CND Press Digest: Friday 1st September 2023

War In Ukraine/NATO

•  A Ukrainian drone attacked a town in western Russia which is home to one of the country’s biggest nuclear power stations, though there was no damage reported to the plant, Russian officials said. Governor Roman Starovoit said a Ukrainian drone had damaged the facade of a building in the town of Kurchatov, just a few kilometres from the Kursk nuclear power station, early on Friday. He had earlier said there were two drones but clarified his remarks.

Drones

• The Conversation reports on the announcement by US Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks that the US military plans to start using thousands of drone systems in the next two years in a bid to counter China’s growing power.
• RAF instructors have commenced simulator training in the US for the General Atomics Protector drone.

Nuclear Testing / Radiation

• New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez and 13 other top prosecutors from around the US are throwing their support behind efforts to compensate people sickened by exposure to radiation during nuclear weapons testing.

• The King must personally deliver the new medal to nuclear veterans - along with a promise of compensation, the government has been told. Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer has been urged to ensure that King Charles presides at a ceremony honouring the Cold War heroes before Remembrance Sunday.

• A historian is “delighted” her social media post about a British study in which Asian women were fed radioactive chapatis has led to renewed calls for an inquiry.
• Sky News: Why Europe’s wild boars are radioactive.

Lakenheath

• Kate has written for Tribune on the “reckless and undemocratic” secret agreement for the US to deploy nuclear weapons to Britain. https://tribunemag.co.uk/2023/09/us-nukes-out-of-britain
• Some letters to the editor of The Telegraph on the latest news about Lakenheath- with once claiming their deployment will increase the level of nuclear risk to Ireland – while another suggests Joe Biden could ask his “favoured allies in Ireland” to station them there.
• The Sun includes CND’s comments on any deployment of nuclear weapons to Lakenheath.
• Lakenheath story also picked up by Defense Blog and BulgarianMilitary.Com.

UK Military

• What are experts saying about the appointment of Grant Shapps as UK Defence Secretary?

Arms Fair

• The Canary: With DSEI looming, it’s once again time to ‘stop the arms fair’ in its tracks.

UK Nuclear Energy

• Suffolk Live: The Government has announced it is speeding up the preparations for the Sizewell C nuclear power station despite local council backlash. The Home Office revealed the government is dedicating £341m of previously allocated funding in investment to Sizewell C, bringing the Government’s stake in the project to a total of £1.2bn.

Nuclear Energy

• Financial Times: Retail investors are buying into uranium-linked funds, amid fears about the coup in Niger, a key producer, hitting supplies and wider expectations of a global increase in demand. Energy companies are taking a renewed interest in nuclear power because of the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on gas supplies and the pressures to cut fossil fuel use and reduce carbon emissions.
• The FT also looks at growing investor interest in small modular reactors as well as some of the problems hampering takeup.
• Kazakhstan will hold a referendum to decide whether to build its first nuclear power plant, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said on Friday, adding that the date would be decided later.
• Oklo Inc has been tapped by the US Air Force to design and build a micro nuclear reactor at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska.

Fukushima

• Japan has summoned the Chinese ambassador to register a diplomatic protest after Japanese institutions and businesses were flooded with harassing phone callsfrom Chinese numbers over the release of Fukushima’s treated radioactive wastewater.
• The row with China over Tokyo’s decision to release treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant could shave 0.2 percent – or $8.2 billion – off Japan’s real GDP.

• Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida ordered his fisheries minister to apologise for referring to treated radioactive water at Fukushima as “contaminated” and told him to retract his remark. Tetsuro Nomura was heard calling the treated radioactive water “contaminated” when speaking to reporters earlier in the day following a meeting with Kishida.

North Korea

• Japan sanctions 3 groups and 4 individuals for supporting North Korea’s missile program. The additional sanctions freeze the assets of the three North Korea-based hacker groups linked to cyberattacks as well as four individuals, three of them based in China, according to a Foreign Ministry statement.

Best,

Pádraig McCarrick

Press and Communications Officer

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament