CND Press Digest: Wednesday 3rd April 2024

NATO / Europe

• NATO foreign ministers to discuss proposal for €100bn fund for Ukraine.
• NATO may send weapons directly to Ukraine to ‘shield’ support if Trump wins presidency. Military alliance would take charge of donations previously sent by individual countries but plans could be seen by Moscow as escalatory.
• The Telegraph: Prepare for Putin pivot to invade us, say Baltic states. Diplomats say Putin’s brutalisation of Ukraine has brought back darkest memories of occupation under Stalin.
• Reuters: Erdogan tells Dutch PM Rutte that Turkey will back a new NATO chiefbased on its needs and expectations.
• Four Lockheed Martin F-35A stealth fighters belonging to the US Air Force (USAF) have arrived in Poland as part of NATO’s effort to bolster air and missile defences along the alliance’s eastern frontier.

Middle East & North Africa

• Britain should stop arming Israel, BBC: Three Britons killed in strike on Gaza aid workers named.
• Al Jazeera: Western allies face threat of complicity if support for Israel continues.

AUKUS / Indo-Pacific

• ‘Poison portal’: US and UK could send nuclear waste to Australia under AUKUS, inquiry told.
• No submarines: Rosie Batty agrees AUKUS funding should go to ending family violence – video.

Global Nukes

• ‘My jaw dropped’: Annie Jacobsen on her scenario for nuclear war. The author’s new book posits an all-too-possible catastrophe, destruction assured by human frailty as much as by technology.
• Oppenheimer: Monaghan man who captured nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• Associated Press: ‘Oppenheimer’ finally premieres in Japan to mixed reactions and high emotions.
• National Interest: Why South Africa built nuclear weapons and gave up nuclear weapons.

Nukes in Britain

• East Anglia Daily Times: Lakenheath Alliance for Peace forms against nuclear weapons.
• Suffolk News: Lakenheath Alliance for Peace launches protest over nuclear weapon concerns at RAF Lakenheath.

UK Nuclear Energy

• BBC: Sellafield prosecution over IT security allegations.
• The Guardian: Sellafield nuclear waste dump to be prosecuted for alleged cybersecurity offences.
• The Guardian: Sellafield’s head of information security to step down.

Nuclear Energy

• Financial Times: As the sabre-rattling over possible sanctions against Russia’s nuclear industry intensifies, the country’s state-owned energy company Rosatom is busily drumming up new business in Africa. Last month, speaking at the African Energy Indaba in Cape Town, Rosatom’s chief executive for central and southern Africa, Ryan Collyer, urged the continent’s most industrialised country, South Africa, to press go on its nuclear programme to ensure “stable, affordable and environmentally friendly” power.
• Reuters: France boosts nuclear output to 3-year highs during Q1 2024.
• Nuclear fusion reactor creates temperature seven times hotter than the sun.
• The Bulletin: Spent nuclear fuel mismanagement poses a major threat to the United States. Here’s how.
• Kashiwazaki nuclear plant better coped to deal with terrorism: IAEA.
• Associated Press: Uranium is being mined near the Grand Canyon as prices soar and the US pushes for more nuclear power.

Best,

Pádraig McCarrick

Press and Communications Officer

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament