Nukewatch

Working for a nuclear-free future since 1979

  • Issues
    • Weekly Column
    • Depleted Uranium
    • Direct Action
    • Lake Superior Barrels
    • Environmental Justice
    • North Korea
    • Nuclear Power
      • Chernobyl
      • Fukushima
    • Nuclear Weapons
    • On The Bright Side
    • Radiation Exposure
    • Radioactive Waste
    • Renewable Energy
    • Uranium Mining
  • Quarterly Newsletter
    • Quarterly Newsletter
    • Newsletter Archives
  • Resources
    • Nuclear Heartland Book
    • Fact Sheets
    • Reports, Studies & Publications
      • The New Nuclear Weapons: $1.74 Trillion for H-bomb Profiteers and Fake Cleanups
      • Nuclear Power: Dead In the Water It Poisoned
      • Thorium Fuel’s Advantages as Mythical as Thor
      • Greenpeace on Fukushima 2016
      • Drinking Water at Risk: Toxic Military Wastes Haunt Lake Superior
    • Nukewatch in the News
    • Links
    • Videos
  • About
    • About Nukewatch
    • Contact Us
  • Get Involved
    • Action Alerts!
    • Calendar
    • Workshops
  • Donate

January 20, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Treaty Seeks End to Nuclear Madness

By Ralph Hutchison and John LaForge

 

It is the beginning of a new movement that will see the elimination of the existential nuclear threat.

On January 22, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons will enter into force. The treaty bans the development, production, possession, deployment, testing, use and just about anything else you can imagine related to nuclear weapons.

Fifty years later, nine nuclear-armed militaries possess more than 13,000 nuclear weapons, arsenals that mock their claimed commitment to disarm “at an early date.”

Approved at the United Nations by 122 countries in 2017, and subsequently signed by 86 and ratified by 51 nations, the nuclear weapons ban will join the venerated status of international prohibitions already established against lesser weapons of mass destruction. These earlier agreements include the Geneva Gas Protocol, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Convention, the Ottawa Treaty or  Mine Ban Convention and the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is no magic wand. Nine nuclear-armed states claim that the treaty doesn’t apply to them, and it’s true that only governments that are “states parties” to the treaty are subject to its prohibitions and obligations. However, the treaty can be a kind of a lever and a beacon for achieving the elimination of nuclear weapons, a goal every government on earth claims to desire.

Decades of refusal to conclude “good faith” negotiations for nuclear disarmament “at an early date,” which the United States and four other nuclear nations agreed to in the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, have left the rest of the world fed up. Fifty years later, nine nuclear-armed militaries possess more than 13,000 nuclear weapons, arsenals that mock their claimed commitment to disarm “at an early date.”

As with bans on other weapons of mass destruction, scofflaw states that continue to produce and use nuclear weapons will increasingly be condemned and shunned as outliers and rogue actors. And nuclear-armed states have already been stung by the treaty’s imminent entry into force. Last October, the Trump White House urged those governments that had ratified the treaty to withdraw their ratifications. Happily, none did.

For more than a decade, public support for the elimination of nuclear weapons remains consistently strong. Current polls — Belgium, 64%; Germany, 68%; Italy, 70%; Netherlands, 62% — show strong majorities in countries that now host U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe. The treaty heralds a new global, civil, diplomatic and economic environment in which nuclear weapons are banned. In Belgium, one of five NATO countries that currently station U.S. nuclear weapons inside their territories, the parliament in January 2020 nearly expelled the U.S. weapons in a close vote. When the first NATO country still hosting the U.S. nuclear bombs demands their removal, others are expected to follow suit.

Elsewhere, financial divestment campaigns in Europe are succeeding, pressing hundreds of institutions to get out of the business of genocidal atomic violence. The Dutch pension fund APB, the fifth largest of its kind in the world, has announced  it will exclude companies involved in production of nuclear weapons. It joins more than seventy other European banks, pension funds, and insurance companies that have already adopted divestment policies.

