Nukewatch

Working for a nuclear-free future since 1979

by Leave a Comment

US Nuclear Weapons “Sharing” in Europe

Protest and Resistance

By John LaForge
Winter Quarterly 2018-19

Regular readers will recall that for two summers in a row, Nukewatch has organized a delegation to Germany made up of US peace activists, and joined forces with Germany’s nation-wide campaign to oust the remaining 20 US nuclear weapons from Germany’s Büchel Air Force Base.

Under a program called “nuclear sharing,” the United States positions nuclear gravity bombs known as B61s at six NATO air force bases in five European states, one base each in Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Turkey, and two bases in Italy.

Military pilots in these NATO states reportedly train for loading the US nuclear bombs on their own fighter jets and are prepared to use them on orders from the president of the United States.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was asked last spring whether NATO’s “nuclear sharing,” was becoming “obsolete.” Speaking at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, April 5, 2018, Mr. Stoltenberg said:

Nuclear sharing, for those who don’t know … the United States, they have the weapons. But then other NATO allies, for instance, deliver the planes that can carry the nuclear bombs. So, then different nations work together to provide a nuclear capability. That’s nuclear sharing…. [I]t’s not obsolete. … I cannot comment on which countries are a part of our nuclear sharing arrangements…”

Protest and Resistance

German activists have worked for 20 years to see the bombs removed from Büchel, and hundreds have been engaged in protest and nonviolent resistance at the base.

Hundreds of activists have participated in the campaign “20 Weeks for 20 Bombs,” a 5-month peace camp organized by Nonviolent Action for Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (GAAA) which is supported by 60 national and regional peace groups around the country. The Nukewatch/US delegation has twice joined the camp during its “International Week” in July.

In the years 2017 and 2018, International Week saw nuclear weapons opponents conduct uninvited “go-in” actions 58 times at the base, GAAA coordinator Küpker reports.

From left, Susan Crane, Marion Küpker, Gerd Büntzly, and John LaForge held banners outside the state prosecutor’s offices in Koblenz, Germany July 25, 2018 after delivering a letter. Büntzly has appealed his conviction on trespass charges stemming from a July 16, 2017 protest in which he, Crane, LaForge, Bonnie Urfer and Steve Baggarly all got deep inside the Büchel Air Base and occupied a heavy bunker. The other four were never charged, and the letter complained of his “selective prosecution.”
Selective Prosecution for Bunker Occupation

In one of the 2017 actions, a group of four US citizens, including this reporter, and German activist Gerd Büntzly set out to inspect a nuclear bomb bunker. After spending an hour on one of the heavily fortified and earth-covered bunkers, and being picked up and briefly detained by air base authorities, the action made headlines. Of the five, only Gerd Büntzly was charged and convicted of trespass and damage to property.

Büntzly will be in Koblenz, Germany on January 16, 2019, for an appeal of the low-level conviction. (check back for updates!)

In protest of the apparently selective prosecution of Gerd, Plowshares activist Susan Crane and I (who along with Bonnie Urfer and Steve Baggarly had joined Gerd on the bunker) submitted a formal letter to the German prosecutor’s office in Koblenz on July 25, 2018. The letter complained of the offices’s unfairness in charging just one for actions taken by five.

The prosecutor’s office first claimed that it could not find contact information for the US citizens. When it was reminded that the German Air Force, the civil police and the US Air Force all had the addresses, the prosecutor simply replied that our letter of complaint had not been persuasive in changing the offices’s position.

With the help of Küpker, translators, and GAAA, Susan Crane and I will travel to Koblenz in January to testify at the appeal hearing on Gerd’s behalf. To support Gerd’s defense of necessity in the case, German attorneys are helping arrange for our testimony and for the submission of formal declarations from international law experts.

