On 11 March, a conference entitled ‘Green Nuclear-Free Wales’ drew more than 60 delegates to the National Library in Aberystwyth on the sixth anniversary of the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster (in March, a Japanese court ruled that state negligence contributed to the triple meltdown).
Speakers in Aberystwyth included the former chief electrical engineer for Hinkley Point, Peter Smith, who critiqued nuclear industry safety…
Every three months, I take direct action against nuclear power. It doesn't involve sitting in the road, cutting fences or trespassing. I simply withhold 11 percent of my electricity bill, like hundreds of others involved in the Consumer Campaign.
The campaign is based on the fact that, quite apart from all the other arguments against nuclear power, the nuclear generation of electricity is more costly than other methods. Most other Peace News readers, like myself, will…
Hinkley Point C protest, 10 October: Welsh, French, English, Chinese and Indian activists call the scheme outdated, uneconomical and unreliable. They demand renewed support for renewables and a stop to dependency on nuclear power.
Photo: Wendy Lewis
Generally, prime ministers and presidents are the last to admit they got something wrong. The sound of Tony Blair saying sorry is the sound of silence. So credit to Naoto Kan, Japanese PM at the time of the (ongoing) Fukushima disaster.
Formerly pro-nuclear, Kan makes no bones about getting it wrong. He came to Wales to warn that Wylfa B, Horizon Nuclear’s proposed plant in Anglesey, would be a terrible mistake.
During the last few years members of anti-nuclear group PAWB (…
In the summer of 1946, ‘more than half the world’s supply of motion picture film... was loaded aboard US Army Air Force planes and dispatched to Bikini Atoll’ where it was used to photograph Operations Able and Baker – the second and fourth nuclear bomb explosions respectively – generating over a million still images and several million feet of moving image matter.
Some of these pictures are reproduced in this collection of essays and photographs, which ranges widely over the last…
In the issue of PN for October 2013, Gabriel Carlyle had an article about the Iraq ministry of health report entitled ‘Summary of reported Congenital Birth Defects in 18 Selected Districts of Iraq’.
This had come to the surprising conclusion that ‘the rates of spontaneous abortion, stillbirths and congenital birth defects were “consistent with or even lower than international estimates” and found “no clear evidence to suggest an unusually high rate of congenital birth…
Late news: on 13 July, the government of Jiangmen city in southern China’s Guangdong province cancelled a $6bn uranium processing plant after nearly 1,000 people demonstrated against the plans.
Banners and slogans included: ‘We want children, not atoms.’
From 6-9 August, a group of peace activists including Serge Levillier, a lively 79-year-old Frenchman, held a fast and vigil outside Burghfield atomic weapons establishment in Berkshire. This was in solidarity with fasts also happening in France and Germany.
We put up banners, sang together, and read from the accounts left by survivors of the terrible atomic bombings in Japan. We did shadow drawings on the tarmac outside the main gate to remember those at the heart of the explosion,…
Due to a misunderstanding by the PN editors, the article by Marc Morgan published in last month’s PN was an early version, which left out important information.
The fast in Paris, still organized by the Maison de Vigilance, will be held in conjunction with a fast in Burghfield held by Action AWE, and a fast at Büchel NATO base, in Germany, organized by the Atomfrei Jetzt campaign.
Fasters at the three sites will take part in symbolic actions, silent vigils and…
Protests continue in Tamil Nadu, India, against the Kudankulam nuclear power plant (see PN 2550) which has still not yet gone online.
On 10 December, more than 100 fishing boats marked international Human Rights Day with a ‘sea siege’ of the plant.
On 21 January, there was another protest by the National Fishermen Forum. The NFF secretary, T Peter, said: ‘If the plant starts its operation, the lives of thousands of fishermen will come to a standstill…. Today, on the…
On 19 December, four anti-nuclear power campaigners pleaded guilty to obstructing traffic at Hinkley Point in Somerset, in late November. Two days after their action, on 26 November, protestors blockaded the entrance to another planned nuclear power station site, Sizewell in Suffolk.
According to the department of energy and climate change, there are seven operational nuclear power plants throughout England, Wales, and Scotland, with at least eight ‘confirmed new sites’.
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Over 700 boats laid 'siege' to the Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu, India on 8 October, in the latest demonstration by the People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE; for background, see PN 2550).
PMANE is demanding the withdrawal of police from local villages (police killed one protester in September), the…
Early on 8 October, 30 people entered the proposed construction site for a new nuclear reactor at Hinkley in Somerset. Inside they scattered 577 seed balls to mark the days since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.
Three people attached themselves to the fence with bicycle locks. After some hours the occupiers were forcibly removed. Just six were charged, some with going equipped to commit criminal damage.
The actions were part of a weekend anti-nuclear camp. There was a…
The 'China syndrome' is a 1970s term for a catastrophic reactor meltdown into the earth's crust – 'all the way to China'. As the new Chinese bid for the proposed Wylfa B nuclear power station is considered, the phrase may bring to mind another scenario – a catastrophic meltdown of democratic accountability, because democracy and transparency are the first casualties of the drive for 'new nuclear'.
The sudden departure of the previous operators, Horizon, from the troubled project…
On 10 September, local fisherman Anthony John, 44, was shot dead by Indian police while taking part in a blockade protesting against the completion of a nuclear power plant in Kudankulam in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Two 1GW reactors have been built on the site and were being loaded with uranium fuel as PN went to press: the authorities plan to build a further four 1GW reactors on the site.
The protests were organised by the People’s Movement Against Nuclear…
