CND Press Digest: Monday 13th February 2024

NATO / Europe

• The head of NATO has responded to comments from Donald Trump – where he encouraged Russia to attack NATO members who paid too little – saying the remarks may put US and EU lives at risk.
• ‘Stupid thing to say’: Republicans divided on Trump threat to violate NATO defence pledge.
• ‘Is this how Europe ends?’ Trump’s NATO warning is a wake-up call.
• NATO may push Europe to go it alone.
• Wolves living by Chernobyl nuclear plant develop cancer-resistant genes. Biologists from Princeton University hope study identifies proactive mutations which could increase odds of fighting disease in humans.
• HMS Prince of Wales’ departure to lead the biggest NATO exercise since the Cold War has been delayed at the last minute.

Middle East & North Africa

• Pro-Palestine and climate activists stage sit-in over British Museum’s ties to fossil fuel giant BP.
• The Telegraph runs a comment from US hawk John Bolton, who claims the two-sate solution is dead.
• That’s as mediator Daniel Levin writes in the Guardian that he believes there is a way to achieve peace in Israel and Palestine.

Global Nukes

• Today’s AI threat: More like nuclear winter than nuclear war.
• Escalating to de-escalate with nuclear weapons: Research shows it’s a particularly bad idea.
• hosting UK’s nuclear weapons in Scotland.
  • The Times takes a look at Babcock International’s fluctuating share price - and confusion among investors over whether the firm should be classed as defence or support services.  
  • Julian Lewis MP responds to Rebecca Johnson’s letter to the Guardian, claimingthe the 1987 INF treaty wouldn’t have happened if the campaign for unilateral UK nuclear disarmament had succeeded.
  • Bright Green: American nukes in Britain ‘makes us a nuclear target’, CND says.

  UK Nuclear Energy

  • FT, Guardian, and Metro, report on plans by Great British Nuclear to discuss buying land in Wylfa, Anglesea, back from Hitachi which in 2020 canned plans to build a new £20 billion reactor there.
  • The final public meeting to discuss plans to bury nuclear waste in East Yorkshire takes place later, reports the BBC.
  • Call to withdrawal from Holderness nuclear waste site talks amid tourism and farming ‘fears’.
  • The Times: Welding method drastically cuts time to make mini nuclear reactors. Sheffield Forgemasters uses electron beams that reduce the process from 150 days to two hours.

  Nuclear Energy

  • Urenco, the biggest supplier of enriched uranium to US nuclear plants, said a US ban on Russian uranium would boost a multibillion-dollar effort by western nations to strengthen their nuclear supply chain.
  • France’s EDF shuts down two nuclear reactors after fire at Chinon plant.
  • The ruined Fukushima nuclear plant leaked radioactive water, but none escaped the facility.

  Best,

   

  Pádraig McCarrick

   

  Press and Communications Officer

  Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament