Showdown at NPT Review Conference
Saturday, 8 May 2010
Nerun Yakub
Iranian President Ahmedinejad minced no words when he responded to reporters' queries prior to the ongoing UN Non Proliferation Treaty Review Conference which started on Monday, May 3, 2010, in New York. He is the only head of state attending and was clearly prepared to take on Washington and its allies on the question of his country's uranium enrichment programme. This, the US and friends insist, is meant to fuel bombs not civilian power, regardless of Iran's claims that it is no more than that and well within the NPT rules. Ahmedinejad told reporters last Sunday that the dominant powers are using the atomic bomb as a 'tool for bullying, domination and expansionism,' and are imposing heavy pressures on independent countries, under 'the pretext of prevention of nuclear weapons proliferation.'
As expected, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Ahmedinejad were found sparring on stage on the opening day, the latter terming it 'disgusting' and 'shameful' that the US would still be in possession of over 5,000 atomic warheads.[ The United States revealed on Monday that it has a total of 5,113 nuclear warheads in its stockpile, as of September 30, 2009.] The Iranians stressed that this was not only unjustified but also a threat to global security. They added that an independent probe would be required to verify the actual number of nuclear warheads in US possession. All this must have been quite infuriating for Clinton. Prior to Monday's inaugural heat, she had told a 'Meet the Press' session, 'We're not going to permit Iran to change the story from their failure to comply.'
Nobody has any illusions about the 'stories' that get spun in the interest of the world's dominant powers and their adversaries, nor the grim fact that they couldn't care less about ordinary people. The nuclear cauldron, including weapons and civilian nuclear power, has been wrecking the planet in more ways than one, and it is high time that the UN, the IAEA and enlightened world leaders, all faced up to the intractable problem and looked for honest ways to roll back the atomic age.
In July last year Presidents Obama and Medvedev had pledged to cut their strategic weapons stockpiles in the next seven years from 1500 to 1675 warheads and 500 to 1100 delivery vehicles each. This agreement was to replace the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, signed in 1991 by the United States and Russia. Under START, the two powers -- which account for 96 per cent of the 26,000 global nuclear weapons, -- were allowed 2,200 strategic warheads and 1,600 launch vehicles. At the height of the Cold War, that is, around 1985, there were 65,000 of these weapons of mass destruction. Arms control agreements since then have been chipping away, but it's not good enough. An internet signature campaign rightly calls for a total elimination of WMD: 'We, the undersigned, believe that to protect our children, our grandchildren, our civilization from the threat of a nuclear catastrophe, we must eliminate all nuclear weapons globally.'
The two presidents had then held a joint press conference at the Kremlin, vowing to leave 'behind the suspicion and rivalry of the past' and forge ahead for a better future. Yet, in the course of their meeting, Russia did not hesitate to say yes to the US using their land and airspace to transport weapons and troops to Afghanistan. Who knows how long the beleaguered land of Afghanistan and its people would go on serving US and Allied troops as cannon fodder? Wars under any pretext, in other peoples' lands, are waged as much to keep the weapons business thriving as to grab the victims' resources in many cunning, corporate ways. So rules under this or that regime, NPT, START, or whatever, are not the same for all players. Israel is therefore treated with kid gloves while the likes of Iran get a shunting!
The dumping or dismantling of military hardware mind you would be no easy matter. And regardless of the neat little theories that experts give us about turning the metal in nuclear weapons into ploughshares and pens, it is fraught with the same intractable problems as the 'spent fuel' from civilian nuclear reactors. Investigations by a Norwegian environmental group, BELLONA, prior to the 1992 Earth Summit, revealed that the former Soviet Union had simply dumped waste from hundreds of old nuclear submarines in the Kara, Sea and Kola Peninsula turning these into the world's greatest burial grounds for atomic reactors and bombs. Bellona's findings were corroborated by a BBC documentary six years later (Horizon 07/06/98). Russia, it said, had dumped more nuclear wastes into the sea than all the world's countries did together.
By the turn of the 20th century, the OECD countries had over 160,000 metric tonnes of spent fuel while the US had over 12,000 tonnes. All this nuclear waste in the process of being recycled or temporarily stored in water-filled utility holding ponds until it is cool enough to be disposed off in 'geological repositories' 300 to 1200 metres below the earth's surface! The UK's Nuclear Industry Radioactive Waste Executive (NIREX) which handles low and intermediate level waste, has been looking for such burial grounds that are stable and not likely to be tampered with by future generations! Sellafield in the UK is one of the sites chosen where the waste is reprocessed for plutonium, the world's deadliest man-made nuclear element. At this reprocessing plant, hundreds of gallons of high level waste are kept in double-walled steel tanks surrounded by thick concrete. These must be perpetually stirred to prevent plutonium clumping together into an explosive mass, and perpetually cooled to prevent it from boiling over from the heat of continuous radioactive breakdown!
Why should this radioactive pollution be feared ? After all, the earth's environment is naturally radioactive. It comes from the cosmic rays, from the sun, various rocks and building materials, and even in the phosphorous in some of our food and drink. The reason is, the nuclear industry, both civilian and military, have increased radioactive pollution to such an extent, that cancers and genetic diseases are growing at an alarming rate, far more than natural background radiation could account for, according to scientists campaigning for a phase-out of nuclear armaments. Even civilian reactors, they say, generate low, intermediate and high-level radioactive waste as well as chemical poisons. Whether it is from warheads or spent fuel, nuclear waste emits different kinds of ionizing radiation that can alter the chemical makeup of living tissue through extremely high frequency electromagnetic waves, such as X-rays and Gamma-rays and Alpha radiation. This break up of atomic bonds that hold together molecules in cells leads to genetic injury. Even the so-called safe dose of radiation is suspect. That is why atomic energy and weaponry must be rolled back.