January 22 marks the culmination of the effort led by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, civil society, and non-nuclear-armed states to create the treaty. It is also the beginning of a new movement that will, in the end, see the elimination of the existential nuclear threat.

Given the need to stop the Biden administration from continuing the $2 trillion commitment to “modernize” U.S. nuclear weapons, build new bomb plants, and invest in new nuclear weapons, the treaty and its message could not be timelier or more compelling.

As supporters the world over have noted, this treaty is the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons.

Filed Under: Direct Action, Nuclear Weapons, Uncategorized

January 2, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2020-2021

Click the links below to access articles from the Winter 2020-2021 Quarterly Newsletter. Page numbers take you to the pdf of each page as they appear in the print version. Individual articles are also tagged by issue category.

Cover
Long-Sought Anti-War Landmark: Treaty Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons Becomes Law

Page 2 Nuclear Shorts
Waste Transport Accident Risks Underrated
50-Year-Old Wisc. Reactors Want 30 Years More
NRC Should Fix Potentially Fatal US Reactor Flaw
Thousands Oppose Haphazard, Unregulated Radioactive Waste Landfill Dumping 
DOE Plans to Ship Plutonium 1,400 Miles 
French Rad Waste Freighter Arrives in US 

Page 3
Germany’s US Bombs in Spotlight
Growing Criticism of Unlawful Rad Waste Storage Plans 
Legal Fight Against Nuclear Navy Risktaking 
A Second Churchrock Spill in the Making?

Page 4
Treaty Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons Becomes Law

Page 5
US Minuteman III ICBM Test Made in Response to 50th Ratification of Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty
Treaties and the Path to Disarmament
Loyalty Demand from Nuclear Gang Leader Snubbed 

Page 6
56 Former World Leaders Call for Ban Treaty Ratification
Church Leaders Urge Governments to Join Treaty  
Is New US H-Bomb Soon Ready? 
Air Force Veterans of Plutonium Dust Disaster Win Class Action Standing

Page 7
Kings Bay Plowshares Sentences: 10 to 33 Months 
Declaration to the Sentencing Judge from a Georgia Jail
Not Guilty Verdicts for Irish Peace Activists 

Page 8
Japan Waffles Over Plan to Dump Radioactive Water Tainted with Tritium, Strontium, Cesium, etc.
Radiation Again Reported at Japan’s Summer Olympic Sites & in Tokyo 
Health Risks of Tritium: The Case for Stronger Standards 

 

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Quarterly Newsletter, Uncategorized

January 2, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Thousands Oppose Haphazard, Unregulated Radioactive Waste Landfill Dumping

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2020-2021

Nearly 10,000 comments were submitted to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) condemning the agency’s plan to deliberately allow radioactive waste, mainly from nuclear power reactors, to go into regular garbage dumps and other landfills that do not have radioactive waste licenses.

In one letter, Roxanne Brown, vice president of the United Steel Workers, wrote, “Putting nuclear waste, of any dosage level, in the hands of undertrained and unqualified workers is not only a bad decision for business and the environment, but hazardous to the people doing the work.”

The NRC proposes to “interpret” its rules, which now require radioactive waste to go to licensed sites. The change would allow waste to be sent to any dump granted a “specific exemption” by the NRC. “Exempt” landfills would be allowed to expose the public to as much radiation as operating nuclear power reactors or licensed nuclear waste sites—a level of exposure that can give cancer to one in every 500 people exposed over their lifetimes, according to Environmental Protection Agency calculations.

“Since there is no safe level of radiation exposure, all industrially generated nuclear waste needs to be isolated, not dispersed into landfills, air, water and possibly even recycled consumer goods,” said Diane D’Arrigo, who has spent 30 years following the issue for the non-profit Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS). “The big concern is the radioactive danger to current and future generations and the unlimited amount of radioactivity released to the environment. Most commenters don’t like that there is no public notice or opportunity to even know if their local landfill gets ‘exempt’ authorization from the NRC,” D’Arrigo said.

