Colorado Legislature is in session. Call your Representative and Senator and urge them to co sponsor The Colorado Coalition proposed joint resolution calling for the dealerting of the 49 Nuclear Armed Missiles in North East Colorado
By JUDITH MOHLING
“Let’s be clear: nuclear plants don’t generate electricity. They produce only three things: vast amounts of heat (which is used to spin the turbines that generate electricity), radioactive fallout (in the form of ‘permissible’ leaks that have been linked to thyroid tumors and childhood leukemia) and tons of radioactive garbage.” from Nuclear Roulette, by Gar Smith.
On Wednesday evening, 7:00 PM,1/23/13 at the Left Hand Book Collective, close to Broadway and the Pearl Street Mall, Boulder, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center in conjunction with Left Hand Books, will show the film “Into Eternity.” It addresses the “tons of nuclear garbage” part of the generation of power from nuclear reactors. Called, “radical and stunning,” by Slant Magazine, the film focuses on the underground waste repository now being built in Finland.
In 100 years it is anticipated that it will be full with nuclear power plant waste from Finland’s four reactors that produce 28% of Finland’s electricity. (The U.S. has 104 reactors in 31 states,according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, that generate 20% of U.S. electricity.)
When the nuclear waste repository in Finland is full, the plan is to close it and seal it “forever.” The film grapples with the intricate philosophical questions of how to communicate with future beings who may exist 100,000 years from now? Should we try to warn them? What symbols might they understand? Theologians, scientists, nuclear repository representatives and others address these questions right before our eyes.
Currently, high level nuclear waste from reactors in the U.S. is stored at the sites of the reactors in vast cooling ponds—incredibly vulnerable to catastrophes like terrorism or earthquakes and tsunamis. It has all come from the hot core of the power plants and is the most intensely radioactive material on the planet, according to the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. It is generated from uranium that is processed into fuel rods and loaded into the reactors where it undergoes nuclear fission reaction and the intense heat is produced to turn the turbines to create electricity.
According to Physicians for Social Responsibility, the fuel rods must remain in the cooling ponds that are 40 feet deep, under at least 20 feet of actively circulating water for five to ten years. Loss of cooling water to a cooling pond is extremely dangerous as we all saw with the tragic catastrophe at Fukushima. After 10 years the rods in Finland may be transported to their repository. The U.S. doesn’t have one. Gulp.
Come see the film.
November 11th 2012, Armistice Day
In 1938, Congress declared today, November 11, a national holiday, “to be dedicated to the cause of world peace.”
Dear Governor Hickenlooper:
We seek your leadership with regard to the enclosed resolution.
Colorado continues to be a station for 49 Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, each with a nuclear bomb 30 times as powerful as Hiroshima. This means Colorado based missiles could deliver the impact of 1500 Hiroshimas on human life and planetary health. We in Colorado give our silent consent to threaten the world with such terror. Each of these missiles is on “Launch-on-Warning” alert. This creates a possible ill-considered hair-trigger launch or even an accidental event.
The Colorado Coalition is urging the Colorado Legislature to pass the enclosed resolution for the immediate de-alerting of these weapons of mass destruction. The International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion 8 July 1996 that, “The threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law.” Does the State of Colorado want to continue to be complicit in this situation? Even though the United States pledged in the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, “To pursue nuclear disarmament aimed at the ultimate elimination of all nuclear arsenals,” the US Senate refuses to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. We think that you as Governor and the Colorado Legislature should at least add our Colorado vote to move in the direction of nuclear disarmament by calling for a stand down of the 49 nukes in Colorado. After all, our troops died in two World Wars to “Make the World Safe for Democracy,” and to, “Save Nations from the Scourge of War,” and to guarantee the Four Freedoms in the Atlantic Charter including “Freedom from Fear”.
A sample resolution is enclosed with an information sheet. We urge you to endorse this resolution and call our Legislature to pass it in January.
We are planning a tour to the missile field soon and hope you would join us. For further information about the planned tour or about this Resolution please call us at 303-949-4073.
Thank you for your willingness to serve our State this year and address the concerns of Coloradans.
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US Compliance with the Nuclear Non Proliferation Regime– A Joint Resolution of the Colorado Legislature
Whereas, the United States Senate in 2010 ratified the New Start Treaty; but
Whereas, the US continues to develop extremely costly Anti Ballistic Missile systems directly in violation of the ABM treaty to which the USA and the Successor Government to the USSR are a Party, and which the Russian Government sees as contrary to the intent and spirit of an international architecture for nuclear disarmament; and
Whereas, the United States Senate still refuses to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) which is also a part of the architecture of a system for the reduction and elimination of Nuclear Weapons; and
Whereas, the New START treaty demonstrates cooperation and leadership by both signatory governments towards the ultimate objective of eliminating nuclear weapons from the world, weapons which threaten the common security of all nations, and;
Whereas, the New START treaty is a further demonstration that the United States and Russia are furthering their obligations to eliminate nuclear weapons under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), and;
Whereas, there are currently 49 Minuteman ICBM missiles armed with nuclear warheads currently actively deployed and on high alert in silos in northeast Colorado.
Therefore be it resolved by the Legislature of the State of Colorado that:
The Colorado Legislature calls upon our United States Senators representing the State of Colorado to continue support for implementation of the new Start Treaty, to defund any further development of “modernized’ nuclear weapons as well as costly Star Wars type Anti-ballistic Missiles which are contradictory to its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations; and that,
The Colorado Legislature calls for the immediate de-alerting of the presently deployed Nuclear Weapons on all 49 Minuteman silos currently on Launch on Warning status in the State of Colorado; and
Further directs our United States Senators to include as component of compliance with the Articles of the New START treaty, the removal and permanent decommissioning of all the nuclear weapons and 49 Minuteman ICBM missiles in Colorado and their silos and related support facilities.
Signed this day __________ by
Speaker of the House
President of the Senate
By JUDITH MOHLING
US robot planes or “drones” are spying and dropping bombs on Afghanistan and Pakistan. As human beings below are crushed or blown up, the “pilot” of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is miles and miles away from the tragedies, maiming, death and abject fear his human targets, their families and other innocents undergo. He or she sees only the Google map on a computer screen.
The “pilot” may be at a computer screen in Afghanistan or Pakistan or in the United States. Space is the navigational medium. Denial is the ethical medium. Kids are raised playing computer games in which objects on the screen are shot down. Air Force pilots who grew up playing computer games sit in safe comfort and pinpoint targets on Google Earth touch screens and direct the bombs without seeing the suffering.
On the ground are bloody, dying or dead men, women and children with screams, panic, indescribable fear and pain and cataclysms of emotion. No pilot looks down from above and sees what he has wrought.
In our, “we’re number one!” society, this warfare may be appealing to the White House and to the public because the “kill ratio” is remarkably lopsided—no US troops have to die and thousands of so-called “militants” and innocents have their lives obliterated in bloody deaths.
A new study by Stanford Law School and New York University’s School of Law calls for a re-evaluation of the practice, saying the number of “high-level” targets killed as a percentage of total casualties is extremely low — about 2%.
Won’t the day of reckoning arrive? Aren’t we engendering the wrath and indignation of more and more of the world’s citizens by our unilateral, imperious behavior? The U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan has not only solidified the Taliban as an organization but has also created increasing public support for it.
A moral review of space policy is ruled out because the critic can never have access to the “secret information” needed for evaluation. Hiding the truth from the enemy means hiding it from the US public.
The US has plans for ownership of orbital space and currently U.S. satellites for intelligence, communications, and navigation are the primary means the U.S. and its allies use to conduct war.
Space is the ultimate commons. No country has the right to dominate the planet through unilateral control. We must go beyond this travesty of American values.
Take Action: 50 Years After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Time to Eliminate Land-Based Missiles
Fifty years ago – October 16-28, 1962 – the Cuban Missile Crisis had the United States and Soviet Union at the precipice of nuclear war.
Now – 50 years later – the United States still keeps 450 Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles on high alert. The missiles and the thermonuclear warheads that they deliver can reach nearly any place on Earth in 30 minutes or less. Because they are located in fixed silos in Wyoming, North Dakota and Montana, there is pressure to “use them first or lose them,” drastically raising the risk that in a time of crisis the missiles could be launched because of a false warning.
Daniel Ellsberg, a NAPF Distinguished Fellow who released the Pentagon Papers in 1971, helped develop U.S. nuclear war strategies in the 1960s. He now strongly opposes the continued existence of land-based nuclear missiles. He says, “This will change only if the pressure on Congress and the Executive Branch is changed from pressure to preserve these [missiles], for the jobs they create and the profits, to the task of dismantling them. We must demand that this challenge to life on Earth be ended.”
Please join Daniel Ellsberg and thousands of other citizens around the United States in demanding that these destabilizing and dangerous land-based missiles be dismantled immediately.–http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6357/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=11925
A Campaign of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – www.wagingpeace.org
This amazing exhibit of the Atomic Photographers Guild will be on display at the Rocky Flats Cold War Museum through November 30.
The museum is not officially open, however, the museum will be open for this exhibit on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday afternoons from noon to 4 pm.
I’m on the museum board and have found the opportunity to work together with board members who were former Rocky Flats workers a challenge and an inspiration.
The exhibit opening struck a deep nerve in many people for different reasons. The board and I welcome your comments. Hope you can make it by to see the exhibit.
Below is the attached the press release/flyer, a link to a Channel 9 interview with Bob, and some photos from the opening including one of Barbara Donachy with the photo and some pieces of the Amber Waves of Grain exhibit. The photo of AWOG was taken by Bob Del Tredici when the show was in Boston in 1986 and appeared as the final photo in his book At Work in the Fields of the Bomb.
http://www.9news.com/shows/mornings/291721/229/Nuclear-bomb-photos-on-display-in-new-exhibition
Moscow is to abandon participation in a decades-old program with the United States aimed at dismantling weapons of mass destruction, Russian daily Kommersant reported Wednesday.
The paper reported Kremlin officials as saying Russia is no longer interested in the Nunn-Lugar program – also known as the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program (CTR) – which dates back to the early 1990′s and helped decommission scores of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The move is the latest in Moscow’s review of its relationship with Washington, and comes after Russia stopped the United States Agency for International Development from working in the country earlier this month.
It also follows comments last week by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that the “reset” policy between Russia and the United States “cannot last forever.”
The CTR program began in 1991, and was extended twice – in 1999 and 2006. The current terms expires in 2013.
The program included measures to increase safety at nuclear plants in the former Soviet Union and generating alternative work for former institutes and production facilities which had been involved in making weapons of mass destruction, the CTR website says.
BY JOE CIRINCIONE | SEPTEMBER 18, 2012
If I were Iran,
if I were Iran — a crazed fanatic, I’d say let’s get a little fissile material to Hezbollah, have them carry it to Chicago or some other place, and then if anything goes wrong, or America starts acting. up, we’ll just say, “Guess what? Unless you stand down, why, we’re going to let off a dirty bomb.” I mean this is where we have — where America could be held up and blackmailed 
by Iran, by the mullahs, by crazy people. So we really don’t have any option but to keep Iran from having a nuclear weapon.
–Mitt Romney, May 17, 2012
Governor Mitt Romney’s description, caught on video, of what he considered the real nuclear threat from Iran has further undermined his national security credentials, showing a fundamental misunderstanding of nuclear threats. Iran’s nuclear program has nothing to do with dirty bombs. Terrorists would not use uranium — from Iran or anywhere else — in a dirty bomb. It is unclear if Gov. Romney was just riffing, or if his advisors had fed him this line of attack. But it is dead wrong.
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Nuclear bombs are serious business, and preventing their spread and their use against the United States is perhaps the paramount duty of the president, who, of course, is also responsible for any decision to use America’s own arsenal. The main reason we are so concerned about Iran is that its uranium-enrichment facilities could produce the fissile material needed to make a nuclear bomb. Anyone running for the highest office in the land simply must know the basics about dirty bombs, nuclear weapons, and the threat from Iran. This video does not help Gov. Romney prove that he does.
A dirty bomb is basically a truck bomb laced with radioactive materials. Such a device (also known as a radiological weapon) uses conventional explosives like dynamite or C-4 to spew radioactive materials over large areas. The explosion would be relatively small, but victims would be exposed to life-threatening levels of radiation. The radiation would prevent emergency response teams from reaching the victims quickly and could contaminate large areas for years, requiring expensive cleanup.
A terrorist could also do a reverse dirty bomb: bring explosives to a source of radioactive material such as a nuclear reactor, a spent-fuel pool, or a factory making radioactive isotopes.
Dirty bombs (which have never been used) are very different from nuclear bombs, which trigger a chain reaction in a small core of fissile material — highly-enriched uranium or plutonium — to produce a massive explosion. The explosion produces heat, blast, and radiation that all cause catastrophic damage.
The key here is that dirty bombs do not use fissile material. They do not use enriched uranium or plutonium — the fissile material that Gov. Romney cites. The reason is simple: These materials, perhaps counterintuitively, are not radioactive enough. Their radioactive emissions don’t travel far and are blocked by simple barriers, including skin and clothing. A dirty bomb would use small amounts of highly radioactive materials such as cesium or cobalt, not uranium. Even specks of these elements send out deadly gamma rays that penetrate walls and bodies causing immediate injury.
The Federation of American Scientists has calculated that a mere 41 grams (1.4 ounces) of cesium-137 in a dirty bomb could contaminate most of Manhattan. By contrast, it would take 1,460 tons of low-enriched uranium to get the same levels of radiation. That pretty much tells you all you need to know. Iran does not have any plutonium, so getting “a little fissile material to Hezbollah” would mean shipping them some 1,400 tons of uranium — when all Iran has now is 6 tons total.
Iran’s production of enriched uranium has nothing to do with dirty bombs. The core problem is that Iran is enriching uranium it says is for reactor fuel but could be turned into fuel for nuclear weapons. The most important reason to contain Iran’s nuclear program is to prevent a dangerous, destabilizing nuclear arms race in the Middle East and an emboldened Iranian regime — not to prevent Iran from giving terrorists nuclear materials for a dirty bomb. And it is crucial that anyone involved in the discussion of Iran’s nuclear program — and certainly the Republican presidential nominee — understand this.
That is not to say that dirty bombs are not a serious problem. The closest we have every come to seeing one used was in November 1995, when Chechen rebels placed a cache of cesium in a trash can in a Moscow park as a warning of what they could do. Neither the Chechens nor the original source of the cesium was ever identified. Experts worry that it is just a matter of time before some group actual set off a dirty bomb.
8:15 a.m., August 6, 1945. Our hometown was reduced to ashes by a single atomic bomb. The houses we came home to, our everyday lives, the customs we cherished—all were gone: “Hiroshima was no more. The city had vanished. No roads, just a burnt plain of rubble as far as I could see, and sadly, I could see too far. I followed electric lines that had fallen along what I took to be tram rails. The tram street was hot. Death was all around.” That was our city, as seen by a young woman of twenty. That was Hiroshima for all the survivors. The exciting festivals, the playing in boats, the fishing and clamming, the children catching long-armed shrimp—a way of life had disappeared from our beloved rivers.
Worse yet, the bomb snuffed out the sacred lives of so many human beings: “I rode in a truck with a civil defense team to pick up corpses. I was just a boy, so they told me to grab the ankles. I did, but the skin slipped right off. I couldn’t hold on. I steeled myself, squeezed hard with my fingertips, and the flesh started oozing. A terrible stench. I gripped right down to the bone. With a ‘one-two-three,’ we tossed them into the truck.” As seen in the experience of this 13-year-old boy, our city had become a living hell. Countless corpses lay everywhere, piled on top of each other; amid the moans of unearthly voices, infants sucked at the breasts of dead mothers, while dazed, empty-eyed mothers clutched their dead babies.
A girl of sixteen lost her whole family, one after the other: “My 7-year-old brother was burned from head to toe. He died soon after the bombing. A month later, my parents died; then, my 13-year-old brother and my 11-year-old sister. The only ones left were myself and my little brother, who was three, and he died later of cancer.” From newborns to grandmothers, by the end of the year, 140,000 precious lives were taken from Hiroshima.
Hiroshima was plunged into deepest darkness. Our hibakusha experienced the bombing in flesh and blood. Then, they had to live with aftereffects and social prejudice. Even so, they soon began telling the world about their experience. Transcending rage and hatred, they revealed the utter inhumanity of nuclear weapons and worked tirelessly to abolish those weapons. We want the whole world to know of their hardship, their grief, their pain, and their selfless desire.
The average hibakusha is now over 78. This summer, in response to the many ordinary citizens seeking to inherit and pass on their experience and desire, Hiroshima has begun carefully training official hibakusha successors. Determined never to let the atomic bombing fade from memory, we intend to share with ever more people at home and abroad the hibakusha desire for a nuclear-weapon-free world.
People of the world! Especially leaders of nuclear-armed nations, please come to Hiroshima to contemplate peace in this A-bombed city.
This year, Mayors for Peace marked its 30th anniversary. The number of cities calling for the total abolition of nuclear weapons by 2020 has passed 5,300, and our members now represent approximately a billion people. Next August, we will hold a Mayors for Peace general conference in Hiroshima. That event will convey to the world the intense desire of the overwhelming majority of our citizens for a nuclear weapons convention and elimination of nuclear weapons. The following spring, Hiroshima will host a ministerial meeting of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Initiative comprising ten non-nuclear-weapon states, including Japan. I firmly believe that the demand for freedom from nuclear weapons will soon spread out from Hiroshima, encircle the globe, and lead us to genuine world peace.
March 11, 2011, is a day we will never forget. A natural disaster compounded by a nuclear power accident created an unprecedented catastrophe. Here in Hiroshima, we are keenly aware that the survivors of that catastrophe still suffer terribly, yet look toward the future with hope. We see their ordeal clearly superimposed on what we endured 67 years ago. I speak now to all in the stricken areas. Please hold fast to your hope for tomorrow. Your day will arrive, absolutely. Our hearts are with you.
Having learned a lesson from that horrific accident, Japan is now engaged in a national debate over its energy policy, with some voices insisting, “Nuclear energy and humankind cannot coexist.” I call on the Japanese government to establish without delay an energy policy that guards the safety and security of the people. I ask the government of the only country to experience an atomic bombing to accept as its own the resolve of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mindful of the unstable situation surrounding us in Northeast Asia, please display bolder leadership in the movement to eliminate nuclear weapons. Please also provide more caring measures for the hibakusha in and out of Japan who still suffer even today, and take the political decision to expand the “black rain areas.”
Once again, we offer our heartfelt prayers for the peaceful repose of the atomic bomb victims. From our base here in Hiroshima, we pledge to convey to the world the experience and desire of our hibakusha, and do everything in our power to achieve the genuine peace of a world without nuclear weapons.
August 6, 2012
MATSUI Kazumi
Mayor
The City of Hiroshima
