Beyond Nuclear International
Pathway of the peacemakers
Walking the long road from law to justice with the Kings Bay Plowshares
By Paul Magno
For the past two-and-a-half years it has been my privilege to support the Kings Bay Plowshares. They are seven disarmament activists who entered the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia by night on April 4, 2018 — the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s martyrdom — to confront the Trident nuclear weapon system and engage in an act of disarmament. The seven poured human blood on signs and missile models, unfurled peace banners and used household tools to begin symbolic disarmament of Trident, a submarine based first strike nuclear missile, termed by the Navy as a “strategic” weapon.
The seven have subsequently been charged and convicted in a jury trial of three felonies and a misdemeanor in federal court. All but one have been sentenced, to date, by Federal Judge Lisa Godbey Wood in Brunswick, Georgia. Their legal odyssey has been protracted, in part by important legal proceedings and in part by the limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
My invitation to walk with these peacemakers came in 2018 as an outgrowth of longstanding personal friendships with each of them. It also came as a result of my own experience and commitment to explaining and supporting the basic idea of these Plowshares actions, as they have proliferated a hundred-fold since 1980.
Left to right: Kings Bay Plowshares defendants, Fr. Steve Kelly, Clare Grady and Martha Hennessy. (Photos courtesy of KBP7.)
Patrick O’Neill, a participant in the Kings Bay action, and I were involved together with six others in the 1984 Pershing Plowshares action at Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin) in Orlando, Florida. I also served as a primary support person for the three Transform Now Plowshares activists who similarly acted at the Y12 nuclear weapons facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee in 2012. They won a federal appeal of their sabotage conviction and were released from prison after two years.
Read MoreDear people of Anglesey
Don’t be led up the garden path on the nuclear road to nowhere
By Linda Pentz Gunter
Dear people of Anglesey:
The announcement that a US consortium, consisting of American companies Bechtel, Southern Company and Westinghouse, could take over the Wylfa B nuclear power project in North Wales, may sound like a much-needed jobs panacea, but it is another cruel joke on the people of Anglesey.
Horizon/Hitachi’s legacy of broken promises, destroyed homes and landscapes, and a 100% failure to deliver the promised two-reactor Wylfa B project, is already a bitter pill. Inking a new nuclear deal with the American consortium would turn it into a poison one. Trust me, we know. We’ve already swallowed it.
Here in the US, the track record of Bechtel, Southern Company, Westinghouse and the AP1000 reactor design, now being proposed for Wylfa B, should send a dire warning to Wales.
Westinghouse’s AP1000 two-reactor project at the V.C. Summer site in South Carolina ballooned to $9 billion in costs and bilked ratepayers of $2 billion before it was abandoned in 2017 after a 9-year debacle. The project’s director, Stephen Byrne, pled guilty to a massive nuclear conspiracy that defrauded ratepayers, deceived regulators and misled shareholders, but not before pocketing a tidy $6 million for himself.
The company’s former CEO, Kevin Marsh, has agreed to plead guilty to federal conspiracy fraud charges, will go to prison for at least 18 months, and will forfeit $5 million in connection with the $10 billion nuclear fiasco.
Read MoreEvery second counts
Opportunities to listen to Hibakusha are diminishing as they age and pass
From Peace Boat
The 75th anniversaries of the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 2020 renewed focus on the push for the elimination of nuclear weapons from the humanitarian perspective. 75 years is not a short period of time, but we still have the urgent task of nuclear abolition.
Among the many approaches, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapon (TPNW) adopted by the United Nations in 2017 is unique in referring to victims of the use of nuclear weapons (Hibakusha) as well as of testing, and focusing on the inhumane aspects of these weapons.
Over the anniversary days in August 2020 the TPNW gained four ratifications, and on October 25 the 50th ratification was made, the threshhold for the treaty to enter into force.
Still, however, the world faces the grave threat of the existence of nuclear weapons and a nuclear arms race, despite the 75-year-long plea for their total abolition by Hibakusha, survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as Global Hibakusha – those impacted by nuclear testing, uranium mining and other nuclear development around the world.
The Hibakusha themselves have prevented the repeat of nuclear war. Yet as their average age is now over 83 and many have already passed away, the opportunities to listen to their first-hand stories are becoming less and less every day. We, therefore, must continue honoring the Hibakusha by celebrating their lives and work. To honor them we must not simply remember them, but we must discuss possible actions we can take together and individually.