“This proposal is sure to spawn fly-by-night dump operations on vacant lots, in urban renewal excavations, and on brownfield sites of old factories,” said Terry Lodge, a Toledo-based environmental attorney working for NIRS. “As usual, the poor and most vulnerable populations will be the collateral damage from this dark atom that was supposed to save us.”

—Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Oct. 21; United Steel Workers, June 29, 2020

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Quarterly Newsletter, Uncategorized

January 2, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Declaration to the Sentencing Judge from a Georgia Jail

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2020-2021

Editor’s note: Prior to his sentencing hearing, Fr. Steve Kelly delivered the following letter to the court explaining his decision to continue his non-cooperation with punitive probationary restrictions and penalties regardless of the judge’s sentence.

Conscientious Objection to and Non-compliance with Post-incarceration Conditions

While still in chains, I, pro se defendant Stephen Michael Kelly, S.J., file this declaration in an attempt to remove any ambiguity and avoid all misunderstanding, come time of sentencing.

I assert the innocence of the Kings Bay Plowshares. But this statement is my own declaration. Both my conscientious objection and my Religious Freedom Restoration Act testimony are attempts to fulfill the mandate of the Nuremberg Accords. This witness has me confronting and engaged with the omnicidal policies of the US government. Recourse to appeal is futile, pathetic, and dangerous because all the judiciary’s rulings precluded our jury from hearing any defense. The circuit, appeal, the entire judiciary has thwarted redress that would fulfill the purpose and mandate of the signatories of the Nuremberg Accords. For this reason, I am a political prisoner of conscience for Christ. The judiciary has been unable to see the Isaian vision as a way out of this spiral of violence. The [Christian Bible’s] Isaiah 2:4 vision is an imperative to conversion. The judiciary dangerously legitimizes a nuclear holocaust in following previous rulings. The precedents, when followed, have functioned as a gag order. This court would not allow the jury, the triers of fact, to hear what was recognized in our Religious Freedom Restoration Act evidence; we were at the Trident base to preach against the sin that flourishes in weapons of mass destruction.

Given that situation, my participation in any aspect of supervised release [probation/parole] is to comply with and accommodate the US’s compelling interest [in] the nuclear weapons agenda. Compelling interest is a euphemism for 1,000’s of Hiroshimas and Nagasakis. And, as in the case of the citizens’ obligation to expose the Nazi concentration camps’ industrial scale genocide in Germany/Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, the Nuremberg Accords were/are both an appraisal and indictment. The nuclear weapons are flying extermination ovens. In conscience, I can’t let any court order or threat restrict me from imitation of the Good Shepherd, Jesus when he placed himself, laying down his life, between the wolf, the thief and the flock. In this case, the wolf is the Trident aimed at millions and the thief is the larceny from the poor predicted by Eisenhower in his Oval Office departure. 

I answer to a higher authority in that my faith imperative, as outlined in the tenets of the Catholic Catechism, missions me to respond to the needs of the poor, oppressed, and disenfranchised in any locality and without any exclusion of those with felony records. I am indigent and itinerant. I will respond, should I be found worthy, led by the Spirit, to witness the prophetic vision offered in Isaiah 2:4 by fulfilling its embodiment.

I am aware that the imposition of supervised release is a [Justice Department] guideline option, not mandatory for this court. I point out that supervised release [probation or parole] was not intended for anti-nuclear activists. Consistent with the above, I will in conscience refuse any fines and restitution. This renders [the probation department’s] role to oversee collection pointless. In the wake of sentencing, I will be taken in chains to Federal Court in Tacoma, Washington to answer for the warrant that stemmed from my stating in open court in September 2016 that I refused supervised release. And I suggested [then] to the federal magistrate presiding to translate any term of supervised release into a period of incarceration. This has been consistent in all my previous Plowshares witnesses.

