CND Press Digest: Monday 16th September 2024

Nukes in Britain

• Britain’s Atomic Bomb Scandal, review: will it take a TV drama to make our government act? For seven decades, the British veterans of the Christmas Island nuclear tests have been waiting for compensation – or an apology.
• The Guardian: ‘The most horrific, sobering thing I’ve ever seen’: BBC nuclear apocalypse film Threads 40 years on. Ahead of a timely re-airing of Mick Jackson’s famously bleak, rarely seen docudrama, its director recalls why he unleashed a mushroom cloud on Sheffield in 1984, while our writer explores the film’s lasting legacy

Global Nukes

• Foreign Affairs: The crumbling nuclear order. How to save the norms against testing, building, and using the ultimate weapon.
• CounterPunch: Ensuring the collapse of civilization?

Ukraine

• Politico: NATO could have done more to avert Ukraine war: Stoltenberg.

UK Nuclear Power

• Wales Online: Welsh Government Transport Secretary Ken Skates says he wants to deliver on “big road projects”, while discussing a key factor that might resurrect a major transport scheme. The Welsh Government’s roads review, which delivered its conclusion in 2023, shelved several prominent Welsh transport initiatives – especially in north Wales where the Menai crossing, Llanbedr bypass and Flintshire ‘Red Route’ were all cancelled. This relates to the dormant Wylfa B project near Cemaes; should it advance, it would necessitate better road network capacity to support the construction of the multi-billion-pound nuclear facility. Wylfa was identified by the preceding UK Government as the optimal site for the nation’s next significant nuclear station.

Iran

• The Independent: Growing fears in UK and US of a secret nuclear deal between Iran and Russia. Intelligence suggesting new nuclear cooperation between Iran and Russia adds to concerns over Tehran’s rising uranium stockpile.

Nuclear Waste

• Energy Central: The DC Circuit appeals court has upheld the authority of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to license private, away-from-reactor storage of spent nuclear fuel, adding confusion to the gnarly issue of what to do with high-level nuclear waste. With federal circuit courts in collision, it may take the US Supreme Court to sort it out. On Aug. 27, a three-judge DC Circuit panel rejected a challenge to a 2021 Nuclear Regulatory Commission license to Interim Storage Partners, a subsidiary of Orano USA, for a private, above-ground “temporary” waste storage site in West Texas near the New Mexico state line. Not long after that, the NRC granted a similar license to Holtec International for an above-ground storage site in eastern New Mexico, close to the Texas line.

NATO / Europe

• The secrets of solidarity: NATO opens up its cultural diplomacy archives.

AUKUS/ Indo-Pacific

• Independent: North Korea inadvertently gives away location of nuclear weapons facility with pictures of Kim Jong-un visit. State media images of Kim Jong-un visiting a uranium enrichment plant did not include its location. But analysts say tell-tale features in the photographs are a ‘close match’ to a particular site near Pyongyang.
• UK Defence Journal: UK hails major breakthrough in AUKUS partnership. In a written statement to Parliament, Defence Secretary John Healey provided a an update on the ongoing progress within the AUKUS strategic partnership, highlighting key advancements in defence trade and nuclear submarine development.

Best,

Pádraig McCarrick

Press and Communications Officer

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament