There is a lot of news about nuclearism these days. President Barack Obama just concluded his Nuclear Security Summit. The new START agreement between the United States and the Russia will cut the number of long-range nuclear warheads on each side by hundreds. And the upcoming Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty Review Conference will take place at the United Nations next month.
It's good that nuclear weapons reductions and security are in the news. When they are asked about it, Americans are concerned. According to a Pew Research survey last fall, a little more than a half of the American public believes that "an attack on the United States with a nuclear, biological or chemical weapon is a greater danger now than it was 10 years ago."
That is an alarming statistic. And a quick look at the nuclear landscape reinforces this anxiety. There are four more nuclear powers — Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea — than when the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty entered into force in 1970.
And here in the United States, despite the White House's pledge to seek a world without nuclear weapons and recent agreements for arms reductions with Russia, the 2011 federal budget for nuclear weapons research and development is likely to be more than $7 billion. If the Obama administration has its way, it could reach $8 billion per year by the end of this decade. This steady and growing investment contradicts the White House's promising rhetoric of disarmament.
In addition, the administration recently unveiled its Nuclear Posture Review, which affirms a more limited but "essential" role for nuclear weapons in U.S. national security and does not rule out "first use" of nuclear weapons. This "right" allows the United States to drop the first bomb in an atomic war, thus leaving U.S. global dominance through military power unchallenged and unchecked. Another key Pentagon document, the Quadrennial Defense Review, suggests that as nuclear reductions are completed, more powerful conventional (i.e. non-nuclear) weapons capabilities — called "Prompt Global Strike" — will be necessary.
It isn't just the existential threat of global annihilation by accidental or deliberate nuclear strike that is of pressing concern. Whole communities throughout the world are affected daily by nuclear weapons, their land forcibly subjected to decades of nuclear testing, mining, and dumping of toxic radioactive waste.
In the United States, these practices disproportionately affect indigenous communities throughout the Southwest, permanently damaging land that was legally granted to them through treaties. This targeting underscores the racism, colonialism, and illegality at the heart of the nuclear project, one that continues to envision, build, and retain the ability to destroy the world many times over.
Today, nuclear mining and nuclear waste dumping on Native lands is back with a vengeance, as the Obama administration pushes for a renaissance of nuclear power production in the United States. In January, the White House approved a $54 billion dollar taxpayer loan in a guarantee program for new nuclear reactor construction, three times what Bush previously promised in 2005. Right now, there are 104 nuclear reactors in the United States that supply 20 percent of U.S. electricity.
Since 2007, 17 companies have sought government approval to build 26 new reactors, at an estimated cost of more than $12 billion each. These new nuclear reactors need uranium and the mining industry has applied to open (or reopen) 22 mines in New Mexico, many of which are on Diné (Navajo) and other tribal land. In terms of waste, nuclear reactors today produce about 2,000 metric tons of nuclear waste every year, which gets added to the 75,000 metric tons of waste stored in temporary containment around the country (122 temporary storage sites in 39 states).
At the end of April, people will be coming to New York City from all over the world to participate in and monitor the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference. They will gather at the "For a Nuclear Free, Peaceful, Just and Sustainable World" conference at Riverside Church in Manhattan on April 30 and May 1.
The 2010 NPT Review Conference represents a vital opportunity to put needed pressure on the U.S. government and kickstart the antinuclear movement. It's also the anti-nuclear movement's opportunity to excite the American people with a vision of what a world free of nuclear weapons looks like and how to get from here to there.
In 1982, the War Resisters League initiated a "Blockade the Bombmakers" series of mass actions in New York City at the UN Missions of the five nuclear powers of the time. It was day one of the UN Special Session on Disarmament, and nearly 1,700 people were arrested in the blockades. The day before, one million people crowded into Manhattan to press for nuclear disarmament.
This year, we'll have another opportunity to take to the streets. On May 2, the "Disarm Now: For Peace and Human Needs" march across 42nd St. will bring the world's message of disarmament to the UN. The War Resisters League, a secular pacifist organization founded in 1923, invites everyone to Grand Central Station to declare NYC a "nuclear weapons free zone," and imagine what our city would look like without the billions spent on nuclear weapons and the terrorism of the nuclear threat.
To cut through the verbiage of treaties and agreements and summits, and move people from fear to action, we need to focus on three concepts. The United States is the biggest problem when it comes to nuclear weapons. We need a new treaty to replace the NPT. And no nukes means no nuclear power.
Between them, the United States and Russia control about 90 percent of the 27,000 nuclear weapons that exist in the world today, and the United States is the only state to have ever dropped nuclear weapons in war. The August 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed or wounded over 350,000 people, and left many more wounded survivors of the devastation. During a speech in Prague on April 5, 2009, Obama acknowledged that in light of what we wrought 65 years ago, "the United States has a moral responsibility to act." We can take that one step further and assert that nuclear abolition begins at home, with unilateral nuclear disarmament.
Next, we need a simple and fair treaty. The NPT entered into force in 1970 and set up a bargain between nuclear haves and have-nots. The five acknowledged nuclear powers at the time — the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, and China — committed to disarmament. They also agreed not to transfer nuclear weapons material or know-how to any other country. The rest of the signing nations committed not to build nuclear weapons or accept delivery of that material or know-how.
Nuclear weapons states have not disarmed, and more than one has transferred nuclear know-how and materials to other nations. The treaty is broken. But there is an opportunity to channel the will toward disarmament into a new treaty framework that is free from the old constructs of haves and have-nots.
The Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy and other groups established a framework for real action towards disarmament. The "Nuclear Weapons Convention," which Costa Rica submitted to the 2007 UN meeting in preparation for the NPT Review Conference this spring, would simply and universally "prohibit development, testing, production, stockpiling, transfer, use, and threat of use of nuclear weapons" [and] calls for "states possessing nuclear weapons [to] destroy their arsenals according to a series of phases." There is much more to the treaty that these few sentences, but in essence it says: "Let's build a safer world and start dismantling nuclear weapons."
Finally, no nukes means no nuclear power. The NPT enshrined nuclear power as the ultimate carrot to be exchanged for nonproliferation. It didn't work. And, just as importantly, nuclear power is not clean, green, or cheap. As uranium mining begins again under Obama, one need only visit Grand Canyon, Arizona (where uranium mining is once again under way) or Cane Valley, Arizona (the site of a uranium reprocessing plant) to be immediately disabused of that nuclear power industry propaganda.
These aren't slogans to shout from the ramparts. They're building blocks for a new anti-nuclear movement. We can't wait for the president or the leaders gathering at the next nuclear summit. They will have to be moved further in the right direction — by us.
over the earth without the scorching radiation shower, of course.
God Help Us All if this was a nuclear bomb anywhere on earth.
That's why we need to eradicate these Horrors On Humanity.
Thank God for the global above ground test ban agreement
honored by even the most paranoid states on earth.
The second-hand radiation dissolving into our atmosphere
would be devastating to the health of all living on earth.
It would have been a cold day in hell, in deed, if this Icelandic plume
had resulted from an above ground nuclear detonation.
Then I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a flying roll. And he said unto me, What seest thou? And I answered, I see a flying roll [ICBM]; the length thereof is twenty cubits [about 40 feet], and the breadth thereof ten cubits [circumference about 20 feet]. Then said he unto me, This is the curse that goeth forth over the face of the whole earth: for every one that stealeth shall be cut off as on this side according to it; and every one that sweareth shall be cut off as on that side according to it. I will bring it forth, saith the LORD of hosts, and it shall enter into the house of the thief, and into the house of him that sweareth falsely by my name: and it shall remain in the midst of his house [the builder’s], and shall consume it [the nuclear weapons builder’s nation] with the timber thereof and the stones thereof.
That suggests only the United States have them. However, the next civilization needs nuclear to maintain itself, everything is a stepping stone to something else, nuclear material enrichment included. There will not be a war, if change doesn’t come there will only be eliminating nations who oppose the US policies.
Now, for energy, nuclear is a proven way of generating electricity. In the case of Chernobyl, it's also a proven way of rendering an area uninhabitable. When your windmill falls over, you might have to compensate farmer Bob for a couple of his cows, and go set the thing back up again. When your power plant falls over, you're evacuating hundreds of square miles. The 'fallout' from wind power is decidedly smaller.
If you look at all nuclear weapon proliferants (including the first one) they started with a weapon program then moved to commercial nuclear power. Expansion of nuclear energy in the US means more of our energy can come from within our borders or from friendly nations like Canada and Australia. That means there's less of a need to fight wars around the world securing access to fossil fuels. We don't even have to mine more uranium to supply our reactors. Reprocessing our spent fuel and constructing IFRs would allow us the use the uranium that's already mined for several centuries.
Not much has changed in 2010 and if THAT DAY, we call 9/11 taught us anything, it should be that America's nuclear arsenal cannot defeat 'terrorism' or provide security from the actions of a few violent mad men who target and murder innocent ones.
America has a nuclear arsenal of over 10,000 weapons and nearly 2,000 remain on hair-trigger alert ever since the end of the Cold War.
An estimated 150 – 240 tactical nuclear weapons remain based in 5 NATO countries and the United States is the only country with nuclear weapons deployed on foreign soil.
American taxpayers provide over $54 billion annually to maintain WMD's, which is but a drop in the bucket of the overall U.S. military spending. The U.S. is also a co-conspirator in international nuclear apartheid and major collaborator in Israel's INEFFECTIVE policy of nuclear ambiguity.
"I believe that as soon as people want peace in the world they can have it. The only trouble is they are not aware they can get it."-John Lennon
"Commies to Al Qaeda and back to US!" @
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1704&Itemid=232
Hillary Clinton herself could not even answer the question about a proper, severe reaction to a chemical/biological attack by one of the signatories if we have unilaterally taken our nuclear retaliation off the table. What would we do, invade?
Ridiculous. And what shall we do for power if not nuclear power, like so much of "so very green Europe" does? The French have 70. We are far, far behind.
False. There was no START treaty signed 10 years ago. START I was signed by Reagan, and the follow-on (START II) was signed by Poppy Bush in 1993.
START III was never signed, because the Russians withdrew from START in response to Double Dumb's unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.
"He had nothing to do with it, period."
False.
Obama had EVERYTHING to do with initiating, driving, and steering the negotiating process... and then bringing the process in for a smooth landing. Even the Russians said so:
"...it is surprising how much attention he kept on Start,†said Sergei M. Rogov, director of the Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies in Moscow, referring to the treaty. “Even being 24-hours-a-day busy on health reform, he had a 25th hour for Start.â€
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/27/world/europe/27start.html?pagewanted=all
"AND, it begins to take effect in 2018."
False.
Article XIV, Paragraph 1:
"This Treaty shall enter into force on the date of the exchange of instruments of ratification."
Clueless and False.
Two serious examples, taking the summit seriously:
Walter Russell Mead:
"This was supposed to be the post-American era... China, Russia, India, Brazil, the European Union: the world was full of new and rising powers who were going to push the old Cold War hegemon aside.
In President Obama, the United States had, people thought, found a president ready to preside gently over his country’s decline.
That’s what a lot of observers expected; that’s not what we have."
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/04/15/roll-on-columbia/
Paul B. Stares, Council on Foreign Relations:
The Obama administration can justifiably pat itself on the back following today's conclusion of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington. Aside from the logistical challenge of convening leaders from forty-seven countries in the capital for one of the largest diplomatic events on U.S. soil since the founding of the United Nations, important progress was made on a critical issue: increasing the security of nuclear material stored around the world from theft by terrorist groups and criminal gangs.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/21894/important_steps_for_nuclear_security.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cfr_foreignaffairs+%28CFR.org+-+FA+multi-pub%29
Serious people certainly do take the summit seriously... only the unserious do not.
Where was North Korea, and where was Iran? Where was Pakistan, who is enriching weapons grade plutonium at a rate faster than the Canadians (who don't have that, by the way) are dumping plutonium? These, the hard issues and the rogue nations, were somehow not even brought up. What was decided, to muted applause, is that two years hence, we will have another meeting.
Ditherer...maybe he will appoint another commission to study the feasibility of the meeting locations.
The 2018 start date for Russian and American draw down is a fact. Ditto the fact about Obama's surreptitiously grabbing onto START as a mechanism - late, after - to make it appear that something was actually done. Something was done. We defanged our nuclear option and EVEN HILLARY CLINTON could not explain what we MAY do in the CASE of an attack by one of the signatories...
However, renegotiating it would be very very slow.
Power generation with mild enrichment and without reprocessing doesn't have any direct link to weapons, although it certainly provides a degree of cover for nefarious conduct.
Issues of waste disposal and fuel production are not nuclear specific. Coal and oil production tend to damage their environments too. The mass of fuel and waste involved there at least tens of thousands of times greater. If there were any native american lands or waters left in appalachia or the gulf of mexico, then you could lay the same criticisms at these energy industries.