Beyond Nuclear International
Radioactive rail wreck
Dangerous nuclear waste casks should stay off roads and rails
By Laura Watchempino
If the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) conclusion that it’s safe to move spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power plants across the country to a proposed storage facility in Lea County sounds vanilla-coated, it’s because the draft environmental impact statement for a Consolidated Interim Storage Facility submitted by Holtec International did not address how the casks containing the spent fuel would be transported to New Mexico.
It’s likely the casks would be transported primarily by rail using aging infrastructure in need of constant repair. But our rail systems were not built to support the great weight of these transport casks containing thin-wall fuel storage canisters.
Nor was the potential for cracked or corroded canisters to leak radiation studied because an earlier NRC Generic EIS for the Continued Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel assumed damaged fuel storage canisters would be detected during an intermediary dry transfer system or a pool.
But Holtec’s proposal only addresses a new destination for the high-level nuclear waste – not the removal and transport of the fuel storage canisters from nuclear power plants to New Mexico.
Read MoreCuba, Chernobyl and COVID-19
Cuba’s doctors have been to the rescue before — to save Chernobyl’s children
By Linda Pentz Gunter
“We do not give what we have in excess; we share all that we have,” said Dr. Julio Medina, director of a Cuban medical program outside Havana that treated children from Chernobyl, in a May 2009 article in The Guardian. “It is simple.”
Today, as Cuban doctors travel the world treating the patients of COVD-19, it is still simple. It is, as the Chernobyl program was before it, “a commitment of solidarity.”
Yet Cuba is not without cases of the viral pandemic at home. In fact, the UK-based Cuba Solidarity Campaign (CSC) recently set up a fundraiser to “provide urgent medical aid to help Cuba during the coronavirus pandemic,” and specifically to purchase “ventilators, testing kits and personal protective equipment to support Cuban health workers in the fight against COVID-19 on the island.”
The CSC, Code Pink, actor Danny Glover and others are calling on the Nobel Committee, via a petition, to award the Cuban doctors — known as the Henry Reeve Brigade — the Nobel Peace Prize, not only for their efforts today, but for their previous rescue missions when ebola struck in West Africa, and cholera in Haiti.
The story of Cuba’s involvement in helping the children of Chernobyl, however, is less well known if at all. It was a free program that lasted an astonishing 21 years, beginning in 1990. In 2019 it resumed, this time to help “the sons and daughters of the victims, who are showing ailments similar to those of their parents,” according to Miguel Faure Polloni, writing in Resumen.
What caused radioactive releases from Russia?
If plume is so “harmless”, why deny it?
By Linda Pentz Gunter
What happened last month in Russia?
Beginning in early June, sensors in Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands began detecting unusually high levels of cesium-134, cesium-137, ruthenium-103, cobalt-60 and iodine-131 coming from Western Russia and passing across Europe. By mid-June, monitors in Finland showed similar readings.
Because these are manmade isotopes and do not occur naturally, they have clearly come from a nuclear installation. And because the levels are far higher than normal, these releases are also clearly the result of some kind of accident.
But an accident to what?
The Russians so far insist there is no problem with their nuclear power plants in the Baltic region —- Kola and Leningrad — the geographical origin of the release. But Friends of the Earth Norway is not so ready to accept this as fact. “We are concerned that we do not know the origin of the radionuclides,” the organization said in a statement quoted by the Russian NGO website, Activatica. “We are concerned that the Leningrad and Kola NPPs cannot be excluded as potential sources.”
Vitaliy Servetnik, co-chair of the Russian Social Ecological Union, also does not rule out the Kola and Leningrad nuclear power plants as the source, pointing out that more than 70% of Russia’s aging nuclear power plants are operating well beyond their design basis timeframes.
Read MoreThe true story behind ‘Z’
Immortalized in a fictional film, the real Lambrakis is unforgotten by the Greek peace movement
By Maria Arvaniti Sotiropoulu
On 27 May every year, the Greek Affiliate of IPPNW and the Peace movement in Greece commemorate the anniversary of the assassination of Grigoris Lambrakis in Thessaloniki in 1963.
