by Eva Moseley, July 3, 2011
Japan was much in the news this year when it suffered (and still suffers) one of the worst nuclear power plant accidents ever. It was also much in the news in 1945, when the only atom bombs ever used during wartime were dropped that August on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Shortly before that, on July 16, 1945, the nuclear age began in the Nevada desert with the first atom bomb test. On the 66th anniversary, July 16, 2011, in Copley Square in Boston, we marked what many of us hope is the beginning of the end of the nuclear age, a Festival for a Nuclear-Free Future.
With a giant globe showing where nuclear warheads and power plants are and where they aren’t, with games, puppets, skits, songs, dances, and short speeches, we entertained and enlighten old and especially young people on the dangers of the nuclear age, the possibilities of meeting our energy needs without nuclear power, and what ordinary citizens can do to promote a saner, safer world.
Along with Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, there have been many relatively minor mishaps at nuclear power plants. The design of the Fukushima plant is the same as that of Vermont Yankee, just across the state line from Massachusetts. Earlier this year, when Vermont Yankee couldn’t meet safety standards, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission–as reported in the press and as it has done at other plants–relaxed the standards to match VY’s conditions, and voted to extend its license beyond the prescribed number of years. Besides this lax “regulation,” no private company will insure nuclear plants. The government insures them: that is, we the taxpayers, but we don’t see any of the profits. No one has any realistic idea for what to do with the tons and tons of nuclear waste, and as more nuclear reactors are built around the world there is an increased danger of proliferation of plutonium, which can be used to make weapons.
Many of us remember “Cold War” days of constant fear of an accidental, mistaken, or intentional nuclear attack. There were 63,000 warheads worldwide at its peak, many [MOST?] of them hydrogen bombs, which are many times larger and more destructive than the relatively tiny atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Now the world is down to 23,000 warheads, and Presidents Obama and Medvedev have recently negotiated further mutual reductions down to 1500 each for the U.S. and Russia. Over the years, citizen advocacy and the work of non-governmental organizations have convinced leaders to negotiate such reductions, and to agree on such treaties as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1970), according to which non-nuclear signatories pledge not to acquire nuclear weapons and nuclear-armed countries pledge to reduce their weapons holdings, by mutual agreement, to zero.
Despite the recent agreement on reductions, the Obama Administration requested and Congress appropriated $85 billion for new warheads and $100 billion for upgraded “delivery systems”: submarines, planes, missiles–all in the name of “modernization.”
In each of the last four years the annual gathering of the U.S. Conference of Mayors has passed, by unanimous vote, a resolution urging the President to work for the elimination of nuclear weapons, as stipulated in the 1970 treaty. Cambridge mayors were present and voting, realizing that our city, like others, is a prime target and that an attack on a city causes the greatest loss of life (not only human life) and the destruction of the elements of civilization: houses, transport, hospitals, arts, and so on. Mayors for Peace, an international group headed by the former mayor of Hiroshima, is another major advocate for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
Why such weapons particularly? Aside from their incredible destructive power: blast, heat, fire, they produce radioactivity, which not only sickens those far enough from ground zero to survive the blast, but which will last for years, decades–some for centuries–continuing to cause cancers and birth defects. These weapons are not just the equivalent of very large conventional bombs.