But as the Center for Public Integrity and Truthout have warned in an article by Douglas Birch and R. Jeffrey Smith entitled "The World Awash in Nuclear Explosive?", we have a frighteningly long way to go in our attempts to put the nuclear weapons proliferation genie back in the bottle.
Environmental coalition attorney Terry Lodge of ToledoThe environmental coalition opposing the 20-year license extension sought by FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC) at its problem-plagued Davis-Besse atomic reactor on the Lake Erie shore east of Toledo has spoken out at NRC Environmental Impact Statement public comment meetings. The coalition issued a press release, focused on the unsolved dilemma created by Davis-Besse's ongoing generation of forever deadly high-level radioactive waste, as well as the renewables alternative (wind power, solar PV, etc.) to a risky, dubious 20 more years of atomic reactor operations.
The press release quoted Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps: “The worsening cracking of Davis-Besse’s concrete containment, the corrosion of its inner steel containment vessel, the risks of its experimental steam generator replacement, and its recently revealed Shield Building wall gap are clear signs that this atomic reactor is overdue for retirement and decommissioning.”
The coalition includes Beyond Nuclear, Citizens Environment Alliance of Southwestern Ontario, Don't Waste Michigan, and the Green Party of Ohio. Terry Lodge of Toledo serves as the coalition's legal counsel.
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As the column in Bulletin of Atomic Scientists by Robert Alvarez of Institute for Policy Studies makes clear, the troubled Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico is used for disposal of trans-uranic nuclear weapons complex wastes. However, as testimony to NRC by Terry Lodge (photo, above left) shows, WIPP's radioactivity leakage also has significance for commercial irradiated nuclear fuel -- undermining NRC assumptions which form the basis for Davis-Besse's current operating license, as well as its proposed license extension.
He addressed the fact that when, in 1994 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons arsenal, it do so in exchange for assurances and guarantees for its territorial integrity and sovereignty, with not only Russia, but also the U.K. and U.S. The four-party international agreement was called the Budapest Memorandum.
In regards to nuclear weapons, Deshchytsia said:
"[T]here are already political voices in Ukraine calling to resume production of nuclear weapons as the only means to protect ourselves from any outside aggression. From the Ukrainian government's standpoint, this option is not on the table. We remain committed to the NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty] as a non-nuclear state."
He also addressed nuclear power plant security:
"One other notable point is the potential threat to many nuclear facilities and other critical infrastructure on the territory of Ukraine, including in Crimea. At present, there is no immediate danger. However, if the situation aggravates Ukraine may be in need of international assistance to protect these facilities."
Ukraine has 15 operating atomic reactors, at four nuclear power plants across the country. One destroyed reactor, and three permanently closed RBMKs, are located just about 100 km (62 miles) north of Kyiv, very near the border with Belarus. Radioactive waste is stored at all five sites. Europe's largest nuclear power plant,the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Station (Ukrainian: Запорізька АЕС), with six full-scale, 1,000 MW-e atomic reactors, is located just north of Crimea, and just west of the border with Russia.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine has reignited bellicose threats of nuclear war and the shocking global consequences that could arise out of regional conflicts. It has further underscored the inherent threat and vulnerability from atomic power not only from the reality of catastrophic accidents but as pre-deployed retaliatory weapons for mass destruction that could be targeted in conventional war. As world tensions mount, more effort must now be directed on the need to abandon both nuclear weapons and nuclear power for planetary survival.
Newsweek reports that many Ukrainians regret surrendering what was the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world following the 1991 breakup of the former Soviet Union. In response to President Obama’s concern that the Russian army backed taking of Crimea is “dangerous and destablizing", Russian television host and anchorman Dmitry Kiselyov for the state-owned Russia One channel retorted, “Russia is the only country in the world realistically capable of turning the U.S. into radioactive ash.” The Wall Street Journal rattled back, “nations that abandon their nuclear arsenals do so at their own peril.
In fact, in preparing for and waging nuclear war nobody wins, everybody loses.
Building and maintaining nuclear arsenals is economically draining the world of vital human needs resources.
Climate scientists at Rutgers University have refocused attention on their study of the global climate catastrophe with a limited exchange of 100 nuclear weapons from the thousands of thermonuclear warheads in the world’s arsenal. As first warned by famed scientist Carl Sagan, nuclear war will generate tremendous amounts of smoke from the burning cities that would absorb incoming sunlight heating the atmosphere, while the dust from ground bursts will reflect sunlight back into space. Both will prevent sunlight from penetrating the atmosphere over a prolonged period of time resulting in a global agricultural collapse. Not only do the nuclear warring nations suffer unthinkable causalities but there will be the global collateral damage from mass starvation.
Even the so-called “peaceful atom” in times of crisis as is growing out of confrontation over Crimea carries inherent catastrophic risk. Nuclear power plants are not only identified as vital infrastructure that could be targeted in a conventional war to cripple that nation’s electricity production but radiological weapons capable of widespread land and resource contamination that will disregard borders.
There is one rational position remaining, abandon nuclear weapons and nuclear power. As militaries mobilize along many borders now, most recently Cuba has voiced the call for the global elimination of nuclear arsenals that “threaten the survival of our species.” The elimination of nuclear arsenals fundamentally begins with the elimination of nuclear weapon building blocks themselves, enriched uranium and plutonium, as generated in nuclear power plants.