Read MoreThe next ‘Great Tide’
Exposed to rising tides and storm surges, Britain’s nuclear plants stand in harm’s way
By Andrew Blowers
‘It was now that wind and sea in concert leaped forward to their triumph.’
Hilda Grieve: The Great Tide: The Story of the 1953 Flood Disaster in Essex. County Council of Essex, 1959
The Great Tide of 31 January/1 February 1953 swept down the east coast of England, carrying death and destruction in its wake. Communities were unaware and unprepared as disaster struck in the middle of the night, drowning over 300 in England, in poor and vulnerable communities such as Jaywick and Canvey Island on the exposed and low-lying Essex coast.
Although nothing quite so devastating has occurred in the 67 years since, the 1953 floods remain a portent of what the effects of climate change may bring in the years to come.
Since that largely unremembered disaster, flood defences, communications and emergency response systems have been put in place all along the east coast of England, although it will only be a matter of time before the sea reclaims some low-lying areas.
Among the most prominent infrastructure on the East Anglian coast are the nuclear power stations at Sizewell in Suffolk and Bradwell in Essex, constructed and operated in the decades following the Great Tide.
Sizewell A (capacity 0.25 gigawatts), one of the early Magnox stations, operated for over 40 years, from 1966 to 2006. Sizewell B (capacity 1.25 gigawatts), the only operating pressurised water reactor in the UK, was commissioned in 1995 and is currently expected to continue operating until 2055.
Further down the coast, Bradwell (0.25 gigawatts) was one of the first (Magnox) nuclear stations in the UK and operated for 40 years from 1962 to 2002, becoming, in 2018, the first to be decommissioned and enter into ‘care and maintenance’.
Read MoreAll casked up with nowhere to go
Why we shouldn’t be talking about nuclear waste “disposal”
By Linda Pentz Gunter
(Note: Please join a webinar on nuclear waste hosted by the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Washington, DC, and moderated by Beyond Nuclear, to discuss the World Nuclear Waste Report with its editor, Arne Jungjohann, and US chapter author and former Nuclear Regulatory Commission chair, Allison Macfarlane, on December 3 from 1pm-2:30pm Eastern US time. Click here to register.)
Let’s get one thing clear right off the bat. You don’t “dispose” of nuclear waste.
The ill-suited, now canceled, but never quite dead radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain was not a “disposal” site.
The radioactive mud being dredged from the sea bed at the Hinkley C nuclear site in the UK, is not going to get “disposed of” in Cardiff Grounds (a mile off the Welsh coast).
When Germany dumped radioactive waste in drums into the salt mines of Asse, it wasn’t “disposed” of.
Taking nuclear waste to Texas and New Mexico border towns and parking it there indefinitely is not “disposal”.
To talk about radioactive waste “disposal” is simply dishonest. It’s disingenuous at best and deliberately misleading at worst.
In Cardiff Bay, that radioactive waste will get “dispersed.” At Asse, the waste leaked out of the barrels and “dispersed” into water that has flooded the site.
At Yucca Mountain, were it to get a renewed green light, water will eventually carry off those radioactive particles, sending them into groundwater and drinking water downstream of the dump.
Read MorePowering down — and out
Closing Indian Point will speed action on climate change, not hamper it
By Marilyn Elie and Linda Pentz Gunter
Next spring, the last working nuclear reactor at the Indian Point Energy Center on the Hudson River, 30 miles from Manhattan, will power down. At least 20 million people in the 50-mile radius of the 40-year-old nuclear generator can sleep more soundly. Future generations will thank us for no longer producing high-level radioactive waste that will bedevil the country and our community for years to come.
But, as that April 30, 2021 Unit 3 closing date approaches, some have called for New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, to keep Indian Point open. (Unit 2 closed permanently on April 30, 2020. Unit 1 closed on October 31, 1974 due to serious technical failures.)
The first thing to note is that the governor has no legal authority to either close or open a nuclear reactor. And while the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) can order a reactor closed in case of danger, it cannot order the license holder to keep a reactor running. That’s a decision taken by the reactor owner, in this case, by Entergy, which owns the Indian Point plant.
In New York’s deregulated energy market, corporations close down generators that are not making a profit — and that is exactly what Entergy has done with all six of its nuclear reactors in the northeast. The company is retreating south, where they have a monopoly and do not have to worry about competition.
The chief — and really only — argument made in favor of keeping Indian Point running is the false notion that its output will automatically be replaced by natural gas, which is of course counterproductive to addressing the urgency of climate change.
Read More
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