The life and death of Grigoris Lambrakis inspired the author Vassilis Vassilikos to write the political novel “Z”. The title stands for the first letter of the Greek word “Zi” which means “[He] Lives!”. In 1969, the Greek-French film director Costa-Gavras made the film Z, which found international acclaim. “Z” appeared in graffiti all over Athens and became an international symbol for peace and democracy. Unfortunately, the younger generation of peace activists today know little of the life and death of Lambrakis which could serve as an example to us all.
Grigoris Lambrakis (3 April 1912 – 27 May 1963) was a medical doctor, a Member of Parliament, an athlete and a member of the faculty of the School of Medicine at the University of Athens. He is also a peace martyr and inspiration for the international peace and anti-nuclear movement.
Born into a poor family in the small village of Kerasitsa, Lambrakis was a champion athlete throughout his life. He held the Greek record for long jump for twenty-three years (1936–1959). He also earned several gold medals in the Balkan Games. He competed in the men’s long jump and the men’s triple jump at the 1936 Summer Olympics. He used athletics to promote, in difficult times, the brotherhood between Balkan nations, and he was a close friend of the Turkish champion in triple jump, Tafic.
During the Axis occupation of Greece from 1941 to 1944, Lambrakis participated actively in the Greek Resistance. In 1943 he set up the Union of Greek Athletes and organized regular competitions. He used the revenue from these games to fund public food banks for the starving population.
Read MoreSeeing stars
Did blotting out the night sky dull our drive to stop climate change?
By Linda Pentz Gunter
Our skies are clear. For now. But not at night. Light pollution still blocks out the universe for most of us. If we could see the night sky, would we regain our sense of wonder in our world, and work harder to save it?
Many decades ago I went camping with my family on a wild and lonely beach on the Camargue in the South of France. There was nothing there but sea and sand, bordered by dunes and a reed-lined canal. No cafes or hotels, no facilities, no lights. Nothing.
On one particularly clear night, my father encouraged us all to float on our backs in the warm sea and look up at the dazzling array of stars in the deep night sky. “What do you think about when you look up there?” he asked us.
My stepmother said she felt overwhelmed at how small and insignificant we are in that vast and endless unknown and how frightening that was. My father, ever the scientist, said he felt amazed at how much humans did already know, and continued to discover, about the universe and how exciting that was.
Today, a depressing “two-thirds of the world’s population — including 99 percent of people living in the continental United States and western Europe — no longer experience a truly dark night, a night untouched by artificial electric light.”
That revelation, among many, is contained in the lyrical and literary non-fiction work, The End of Night. Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light. It is written by Paul Bogard, who teaches creative non-fiction writing, a skill reflected in the vivid style of this work, which is no dry text book.
Follow the Yellowcake Road
A journey from Tokyo to Mirrar country
By Alexander Brown
On 19 July 2019 I boarded a plane in Tokyo and headed to Cairns for two weeks of fieldwork connected with my research on transnational activism in the Asia-Pacific. My purpose was to learn about the pathways via which uranium travels from Australia to Japan and the resistance movements and grassroots connections which have formed along the way.
Prior to the Fukushima disaster, Australia supplied approximately one third of Japan’s uranium needs, something I first became aware of when anti-nuclear activists from Australia came to Japan in 2012 for the Global Conference for a Nuclear Power Free World.
Since that time I have pondered the nature of the nuclear relationship between my birthplace and my second home in Japan. After delving into the history of this relationship from my dusty office in Tokyo, it was time to make the physical journey along the yellowcake road and see where it might take me.
In Cairns I met with local Japanese-Australian people who organise Smile with Kids, a registered charity which brings junior high school students from Fukushima prefecture, whose lives have been disrupted in multiple ways by the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, for a ten-day visit to Cairns.
The children’s visit happened to coincide with a visit to the city by Peace Boat, a cruise ship with a difference which holds peace and sustainable development education activities onboard during its global and regional voyages.
The ship is part of an NGO which campaigns around these issues and has played a significant role in fighting nuclear power in post-Fukushima Japan. Local activists took advantage of this fortuitous timing to organise a welcome event for Peace Boat passengers and staff at which the Fukushima children spoke about their experiences growing up in the wake of the nuclear disaster.
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