Prosecutor’s Warnings to “Go-in” Activists

GAAA’s Küpker reports that over the last 20 years, so-called “go-in” protest actions involving crossing into air force property have led to charges and convictions for trespassing, and sometimes for property damage if the fence was cut. However, it is striking that prosecutors have always refused to charge activists from European countries outside Germany.

This year for the first time, letters of warning from the German military and in some cases from the state prosecutor have been sent to at least 16 activists from various countries informing them that the charges could be pending. Peace activists from The Netherlands, England, and the United States have received notices which strangely do not contain official charges. Küpker suggested the letters could be an attempt at intimidation.

Join the Effort to Oust US Nukes from Germany

The camp, set just outside the gates of the Büchel Air Force Base in west-central Germany, is again scheduled to run from March 26 to August 9, 2019. Contact Nukewatch to join this year’s delegation running July 8-16.

by Leave a Comment

Russia Pledges No-First-Use of Nuclear Weapons, Joining China, North Korea, and India

By John LaForge
Winter Quarterly 2018-19

President Vladimir Putin said Oct. 18, 2018 that Russia would only use nuclear weapons in response to an incoming missile attack, the equivalent of a “no first use” pledge, the AP reported. Putin reportedly said Moscow would resort to launching nuclear weapons only in retaliation “if early warning systems spotted missiles heading toward Russia.”

“Only when we become convinced that there is an incoming attack on the territory of Russia, and that happens within seconds, only after that, we would launch a retaliatory strike,” Putin said during an international policy forum in Sochi, the Black Sea resort.

Neither the United States nor its NATO allies have ever made a “no-first-use” pledge, a promise not to use nuclear weapons in war or to launch a pre-emptive “first strike” with them.“NATO has always opposed a US ‘no-first-use” declaration and has never ruled out US first-use under its ‘flexible response’ posture since 1967,” wrote Ankit Panda in the July 2018 issue of Council on Foreign Relations online.

In 1964, China made the unequivocal pledge “not to be the first to use nuclear weapons at any time or under any circumstances,” and has reiterated the promise many times. China has also called on nuclear weapon states to establish an international no-first-use treaty.

India made a no-first-use promise in 2003, and North Korea declared the same on May 7, 2016.

—Associated Press; KIRO-7 News, Seattle, Wash.; “Putin: Russia would only use its nuclear arms in retaliation,” Oct. 18, 2018; The Independent, “North Korea will not use its nuclear weapons first, Kim Jong-un tells Congress,” May 8, 2016.

by Leave a Comment

“Low-yield” Mass Destruction

By John LaForge
Winter Quarterly 2018-19

The Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) is the government’s most public nuclear weapons and war-planning paper. It provides smart-sounding euphemisms for reporters, teachers, researchers, and others who are interested in nuclear weapons policy. Since nuclear weapons can produce only human catastrophes with mass fires, obliterated hospitals, crushed first responders, and poisoned food and water, the “Posture Review” uses cool, detached, and technical terms to convince Congress and taxpayers about the “need” and “usefulness” of the Bomb and “deterrence.”

A mock-up of the new B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb was brought into a Congressional hearing.

The phrase “low-yield nuclear weapon” is one of dozens of misnomers in the NPR. “Low-yield” refers to nuclear detonations ranging from 0.1 to 50 kilotons of TNT in explosive force. That is, up to three-times the 15 kiloton bomb the United States used on Hiroshima, killing 140,000. The White House NPR promotes building new “low-yield” warheads for Cruise missiles, submarine missiles, gravity bombs, and even land-based ICBMs.

Talking about low-yield nuclear weapons as if they are small is “dangerous,” says Alexandra Bell, of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. “‘Low-yield’ [are] …the kind of weapons that were used in World War II,” she told Medill News Service last February.

Yet Elbridge Colby writes in the Nov/Dec 2018 issue of Foreign Affairs now on newsstands. His article, “If you want peace, prepare for nuclear war.” Colby, a former Trump Administration Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy & Force Development, writes, “Washington’s task is clear. It must demonstrate … the right strategy and weapons to fight a limited nuclear war and come out on top.”

