Nuclear weapons

1 August 2017News

122 nations vote for treaty outlawing nuclear weapons

Delegates give a standing ovation on 7 July as the UN adopts a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons, by 122 votes to 1. PHOTO: CLARE CONBOY/ICAN

On 7 July, the United Nations passed a treaty forbidding the development, testing, production, possession, transfer, use and threatened use of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.

Costa Rican diplomat Elayne Whyte Gómez, president of the abolition conference, said: ‘We all feel very emotional today. We feel that we are…

1 August 2017News in Brief

On 12 July, two Trident Ploughshares (TP) campaigners were put in prison after refusing bail conditions. Brian Quail (79), a retired teacher from Glasgow; and Angie Zelter (66), a peace and environmental campaigner from Knighton in Wales, were both remanded in custody by Dumbarton sheriff court until 3 August.

Brian and Angie had both refused to accept a bail condition barring them from going within 100m of the Coulport nuclear weapon store and the Faslane nuclear submarine base.…

1 August 2017Feature

The opening sections of a historic agreement

On 27 March, Elayne Whyte Gómez of Costa Rica chairs the opening meeting of the United Nations nuclear ban conference in the General Assembly Hall in the UN building, New York, USA. Photo: UN photo

“The States Parties to this Treaty,

Determined to contribute to the realization of the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations,

Deeply concerned about the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from any use of nuclear weapons, and recognizing…

1 August 2017Comment

We need to get our priorities right, argues Bruce Kent

What an odd world of priorities we live in. Any more about Brexit – important though it is in so many ways – tends now to produce a yawn.

Yet the recent Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has not even started to be a priority. We must all make it one.

It was passed with the support of 122 countries at a UN conference a couple of weeks ago. Only the Netherlands voted ‘No’.

The nuclear weapon countries, including our own, took no part. In fact Michael…

1 August 2017Comment

Nikki No-Nukes on her recent trip to Coulport, where the nuclear warheads for Trident submarines are stored and loaded onto missiles.

Angie Zelter is cut out of a lock-on in front of Coulport nuclear weapon store in Scotland on 11 July. Photo: Trident Ploughshares

Thursday: We (a contingent from the south-west of England) arrived at the Trident Ploughshares Coulport Disarmament Camp late at night, having travelled straight from an action which was part of the July rolling blockade at the fracking front line: Preston New Road in Lancashire. We arrived tired but exhilarated having kept the drills at bay for nearly…

1 August 2017Feature

A day-by-day account by a Scottish civil society team of the second part of the United Nations negotiations to ban the Bomb

Over 120 countries negotiate a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons in Conference Room A in the UN building, New York, 3 July 2017. PHOTO: RALF SHLESENER/ICAN

15 June 2017: Day 1

Flavia Tudoreanu & team:

The concluding session of the United Nations conference to negotiate a legally-binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons has started today.

Queueing to get our badges proved to be a much more interesting experience than expected. We got to reunite with…

7 July 2017Blog

122 countries vote in favour of a treaty banning nuclear weapons - Britain refused to participate

New York, 7 July 2017: Negotiations of a new international treaty that bans nuclear weapons concluded at the United Nations today as the treaty was formally adopted by states. The United Kingdom, alongside other nuclear-armed states, has boycotted the negotiations despite government claims to support multilateral disarmament and a world without nuclear weapons.

'States that are serious about eliminating nuclear weapons have joined the United Nations treaty negotiations to ban nuclear…

1 June 2017News

Atom bomb survivors embark on world tour

Three hibakusha, survivors

Three hibakusha – two survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and one of that of Nagasaki – set sail from Japan on board Peace Boat on 12 April for a 105-day global voyage.

Joined by two second generation hibakusha and two ‘youth communicators’, the delegation is visiting 22 countries, including the nuclear weapon states of France, Russia and the United States.

Ms Tsuchida Kazumi, Ms Tanaka Toshiko and Mr Mise Seeiichiro are giving personal…

1 June 2017News in Brief

On 15 May, an escort vehicle with a nuclear convoy broke down near Bicester, holding up a convoy taking warheads from the nuclear bomb factory in Burghfield, Berkshire, to Coulport in Scotland.

More nuclear weapons were moved across England and Scotland in 2016 than in previous years, according to Nukewatch, who monitor nuclear warhead convoys.
The number of convoys was similar, but twice as many were carrying nuclear weapons, Nukewatch estimates.

Nukewatch believes…

1 April 2017News in Brief

Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu was, at the time of going to press, waiting to be sentenced after being found guilty in January of talking to two US citizens in East Jerusalem without permission from the Israeli authorities.

This breached conditions imposed after Vanunu was released from prison in 2004. He had served 18 years in prison for telling the world about Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal.

Vanunu is waiting to hear about his latest appeal to quash…

1 April 2017News

Camp celebrates 35th anniversary by halting warhead convoy

A nuclear warhead convoy is brought to a full stop on the A817 near Helensburgh, Scotland, on 22 March by Faslane Peace Campers.Photo: Faslane Peace Camp

In Scotland, peace activists connected to Faslane Peace Camp have blockaded the Faslane Trident submarine base, held an open day as part of the camp’s 35th birthday celebrations. Oh, and halted a nuclear warhead convoy.

The 2 February blockade was carried out by five peace campers who ‘locked-on’ to each other by chaining…

1 April 2017News in Brief

On 26 January, the hands of the Doomsday Clock moved 30 seconds closer to catastrophe.

‘It is two and a half minutes to midnight’, announced the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board, warning that ‘world leaders were failing to act with the speed and on the scale required to protect citizens from the extreme danger posed by climate change and nuclear war’.

In 2016, according to the board, ‘the international community did not take the steps needed…

1 April 2017News in Brief

With the trial that concluded just after last issue went to press, all 13 people charged during the Trident Ploughshares June month of action at the Burghfield nuclear bomb factory in Berkshire have now had their cases resolved (all at Reading magistrates court).

On 19 October, Helen Swanston was found guilty of obstructing the highway and was given 12 months conditional discharge plus costs of £215. She had locked onto a vehicle parked across the northern end of ‘The Mearings’, a…

1 April 2017News

UK nuclear power driven by military demands - SPRU

Peter Smith of Stop Hinkley. Photo: Alun Williams

On 11 March, a conference entitled ‘Green Nuclear-Free Wales’ drew more than 60 delegates to the National Library in Aberystwyth on the sixth anniversary of the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster (in March, a Japanese court ruled that state negligence contributed to the triple meltdown).

Speakers in Aberystwyth included the former chief electrical engineer for Hinkley Point, Peter Smith, who critiqued nuclear industry safety…

1 April 2017Letter

In his column, ‘As I Please’ (PN 2600–2601), Bruce Kent mentions Stanislaus Petrov, who saved us all from nuclear war by refusing to believe the evidence on his computer of a US nuclear attack on Russia – and was reprimanded for it!

The story is one of several in Jim McCluskey’s booklet The Nuclear Threat, Intolerable and Avoidable Accidents, Misjudgements, and Mega Foul-ups, published in 2009.

I have a dozen copies and would love to give them away!…