Antinuclear

Australian news, and some related international items

Australia should join UN nuclear weapons ban treaty, when it opens in September

Aust on ‘wrong side’ of nuclear weapon ban http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/aust-on-wrong-side-of-nuclear-weapon-ban/news-story/be98118f29f512aad05aac1134546ad4, Belinda Merhab, Australian Associated Press, July 8, 2017 Australia is accused of being on the wrong side of history after ignoring a United Nations vote to ban nuclear weapons.

More than 120 countries have approved the first-ever treaty to ban nuclear weapons at a UN meeting in New York boycotted by all nuclear-armed nations overnight.

Only one country, the Netherlands, voted against it while Singapore abstained.

Greens senator Scott Ludlam says he travelled to New York at his own expense to witness the historic vote.  He’s urging the Turnbull government to sign the treaty when it opens in September, insisting Australia is on the wrong side of history.

“We don’t have nuclear weapons but, for some reason, we’re against having them banned, which is directly at odds with what the government says that it wants,” he told the ABC on Saturday.

It was an “enormous shame” Australia failed to play a part in shaping the treaty despite Labor and coalition governments insisting they supported nuclear disarmament, he said.

He accused Australia of being “massively hypocritical” for supporting nuclear disarmament and opposing North Korea’s provocations while happily selling uranium “bomb fuel” to other countries.

The treaty will come into force when 50 countries have ratified it.

Elayne Whyte Gomez, president of the UN conference that has been negotiating the legally binding treaty, said 129 countries signed up to take part in drafting it but all nuclear states and NATO members have boycotted the negotiations except for the Netherlands, which has US nuclear weapons on its territory and was urged by its parliament to send a delegation to the negotiations.

The treaty requires of all ratifying countries “never under any circumstances to develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”

It also bans any transfer or use of nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices – and the threat to use such weapons.

 None of the nine countries known or believed to possess nuclear weapons – the United States, Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel – is supporting the treaty.

Senator Ludlam said the treaty was a circuit-breaker amid a growing nuclear threat from North Korea and as countries like the US modernise their nuclear weapons, amounting to a “geopolitical suicide pact”.

July 10, 2017 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics international, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Females much more susceptible to radiation induced cancer than males are

The highest incidence of cancer, looking across 60 years, was among those who were children when they were exposed. This is not news. The surprise is that in this group, females suffered twice as much cancer across their lives than did males.

The difference between male and female, with males more resistant to radiation harm, is measurable in all the age-of-exposure cohorts, even into old age

For every two men exposed in adulthood who died of cancer, three women died of cancer

Females Exposed to Nuclear Radiation Are Far Likelier Than Males to Suffer Harm http://www.passblue.com/2017/07/05/females-exposed-to-nuclear-radiation-are-far-likelier-than-males-to-suffer-harm/, by Mary Olson • July 5, 2017 • The new nuclear weapons ban treaty, to be most likely adopted by the United Nations General Assembly this week, arises from hope for our future. The negotiations for the treaty have elevated new information about the damage from ionizing radiation to the world stage. That is exactly where it needs to be heard.

More cancers are derived from radiation than national regulators now report. They may not be aware that both age-at-exposure and one’s sex determine how much harm we suffer from radiation.

Women exposed to ionizing radiation during childhood suffer from cancer at a rate 10 times higher than predicted by traditional models used by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The models assume that “Reference Man” represents us all. Invented to simplify calculations, Reference Man is 25 to 30 years old, weighs 154 pounds, is 5 feet 6 inches tall, “Caucasian and has a Western European or North American” lifestyle.

There has never been a pause as more than 2,000 atomic tests since 1945 have been spreading radioactivity worldwide and hundreds of nuclear factories have proliferated. No one asked if Reference Man is an appropriate stand-in for all of humanity and radiation harm. Continue reading →

July 10, 2017 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Russia’s secret radioactive city

the pact has had deadly consequences. For years, the Soviet Union’s political and scientific leadership withheld the effects of extreme exposure to radiation on the health of the city’s inhabitants, and their future offspring.

 From the late 1940s, people here started to get sick and die: the victims of long-term exposure to radiation.

While accurate data is not available thanks to the authorities’ extreme secrecy and frequent denials, the gravestones of many young residents in Ozersk’s cemetery bear witness to the secret the Soviets tried to bury alongside victims of the Mayak plant.

It is difficult for outsiders to comprehend how the residents of City 40 can continue to live in a place they know is slowly killing them.

Hot Docs 2016 Trailers: CITY 40

highly-recommendedThe graveyard of the Earth’: inside City 40, Russia’s deadly nuclear secret   https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jul/20/graveyard-earth-inside-city-40-ozersk-russia-deadly-secret-nuclear

Ozersk, codenamed City 40, was the birthplace of the Soviet nuclear weapons programme. Now it is one of the most contaminated places on the planet – so why do so many residents still view it as a fenced-inparadise?ViSamira Goetsche

“Those in paradise were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative.” (From the dystopian novel We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1924)

Deep in the vast forests of Russia’s Ural mountains lies the forbidden city of Ozersk. Behind guarded gates and barbed wire fences stands a beautiful enigma – a hypnotic place that seems to exist in a different dimension.

Codenamed City 40, Ozersk was the birthplace of the Soviet nuclear weapons programme after the second world war. For decades, this city of 100,000 people did not appear on any maps, and its inhabitants’ identities were erased from the Soviet census. Continue reading →

July 10, 2017 Posted by | Uncategorized | 1 Comment