Iranian President Ahmedinejad minced no words when he responded to reporters' queries prior to the ongoing UN Non Proliferation Treaty Review Conference which started on Monday, May 3, 2010, in New York. He is the only head of state attending and was clearly prepared to take on Washington and its allies on the question of his country's uranium enrichment programme. This, the US and friends insist, is meant to fuel bombs not civilian power, regardless of Iran's claims that it is no more than that and well within the NPT rules. Ahmedinejad told reporters last Sunday that the dominant powers are using the atomic bomb as a 'tool for bullying, domination and expansionism,' and are imposing heavy pressures on independent countries, under 'the pretext of prevention of nuclear weapons proliferation.'
As expected, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Ahmedinejad were found sparring on stage on the opening day, the latter terming it 'disgusting' and 'shameful' that the US would still be in possession of over 5,000 atomic warheads.[ The United States revealed on Monday that it has a total of 5,113 nuclear warheads in its stockpile, as of September 30, 2009.] The Iranians stressed that this was not only unjustified but also a threat to global security. They added that an independent probe would be required to verify the actual number of nuclear warheads in US possession. All this must have been quite infuriating for Clinton. Prior to Monday's inaugural heat, she had told a 'Meet the Press' session, 'We're not going to permit Iran to change the story from their failure to comply.'
Nobody has any illusions about the 'stories' that get spun in the interest of the world's dominant powers and their adversaries, nor the grim fact that they couldn't care less about ordinary people. The nuclear cauldron, including weapons and civilian nuclear power, has been wrecking the planet in more ways than one, and it is high time that the UN, the IAEA and enlightened world leaders, all faced up to the intractable problem and looked for honest ways to roll back the atomic age.
In July last year Presidents Obama and Medvedev had pledged to cut their strategic weapons stockpiles in the next seven years from 1500 to 1675 warheads and 500 to 1100 delivery vehicles each. This agreement was to replace the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, signed in 1991 by the United States and Russia. Under START, the two powers -- which account for 96 per cent of the 26,000 global nuclear weapons, -- were allowed 2,200 strategic warheads and 1,600 launch vehicles. At the height of the Cold War, that is, around 1985, there were 65,000 of these weapons of mass destruction. Arms control agreements since then have been chipping away, but it's not good enough. An internet signature campaign rightly calls for a total elimination of WMD: 'We, the undersigned, believe that to protect our children, our grandchildren, our civilization from the threat of a nuclear catastrophe, we must eliminate all nuclear weapons globally.'
The two presidents had then held a joint press conference at the Kremlin, vowing to leave 'behind the suspicion and rivalry of the past' and forge ahead for a better future. Yet, in the course of their meeting, Russia did not hesitate to say yes to the US using their land and airspace to transport weapons and troops to Afghanistan. Who knows how long the beleaguered land of Afghanistan and its people would go on serving US and Allied troops as cannon fodder? Wars under any pretext, in other peoples' lands, are waged as much to keep the weapons business thriving as to grab the victims' resources in many cunning, corporate ways. So rules under this or that regime, NPT, START, or whatever, are not the same for all players. Israel is therefore treated with kid gloves while the likes of Iran get a shunting!
The dumping or dismantling of military hardware mind you would be no easy matter. And regardless of the neat little theories that experts give us about turning the metal in nuclear weapons into ploughshares and pens, it is fraught with the same intractable problems as the 'spent fuel' from civilian nuclear reactors. Investigations by a Norwegian environmental group, BELLONA, prior to the 1992 Earth Summit, revealed that the former Soviet Union had simply dumped waste from hundreds of old nuclear submarines in the Kara, Sea and Kola Peninsula turning these into the world's greatest burial grounds for atomic reactors and bombs. Bellona's findings were corroborated by a BBC documentary six years later (Horizon 07/06/98). Russia, it said, had dumped more nuclear wastes into the sea than all the world's countries did together.
By the turn of the 20th century, the OECD countries had over 160,000 metric tonnes of spent fuel while the US had over 12,000 tonnes. All this nuclear waste in the process of being recycled or temporarily stored in water-filled utility holding ponds until it is cool enough to be disposed off in 'geological repositories' 300 to 1200 metres below the earth's surface! The UK's Nuclear Industry Radioactive Waste Executive (NIREX) which handles low and intermediate level waste, has been looking for such burial grounds that are stable and not likely to be tampered with by future generations! Sellafield in the UK is one of the sites chosen where the waste is reprocessed for plutonium, the world's deadliest man-made nuclear element. At this reprocessing plant, hundreds of gallons of high level waste are kept in double-walled steel tanks surrounded by thick concrete. These must be perpetually stirred to prevent plutonium clumping together into an explosive mass, and perpetually cooled to prevent it from boiling over from the heat of continuous radioactive breakdown!
Why should this radioactive pollution be feared ? After all, the earth's environment is naturally radioactive. It comes from the cosmic rays, from the sun, various rocks and building materials, and even in the phosphorous in some of our food and drink. The reason is, the nuclear industry, both civilian and military, have increased radioactive pollution to such an extent, that cancers and genetic diseases are growing at an alarming rate, far more than natural background radiation could account for, according to scientists campaigning for a phase-out of nuclear armaments. Even civilian reactors, they say, generate low, intermediate and high-level radioactive waste as well as chemical poisons. Whether it is from warheads or spent fuel, nuclear waste emits different kinds of ionizing radiation that can alter the chemical makeup of living tissue through extremely high frequency electromagnetic waves, such as X-rays and Gamma-rays and Alpha radiation. This break up of atomic bonds that hold together molecules in cells leads to genetic injury. Even the so-called safe dose of radiation is suspect. That is why atomic energy and weaponry must be rolled back.