Beyond Nuclear International
An act of love
Lyubov Kudryashova loves nature. Now she may be jailed for defending it
By Jack Cohen-Joppa
In Russian, her name means love. And it’s true. Lyubov Kudryashova loves the broad valley of Russia’s Tobol River, where it meanders out of Kazakhstan into the Kurgan Oblast. Her grandfather is buried there, she was born there, and she’s raised three sons there. As far as she knows, her ancestors have always lived there.
There, below the southern Urals, frigid continental winters give way to spring floods that inundate a landscape of oxbow lakes, wetlands, forests and fields. The waters sustain a large aquifer that Russia recognizes as a strategic reserve of fresh water.
“We, native people of the land, are against a barbaric attitude towards nature,” she says. “But our voices are too low.”
Which is why the passion of this campaigning environmentalist and entrepreneur has been met with fabricated charges of encouraging terrorism via the internet. She’s now on trial in a military court in Yekaterinburg, six hours away from her small town.
Lyubov Kudryashova (above left). At right, Measurements of radioactive levels in the vicinity of the mining well of Dalur corporation show elevated levels of 8,04 micro Sieverlt per hour (mSv/hr). October 2020. (Photos courtesy of Ms. Kuddryashova.)
But Lyubov Kudryashova will not be spurned. “My ecological activity is going to continue. Well, I guess till the day the unjust court could takes away my freedom.”
Read MoreTrespassers on Native land
Ian Zabarte’s long fight for Western Shoshone justice
By Linda Pentz Gunter
In the United States, a school day — at least one that used to involve attending in person, remember those? — begins with the Pledge of Allegiance.
In Australia, New Zealand and Canada, it more typically begins with a land acknowledgement. And not just a school day. As Teen Vogue recently explained it to its young readership, it also happens at meetings and even hockey games.
“An acknowledgment might be short: ‘This event is taking place on traditional Chickasaw land.’ Or it might be longer and more specific: ‘We are gathered today on the occupied territory of the Musqueam people, who have stewarded this land for generations,’” explained the Teen Vogue article.
It happens occasionally in the US, too, but usually at rallies — and now on activist Zoom meetings — rather than at official events. However, it shouldn’t become another trendy thing we all do to feel better and politically correct. It needs to come with meaningful action.
“Although land acknowledgements are powerful statements, they are only meaningful when they are coupled with authentic and sustained relationships with Indigenous communities and community-informed actions,” writes Michigan State University’s Native American Institute’s Guide to Land Acknowledgment.
That relationship has historically been far from meaningful. Instead, it is a dark and bloody one, leading eventually to a slow genocide, made infinitely worse once the White man had split the atom and discovered the bomb.
When the military industrial complex showed up in Shoshone country to test its atomic bombs, or excavate a mountain for a potential radioactive waste dump, they were there “as trespassers,” says Ian Zabarte, Principle Man of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians, and this year’s winner of Beyond Nuclear’s Dr. Judith H. Johnsrud “Unsung Hero” Award.
“The United States gave away Shoshone property before there was the United States here,” Zabarte explained during a recent on-line teach-in about uranium and Indigenous rights.
Read MoreEuropean Union should join ban treaty
Europe would face the greatest level of destruction in the event of a nuclear conflict
By Erkki Tuomioja
In July 2017, an overwhelming majority of the UN General Assembly adopted a landmark global agreement to ban nuclear weapons, known as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Ratification by the fiftieth country took place this year, on the day the United Nations celebrated its 75th anniversary. The treaty will now enter into force on January 22. Those countries that have ratified the treaty include Austria, Ireland, and Malta – three member states of the European Union – and it is to be hoped that others in Europe will soon follow.
Finland did not participate in the negotiations leading up to the treaty, and it did not vote for it. Public opinion is, however, in favour of the treaty, with one poll showing that 84 per cent of Finns would support signing up. Three parties in Finland’s coalition government also want the country to join. Foreign ministry officials have argued in hearings of the Finnish parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee that joining would weaken the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – a faulty reasoning that the Committee unanimously rejected.
