Beyond Nuclear International
“We won’t be scapegoats!”
A new tongue-in-cheek rebellion has risen in France, but the cause is deadly serious
By Linda Pentz Gunter
In France, civil disobedience and defiance of authority — and authoritarianism — is in the national DNA. We have seen it most recently in the demonstrations against the raising of the retirement age, and against proposed agricultural reservoirs known as mega-basins. Before that it was the “yellow vests”, angered at a rise in fuel prices. Further back came the Resistance during World War II, and even further back, of course, the Revolution of 1789.
The French anti-nuclear movement is no exception and has engaged in protests that deliver considerable numbers and abundant creativity — and sometimes a lot of useful tractors as well.
It’s no surprise then to learn that such continued defiance has now spread: to goats.
Before continuing, it’s necessary to explain what a ZAD is. In French, it stands for Zone À Défendre (zone to defend.) ZADs are usually occupations or blocades created by citizens protecting something they deem precious from development or destruction. There are scores of ZADs across France, deemed illegal by French authorities. ZADs have sometimes won, most notably at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, where an unpopular airport project was stopped.
But raids on ZADs can sometimes turn violent, and authorities can over-react as they did in February 2018 at Bure, when 500 gendarmes went in to remove just 15 anti-nuclear activists occupying and attempting to protect the forested site targeted to become the country’s high-level radioactive waste dump.
Dressed in riot gear, the gendarmes used bulldozers, trucks, helicopters, drones and chainsaws to confront the occupiers, self-described “owls” who had been living in tree houses and lookout towers for the past 18 months.
Now, activists around the La Hague nuclear reprocessing site on the northern Cherbourg peninsula, have redefined the ZAD acronym to stand for Zone À Déchets (Waste Zone), and specifically radioactive waste.
Read MoreDogs of war
DNA research among Chornobyl’s dogs could provide answers about the effects of living in a radioactive environment
By Linda Pentz Gunter
Pity the poor dogs (and cats) of Chornobyl. Abandoned in 1986 by owners fleeing the nuclear disaster, their descendants live on in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, an area deemed too radioactive for human habitation and in a country now at war.
Shortly after the 1986 nuclear accident, that saw Chornobyl unit 4 explode and spew deadly radioactive fallout across the former Soviet Union and Western Europe, Soviet authorities made an effort to cull the abandoned pets. (For animal lovers who watched the Sky/HBO drama series, “Chernobyl”, this was a particularly disturbing episode.)
Now, Chornobyl’s hapless lost dogs and cats find themselves living in a war zone as well. Russian troops marched into the Exclusion Zone at the very start of the invasion, in late February 2022, and occupied the Chornobyl power plant site by force. When they moved on, they left behind churned up topsoil that disturbed radioactive fallout and increased radiation levels in the area. As the war drags on, it is impossible to predict whether the Russian troops will be back.
The presence today of at least several hundred semi-feral domestic dogs living around the Chornobyl plant and beyond, indicates that the 1986 cull was not, of course, entirely successful. The Dogs of Chornobyl — and their more furtive feline friends — continue to survive down the generations in a highly radioactive environment. There are other threats too, including exposure to rabies and wolf packs that prey on the dogs and their puppies.
Read MoreDaniel Ellsberg is still fighting
Legendary whistleblower keeps giving in his final months
By Linda Pentz Gunter
Most of us who have been around long enough in this movement probably have their own Daniel Ellsberg story. With the 91-year old famous whistleblower’s recent announcement that he has terminal pancreatic cancer, with just months to live, many were re-telling theirs. It was an apt outpouring of admiration, respect and love. So much so, that April 24-30 is now Daniel Ellsberg Week.
My own Ellsberg story is reasonably prosaic. It was spring 1998, and I was newly-arrived in Washington, DC and also newly on the anti-nuclear beat. I had spent 20 years as a journalist, including in Los Angeles, where, for a brief time I had the theoretically enviable task of attending celebrity-studded parties and openings in order to prize a minimal nugget of prose from a sometimes reluctant Hollywood star.
Actually, I have to admit that most of those A-listers (and occasionally Bs) were incredibly accommodating and warm and down-to-earth. It was a job and one I enjoyed in an entirely unfangirlish way. But then I met Daniel Ellsberg.
He was standing off to the side at an activist pizza party in DC. I had just started a new job in an almost entirely unfamiliar field, working at the Safe Energy Communication Council. The event was — and still is (Covid permitting) — held annually by the activist group now called Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, but then still the Military Production Network. I didn’t recognize Ellsberg. Someone pointed him out. I was stunned. Daniel Ellsberg is here with us? At this humble event? Is it really him?
Thus I came to learn that one of the great heroes of our time, who was prepared to sacrifice a lifetime of freedom for a just cause, was indeed a man of quiet humility and one who has filled that lifetime that he views as some sort of unexpected bonus, with endlessly generous gifts of writing, insight, analysis and conviction.
