CND Press Digest: Monday 6th March 2023

War In Ukraine/NATO

• Simon Tisdall on the need for NATO to have a plan to win the war in Ukraine.

Chernobyl

• AP: Can the dogs of Chernobyl teach us new tricks on survival?

No First Use

• A former mayor of Hiroshima has called on G7 leaders to use an upcoming summit in Japan in May to declare a no first use nuclear weapons policy.

AUKUS

• More details on the future of the AUKUS programme are expected to be announced within the coming weeks. Read The Guardian Australia’s round-up of what could be in store.

UK Nuclear Energy

• Private Eye on how the government looks set “to plough on with plans for EDF to build another pair of European pressure reactors (EPRs) at Sizewell in Suffolk. But wherever in the world EDF’s EPR design is already in service or struggling to be built, the news is highly discouraging for optimistic ministers.”
• Staff at Sellafied are helping local schoolchildren to read.
• Unherd on the battle against the siting of an offshore nuclear waste dump near Theddlethorpe in Lincolnshire.
• Highland Council has been urged to firm up its plans for the Dounreay nuclear site once.
• The Ferret: “The police force tasked with guarding UK nuclear plants reported 37 security breaches last year including the thefts of a uniform, confidential documents, an officer’s diary and three ‘classified’ Microsoft tablets.”

Nuclear Energy

• Strikes at EDF nuclear plants in France cut electricity output on Saturday by 2.1 gigawatt – the equivalent of two reactors.

Fusion

• Rishi Sunak is expected to announce a £360 million investment package in AI, nuclear fusion, and genetics, as part of post-Brexit plans to turn Britain into a science superpower.

Fukushima

• SimplyInfo.org has released its 11th annual Fukushima Disaster report.

Iran Nuclear Deal

• Iran has pledged to restore cameras and other monitoring equipment at its nuclear sites and to allow more inspections at a facility where particles of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade were recently detected, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Saturday.
• The Atlantic on the need for Iran to believe the US nuclear threat: “If the US does not take forceful action to check Tehran’s progress toward a nuclear bomb, Israel will. That’s a much more dangerous scenario.”

North Korea

• The Telegraph on how tensions between North and South Korea is turning the peninsula into the “worlds biggest powder keg.”

Best,

Pádraig McCarrick

Press and Communications Officer

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament