CND Press Round-Up - 8th March 2021

Posted: 8th March 2021

Dear all,

Please find today’s press round up below. I hope you had a restful weekend. With the tenth anniversary of the disaster at Fukushima falling this week, we expect to see substantial coverage of this over the coming days, so this may be worth watching out for.

Nuclear Power 
 
Fukushima
 
The president of the Japanese company which operated the Fukushima plant has given an interview in which he has re-promised to clean up the site and regenerate its surrounding areas economically, as the ten year anniversary of the disaster approaches. In an interview with Kyodo News, Tomoaki Kobayakawa, the president of the Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings said that he regrets that there continues to be melted fuel debris in the site (which emits very high amounts of radiation) and says he hopes decommissioning work can provide high-paid, skilled jobs for local people.

Sizewell C
 
The Planning Inspectorate has requested further clarification and information from EDF Energy in relation to its proposed Sizewell C twin reactor project, according to local press.  This is in response to EDF’s previously unveiled plans which sought to reduce the number of Heavy Goods Vehicles servicing the site by upgrading its ability to be provisioned by sea and rail.

Nuclear Weapons

Israel
 
Recently released satellite photography of the Dimona plutonium-manufacturing site in Israel has sparked speculation that the Israeli state may be engaged in the production of tritium at the site. In an article in Middle East Eye, Richard Silverstein conjectures that the imagery, taken sometime in late 2018 or 2019, was released by the new U.S. administration to rebalance attention to nuclear threats towards the only power in the Middle East to possess nuclear weapons, in addition to Iran. The Israeli nuclear expert Avner Cohen has called Benjamin Netanyahu the most ‘nuclear keen’ Prime Minister since David Ben-Gurion.

North Korea

The U.S. Secretaries of State and Defense will visit South Korea towards the end of the month, where they are expected to discuss with senior South Korean officials the U.S. ally’s relationship with its northern neighbour. This visit comes in the context of a Washington policy review into the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, following bellicose nuclear rhetoric from Kim Jong Un.

Anti-war

Yemen
 
The head of the UN’s Office for Humanitarian Affairs has argued that the UK government has decided to ‘balance the books on the backs of the starving people of Yemen’ in a surprisingly frank public intervention, today’s Guardian reports. Mark Lowcock, himself a former senior official in the UK Civil Service, said the decision was ‘an act of medium and longer term self-harm, and all for saving what is actually…a relatively small amount of money’, after the government cut humanitarian aid to Yemen by around £80 million in the coming year.

China
 
China has said that it will increase its defence budget by 6.8% to $209 billion dollars in the coming year, which represents a slight increase from last year’s rise. A considerable amount of the new spending is believed to be earmarked for what the People’s Liberation Army has described as its strategic shift from one of ‘mechanisation’ to one of ‘informationisation’ and ‘intelligentisation’.


With best wishes,

Michael Muir

Press and Communications Officer
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament