The Nuclear Treaty
Wreckers, and also - Sellafield Leak
Re.Robin Cook, he has since died. He took this strong
stand advisedly as we learn the nuclear belligerence of
George Bush, experience the nuclear threats of Israel,
and here in Ireland have to acknowledge the ham-fisted
response of Dick Roche TD (politician) to news of a
serious leak in Sellafield, a message having been
transmitted to him a month after the event was first
recognised.(See below)
By George Monbiot
ZNet Commentary
August 04, 2005
Saturday(August13) was the 60th anniversary of the
bombing of Hiroshima. The nuclear powers are
commemorating it in their own special way: by seeking to
ensure that the experiment is repeated.
As Robin Cook showed in his column last week, the British
government appears to have decided to replace our Trident
nuclear weapons, without consulting parliament or
informing the public.(1) It could be worse than he
thinks. He pointed out that the atomic weapons
establishment at Aldermaston has been re-equipped to
build a new generation of bombs. But when this news was
first leaked in 2002, a spokesman for the plant insisted
that the equipment was being installed not to replace
Trident, but to construct either mini-nukes or warheads
which could be used on cruise missiles.(2)
If this is true, it means that the government is
replacing Trident AND developing a new category of
boil-in-the-bag weapons. As if to ensure we got the
point, Geoff Hoon, then the defence secretary, announced
soon before the leak that Britain would be prepared to
use small nukes in a pre-emptive strike against a
non-nuclear state.(3) This put us in the hallowed company
of North Korea.
The Times, helpful as ever, explains why Trident should
be replaced. "A decision to leave the club of
nuclear powers," it says, "would diminish
Britain's international standing and influence."(4)
This is true, and it accounts for why almost everyone
wants the bomb.
Two weeks ago, on concluding their new nuclear treaty,
George Bush and the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh
announced that "international institutions must
fully reflect changes in the global scenario that have
taken place since 1945. The President reiterated his view
that international institutions are going to have to
adapt to reflect India's central and growing
role."(5) This translates as follows: "now that
India has the bomb, it should join the UN Security
Council."
It is because nuclear weapons confer power and status on
the states that possess them that the non-proliferation
treaty, of which the United Kingdom was a founding
signatory, determines two things: that the non-nuclear
powers should not acquire nuclear weapons, and that the
nuclear powers should "pursue negotiations in good
faith on ... general and complete disarmament".(6)
Blair has unilaterally decided to rip it up.
But in helping to wreck the treaty, we are only keeping
up with our friends across the water. In May, the US
government launched a systematic assault on the
agreement. The summit in New York was supposed to
strengthen it, but the US, led by John Bolton - the
under-secretary for arms control (someone had a good
laugh over that one) - refused even to allow the other
nations to draw up an agenda for discussion.(7) The
talks, unsurprisingly, collapsed, and the treaty may now
be all but dead. Needless to say, Bolton has been
promoted: to the post of US ambassador to the United
Nations. Yesterday Bush pushed his nomination through by
means of a "recess appointment": an
undemocratic power which allows the president to override
Congress when the members are on holiday.
Bush wanted to destroy the treaty because it couldn't be
reconciled with his new plans. Last month the Senate
approved an initial $4m for research into a "robust
nuclear earth penetrator" (RNEP). This is a bomb
with a yield about ten times that of the Hiroshima
device, designed to blow up underground bunkers which
might contain weapons of mass destruction. (You've
spotted the contradiction). Congress rejected funding for
it in November, but Bush twisted enough arms this year to
get it restarted. You see what a wonderful world he
inhabits when you discover that the RNEP idea was
conceived in 1991 as a means of dealing with Saddam
Hussein's biological and chemical weapons.(8) Saddam is
pacing his cell, but the Bushites, like the Japanese
soldiers lost in Malaysia, march on. To pursue his war
against the phantom of the phantom of Saddam's weapons of
mass destruction, Bush has destroyed the treaty which
prevents the use of real ones.
It gets worse. Last year Congress allocated funding for
something called the "reliable replacement
warhead". The government's story is that the
existing warheads might be deteriorating. When they show
signs of ageing, they can be dismantled and rebuilt to a
"safer and more reliable" design.(9) It's a
pretty feeble excuse for building a new generation of
nukes, but it worked. The development of the new bombs
probably means that the US will also breach the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty - so we can kiss goodbye to
another means of preventing proliferation.
But the biggest disaster was Bush's meeting with Manmohan
Singh a fortnight ago. India is one of three states which
possess nuclear weapons and refuse to sign the
non-proliferation treaty (NPT). The treaty says it should
be denied access to civil nuclear materials. But on July
18th, Bush announced that "as a responsible state
with advanced nuclear technology, India should acquire
the same benefits and advantages as other such
states." He would "work to achieve full civil
nuclear energy cooperation with India" and
"seek agreement from Congress to adjust U.S. laws
and policies".(10) Four months before the meeting,
the US lifted its South Asian arms embargo, by selling
Pakistan a fleet of F-16 aircraft, capable of a carrying
a wide range of missiles, and India an anti-missile
system.(11) As a business plan, it's hard to fault.
Here then is how it works. If you acquire the bomb and
threaten to use it, you will qualify for American
exceptionalism by proxy. Could there be a greater
incentive for proliferation?
The implications have not been lost on other states.
"India is looking after its own national
interests," a spokesman for the Iranian government
complained on Wednesday. "We cannot criticise them
for this. But what the Americans are doing is a double
standard. On the one hand, they are depriving an NPT
member from having peaceful technology, but at the same
time they are cooperating with India, which is not a
member of the NPT."(12) North Korea (and this is the
only good news around at the moment) is currently in its
second week of talks with the US. While the Bush
administration is doing the right thing by engaging with
Pyongyang, the lesson is pretty clear. You could sketch
it out as a Venn diagram.
If you have oil, but aren't developing a bomb (Iraq), you
get invaded. If you have oil but are developing a bomb
(Iran) you get threatened with invasion, but it probably
won't happen. If you don't have oil, but do have the
bomb, the US representative will fly to your country and
open negotiations.
The world of George Bush's imagination comes into being
by government decree. As a result of his tail-chasing
paranoia, assisted by Tony Blair's cowardice and Manmohan
Singh's opportunism, the global restraint on the
development of nuclear weapons has, in effect, been
destroyed in the course of a few months. The world could
now be more vulnerable to the consequences of
proliferation than it has been for 35 years. Thanks to
Bush and Blair, we might not go out with a whimper after
all.
www.monbiot.com
References:
1. Robin Cook, 29th July 2005. Worse than Irrelevant. The
Guardian.
2. Richard Norton-Taylor, 18th June 2002. MoD plans £2bn
nuclear expansion. The Guardian.
3. Geoff Hoon, 24th March 2002. The Jonathan Dimbleby
Show, ITV 1.
4. Tom Baldwin and Michael Evans, 28 May 2005. The hunt
for a new nuclear option. The Times.
5. Office of the Press Secretary, 18th July 2005. Joint
Statement Between President George W. Bush and Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh. The White House.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/07/20050718-6.html
6. Article VI, Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear
Weapons, Entered into force 5th March 1970. United
Nations Department for Disarmament Affairs.
7. See for eg BASIC/ORG, January 2005 and following. The
Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference: Breakthrough
or Bust in '05? http://www.basicint.org/nuclear/NPT/2005rc/nptoverview.htm#01;
and Robin Cook, 27th May 2005. America's broken nuclear
promises endanger us all. The Guardian.
8. Eg Friends Committee on National Legislation, 3rd May
2005. Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator: Questions and
Answers. http://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=88&issue_id=48
9. See Jonathan Medalia, 20th July 2005. Nuclear Weapons:
The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program. Congressional
Research Service Report for Congress. At: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RL32929.pdf.
10. Office of the Press Secretary, ibid.
11. Ashley J. Tellis, 2005. South Asian Seesaw: A New
U.S. Policy on the Subcontinent. Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace.
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=16919&prog=zgp&proj=zsa
12. Simon Tisdall, 28th July 2005. Tehran accuses US of
nuclear double standard. The Guardian.
Sellafield Staff
ignored 100 warnings about leak
From an article by
P Brown, tHE Guardian ,JULY16 2005
Shift workers and
managers at Sellafield, that was taken over by the
"British Nuclear Group" successor to
state-owned British Nuclear Fuels (and part of Tony
Blair's project to privatise any government organisation
that might bleed the government treasury of large sums of
money,JB.ed.) the nuclear reprocessing plant,
believing that it was impossible for the £1.8bn factory
to go wrong, ignored more than 100 warnings over six
months that it had sprung a catastrophic leak.
The plant is manned 24hrs
a day , and continued operating even though 83 cubic
meters of radio-active liquid was gradually leaking into
the base of the plant. In April 2005 a fractured pipe was
discovered and a board of enquiry was established.
(A comical scapegoat
was found, the psychological mind-set of
"over-confidence" of workers in a
"new" plant !!!JB.ed.)PLUS: Some supports
for tanks that hold the liquid, which were designed to
prevent vibration and guard against earthquakes, had
never been fitted.Thus the pipework had exceeded its
theoretical life expectancy given the level of
vibration.......Thus the spent fuel dissolved in nitric
acid sprung a leak.
(The enquiry turned up
the fact that under previous state-ownership warnings had
been ignored for years, despite alarms being
activated.JB.ed.)
Workers are now being
re-trained (or should I read "de-briefed")to
change their outlook (or unfortunate feelings of
security).
Radioactive material from
3 different countries has also been mixed up and with the
fuel that they have managed to contain in buffer tanks (that
was previously filling an entire basement cavern) the
company are NOW UNSURE HOW TO PROCEED. .It is
understood that the company will take months before the
works can be brought back into operation.(it is now
September and The Guardian has given no further news on
the matter to the general public.)An accident in
1998 had gone undetected for years said a report on
papers obtained by Martin Forwood from Cumbrians Opposed
to Radioactive Environment.
How Britain helped
Israel get the bomb
Newsnight reporter Michael
Crick tells the story of how Britain helped Israel build
the bomb - without telling the Americans.
Documents uncovered by
Newsnight in the British National Archives show how, in
1958, Britain agreed to sell Israel 20 tonnes of heavy
water, a vital ingredient for the production of plutonium
at Israel's top secret Dimona nuclear reactor in the
Negev desert.
Robert McNamara, President
Kennedy's Defence Secretary, has told Newsnight he is
"astonished" at the revelation that Britain
kept this secret from America.
One of the documents uncovered
at the British National Archives
In Wednesday's programme, Newsnight reveals how British
officials decided it would be "over-zealous" to
impose safeguards on the Israelis, and chose not to
insist that Israel only use the heavy water for peaceful
purposes.
Earlier the Americans had
refused to supply heavy water to Israel without such
safeguards.
Making money
The documents unearthed by
Newsnight also show British officials decided not to tell
Washington about it.
"On the whole I would
prefer NOT to mention this to the Americans,"
concluded Donald Cape of the Foreign Office. When
contacted by Newsnight this week, Mr Cape could remember
nothing about the episode.
"I think it is quite
extraordinary," says the former Conservative Defence
and Foreign Office minister Lord Gilmour. "Whether
the civil servants who were involved knew what they were
doing, or whether they didn't, I don't know." He
thinks they put Britain's economic interests first.
"One must assume they must
have known ... And what's more they seemed to have no
idea of the political or indeed even the technical and
foreign policy implications of what they were doing. They
just seemed to be concerned with making a bit of
money."
Escaping criticism
Until now both France and
Norway have been criticised for helping the Israelis
develop the bomb, but Britain has escaped criticism.
Frank Barnaby, who worked on
the British bomb project in the 1950s, and later
debriefed the Israeli whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu,
says he had "no idea" that Britain was
"involved" in supplying Israel with heavy
water.
"Heavy water was crucial
for Israel," he says. "Therefore it was a
significant part of their nuclear programme."
More extraordinary, the
archives suggest that the decision to sell heavy water
was taken simply by civil servants, mainly in the Foreign
Office and the UK Atomic Energy Authority.
Newsnight has found no evidence
that ministers in the Macmillan Government were ever
consulted about the sale, or even told about it.
Surplus
The 20 tonnes of heavy water
were part of a consignment which Britain bought from
Norway in 1956, but the UK later decided this was surplus
to requirements.
The papers in the National
Archives in London show how officials presented the sale
internally as a straight sale from Norway to Israel. But
the minutes reveal that the heavy water was shipped from
a British port in Israeli ships - half in June 1959 and
half a year later.
In 1960 the Daily Express first
exposed the Israelis' work at Dimona and the fact that
Israel was probably making a bomb.
When Israel asked Britain for a
further five tonnes of heavy water in 1961 the Foreign
Office decided against a second transaction.
"I am quite sure we should
not agree to this sale," advised Sir Hugh Stephenson
of the Foreign Office. "The Israeli project is much
too live an issue for us to get mixed up in it
again," he wrote.
Robert McNamara, who became
President Kennedy's Defence Secretary in 1961, has
expressed his surprise to Newsnight that Britain didn't
inform the Americans it had sold heavy water to Israel.
"The fact that Israel was trying to develop a
nuclear bomb should not have come as any surprise ... But
that Britain should have supplied it with heavy water was
indeed a surprise to me.
"It's very surprising to
me that we weren't told because we shared information
about the nuclear bomb very closely with the
British."
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