CND Press Digest: Wednesday 8th November 2023

Posted: 8th November 2023

War In Ukraine/NATO

  • Financial Times (paywall): US reliance on Russia’s nuclear fuel poses a critical threat to national security and climate goals, said a senior Biden administration official, who urged Congress to provide funds to rebuild its domestic supply chain and restrict imports from the country.
  • An ally of Vladimir Putin claimed on Wednesday that the destructive policies of the US and its allies were increasing the risk that nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons could be used.

Gaza War

  • Russia’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday that a remark by an Israeli junior minister who appeared to express openness to the idea of Israel carrying out a nuclear strike on Gaza had raised a huge number of questions – namely that Israel appeared to admit its possession of nuclear weapons - something it officially denies.
  • The Guardian: The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, has defied calls for a ban on a pro-Palestinian march through London on Armistice Day as he insisted on the independence of his force amid intense government pressure to act.
  • The Times runs a preview on the groups organising the march. On CND it writes: 

    Launched in London in 1958 in response to global fears of a nuclear conflict, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) symbol has become synonymous with the anti-war protests. The left-wing group’s standing has waned in recent decades and it now focuses largely on opposing the UK’s Trident system and Nato. At its recent annual conference, it agreed in an emergency resolution that Israel’s “aggression increases the risk of war in which nuclear weapons may be used”. It called on the British government to press for an immediate ceasefire. The pressure group’s offshoot within the Labour Party has called for a peaceful solution to the present conflict. It said that Sir Keir Starmer’s support for Israel and its “disproportionate force” contradicted Labour policy. In a speech in London last month, Kate Hudson, CND general secretary since 2010, said the British government was enabling the “slaughter” of Palestinians through its support of the arms trade and Israeli government.

AUKUS

  • The host of this week’s Pacific Islands Forum summit says the region must “revisit” a landmark anti-nuclear treaty, citing Australia’s AUKUS submarine deal and Japan’s discharge of treated Fukushima wastewater.

Nuclear Weapons

  • In the first of two interviews on peace and conflict for the Morning Star, Ian Sinclair speaks to Joseph Gerson about his seminal 2007 book Empire and the Bomb: How the US Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World.
  • New York Times: Nuclear talks with China are essential and long overdue.
  • The US Air Force is asking Congress to restrict further construction of towering wind turbines that have edged closer to its nuclear missile sites in Montana and Wyoming

Depleted Uranium

  • NFLA: 20 years after campaign began, the fight to ban deadly depleted uranium weapons goes on.

UK Nuclear Energy

  • A deal has been struck to explore the production of zero emission hydrogen at Rolls Royce’s proposed small modular reactor (SMR) nuclear power plants. The Memorandum of Intent between Rolls-Royce SMR, nuclear development firm ULC-Energy, and carbon engineering firm Topsoe commits the companies to investigate how hydrogen could be produced using electricity and heat generated by smaller, next-generation nuclear plants. Rolls Royce SMR is among a number of firms that have passed the first stage of the government’s small nuclear reactor competition, as part of Ministers’ plans to see the fledgling technology deployed by the 2030s.
  • The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority Mission Progress Report 2023.

Nuclear Energy

  • France and Kazakhstan deepen nuclear ties, following a trip by Emmanuel Macron.

Nuclear Cleanup

 


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