CND Press Digest: Friday 11th October 2024

• Congratulations to the Hibakusha, who were named this year’s winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Coverage from the BBC, Sky News, Guardian, Independent, and Al Jazeera.

Nukes in Britain

• The Canary previews CND’s conference in SOAS.
• FT: Ukraine warns nuclear plants at risk from Russian missiles flying overhead.Energy minister accuses Moscow of using military tactic that heightens risk of atomic accident. Ukraine has accused Russia of routing its missiles to fly over nuclear power plants “every day”, a military tactic that heightens the risk of atomic accidents. Ukrainian energy minister German Galushchenko told the Financial Times that Russian attacks had forced one plant into shutdown on August 26 after a substation was hit. Since then, he said, Russian missiles had increasingly flown over Ukraine’s three nuclear facilities, which generate almost 60 per cent of the country’s electricity. A proponent of expanding nuclear power in the country, Galushchenko said that despite the high costs, this form of energy would provide Ukraine with the stable energy it needs.
• New York Times Opinions: Give Ukraine NATO membership. Peace depends on it.

Middle East

• Al Jazeera: Israel wages war on Lebanon using its tactics from Gaza. As Israel wages war on Lebanon, it is deploying some of the same devastating tactics that it used to destroy Gaza.
• Sky News: Israel accused of ‘extermination’ in Gaza by UN inquiry. The UN inquiry accused Israel of a concerted policy of destroying Gaza’s healthcare system, actions it claimed amounted to both war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination.
• Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit exposes Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip through the medium of photos and videos posted online by Israeli soldiers themselves during the year long conflict.

Iran

• NPEC: As military tensions between Israel and Iran escalate, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and the other media outlets are speculating about how soon Iran could acquire a missile-deliverable warhead if it decided to do so. The conventional wisdom is it would take a year or more. But, as Greg Jones and I note in the attached Foreign Policy piece, “Iran Could Build a Nuclear Weapons Sooner Than You Think,” it would take no more than a few months. History here is our guide. The United States, under the pressures of an ongoing world war in the 1940s, had working gun and implosion devices on the ready to accept nuclear weapons fissile material. The nuclear material and the nonnuclear components of the bomb were developed at the same time and were completed for the Hiroshima bomb just nine days after the United States had enough uranium for this device. That was 79 years ago. Since then, most nations’ first weapons designs have been more efficient, lighter, and smaller than either of the nuclear weapons America dropped on Japan. This includes Iran’s design, which Tehran began working on more than 20 years ago and was geared to be missile-deliverable from the start. Iran is within a week or two of producing enough weapons-grade uranium for four devices (and, by our calculations, could produce another six in another eight weeks). Even if Iran has not completed construction of its missile-deliverable warhead design, history suggests Iran could finish this work after a decision to do so in no more than five months. Of course, if our intelligence is wrong, and Iran has already completed work on this implosion device, it’s assembly with weapons uranium cores might only take a few weeks.
• Reuters: US still believes Iran has not decided to build a nuclear weapon, US officials say.
• Hamish de Bretton-Gordon beating the drums of war in the Telegraph: The West is sleepwalking into nuclear disaster. Our leaders must let Israel eliminate the menace of Iranian atomic weapons for the longer term.
• Euronews meanwhile, reports on speculation that a recent earthquake in Iran may have been an underground nuclear test.
• PM meeting with Secretary-General of NATO Mark Rutte: 10 October.

NATO / Europe

• NATO’s new Secretary General Mark Rutte was in London for meetings with Keir Starmer and Volodymyr Zelenskyy – followed by media rounds where rebuffed concerns of what a potential Trump return to the White House would mean for the nuclear-armed alliance. Coverage from the Guardian, Sky News, and Channel 4.
• Reuters: NATO to hold annual nuclear drill from Monday, alliance chief Rutte says.

UK Nuclear Energy

• The Guardian, Bloomberg, Somerset Live: EDF reportedly seeking up to £4bn from investors to finish Hinkley Point C.
• South Wales Echo: It seems Ed Miliband isn’t too keen on nuclear, which is not good news for Wylfa.

Nuclear Energy

• Nuclear Decommissioning Authority: Annual Report and Accounts 2023 to 2024.Our Annual Report and Accounts 2023 to 2024 sets out the progress made towards our mission of reducing hazards and decommissioning the UK’s civil nuclear sites.

AUKUS

• Defence Post: AUKUS partners test ability to control ships from 10,000 miles away.

Environment

• King’s College London event: Developments in the legal framework protecting the environment in relation to armed conflict.

Best,

Pádraig McCarrick

Press and Communications Officer

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament