BBC – Japan has confirmed the existence of a secret Cold War deal allowing the transit of nuclear-armed US vessels through its ports. The move by a government-appointed panel ends decades of official denial – although the existence of the pact was an open secret. The government said that the move was aimed at increasing transparency. But it comes at an unsettled time for the US-Japan relationship, amid a row over US military bases in Okinawa. Read article
Press TV – Israel, which is widely deemed as the sole wielder of nuclear arsenals in the Middle East, says it plans to build its third nuclear power plant. Israeli Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau plans to announce Israel’s interest in developing nuclear power at an international nuclear energy conference in Paris, the ministry’s spokesman Chen Lulu said on Monday. He said Landau would tell the Paris meeting that he sees such a plant as a joint project between Israel and Jordan, with France supervising and providing technology. Read article
Washington Post – President Obama’s top national security advisers will within days present him with an agonizing choice on how to guide U.S. nuclear weapons policy for the rest of his term. Does he substantially advance his bold pledge to seek a world free of nuclear weapons by declaring that the “sole purpose” of the U.S. arsenal is to deter other nations from using them? Or does he embrace a more modest option, supported by some senior military officials, that deterrence is the “primary purpose”? The difference may seem semantic, but such words, which will be contained in a document known as the Nuclear Posture Review, have deep meaning and could dramatically shift nuclear policy in the United States and around the world. Read article
CBS News – Doctors and parents in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are blaming a sharp increase in the number of birth defects on the highly sophisticated weapons U.S. troops have used in the city during the war. The BBC reported Thursday the staggering statistic from doctors in the city that the number of heart defects found in newborn babies is 13 times the number of similar birth defects in Europe. U.S. troops carried out a major offensive in the city in 2004. Military spokesman Michael Kilpatrick told the news organization it takes public health concerns “very seriously.” Read article
Telegraph – The US and Britain are acting in the expectation that any measures agreed by the UN Security Council will be heavily diluted by Russia or China. The supplementary action is being drawn up in consultation with Middle Eastern and Asian countries that have financial or trade ties with the Islamic regime, and a common interest in preventing it developing nuclear weapons. The measures would focus on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the secretive militia force that is suspected of running and financing the country’s covert nuclear programme. Read Article
Arab News – Syria said on Thursday that Israel dropped uranium particles onto Syrian soil from the air to make it look as if a covert nuclear weapons plant was being built there, diplomats at a UN nuclear watchdog meeting said. Damascus has strongly denied US intelligence that a complex in the Syrian desert bombed to ruins by Israel in 2007 had been a nascent nuclear reactor, North Korean in design and geared to making plutonium for atomic bombs. Read article
Reuters – A Western proposal for fresh U.N. sanctions on Iran includes a call for restricting new Iranian banks abroad and urges “vigilance” against the Islamic Republic’s central bank, diplomats said on Friday. Speaking on condition of anonymity, Western diplomats familiar with negotiations on the draft proposal — which Washington worked on with Britain, France and Germany and then shared with Russia and China — said they were no longer pushing for an official U.N. blacklisting of the central bank. Read article
New Scientist – The concept has been around for decades, and has been discussed in the technical literature and at the International Atomic Energy Agency. But it has not yet been explained to governments, industry, researchers and the public. Hybrid nuclear fusion combines the two forms of nuclear power, fission and fusion, in a single reactor. This has several advantages over fission alone: it minimises the environmental impact, reduces risks, enlarges reserves of nuclear fuel and is more flexible to operate. Read Article
Reuters – The president of the U.N. Security Council said on Tuesday it was ready to tackle proposals for new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, while U.S. diplomats worked to persuade China that action is needed. Gabon’s U.N. Ambassador Emanuel Issoze-Ngondet, president of the Security Council for March, said the Iranian nuclear issue was not on the agenda of the 15-nation panel this month, but council members might still hold a meeting on it. Read article
BBC – Doctors in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are reporting a high level of birth defects, with some blaming weapons used by the US after the Iraq invasion.The city witnessed fierce fighting in 2004 as US forces carried out a major offensive against insurgents. Now, the level of heart defects among newborn babies is said to be 13 times higher than in Europe. The US military says it is not aware of any official reports showing an increase in birth defects in the area. Read Article
Ed – To read more about the most commonly used weapon of mass detruction, depleted uranium, CLICK HERE
BBC – Brazil will not bow to pressure from the US to support further sanctions against Iran over its nuclear work, the country’s foreign minister has said. Celso Amorim told US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Brazil wanted to see further negotiations on the issue before it would support sanctions. Read article
Reuters – The president of the U.N. Security Council said on Tuesday it was ready to tackle proposals for new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, while U.S. diplomats worked to persuade China that action is needed. Gabon’s U.N. Ambassador Emanuel Issoze-Ngondet, president of the Security Council for March, said the Iranian nuclear issue was not on the agenda of the 15-nation panel this month, but council members might still hold a meeting on it. Read article
BBC – Aboriginal groups are to gather at a public meeting to debate controversial plans to build Australia’s first nuclear waste dump on tribal land. The federal government has identified a remote cattle station north of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory as a likely site. The proposal has caused deep divisions within the indigenous community. Ministers have indicated that the nuclear dump would not be built if landowners opposed it. In the next six years nuclear waste that Australia sent to Europe for reprocessing will be returned. Read Article
Ed – First you steal their land; then you wipe out 90% of their population, mainly through diseases; then you steal their children; then you use their land for nuclear bomb testing; then you count them as “flora & forna” in censuses until 1967; and then you dump the world’s nuclear waste on the desert land that you recently and reluctantly gave back.