In closing this declaration, if it is not apparent that our nonviolent witness at the Trident base was to save not a few but a multitude of lives, then let this instrument serve to make that an explicit recapitulation of that intention. —Fr. Steve Kelly, SJ

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Quarterly Newsletter, Uncategorized

October 26, 2020 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Organizational coalition comment letter re: Docket ID NRC-2016-0231/Report Number NUREG-2239, NRC’s ISP/WCS CISF DEIS

Submitted via: <WCS_CISF_EIS@nrc.gov>
Dear U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Commissioners and Staff,

This public comment is in response to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (Docket ID NRC-2016-0231) regarding Interim Storage Partner’s (ISP) application for a license to build and operate a “Consolidated Interim Storage Facility for Spent Nuclear Fuel in Andrews County, Texas” (NUREG-2239).

The undersigned organizations oppose ISP’s proposal and ask that the NRC halt its licensing in order to protect public health and safety, the environment and our economy. It appears from the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) and other license application documents that there would be no dry cask transfer facility (Dry Transfer System, DTS) at the proposed site, which means there would be no way to repackage waste. The site is not designed for long-term disposal, but a dangerous de facto permanent surface dump could result if waste casks or canisters are damaged or corroded and cannot be moved.

ISP’s application to store radioactive waste in Texas would bring in 40,000 tons of irradiated nuclear fuel from nuclear reactors around the country. 90% of those reactors and their irradiated nuclear fuel are in the eastern half of the country; 75% are east of the Mississippi River.

The plan would target a Latinx community with forever deadly highly radioactive waste. The waste would be stored above ground in a region prone to earthquakes, sinkholes, temperature extremes, wildfires, and intense storms and flooding, all of which can increase contamination risks. ISP’s scheme would exacerbate existing environmental injustice and threats to the Ogallala and other aquifers. WCS is already a national dump for so-called “low-level” radioactive wastes and other hazardous materials. In addition, the URENCO USA uranium enrichment facility is right next to the WCS/ISP site. In fact the two nuclear complexes are on one former ranch that straddled the New Mexico/Texas border. The majority Hispanic town of Eunice, New Mexico — through which every single one of the 3,400 irradiated nuclear fuel rail casks bound for ISP would pass — is within just a few miles of the WCS/ISP site.

Consolidated interim storage facilities (CISFs) are an illegal approach that does not solve the highly radioactive waste problem. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended, prohibits the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) from taking ownership of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel, unless and until a permanent repository is licensed and operational. In illegally considering this application, the NRC has ignored expert testimony, widespread local, regional, and even national opposition, and many tens of thousands of written and oral comments.

The Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) is deficient because it fails to:

•    Account for disproportionate impacts to low-income communities of color (environmental justice communities) in the American Southwest and along transport routes there and nationwide.
•    Detail transportation routes and consider nationwide risk to millions of Americans along transport routes.
•    Consider the risk of leaks, contamination, sabotage/intentional attacks, or severe transportation accidents.
•    Include a plan to repackage leaking waste casks and a plan to move waste when required.
•    Complete the required alternatives analysis by considering Hardened On-Site Storage (HOSS), at or near reactors, as an alternative to Consolidated Interim Storage.
•    Consider lessons learned from past accidents, nor the potential for future radioactive waste accidents to cost hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to clean up.
•    Detail cumulative impacts of the proposed facility and nearby sites — including the Holtec CISF, URENCO and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, in New Mexico — on workers, local residents, and the environment.

•    Analyze potential for groundwater contamination, including of the Ogallala, and other aquifers.
•    Address the open secret that Orano/Areva desires to reprocess the irradiated nuclear fuel, which would cause large-scale releases of hazardous radioactivity to the environment.
•    Acknowledge that “interim storage” at ISP could last not decades, nor centuries, but forevermore; de facto permanent surface storage, combined with eventual container failure and inevitable loss of institutional control, would result in catastrophic releases of hazardous radioactivity downwind, downstream, up the food chain, and down the generations.

On behalf of our members and supporters, our organizations oppose Consolidated Interim Storage Facilities at this and other sites, including Holtec International/Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance’s CISF, targeted at Laguna Gatuna in southeastern New Mexico, just 40 miles from WCS. The DEIS fails to adequately analyze environmental and cumulative impacts and the socioeconomic risks of the two proposed CISF applications in the same local area. The NRC should protect public health and safety, the economy and the environment, by halting the application processes and denying the licenses for both ISP’s and Holtec’s proposed facilities.

We also oppose as unacceptably dangerous the plan to multiply transport risks, and the environmental justice burden, that is inherent in Consolidated Interim Storage. As ISP/WCS itself admitted in its Environmental Report (Revision 2, Chapter 2, Figure 2.6-1, Transportation Routes, Page 2-78), the outbound shipments from the CISF, heading to Yucca Mountain, Nevada for permanent burial, would travel through the very same communities in New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma that had already seen the inbound shipments, carrying irradiated nuclear fuel from eastern reactors, to the CISF in the first place. These outbound shipments could number in the several tens of thousands if the irradiated nuclear fuel is repackaged at WCS (itself a hazard to workers and local residents), into smaller-sized TAD (Transport, Aging, and Disposal) containers, required for compliance with DOE’s Yucca repository design plans. CIS makes no sense, and would significantly increase transport risks and EJ burdens.

Last but not least, ISP/WCS, as well as NRC, simply assuming that Yucca Mountain will be the permanent dump, is wrong and unacceptable. Yucca Mountain is on Western Shoshone land. The 33-year long attempt to dump highly radioactive wastes there is a violation of the “peace and friendship” Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863, signed by the U.S. government with the Western Shoshone, the highest law of the land, equal in stature to the U.S. Constitution itself. It is also an environmental justice violation, considering the deadly radioactive fallout already suffered by the Western Shoshone, and others, downwind and downstream from the Nevada Nuclear Weapons Test Site. In addition, just like ISP’s proposed facility, the Yucca dump would not be: consent-based; scientifically-suitable; regionally equitable; nor intergenerationally equitable.
For all the above reasons and more, we maintain that the DEIS for ISP’s application is inadequate, and further that the license for the high-level radioactive waste “consolidated interim storage” facility should be denied. In conclusion, highly radioactive wastes from atomic reactors around the U.S. should not be brought to Texas – but instead be isolated on or near the current nuclear power plant sites, in Hardened On-Site Storage (HOSS), until there is an environmentally just and scientifically sound option available.
Sincerely,
Public Citizen Texas Office
Adrian Shelley, Texas Office Director, Austin, TX
Sustainable Energy & Economic Development (SEED) Coalition
Karen Hadden, Executive Director, Austin, TX
Beyond Nuclear
Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist, Takoma Park, MD

Filed Under: Uncategorized

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 10
  • Next Page »

Stay Connected

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Subscribe

Donate

Facebook

Categories

  • B61 Bombs in Europe
  • Chernobyl
  • Depleted Uranium
  • Direct Action
  • Environment
  • Environmental Justice
  • Fukushima
  • Lake Superior Barrels
  • Military Spending
  • Newsletter Archives
  • North Korea
  • Nuclear Power
  • Nuclear Weapons
  • Office News
  • On The Bright Side
  • Photo Gallery
  • Quarterly Newsletter
  • Radiation Exposure
  • Radioactive Waste
  • Renewable Energy
  • Sulfide Mining
  • Through the Prism of Nonviolence
  • Uncategorized
  • Uranium Mining
  • US Bombs Out of Germany
  • War
  • Weekly Column

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

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

© 2021 · Nukewatch