In a similarly hair-raising vein, David Lonsdale writes in the Nov. 7 issue of The Strategist (from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute), in an article titled “The demise of the INF Treaty and a return to nuclear war fighting”: “Should deterrence fail, the US must have the wherewithal to fight, survive and win a nuclear war.”

Never mind that even Ronald Reagan, who oversaw the production of 17,000 new nuclear weapons during his eight years in office, declared, “Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

Depending on where a “low-yield” H-bomb detonates, “it still has city-killing potential,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, in Washington. This power of mass destruction is overlooked partly because nuclear war planners have ignored the effect of mass fire caused by thermonuclear detonations.

In her book Whole World on Fire, Lynn Eden shows that “Because fire damage has been ignored for the last half century, high-level US decision makers have been poorly informed, if informed at all, about the damage that nuclear weapons would cause.”

“Any decision or threat to use nuclear weapons would in all likelihood,” Eden reports, “be based on a severe underestimate of the damage that would result. … Mass fire [sometimes called firestorm] and extensive fire damage would occur in almost every circumstance in which nuclear weapons were detonated in a suburban or urban area. … Under most circumstances, damage from mass fire would extend two to five times farther than blast damage.”

by Leave a Comment

Congress Could Trim Bomb Production Plans, Tweek Nuclear Attack Policy

By John LaForge
Nukewatch Winter Quarterly 2018-19

Democrats in the House of Representatives plan to cut back on some of the Trump/Obama nuclear weapons production programs, and curb presidential nuclear attack authority.

Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., joined Ted Lieu, D-CA and others in introducing HR 6840, the Hold the LYNE – Low-Yield Nuclear Explosive – Act. Tri-Valley CAREs in Livermore California reports that the bill would prohibit funds from being used for research, development, production or deployment of the new nuclear warhead. The bill has been referred to the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, and Lieu promises to re-introduce the measure in 2019.

Rep. Smith has criticized the $1.7 trillion, 30-year plan to upgrade the US nuclear arsenal—land-based missiles, submarines, and heavy bombers—as both unaffordable and dangerous, Politico reports. “There’s no such thing as a low-yield nuclear war,” says Rep. Lieu; and Smith warns that the proposed nuclear weapon “brings us no advantage and it is dangerously escalating,” Politico reported.

Rep. Lieu and Sen. Ed Markey, D-MA, have also introduced HR669 and its tandem measure S200, the Restricting First-Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017. The legislation, now with 82 co-sponsors, would prohibit a president from launching a nuclear first-strike without a declaration of war by Congress. Rep. Lieu’s office told Nukewatch Nov. 4 that he will reintroduce the measure in the upcoming session.

Key Democrats have also targeted a proposed $100 billion replacement for today’s land-based Minuteman III missiles dubbed “Ground Based Strategic Deterrent” now in early development. “The rationale for the triad I don’t think exists anymore. The rationale for the numbers of nuclear weapons doesn’t exist anymore,” Rep. Smith said to a recent gathering of the Ploughshares Fund.

“But pork-barrel politics and campaign cash are slowing disarmament,” the Huffington Post reported. Current and future land-based missile are championed by the “ICBM Coalition,” a group of House and Senate members from states where the missiles are deployed, tested or repaired—Wyoming, North Dakota, Montana, Utah, Nebraska, Colorado, California, and Louisiana.

Maintenance workers inspect a Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.

But high-level critics want them abolished and are pushing back. Former Secretaries of Defense William Perry and Leon Panetta both want current ICBMs scrapped and plans for their replacement cancelled. Last year Sec. Panetta told Reuters news service, “There is no question that out of the three elements of the triad, the Minuteman missiles are at a stage now where they’re probably the most antiquated.” In a series of articles published in major papers, Sec. Perry and General James Cartwright, a former Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argue that, “the United States can safely phase out its land-based intercontinental ballistic missile force,” and “save about $100 billion over the next three decades.” And they wrote, “We are safer without these expensive weapons and it would be foolish to replace them.”