Read MoreUK ignites new depleted uranium weapons debate
UK will send DU weapons to Ukraine prompting “nuclear” rhetoric from Russia
By Linda Pentz Gunter and Maria Arvaniti Sotiropoulou
On March 21, 2023 Britain confirmed that it was sending depleted uranium (DU) weapons to Ukraine , prompting a response from Russian president, Vladimir Putin, that, “If all this happens, Russia will have to respond accordingly, given that the west collectively is already beginning to use weapons with a nuclear component.”
Russian defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, warned that such steps moved us closer to a “nuclear collision.”
Days later, Putin announced he had made an arrangement with neighboring Belarus to station tactical nuclear weapons there.
According to ICAN, Putin “will start training Belarusian personnel to use them” and that “up to 10 Belarusian aircraft are already prepared to use these weapons and Russia would complete the construction of a storage facility for nuclear warheads in Belarus by July.”
The Belarus nuclear weapons deal was more likely a response to the continued expansion of NATO — with Finland now the newest member — rather than retaliation for Britain arming Ukraine with depleted uranium weapons.
However, there are many wrongs in this situation to unpack.
Possessing or threatening the use of nuclear weapons is a violation of the human rights that are embedded in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The use of depleted uranium weapons is also abhorrent, with compelling, if still somewhat anecdotal, evidence from the wars in the Balkans and Iraq/Kuwait to suggest these toxic exposures cause serious long-term health effects.
Despite Putin’s thinly veiled threat mount a nuclear response to DU weapons, the International Campaign to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW) points out that this would be disproportionate because “DU projectiles are not nuclear weapons at all, but conventional weapons of high chemical-radiological toxicity and harmfulness.”
Adds Dr. Frank Boulton of the British IPPNW affiliate, MEDACT: “Much if not most of the toxicity of DU is biological rather than radiological (DU is a heavy metal with biological effects similar to that of lead)”.
The US and NATO used around 980,000 rounds of uranium shells in Iraq and Kuwait, 10,800 in Bosnia, 31,000 in Kosovo , another 7,000 in S. Serbia and Montenegro, and an unknown number in Afghanistan, while Russia also used such weapons in Chechnya.
Read More83 Hiroshimas
American B61-12 nuclear bombs head to Europe
Since last December, the United States has begun to replace its nuclear weapons on European soil with more modern ones. It is replacing the B61-3, B61-4 and B61-7 thermonuclear bombs with the B61-12, which has become the main US and NATO air-launched nuclear weapon.
Boeing designed the bomb’s new guided-tailkit, giving it additional maneuverability and the appearance of more precision. But, it’s a nuclear weapon, and has different yields, from 0.3kt to 50kt. These bombs can detonate beneath the Earth’s surface, increasing their destructiveness against underground targets to the equivalent of a surface-burst weapon with a yield of 1,250 kilotons––the equivalent of 83 Hiroshima bombs.
These nuclear weapons are coming to Europe in a time of heightened nuclear tension on the continent, and even as the majority of people in European host countries want to remove nuclear weapons and join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Combined with the lack of transparency around nuclear sharing, this moment raises questions about whether citizens in the host states would agree to be complicit if these weapons are ever used. Even if the bombs are American and the US retains launch authority, they would most likely be dropped by Europeans. If the US decides to use its nuclear weapons located in Germany, the warheads are loaded onto German planes and a German pilot drops them.
ICAN is a broad, inclusive campaign, focused on mobilizing civil society around the world to support the specific objective of prohibiting and eliminating nuclear weapons.
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$16-million-a-second and no electricity
Exorbitant fusion project is obsolete and might even be inoperable
By Linda Pentz Gunter
As defined by World Nuclear News, the international fusion project known as ITER, exists “to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy. The goal of ITER is to operate at 500 MW (for at least 400 seconds continuously) with 50 MW of plasma heating power input. It appears that an additional 300 MWe of electricity input may be required in operation. No electricity will be generated at ITER.”
Four hundred seconds. No electricity.
ITER, which stands for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, is a collaboration between 35 countries that was first conceived in 1985 and formally agreed to on November 21, 2006. Construction began in 2010 at the Cadarache nuclear complex in southern France.
The official seven group founding members of ITER are China, the European Union (then including the UK, which remains in the project), India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States.
By the time ITER is actually operational — if it ever is — it will have gobbled up billions of dollars. Currently, those cost estimates range wildly between the official ITER figure of $19-23 billion (likely a gross under-estimate) and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) current estimate of $65 billion.
The starting price when the project began was around $6.3 billion.
If the DOE numbers are right, then those 400 seconds will cost $16.25 million a second. Just to prove that fusion power is possible. Without actually delivering anything practical at all to anyone.
Whatever the costs, they are too high to be remotely justifiable, given the end product and the far more compelling and essential competing needs of the world right now.
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