Beyond Nuclear International

Humanitarian crisis would be worsened if nuclear plants hit

Introduction: There are many views about what the next steps should be to address the ever greater humanitarian tragedy in Ukraine, but virtual unanimity in favor of an immediate end to the war. Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has made frequent pleas for a “no-fly zone.” But what would this mean?

On March 17, US Represenative Ilhan Omar said, “As we support Ukraine in their fight against Russia’s brutal invasion, we must avoid the knee-jerk calls that risk nuclear war. A no-fly zone is not simply declared, it must be militarily enforced. It would mean the beginning of World War III. We must reject this completely.” As Code Pink lays out below, a no-fly zone would likely escalate the war exponentially, with the US and NATO involved directly in aerial combat with Russia. That could rain down damage on nuclear power plants indiscriminately. None of the four nuclear power plants sites in Ukraine was built to withstand protracted bombardment.

While the Code Pink article does not address the specific risks to nuclear power plants should a “no-fly zone” be declared (unlikely at this time), it lays out both a preview of such an escalation and a plea for peace, alongside a perhaps uncomfortable short history lesson about the contribution of the US and NATO to the current crisis. While the solutions offered by Code Pink are their own, neither Code Pink nor Beyond Nuclear exonerates in any way the atrocities currently being committed against civilians in a country under invasion. But the precarious situation, poised for a potential escalation — rather than cessation — of war, points up once again the extreme liabilities of nuclear power plants, whose dangers are unequalled by any other power source.

By Medea Benjamin and Code Pink

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky just addressed both chambers of Congress. He asked for a no-fly zone — a situation in which U.S. fighter jets would shoot down Russian planes — and for MiG-29 fighter jets to be transferred from Poland to Ukraine (the U.S. has so far declined to be a part of such a transfer as it would be received by Russia as U.S. combat entry into the war).

Following Zelensky’s address, President Biden approved $800 million in new aid for Ukraine, bringing the total U.S. assistance to Ukraine to $1 billion in just this past week, and will include Javelin anti-tank and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. 

Standing ovations, such as the one Zelensky just got from Congress, are great, but what Ukraine really needs is vigorous negotiations to reach a ceasefire deal. To this end, we are calling on the U.S. to enter the negotiations by outlining the agreements and compromises the U.S. should support. Add your name.

New report looks at how medical services could never cope in a nuclear war

We have already seen how quickly overwhelmed emergency rooms, hospital wards and intensive care units quickly became when faced with the pandemic brought on by the Covid-19 virus. Now, the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) brings us its latest report — No place to hide: nuclear weapons and the collapse of health care systems — which looks at how the healthcare systems in 10 major cities would cope in the event of a nuclear war. 

The study models the detonation of one 100-kiloton airburst nuclear explosion over major cities in each of the nine nuclear-armed states and Germany, which hosts U.S. nuclear weapons on its territory. It then examines how many hospital beds, doctors, nurses and where information is available, ICU beds and burn care centers would be left to treat hundreds of thousands to over one million injured people. What follows is the Executive Summary. Download the full report.

Nuclear-armed states may prepare to use nuclear weapons but they can never adequately prepare for the humanitarian consequences of their use. Examining the existing health infrastructure available to respond to the explosion of a moderately-sized nuclear weapon over nine cities in nuclear-armed states and one non-nuclear armed state’s capital makes this point tragically clear.

A nuclear war would realistically involve many nuclear weapons targeting many cities in a country, creating an enormous humanitarian catastrophe impossible for any health care system to deal with — one that could potentially lead to the end of civilization as we know it. But if even just one average-sized nuclear weapon were to be detonated over a major city today, the immediate health impact would be disastrous beyond the ability of any nation to effectively respond.

This report uses publicly available information about hospitals, doctors, nurses and the NUKEMAP simulator to evaluate the immediate health response capacity to treat victims of a 100 kiloton airburst nuclear weapon detonation. This NUKEMAP model does not include the impact of mass fire or fallout after a nuclear detonation.

While the consequences of this model varied from city to city based on population density and geographic size, the data is clear: even without calculating for the mass fires or fallout caused by a nuclear blast, none of these cities would have anywhere near the sufficient healthcare capacity to respond to a nuclear explosion over their city. There would not be enough doctors, nurses, hospital beds or intensive care unit (ICU) beds – even assuming that all available medical professionals are adequately trained in emergency medicine and that every bed listed in each of these cities that is not destroyed during the nuclear attack is unoccupied.

Under this scenario in New Delhi, for example, roughly 50,000 beds would have to accommodate more than two and a half million injured people. Several cities lack needed burn beds: Paris has nine; London two.

After the bomb’s destruction of medical personnel and infrastructure, cities would be overwhelmed. In Washington D.C., over 500,000 people would be killed or injured by the blast. In Berlin, one-third of hospitals would be destroyed.