This is one of a series of articles being produced by Aberdeen and District Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). You can read further articles in both past and future editions of Aberdeen Voice. With thanks to Jonathan Russell.
Even a nuclear power plant that suffers accidental damage has dire long-term consequences, for instance those following Fukushima’s nuclear disaster and although the first reports suggested that harvests contained levels of contamination well under the safety limit for human consumption:
more recent research by the Universities Space Research association in the US State of Maryland has found that the area of eastern Fukushima had levels that exceeded official government limits for arable land and
researchers estimated that cesium-137 (the longest lasting contaminant) found close to the nuclear plant was eight times the safety limit, while neighbouring regions were just under this level.
Much more worryingly, there is a daily struggle to keep 1,500 rods cool which, otherwise, would release huge amounts of radiation into the atmosphere.
If hit by another similar earthquake, the US National Council on radiation protection, along with Japanese experts, have stated that if there were another earthquake, there is a 70% chance that the entire fuel pool structure would collapse, leading to a disaster that would release 134 curies of cesium -137 – roughly 85 times the amount released at Chernobyl.
These experts believe this would destroy the world environment and our civilization, which has led to Japan decommissioning its entire nuclear program and move to Green Energy. In Germany, the public outcry has led them to stop building nuclear power stations and engage in a programme of closing down existing ones and moving even more to Green Technology.
We have yet to find out the long term effects of the depleted Uranium
Of course Nuclear Technology has improved since the building of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant and neither Scotland, nor the United Kingdom, is likely to be affected by an earth quake the size of the one in Japan.
Nuclear power stations have to take this possibility into account in their design (the Health and Safety Executive did note two problems with seismic design at the Heysham and Torness nuclear power plants).
Fukushima has highlighted the extremely scary potential for disaster if we go down the nuclear route as many risks, such as human error and terrorist attacks, would still exist. Also some nuclear power stations, such as Torness, are located near to the sea and the rise in sea levels could lead to flooding.
The present Scottish government is committed to closing down our nuclear power stations while, in contrast, the UK government is planning to build nuclear power stations, although German firms which would have been involved have pulled out.
We have yet to find out the long term effects of the depleted Uranium used by Western forces and NATO in recent conflicts from Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Libya.
What we do know is that death rates and serious malformations of many babies have already greatly increased as a result of the use of depleted uranium in our Western weaponry. But what might happen in the case of unavoidable accidental damage, or terrorist action and what might survivors then regret?
Aberdeen and District CND have meetings each month at 7.30pm on the top floor of the Belmont Cinema Belmont Street Aberdeen
This is one of a series of articles being produced by Aberdeen and District Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). You can read further articles in both past and future editions of Aberdeen Voice. With thanks to Jonathan Russell.
Western and Soviet scientists in the 1980s exchanged information on the effects of the use of Nuclear Weapons on climate.
Their findings were that:
Nuclear explosions would send massive clouds into the astrosphere blocking so much sunlight that a nuclear winter would result.
Global temperatures would plunge 20 to 40 degrees centigrade for several months and remain 2-6 degrees centigrade lower for 1-3 years.
Up to 70% of the earth’s stratospheric ozone layer would be destroyed allowing huge doses of ultra-violet light to reach the earth’s surface.
The UV light would kill much of the marine life that forms the basis of the food chain – it would also blind animals and humans.
The cold and dust would create widespread crop failures and global famine.
More recent research in the United States, based on a sophisticated atmospheric oceanic climate model that had an excellent track record of simulating the cooling effects of past volcanic eruptions, concluded that the 1980s predictions of nuclear weapon winter effects were if anything underestimates.
Furthermore, even limited nuclear war poses a significant threat to the earth’s climate. This would further have an effect on climate change capable of causing economic chaos.
The problems of climate change are already evident. The International Energy Agency projects that unless societies build alternatives to carbon-emitting energy technologies over the next five years, the world is doomed to harsher weather, drought, famine, water scarcity, rising sea levels – leading to the loss of island nations and many coastal areas.
The use of Nuclear Weapons would make this possibility, if we’re foolish enough to continue along the nuclear road, even more of a threat to human and animal life.
Aberdeen and District CND have monthly meetings held at 7.30pm on the second Monday of each month on the top floor of the Belmont Cinema, Belmont Street, Aberdeen.
At the next meeting of Aberdeen CND on Monday 10th April, Jonathan Russell, Chair of Aberdeen CND and also a member of Campaign Against the Arms Trade, will be leading a discussion on the Arms Trade. The meeting will take place at 7.30pm on the Top Floor of the Belmont Cinema, Belmont Street, Aberdeen.