A cruel loss
Covid-19 takes the life of Russian anti-nuclear activist at just 40
By Linda Pentz Gunter
It’s hard enough to be an anti-nuclear activist in Russia. As stories on this website have already illustrated, it takes guts and persistence and an immense amount of unwavering integrity.
Some have had to flee the country for their own safety. But one who stayed, and faced the intimidation and arrests, was Rashid Alimov from Greenpeace Russia.
Now a more deadly force has taken Alimov, at just 40 years old, when he succumbed on December 17, 2020 to covid-19.
Exactly one year earlier, Alimov had stood in protest “in the center of Saint Petersburg (see headline picture). Later the same day, two police officers together with six other people without uniform detained Alimov in front of his house. He then faced charges and a substantial fine. Charges were later dropped,” wrote the Russian Social Ecological Union in their report and our article, Standing up to Rosatom.
A journalist, before he became an activist, Alimov helped found the Russian-language environmental magazine, Ecology and Rights, before joining Greenpeace.
Read MoreUninhabitable
Booklet by citizen scientists uncovers true extent of radioactive contamination in Japan’s soil and food
From Minna-no Data Site, a citizen’s collaborative radioactivity monitoring project
Minna-no Data Site (Everyone’s Data Site) is a network of 30 citizens’ radioactivity measurement laboratories from all over Japan.
After the 2011 Fukushima accident, many independent citizen-operated radioactivity measurement laboratories sprang up across Japan.
In September 2013, a website called “Minna-no Data Site” was established in an effort to integrate all of the radioactivity measurement data into a common platform and disseminate accurate information in an easy-to-understand format.
As of July 2019, the Data Site website is home to approximately 16,000 cases of food measurement data, more than 3,400 cases of soil measurement data, and 1,700 cases of environmental samples (ash, river water, etc).
This English language version of the book is a digest version of our bestselling Japanese book, Illustration: 17 Prefecture Radioactivity Map & Close Analysis which was self-published in November 2018, and was awarded the Japan Congress of Journalists Prize in July 2019.
Read MoreDid a research reactor in Jordan leak?
When a whistleblower sounded the alarm, Basel Burgan reposted, then retracted it. But he may still go to jail.
Jordan has no commercial nuclear power plants although it had aspired to having two 1,000 MWe nuclear power units in operation by 2025. However, these were canceled and the country is now considering the use of small modular reactors. X-energy, a company based in Rockville, Maryland, signed a letter of intent (LOI) in November 2019 with Jordan’s Atomic Energy Commission as part of that country’s plan to develop a civilian nuclear power program.
By Jack Cohen-Joppa
Basel Burgan, the head of a successful family pharmacy business and a prominent environmental champion in Jordan, is accused of cyber crimes and spreading rumors “that damaged a government institution.” Hearings in the case against him began in September, continuing every other week. Unless the case is dismissed, and barring additional delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a verdict by next spring could lead to a sentence of 6-24 months in prison for Burgan.
Burgan is trained as a pharmacist, and in 1992 he became the owner of the family pharmacy business his father started in 1952. Since then, he has published articles about nuclear power, environmental preservation, sustainable energy, and other topics in Arabic and in English in Jordan’s press and he has appeared many times on Jordanian television as an expert on environmental issues.
When the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission was established in 2007 to promote uranium mining and the construction of five large reactors to make the country a net energy exporter, Burgan founded the National Committee Against the Nuclear Project. The National Committee met some success as only two large reactors were ordered, then cancelled, and despite uranium exploration and mining contracts signed with French, Saudi Arabian and Russian agencies, no mines have been opened.
Burgan’s commitment to sustainability led to him co-founding Karak Star Recycling in 2015, and pioneer the paper and carton recycling industry in the kingdom. The enterprise now converts tons of paper waste each day into poultry egg trays and cartons.
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