Keeping on Keeping Uranium in the Ground

Just over 30 years ago — on April 10, 1988 — seven indigenous activists from different parts of the world set out on a three-week public awareness tour through Germany. They called their tour “Leave Uranium in the Ground.” Its purpose was to bring the detrimental impacts of uranium mining and nuclear weapons tests on health, environment and indigenous peoples, to the awareness of German people and decision-makers in provincial and federal parliaments.

The tour triggered inquiries in the German Federal Parliament in regard to the responsibility of German (indirectly government-owned and supported) uranium mining companies in other parts of the world. It also inspired other NGO activities for many years to come.

At the forefront of the struggle to halt the use of nuclear power we still find indigenous peoples as well as disadvantaged local communities in what is called the “Third World.” And it is often they who point out the many human rights violations on different levels, from taking away peoples’ land and livelihood, down to individual death threats, all in the name of so-called “development”.

Read Gunter Wippel's story on the Beyond Nuclear International blog.

(Photo of Pauline Esteves today by Kim Stringfellow.)

Two women helped boot Russian nukes out of South Africa

Liz McDaid of SAFCEI (above left) and Makoma Lekalakala of Earthlife Africa (above right) helped lead a legal fight that sent Rosatom packing. Thier victory was a win last year in the South African High Court which ruled that a secret nuclear power deal between Russia and the then Zuma government was unconstitutional. It effectively chased Rosatom, the Russian government-owned nuclear corporation, out of the country. It was the culmination of several years of broad campaigning across many strategies and demographics.

Since the court victory, Zuma has stepped down and Cyril Ramaphosa, who is trying desperately to restore confidence in their shared political affiliation, the ANC, has taken the helm. So far, Ramaphosa has suggested that nuclear energy is not affordable for South Africa. For now, Lekalakala and McDaid remain on the winning side.

But these women and their allies know that nuclear could still raise its ugly head in South Africa again and they are ready. Any nuclear power plan in South Africa could have devastating effects beyond its borders.

“The 8-10 nuclear power plants on the table would have had huge impacts for uranium mining in the rest of Africa,” says McDaid. “Now that the deal is no more we want to keep up the pressure throughout the region and even into East Africa as well because Rosatom is actively trying to sign deals with Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe.”

Read our story about their work on Beyond Nuclear International.

First atom bombs, now climate change. Marshall Islands in peril

The US government exploded 67 atomic bombs on what is now the Republic of the Marshall Islands. These so-called "tests" -- which were also radiation experiments on human beings --have left a terrible legacy of health effects and contamination. They destroyed islands, displaced people, finished off traditional ways of life, and crowded refugees into one of the world's worst slums.

On Beyond Nuclear International this week, we offer two pieces about RMI. One, written by renowned Australian journalist, John Pilger, describes a horrifying visit there and the secrets and lies perpetrated by the US which has never paid meaningful compensation. The other is a beautiful poem on video, bringing alive the history, myths, nature and traditional teachings that have been permanently destroyed.

Russia's floating nukes to power oil and gas extraction in Arctic Ocean

Russia has launched the first in a series of at least seven small-sized floating nuclear power stations largely to power its Gazprom’s massive expansion of offshore oil and gas extraction in the Arctic Ocean. The floating atomic power plants will also power new and renovated Russian military bases in the globally strategic region.

The “Akademik Lomonosov” carries two KLT-40S small modular pressurized water reactors rated at 35 megawatts electric each (MWe). The atomic power reactors are built into a 500-foot long, 21,500-ton barge currently being towed by tug boats from St. Petersburg to Murmansk, Russia. Once in Murmansk, the Lomonosov reactors will be loaded with enriched uranium fuel, low power tested and towed further to Russia’s northernmost Arctic region. There, the floating atomic power station is to be moored offshore from the port city of Pevek on the Northern Sea Route. It is scheduled to begin full power production (70 MWe) in 2019. Pevek, once a center in the former Soviet Gulag for seven large hard labor camps where prisoners mined uranium, is now a modernized city.

The concept of a floating nuclear reactor is not a new. The United States was the first country to deploy a floating nuclear power plant in 1968. The 10 MWe MH-1A was an early pressurized water reactor retrofitted into a Liberty ship, the Sturgis. The Sturgis was to supply electrical power to the Panama Canal. The Sturgis operated only eight years before it was permanently closed as too expensive to maintain. In 1971, the U.S.-based Westinghouse Corporation briefly revived the concept building a central manufacturing facility in Florida for 1200 MWe Pressurized Water Reactors using a notoriously thin shelled containment structure. The reactor was to be placed on a barge and towed out to sea up where it would be moored off the coastline beyond controversial emergency planning zones. New Jersey utilities were the first to enthusiastically embrace the plan without fully appreciating the unique concerns the concept  added to already apparent siting issues from land based reactors. Ship collisions, barges sinking, fishing ground impacts and a host of regulatory concerns clashed with national and international law and inter-agency authority including the US Coast Guard. The U.S. Government Accounting Office issued a report criticizing federal regulators for not even analyzing the impacts of meltdown through the barge on the ocean environment. It added up to failure with no utility orders, the unwillingness of states to site facilities in coastal waters and the failure of a government bailout to finance construction.  

The KLT-40S nuclear power reactor is significant because it is Russia’s first small modular reactor (SMR) design originally intended to be manufactured on an assembly line and mass marketed for international export to power large coastal cities where the reactors could be moored offshore.  While the Russian state-owned nuclear power industry, Rosatom, promotes the technology as proven, reliable and safe, the KLT-40S is based on a previous design, the KLT-40M, that powers Russian icebreakers not without accidents. In 2011, one of those icebreakers, the Taimyr, experienced a radioactive release to the atmosphere from the reactor’s primary cooling system prompting the crew to abandon its mission and make an emergency return to port. Greenpeace International aptly identifies the five key reasons why floating nuclear power stations are still a bad idea; 1) it’s an accident waiting to happen; 2) such a catastrophe at sea will be extremely difficult to manage with significant environmental consequences; 3) there is already a terrible track record of accidents involving nuclear ships, ice breakers and submarines; 4) these reactors will be a nuclear dumping ground on water and; 5) using nuclear power to extract fossil fuels is the worst of all worlds.

Nuclear deterrence is used to justify the possession of nuclear weapons. But it's a myth.

In our new pamphlet, we lay out the arguments about why nuclear deterrence is a myth used to justify the continued possession -- and threatened use -- of nuclear weapons. In the current controversy over the Iran nuclear deal, it has become ever more important to understand the agendas behind the nuclear powers' arguments that only they should have -- and need -- nuclear weapons, the basis used to excuse expanding nuclear arsenals at a time when the world should be disarming.

Read our blog article at Beyond Nuclear International.

Please download and distribute the Myth of Deterrence pamphlet.