The arms trade is a deadly, corrupt business. It supports conflicts and human rights abusing regimes while squandering valuable resources which could be used to deal with the many social and environmental challenges we face here on Planet Earth. It does this with the full support of governments around the world, in particular the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: the United States, Russia, France, China and the United Kingdom.
These are the very countries which are meant to be our global custodians, but are in fact the very countries which are feeding global insecurity and conflict.
While very few countries sell large volumes of weaponry, the buyers are spread across the world. Other than to the five permanent UN Security Council members, the largest buyers are in the Middle East and South East Asia. The arms themselves range from fighter aircraft, helicopters and warships with guided missiles, radar and electronic warfare systems, tanks, armoured vehicles, machine guns and rifles.
The common misconception is that it is the illegal trade that is damaging, while the legal trade is tightly controlled and acceptable. However, the vast majority of arms sold around the world including those to human rights abusing governments or into areas of conflict are legal and are supported by governments. In 2007 the value of legal arms around the world amounted to 60 billion dollars. The illegal market is estimated at 5 billion dollars: many illegal weapons end up as legal weapons.
The arms trade exists to provide weapons to those who can pay for them. What the buyers do with the arms, what political approval the sales signify, and how money could be better spent appears irrelevant to the arms companies and our governments. The UK Government’s 2010 Human Rights Annual Report identified 26 countries of concern. In that year the UK approved arms licences to 16 of these.
There’s a sense that in the past we were embarrassed about supporting defence exports. There’s no such embarrassment in this Government.
David Cameron was in the Middle East on a high-profile mission to sell arms when the democracy movement started in the Middle East. Selling arms to a country in conflict whether internal or external makes the conflict more deadly and longer lasting.
If there is tension between countries or within a country, then arms purchases are likely to increase this tension and make actual conflict more likely.
Even when conflict has ended, arms, particularly small arms, may remain in large numbers (as in Libya at present), fuelling further conflicts and/or criminal activity.
Every year the UK Government authorises the sale of arms to well over 100 countries. This is hardly surprising given that it is Government policy to vigorously support arms exports. Peter Luff, Minister of Defence Exports in the present UK Government, has stated that:
“There’s a sense that in the past we were embarrassed about supporting defence exports. There’s no such embarrassment in this Government.”
Arms companies and Government are inseparable when it comes to selling arms. The Government’s UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) department is a vital element of UK’s arms dealing. In 2008 the Government opened the Defence and Security Organisation which promotes weaponry on behalf of arms companies. There are 158 civil servants in the Defence and Security Organisation while other non-arms sectors have137 staff. This is despite arms accounting for less than 1.5 Percent of UK exports.
• Arms export jobs as a percentage of total employment: 0.2%
• Arms as a percentage of exports: 1.5 %
• UK Government Research Expenditure Spent on Arms: 27%
• UK trade and investment staff committed to selling arms: 54%
Research carried out for Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) by the Stockholm International Peace Institute assesses the level of subsidy by Government to the arms trade in the UK to be around £700 million a year. In 2010 the UK Government issued 10,850 arms export licences, refused 230, and revoked 14.
Half of the refusals related to proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, with a maximum of 76 being revoked on the grounds that they contributed to internal repression, internal conflict or regional instability. Foreign office embassies also promote the arms sales, as do the Ministry of Defence armed services. Arms fairs are common in the UK and around the world. The governments of host countries provides support for their arms firms.
Arms sales from the UK seem to vary from year to year:
• 2007 9651 million (particularly high because of sales of Typhoon aircraft to Saudi Arabia)
• 2008 4367 million
• 2009 7261 million also high as included Typhoon support services to Saudi Arabia)
• 2010 5819 million
Of the 16 countries identified by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute as locations of major conflict in 2009, the UK sold arms to 12.
Columnist Will Self – “War, the arms trade and the abuse of language”
BAE arms are the UK’s main arms company and has military customers in over 100 countries. BAE’s focus over the past few years has been on increasing sales to the US, specifically targeting equipment for conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, and supplying Euro fighters and other arms to Saudi Arabia. BAE routinely supplies countries which the UK Foreign Office considers as having ‘the most serious wide-ranging human rights concerns’.
The casualties of conflict are now overwhelmingly civilian, increasing from 50% of war related deaths in the first half of the twentieth century to 90% near the end of the century.
The arms trade affects development both through the money wasted on arms purchased and through the conflicts fuelled by arms.
A study in 2007 by Oxfam of the economic cost of armed conflict to Africa estimated that Africa loses around 18 billion dollars a year due to wars and that armed conflict shrinks an African nations economy by 15%.
As well as the direct effects of military spending, medical costs and the destruction of infrastructure, there are indirect costs on the economy and employment suffers ( this does not take into account the countless human misery caused by loss of life and sustained injuries effecting families and friends as well as the individuals concerned).
The study estimated that the cost of conflicts in Africa since 1990 was equivalent to the aid provided to them by major donors.
Even when conflict is not taking place money diverted to arms is a drain on government resources and takes away from vital spending on health education and infrastructure. The massive 1998 South African arms deals for aircraft, helicopters, warships and submarines cost the country over £8billion. Yet most of the population live in shanty towns and other poor housing and South Africans with HIV/AIDS were told that the country could not afford ant-retroviral medication.
Despite desperate poverty and its recent appalling history of armed struggle, the UK government is actively promoting arms struggle to Angola. The UK government not only approved arms exports to Angola it actively organised an “industry day’’ when HMS Liverpool docked in Angola waters and hosted Angolan political and military officials.
The arms trade causes countless misery in our world; it is a poor use of limited resources which should be used to make this world a better place. We need to question the thinking in the world that believes you only get what you want by force. The five members of the Security Council should start taking on their responsibilities and use conflict resolution rather than warfare to sort the many conflicts that take place both between and within countries.
Aberdeen’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament group has held a memorial service marking 66 years since the nuclear attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War Two. Philip Sim attended the annual event and brings us the following account.
There was a healthy turnout at the event on the banks of the River Dee, where speakers and spectators alike braved the pouring rain and swirling winds.
The service included speeches from a range of political and community groups, including SNP MSP Maureen Watt, Nathan Morrison of the Labour Student’s Association, Gordon Maloney of the Aberdeen University Student’s Association, and Clive Kempe of the Green Party.
Messages of support were read out from Tomihisa Taue, the mayor of Nagasaki, Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, and Aberdeen North MP Frank Doran. Poems and songs were recited, all conveying the same broad anti-nuclear message.
After a minute’s silence, the group lit two hundred peace lanterns, one for each thousand people killed in the nuclear attacks on Japan in 1945, and floated them down the River Dee as the sun went down.
CND rallies were also hosted in Dundee, Ayr and Paisley, while people gathered to hear speeches in Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gardens and Glasgow’s west end.
Saturday the 6th of August sees the 66th anniversary of the dropping of the world’s first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August the 6th in 1945.
Aberdeen CND will be holding a commemoration of the event at the River Dee on the evening of the 6th.
Previous years have seen an increasing amount of attendees at this event with representatives from political parties, faith groups and members of the public.
We will release 200 peace lanterns on the River Dee to commemorate the 200,000 men, women and children who died. There will also be short contributions from persons representing Student organisations, Trade Unions, Faith Groups and Civic leaders.
All are welcome at the event and messages of support have so far been received from the Mayor of Nagasaki (see below), Scotland’s First Minister and local MP Kevin Stewart.
CITY OF NAGASAKI Message from the Mayor
“Today I would like to say a few words on behalf of the people of Nagasaki for Hiroshima/Nagasaki Memorial Ceremony being held in Aberdeen.
“I would first like to extend my appreciation for the people of Aberdeen and their continued participation and support in lasting peace activities.
“At 11.02am on August 9, 1945Nagasaki was devastated by a single atomic bomb. With 74,000 people killed instantly in the explosion and a further 75,000 who suffered injuries, Nagasaki fell into ruin. Those who narrowly escaped death were dealt terrible incurable physical and psychological wounds caused by the after effects of the radiation that they suffer from even today, 66 years later.
“Through the Hiroshima/Nagasaki Memorial Ceremony, I hope many people of Aberdeen can deepen their general understanding of the inhumanity of nuclear weapons and help us work towards realizing a world free of nuclear weapons and everlasting peace.
“In closing, I would like to extend my best wishes for the success of this event and for the good health of all the people who are gathered here today.” – Tomihisa Taue, Mayor of Nagasaki.
Date: Saturday 6th August 2011, at 8.30pm Venue: the Fisherman’s Hut on the River Dee
(by Riverside drive – See map)
CND campaigns to stop any future mass destructions! We call on the Government to:
Scrap the Trident nuclear system.
