CND Press Digest: Wednesday 3rd July 2024

General Election 2024

• Nation Cymru: The Conservative candidate for the three-way marginal seat of Ynys Môn has been accused of exaggerating the possibility of a new nuclear power station being developed on the island. Dr Jonathan Dean, a trustee of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales, submitted a freedom of information request to the UK Government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), seeking a copy of the evaluation report that Wylfa, on Ynys Môn, should be selected as the next large nuclear site after Sizewell C. He says he was surprised to be told that Wylfa had not been confirmed as the next big nuclear site. Instead, he was told by DESNZ: “To date, while Wylfa has been announced as the preferred location for a further large nuclear reactor, final decisions on sites and technologies have not been made.”
• Herald: Developing nuclear power would put our energy security into Russian hands. Whenever there’s debate on energy and climate change, as we are seeing fleetingly in the 2024 election campaign, you can rely on nuclear power fans to flood the zone with claims that it is the answer. It all seems so simple. But it isn’t. Far from it. Take uranium. It’s not talked about much, but nuclear’s raw material is a global commodity – and we don’t have any.

Nukes in Britain

• BBC: Nuclear weapons could pose a risk to plans for almost 500 homes just outside a village, a council has been warned. The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) – the only maker of nuclear warheads in Britain – has opposed plans for the development near Spencers Wood in Berkshire. It told Wokingham Borough Council the residents would live in an area exposed to a “radiation emergency” if something went wrong at its site in nearby Burghfield.

Global Nukes

• Newsweek: You have to be a real optimist to think that we can keep thousands of nuclear weapons in fallible human hands indefinitely and nothing terrible will happen. Something terrible will happen—and it could mean the end of human civilization. The risks are growing. Today, nine nations hold over 12,000 nuclear weapons, each many times more powerful than those used on Japan. The United States and Russia have most of them—about 90 percent of the global total—but China may be trying to catch up.
• European Leadership Network: Preparations are underway for the second Preparatory Committee for the 2026 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, to be held in Geneva in July 2024. This second NPT intersessional meeting will take place against a backdrop of increasingly tense geopolitical tensions between states. These tensions resulted in the last NPT Review Conference, held in August 2022, ending without a final agreement due to Russia’s opposition to the wording of the draft document on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant that is currently under Russian military occupation. However, a lesser-discussed aspect of the last Review Conference was the contentious nature of language relating to gender among States parties. These disagreements are adding to the tensions in the new review cycle.
• European Leadership Network: How to bolster nuclear-weapon-free zones.
• The Bulletin: Trump has a strategic plan for the country: Gearing up for nuclear war.
• Atlantic Council: Putin is using Belarus to escalate his nuclear threats

Space

• Space Watch: A new website has been launched to investigate and challenge the the militarisation and corporate exploitation of space, focusing in particular on the UK’s military space programme. Space Watch UK is a project of Drone Wars UK, and will undertake education work with the public, parliamentarians and NGOs to raise awareness of the dangers of militarising space; support local and international efforts to control the environmental and security impact of military space programmes; and engage in networking and advocacy in support of ensuring the peaceful use of space.

UK Nuclear Power

• Carlisle News & Star: A company which specialises in remote handling in the nuclear sector has plans to take on 20 more employees as it grows the business following a rebrand. PAR Systems, which has been trading in West Cumbria since 2010, has rebranded as CORE Nuclear Solutions. The company, based in Lillyhall but also with offices in Haile, near Egremont, was originally set up as part of the United States-headquartered PAR Systems group to maintain remote handling equipment on the Sellafield site.

NATO / Europe

• NATO’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
• CND website: Confronting NATO’s war summit in Washington.

Middle East / North Africa

• The Westmorland Gazette: Calls for companies to stop involvement in planes used in Gaza.
• Haaretz: An annihilation discourse has taken over Israel. Calls for Israel to launch a nuclear attack on Iran by historian Benny Morris and many others, including those on the left, is the continuation of a strategy of vengeance that would destroy everything. We must take to the streets and protest, while we still can.
• Jerusalem Post: Israel spent $1.1b on nuclear weapons in 2023 – report.

AUKUS / Asia-Pacific

• Financial Review: AUKUS future is resting on belief alone. Defence and government figures express brimming confidence in the progress of Australia’s nuclear submarine program, but there’s no Plan B and – to some – an air of desperation.

Best,

Pádraig McCarrick

Press and Communications Officer

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament