CND Press Digest: Wednesday 12th June 2024

General Election 2024

• Carlisle News & Star: The five general election candidates standing for Whitehaven and Workington have been quizzed on three key issues around industry – whether they support the new coal mine in Whitehaven being given the go-ahead; whether they support new nuclear and their views on developing the tourism sector in West Cumbria.
• Conservative Party pledges to scale back green levies and fast-track nuclear.Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has unveiled the Conservative Party’s General Election Manifesto, containing pledges to fast-track next-generation nuclear and to put decisions on the next phase of the UK’s net-zero transition to a Parliamentary vote.

Nukes in Britain

• Tribune Magazine: Atomic bomb survivors have a warning for the world. As the world inches closer to nuclear war, survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki speak to Tribune about the urgent need to rid the world of atomic weapons.

Global Nukes

• Al Jazeera: Russia and Belarus begin second stage of tactical nuclear weapons drills. Moscow says the exercises are a response to ‘daily provocations’ from the United States and its European allies.
• Reuters: What are tactical nuclear weapons and why is Russia holding drills?
• Kyiv Independent: Russia may store 100 nuclear warheads in Kaliningrad Oblast,Polish FM claims.
• Futurism: UN head implores dimwit leaders not to give AI control of nuclear weapons.
• Wilson Centre: Facing stalemate, Putin talks up nuclear weapons use and supporting foes of the west.

Space

• BBC: Space radar plan near national park ‘unacceptable’. Plans to build 27 radar dishes overlooking the UK’s only coastal national park are “unacceptable”, campaigners say. They want the UK government to scrap proposals to build a space radar installation at an old air force base on the tip of remote west Wales.

UK Nuclear Power

• The Guardian: One of the UK’s most senior civil servants, Alex Chisholm, has been revealed as the new UK chair of the energy company EDF, after having previously run the department that struck a deal for it to build a new nuclear power station. Chisholm was permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, and before that led the business department, which worked on the government deal for EDF to go ahead with the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant in Somerset.
• World Nuclear News: A fortnight’s extension – until after the general election – has been given for the submission of documentation by the six contenders in the UK’s small modular reactor selection process.
• Confidential talks are now moving at pace to site some of the first new nuclear Small Modular Reactors, or SMRs, to Gloucestershire.

Nuclear Power

• New York Times: Work is starting in Wyoming coal country on a new type of reactor. Its main backer, Bill Gates, says he’s in it for the emissions-free electricity.

NATO / Europe

• Euronews: NATO chief says Hungary has agreed not to veto alliance’s assistance to Ukraine.
• Reuters: At NATO allies summit, Latvia touts coordinated Ukraine approach, without Hungary.
• Financial Times: Eastern NATO allies discuss barring Hungary from their club.
• CSIS: Is NATO ready for war? An assessment of allies’ efforts to strengthen defense and deterrence since the 2022 Madrid summit.

Middle East & North Africa

• Declassified UK: Britain greenlit dozens of arms deals with Israel amid Gaza war.Trade secretary Kemi Badenoch kept arming Israel throughout its brutal onslaught on Gaza, new data reveals.

AUKUS / Indo-Pacific

• The Telegraph: US Army deploys a completely new type of cyber missile unit as part of AUKUS alliance.

Best,

Pádraig McCarrick

Press and Communications Officer

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament