois and South Carolina, you might be getting a bit of a déjà vu feeling reading the news coming out of Ukraine about a corruption scandal involving Energoatom, Ukraine’s nuclear energy company. That’s because two independent Ukrainian anti-corruption bodies have just uncovered a massive graft scandal involving kickbacks from nuclear power projects.
In July 2020, then Speaker of the Ohio House, Republican Larry Householder, was arrested along with four others for involvement in what was described as “the largest bribery money-laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio.”
In a year-long covert investigation by the US Attorney’s office and the FBI, a plot was uncovered that involved $61 million in dark money that flowed from FirstEnergy into the pockets of Householder and others to ensure a favorable vote in the House that would guarantee a $1.5 billion bailout of the company’s Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear reactors to keep them running. Once uncovered, indictments followed. Householder is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Similar scandals rocked Illinois and South Carolina, also connected to nuclear power plant schemes and also leading to indictments and prison sentences.
In Ukraine, the two investigating agencies — the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) — have just named at least eight individuals who have reportedly been charged with bribery, embezzlement, and illicit enrichment, netting around $100 million off contracts with Energoatom.
Details about precisely how the scheme operated and which contracts were involved have not fully emerged. However, some sources have suggested it involved a wide range of Energoatom’s private subcontractors who were allegedly forced to pay kickbacks of 10-15% to secure or maintain their supplier status and ensure timely payments.
Read MoreSpoiler alert: deterrence doesn’t work
‘A House of Dynamite’ reminds us there are no good choices after a nuclear launch, writes Linda Pentz Gunter
Warning: This article contains spoilers in connection to the film, A House of Dynamite. If you have not seen the film, you are advised to read no further (and to watch the film).
Upon the abrupt ending of Kathryn Bigelow’s new drama, A House of Dynamite, the three bros in the row in front of us at the cinema all exclaimed in unison, “Whaaaat??” They had expected the film to have an ending; a resolution; a big bang for their fourteen bucks. “Congratulations” I remember uttering under my breath, “you just missed the entire point of the movie.”
A House of Dynamite is not about seeing things blow up. It is about realizing that once things are about to blow up, there is no right decision anyone can make, not even the President of the United States. (In case you haven’t seen the film, an omission you should immediately remedy, it features three versions of the same 18-minute span during which US military, officials and the US president must respond to a single nuclear missile headed for Chicago.)
The editorial pages of the Washington Post, which have become a compliant mouthpiece for the paper’s owner, Trump-supporting billionaire Jeff Bezos, couldn’t wait to nitpick at the film, desperate to find “inaccuracies.” The US president, they complained, played by Idris Elba, would not have been “alone on Marine One with one military aide” when faced with deciding what to do about the missile.
Really? Chicago is about to be obliterated and this is what niggled at them? Doubtless the scene was done this way for dramatic effect. Their other gripe was that the greeting between the president and his deputy national security advisor was too formal. Perhaps the Post had to cling to these trivial pursuits because when it comes to the things of substance in the film, almost everyone familiar with how such a scenario would play out has called many of the depictions in it by and large chillingly accurate.
All of this was simply the Post’s way of navigating toward the central thesis of its editorial — entitled How to live in our nuclear ‘House of Dynamite — that “only deterrence, not disarmament, can actually keep the peace” and that “Mutually assured destruction works.” Houston, we’ve had a problem!
Read MoreUS conducts its ICBM test
Although not carrying a nuclear warhead, the test is still provocative, say Defuse Nuclear War and Tri-Valley CAREs
In the early morning hours of November 5th, Vandenberg Space Force Base launched a Minuteman III missile, the current intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) ground-based nuclear warhead delivery system in roughly 400 underground silos across five states that would target US adversaries in a full-scale nuclear war.
This ICBM test, which landed roughly 30 minutes later at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, is one of several that occur at Vandenburg every year — as they have for many decades. According to the Space Force Press Release, today’s test “validates” the “reliability, operational readiness, and accuracy of the ICBM system.” While these tests are launched without the nuclear warhead, the purpose is to practice nuclear war fighting and these tests are just as provocative to US adversaries as their nuclear-capable missile tests are to us.
This launch has an increased gravitas, as it comes hardly a week after the President used his social media platform to make a confusingly provocative announcement that, “Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our nuclear weapons on an equal basis.”
Exactly what was meant by the President’s vague statement has been debated in the days since. The President could not have been referencing other countries conducting explosive nuclear tests, because no nation except North Korea has conducted an explosive nuclear test this century.
The reference to “equal basis” with other “countries testing programs” has been thought to be in reference to nuclear weapon delivery system tests, which have been conducted by both Russia and China. But as today’s launch displays, these delivery system tests are nothing new, and the United States has long tested all of the delivery vehicles in its triad, including today’s ICBM test.
If the US were to resume explosive nuclear testing, Russia and others have already signaled they will follow. This reckless move would break a 30-year taboo that has kept the world safer. If the US resumes testing, it won’t just poison the air: it could destroy decades of progress toward preventing nuclear war.
Read MoreTrump threatens to resume nuclear testing
But does that word (testing) mean what he thinks it means?
By Linda Pentz Gunter
Editor’s Note: The Department of Energy has since clarified that there will be no nuclear explosions of actual nuclear weapons and that it is “systems” not weapons that the US will be testing. Nevertheless, the original social media posting by Trump once more raised the specter of another insane nuclear arms race, arguably one we are already in.
US President Donald Trump says the US will start testing nuclear weapons again, a statement that has raised alarm in the peace movement and in nations across the world. According to news reports, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that “We’ve halted many years ago, but with others doing testing I think it’s appropriate to do so.”
Which other countries he is referring to — and exactly what kind of testing — remain opaque since none of the major nuclear weapon states have tested atomic weapons since the 1990s. However, both Russia and the United States have continued to test nuclear missile delivery systems. Russia also recently tested a nuclear-capable torpedo and cruise missile. However, none of these activities constitute actual nuclear weapons testing.
Nevertheless, Trump’s pronouncements prompted headlines around the world, raising concerns of further global destabilization. “If the US restarts testing its nuclear weapons, this will accelerate a new nuclear arms race,” Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament general secretary Sophie Bolt, told the Morning Star.
“I think a decision to resume nuclear testing would be extremely dangerous and would do more to benefit our adversaries than the United States,” Corey Hinderstein, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for Nuclear Peace, said on National Public Radio.
Russia last tested nuclear weapons in 1990, China in 1996 and India and Pakistan in 1998. Britain halted in 1991 and France in 1996. Only North Korea has tested since then, in 2017.
“Previous nuclear testing has left a catastrophic legacy of harm across the planet and caused devastating health impacts — cancer, birth defects, displacement, trauma — and poisoned land and water for generations,” said the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons in a statement. ICAN won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. “The world has seen enough suffering caused by nuclear explosions and repeating those crimes would be indefensible.”
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