Daily Telegraph – Australian aborigines and former servicemen are to sue the British Ministry of Defence over diseases and disabilities that they claim were caused by nuclear testing in the Outback more than 50 years ago. A group of 250 people, including 150 former servicemen, say they have suffered cancer, skin disease and deformities because of the fallout from blasts. Read Article
BBC – US President Barack Obama is planning “dramatic reductions” in the country’s nuclear arsenal, a senior US administration official has said. This would come as part of a sweeping policy review designed to prevent the spread of atomic weapons, he said. He added that the new strategy will point to a greater role for conventional weapons. Read article
Ed – then why is he spending MORE to maintain the current stockpile?
ABC – The Federal Government claims its plan to put Australia’s first nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory has the support of the Coalition. The Government is considering a site at Muckaty Station, north of Tennant Creek, that was nominated by the Northern Land Council more than two years ago in a deal with the Howard government. Read Article
Ed – Pollution that will stay for the next few thousand years. Lets hope that in that time no-one forgets where it is, or forgets to maintain its integrity from leakages.
Haaretz – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Monday for an immediate embargo on Iran’s energy sector, saying the United Nations Security Council should be sidestepped if it cannot agree on the move. Iran’s uranium enrichment, in defiance of several rounds of Security Council sanctions, has spurred world powers to consider tougher diplomatic measures, against the backdrop of threatened military action by Israel as a last resort. Read article
Press TV – Iran’s envoy to the IAEA has objected to the fact that suspicions have been raised about Tehran’s nuclear activities only because it is not implementing voluntary protocols. “We have to be able distinguish between two different issues. One is the Safeguards Agreement… and the other is additional measures, which are voluntary like the additional protocol. They cover more activities,” Ali-Asghar Soltanieh told Press TV on Sunday. Read article
CNN – Seven in 10 Americans believe that Iran currently has nuclear weapons, according to a new national poll. Friday’s release of the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey comes just hours after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the Islamic republic isn’t seeking and doesn’t believe in pursuing nuclear weapons. Khamenei was responding to a draft United Nations report that said that Iran may be working to develop a nuclear weapon. Read article
AFP – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said her country has no plan for military action against Iran over its nuclear programme, in a television interview broadcast on Wednesday. “Obviously, we don’t want Iran to become a nuclear weapons power, but we are not planning anything other than going for sanctions,” she told Al-Arabiya television. Read article
Ed – she’s not lying, unless of course the Israeli plan can be considered a US plan.
Reuters – The U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Thursday it fears Iran may be working now to develop a nuclear-armed missile, as Washington warned Tehran of “consequences” for ignoring international demands to stop its atomic program. In unusually blunt language, an International Atomic Energy Agency report for the first time suggested Iran was actively pursuing nuclear weapons capability, throwing independent weight behind similar Western suspicions. Read article
Telegraph – The three countries raised a fresh alarm on Tuesday in a statement to the International Atomic Energy Agency which is preparing a report on Iran’s compliance with atomic inspectors. “If Iran goes forward with this escalation, it would raise concerns about Iran’s nuclear intentions,” their statement said. “Iran’s enrichment of its LEU (low-enriched uranium) stockpile to higher levels is not only unnecessary, but would serve to further undermine the confidence of the international community in Iran’s actions.” Read article
BBC – Imposing more sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme would not be a quick enough solution, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister has said. Prince Saud al-Faisal said the threat posed by Iran demanded a “more immediate solution” than sanctions. Read article
Reuters – France deliberately exposed its soldiers to nuclear explosions in Algeria in the 1960s to study the effect of radiation on humans, a newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing confidential documents. The French government promised last year to compensate victims of nuclear tests in Algeria, carried out between 1960 and 1966, recognizing a link between the explosions and veterans’ illnesses such as cancer. Read Article
The Times – High-level nuclear waste from across the European Union could be shipped to eastern Europe for burial in a central underground storage facility under plans being considered by EU member states. The Times has learnt that the project, which comes amid a resurgence of interest in nuclear power, could be given the green light later this year by the European Commission. So far, only a handful of countries worldwide have built a permanent resting place for their stockpiles of waste, the unwanted by-product of nuclear power generation. The rest keep the material in interim storage facilities, such as Britain’s Sellafield plant in West Cumbria, where about 5,000 half-tonne canisters of vitrified atomic waste are stored in concrete and steel chutes, some of which will remain highly radioactive for up to 100,000 years. Read Article
Ed – You can almost hear the negotiations; “As pay back for giving up your democratic freedoms to become vassal states in our new world order you must also look after our nuclear waste….for the next 100,000 years”
