In a major address in Prague on April 5, 2009, the newly-elected U.S. President, Barack Obama, proclaimed “clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” On January 24, 2013, however, Senator John Kerry, speaking at Senate confirmation hearings on his nomination to become U.S. secretary of state, declared that a nuclear weapons-free world was no more than “an aspiration,” adding that “we’ll be lucky if we get there in however many centuries.” Has there been a change in Obama administration policy over the past four years?
There are certainly indications that this might be the case. Read more…
Last week, I made fun of an advisory that appeared in the Greater Kashmir newspaper, describing steps people could take to protect themselves during a nuclear attack. I noted the similarities with the fallout shelter schemes and “duck and cover” drills promoted in the US in the 1950s. With the Oslo conference on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons only a few weeks away, with an entire panel given over to a critical examination of preparedness and response, I got to wondering what, if anything, the US had done to update its own nuclear civil defense plans in recent times.
What I found was a 40-page interagency document called “Nuclear Detonation Preparedness: Communicating in the Immediate Aftermath,” which was approved for “interim use” in September 2010. The document draws upon the combined resources of 13 federal agencies and the American Red Cross to provide a set of messages that can be delivered by local, state, and national authorities in the event of a nuclear explosion. Read more…
“Duck and cover” Indian style
India now has its own T. K. Jones, although we may never know the name of the actual person in the Jammu and Kashmir Civil Defence and State Disaster Response Force who wrote an advisory on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack that was published in the Greater Kashmir newspaper this week.
Jones, for those who didn’t get as far as the Cold War in high school history, was a Deputy Under Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration, who preached that nuclear war would not be as bad as people thought. (He was right. Most people, then as now, had no idea how bad it would really be.) His infamous line — “If there are enough shovels to go around, everybody’s going to make it” — was adapted by journalist Robert Scheer for the title of a book debunking nuclear civil defense. [1] Read more…
IPPNW to President Obama: Stop subcritical nuclear tests!
[The United States conducted a subcritical nuclear test on December 5. Subcritical tests do not involve a chain reaction leading to an actual nuclear explosion and are legal because of a loophole in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the US has signed but not ratified. Nevertheless, they undermine one of the purposes of the CTBT, which is to prevent the development of new new warhead designs. IPPNW has sent the following letter to President Obama, protesting this most recent test and calling for a cessation of subcritical testing in the future.]
December 18, 2012
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC 20001
Dear President Obama:
As fellow Nobel Peace Laureates who share your desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons and the danger they pose to our common survival, we would like to congratulate you on your election to a second term as President. We encourage you to use the next four years to make rapid and significant progress toward the global elimination of the only weapons capable of extinguishing life on Earth.
With that goal in mind, we want to express serious concern with the continued program of subcritical nuclear tests that have been conducted by the US since it signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996. We understand that you have received letters from the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and from groups of atomic bomb survivors protesting the most recent subcritical test on December 5—the fourth such test since you took office—and we join them in urging you to cancel this unnecessary and provocative practice.
While subcritical tests are permitted under compromise language that was meant to facilitate ratification of the CTBT by the Senate— but failed to do so—they go against the intent of the Treaty, which is to ensure that no new nuclear weapons will be designed and that no new capabilities will be developed for weapons that already exist. The nuclear-weapon states—and the US in particular—have a significant technological edge with regard to computer simulation of nuclear tests, derived from decades of actual test explosions. This advantage is not lost upon the rest of the world, which sees any such tests, with or without a nuclear chain reaction, as a means to extend and perpetuate the role of nuclear weapons in security policy, and not as a step toward disarmament.
The message subcritical testing sends to other States is that nuclear weapons are here for the long term and that their designs can be modified and enhanced simply by making use of a loophole in a treaty to which the US says it is otherwise committed. At the very least, this is a demoralizing message for the large majority of States who have made nuclear disarmament an urgent priority. For at least a few who may be questioning the wisdom of remaining non-nuclear in the future, subcritical tests are seen as a hypocritical practice that undermines the arguments for non-proliferation.
While nuclear disarmament will require complex and careful negotiation among many States, you can end future US subcritical tests with the stroke of a pen. We urge you to take this step without delay.
Pushing the States to the Negotiating Table
In Helsinki at this time of year, the sun rises just after 9am and sets again at 3pm. Our Finnish hosts told us that we were lucky that the snow had come already, to lighten up the all-pervading darkness by reflecting what little light there is. Already, after only a short time, the snow was very deep, much of it shovelled up by bulldozers to form piles shoulder high by the side of the road. There was something magic about it, like we were somehow closer to Christmas by being there. Indeed, Christmas filled all the restaurants and bars with office parties, people drunkenly swaying arm in arm on the street, or singing to the stars.
Snowy Helsinki should have been the setting for an historic conference to discuss the establishment of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. The date was set for today, December 17th, to begin perhaps one of the most important negotiations for peace and security in the Middle East. But the conference rooms remain empty, because the governments did not come. Read more…
Progress in preventing nuclear terrorism
Terrorists who wanted to kill 100,000 people and destroy a city could build a simple nuclear bomb, without much difficulty, by obtaining some Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU). As little as 20 kg of HEU would provide the fuel for a possible bomb to even a fairly unsophisticated terrorist group. I probably could do it myself with the help of a few engineers and someone who understands how to use explosives.
The simplest way to get access to HEU is to steal the stuff from a research reactor or a reactor that makes isotopes for medical use. Many of these reactors are guarded by a couple of guys with semiautomatic rifles, who could be overpowered or bribed. Obtaining fuel in this way would more likely lead to a usable weapon than stealing a bomb, which could not be made to work without codes and, usually, a critical gadget for ignition. Read more…
IPPNW Austria and IPPNW Zambia are engaged in a research project in Lusaka, Zambia designed to improve care and support for victims of interpersonal violence in Zambia, and suggest guidelines for best practice for other sub-Saharan African countries.
30 Austrian medical students are participating in the project in Zambia along with their Zambian medical student counterparts. Training and supervision are being conducted by senior Austrian and Zambian medical leaders. The one year project has been underway since August 2012. Preliminary findings suggest widespread lack of awareness of social and other support services that are available to victims. An upcoming communications outreach program to hopefully improve this will soon take place with all medical and social service partners closely involved. Read more…
Is it time to improve nuclear disaster preparedness?
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) proposes to do just that, following a consultation among 16 national member societies more than a year after the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster.
The world’s largest humanitarian organization announced in May that it would establish “a resource centre offering specialist advice on nuclear disaster preparedness, along with chemical and biological hazards.” The center, the IFRC said, will consider “how national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies can be active in helping to protect communities, by raising awareness, helping to manage evacuation if needed and providing psychosocial support and health monitoring in the event of a nuclear disaster.”
The IFRC decided to take this initiative, according to its President, Tadateru Konoé, because people “cannot rely solely on governments and on the nuclear industry, which has a vested interest in telling them that everything is safe and nothing can go wrong. It has and it could again, anywhere and at any time.” Read more…
Ecocide – a catastrophic consequence of nuclear weapons
“Killer” Lake Karachay, known as the most polluted place on Earth, near the Mayak nuclear plant in Chelyabinsk, reportedly has enough radiation in it to kill a human being in an hour. Image: Google
Over the many years that we have been trying to educate the public on the catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons we have mostly concentrated on the destruction of human life and health, not surprisingly, as we are a physician’s organisation.
Recently, IPPNW has begun to focus on the environmental effects, particularly on the climate, of a nuclear war, limited to one region but affecting the whole world and the knock-on effects for human life and health. The work with climatologists Alan Robock and Brian Toon has enabled us to show that a relatively “small” nuclear exchange could cause millions of people to die from starvation – this we have termed “nuclear famine”. Read more…
First Committee hears humanitarian call for nuclear abolition
by Ira Helfand
The campaign to build support for a nuclear weapons convention took a big step forward at the UN Monday when a group of 34 nations and the Holy See released a joint statement calling for nuclear abolition.
The statement said, in part:
The only way to guarantee (that nuclear weapons are never used) is the total, irreversible and verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons, under effective international control, including through the full implementation of Article VI of the NPT. All States must intensify their efforts to outlaw nuclear weapons and achieve a world free of nuclear weapons. Civil society plays a crucial role in raising the awareness about the devastating humanitarian consequences as well as the critical IHL [International Humanitarian Law] implications of nuclear weapons.”
Bimal Khadka
Bjorn Hilt
Charles K. Johnson
Gunnar Westberg
IPPNW
John Loretz
Lawrence Wittner
Maria Valenti
mollymcgint
Sue Wareham
Tilman Ruff
Tim Wright
Xanthe Hall
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