Cancel plans for the next generation nuclear weapons
Nuclear Power has always been a contentious issue. There have always been advocates for and against. International concerns about Climate Change, an impending energy crisis and the nuclear accident in Japan have highlighted the issues concerned. Jonathan Hamilton Russell writes.
For CND there has always been the concern of the link between the technology of Nuclear Power and Nuclear Weapons. The Sustainable Development Commission chaired, at the time by Jonathon Porrit in 2006, produced a report for the then Labour Government stating unanimously that, following a detailed analysis of sustainable development factors, that Nuclear was not the preferred option.
This followed a Government White Paper in 2003 which had concluded that Nuclear Power was not an Economic Option. Several days after the Sustainable Development Commission reported, Tony Blair announced that Nuclear Power was to be an essential component of our future Energy Provision.
Recently high profile environmentalists James Lovelock and George Monbiot have been converts to Nuclear Power given their concerns about Climate Change and the resulting requirements to cut back on Carbon omissions.
The SNP have long championed alternative energy and have been against Nuclear Power, as have the Scottish and English Green Parties, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. Jonathon Porritt, who was sacked as the chair of the Sustainable Development commission still sees alternative energy and energy conservation as the way forward.
We have had until recently a bonanza of cheap energy in Scotland and the UK and the public has become used to cheap energy and the ability to regularly drive, fly and live and work in centrally heated buildings. This situation will soon end. The reality of peak oil and the need to import Russian Gas have yet to be admitted to the public by most politicians, and the expectations of the general public is that the status quo remains. Whatever decisions are made, there will be inevitable opposition to both nuclear power and alternative energy. Climate Change has already gone down the political agenda.
We have failed to invest and research sufficiently, concentrating our efforts on oil, gas and also nuclear
The costs of producing both Nuclear Power and Alternative Energy will be much higher than present costs and will require both increased public subsidy and will mean rising costs for the consumer. The costs are likely to reduce as we become more expert at production of nuclear or its alternatives.
The costs of South Korea’s Nuclear Reactors went down by 28% by the time they produced their 7th and 8th Reactors.
Safety measures have improved – the Reactors in Japan are 40 years old – and the safety technology no longer requires power from outside. However, the risk of human error intentional or otherwise and unknown hazards still exist. The costs of insurance are high and do not include de-commissioning. The potential hazards of storage of spent Uranium still remain to be seen. Only three councils have agreed to storage underground – all three being in Cumbria.
There is however still uncertainty of risk in relation to this method of storage. Storage and waste costs still have to be borne by government. Increased use of Uranium will lead to shortages as estimates are that about 100 Years worth still remain, and when it runs out what will happen?
There are concerns and restrictions in many countries regarding the mining of Uranium, and Kazakhstan – a Muslim country on Iran’s border – has the main stocks. The costs of Uranium are likely to increase if there is more demand. There has historically been considerable contamination of local communities when mining has taken place, and even with greater safety measures some risks will remain.
The alternative is increased energy conservation and the use of renewables. As identified by the Sustainable Development Commission the UK – and in particular Scotland – has the potential with tidal energy, wind power, carbon capture, waste and power, and solar developments to cover our energy needs.
However there are challenges. We have failed to invest and research sufficiently, concentrating our efforts on oil, gas and also nuclear. There would have to be significant resources put into research and design, and if we were also putting our efforts into nuclear then opportunities with renewable would be lost.
The recession will mean there is less money to invest. A much better use than cutting the cost of petrol in the long term would have been to use the money from taxing oil companies to pay for the development of renewable energy resources.
There would be problems both with nuclear and renewable as to where to place energy resources.
There has been significant public opposition both to nuclear and wind developments. The Crown Estate commission has powers in relation to developing resources at sea which would have to be overcome.
The North-East of Scotland has a huge potential for the development of renewable energy and the area would benefit from more focus on its development. The main problem I would suggest in relation to our future energy provision, is public expectations and politicians needs in terms of re-election. People have become used to private transport and cheap central heating and whichever way we go will be unpopular.
My own conclusion is, that spending on Nuclear Energy developments will divert money that could be spent on energy efficiency and renewable energy. There is a challenge in relation to needs in terms of peak usage – such as before Christmas – but these could be overcome by us linking into a European network of energy.
In historical terms Nuclear Power is just another short term fix whilst the opportunity of renewable energy will always be with us. In some countries which are landlocked, Nuclear may be the only possible route but given what has happened in Japan potential risks of location would have to be taken into account.