What you can do: Call, email or write your Representatives and Senators urging them to co-sponsor bills to cancel low-yield nuclear warheads, the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, and the president’s sole nuclear war-making authority.

by Leave a Comment

Parking Lot Radioactive Waste Dumps

Cross-country transport of the high level radioactive waste would be mostly by rail along with some highway and barge shipments.

By Leona Morgan, Nuclear Issues Study Group
Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2018-19

Plans for so-called Consolidated Interim Storage (CIS) of high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) in the desert Southwest are a threat to anyone living, working, or traveling near HLRW casks being transported, and that could mean most of the US population. HLRW is the most radioactive and long-lived waste left by nuclear reactors and must be containerized for over 1-million years.

Two firms, Holtec International and Waste Control Specialists (WCS), have each proposed building and operating “temporary” parking lot storage facilities with enough space for more than two times the volume of all the waste (“spent”) nuclear reactor fuel currently in the United States. Holtec plans a site in Southeast New Mexico near Hobbs; WCS plans a site in Andrews County in far west Texas. Cross-country transport of the waste would be mostly by rail along with some highway and barge shipments.

According to the national Nuclear Waste Policy Act, as amended, temporary CIS sites are not legally allowed unless a permanent waste repository is already operating. A June 2017 House Resolution (HR 3053) introduced by Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill, was aimed at allowing CIS facilities to be built; it passed the House in May 2018, but is expected to die this year without a corresponding senate bill. Despite the question of legality, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is still considering the two CIS license applications and has been moving forward with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) processes.

Holtec’s NEPA scoping period ended July 30, and garnered 30,000 public comments. The NRC has announced that a Draft Environmental Impact Statement can be expected in June of 2019. WCS’s initial application process started and was paused last year due to the company’s financial issues. The NRC began a second scoping period this year. As of the mid-November deadline, it is estimated that 40,000 total comments were sent.

WCS’s financial problems were resolved enough to move forward when it was acquired by J.F. Lehman & Company. (Lehman’s chairman and founding partner John Francis Lehman, Jr. was allowed to go un-prosecuted for his involvement in the 1991 Tailhook Scandal where at least 83 women and 7 men were sexually assaulted by more than 100 US military officers in Las Vegas, Nevada.)

Legal challenges opposing both Holtec’s and WCS’s plans have been filed, and pre-hearing oral arguments for Holtec are scheduled for January 23 and 24, 2019 in Albuquerque, NM.

With all these events taking place, local communities in both New Mexico and Texas are actively working to inform the public and to build awareness regarding HLRW moving through their regions. Awareness has created both opposition, and support for the projects, but public opposition is much stronger than support. However, the strength of the opposition seemed to be trumped by big industry and government, especially in the current national administration.

The public has spoken out with the passage of 18 resolutions opposing CIS and related transport from counties and municipalities in New Mexico and Texas. There is only one resolution from a local community in support of CIS.

With the introduction of H.R. 3053 and NRC processing CIS applications, we have learned that the cancelled Yucca Mt. waste site is still being supported by some Congress and the nuclear industry. While government and industry have kept the public out of the debate as much as possible, people are becoming more aware and actively engaged in speaking out against both CIS proposals.

Although there is no current public comment period, the public can always send letters to the NRC and is strongly encouraged to educate local officials about CIS—and to encourage any type of official public opposition to these temporary “Band-Aid” storage sites and the deadly transport of waste reactor fuel through your community.

—Leona Morgan works with the Nuclear Issues Study Group in New Mexico

Contact Us

(715) 472-4185
nukewatch1@lakeland.ws

Address:
740A Round Lake Road
Luck, Wisconsin 54853
USA

Donate To Nukewatch

News & Information on Nuclear Weapons,
Power, Waste & Nonviolent Resistance

Stay Connected