IPPNW at the NPT PrepCom: Risks and consequences of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy

[bananas]

IPPNW is International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

http://peaceandhealthblog.com/2012/05/02/risks-and-consequences/

IPPNW at the NPT PrepCom: Risks and consequences of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy
May 2, 2012

The first Preparatory Committee session (PrepCom) for the 2105 Review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty is midway through its first week in Vienna. IPPNW and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) are among 60 NGOs participating in the PrepCom, with the goal of focusing Member State attention on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war and the urgency of a global treaty to ban nuclear weapons.

This afternoon, NGOs presented a series of papers to the PrepCom during a formal plenary session. IPPNW Regional Vice President and the Chair of the ICAN core group, Dr. Tilman Ruff, delivered the following paper on the risks and consequences of nuclear weapons, which was prepared by IPPNW in collaboration with the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy and People for Nuclear Disarmament. This and the other NGO papers are available online at Reaching Critical Will.

Dr. Tilman Ruff of IPPNW and ICAN addresses the 2012 NPT PrepCom. "If one bomb can destroy a city, the consequences of a war involving many nuclear explosions are on a scale larger than anything we have experienced previously in human history."

Mr. Chairman, Distinguished Delegates:

<snip>

Last November, the Council of Delegates of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement adopted a new resolution, by acclamation, appealing to all States “to ensure that nuclear weapons are never again used, regardless of their views on the legality of such weapons,” and “to pursue in good faith and conclude with urgency and determination negotiations to prohibit the use of and completely eliminate nuclear weapons through a legally binding international agreement, based on existing commitments and international obligations.”

One clear and viable way to implement this resolution would be to transform the nuclear disarmament obligation embodied in Article 6 of the NPT into a global agreement to eliminate and abolish nuclear weapons—what many of the NGOs represented here have called a nuclear weapons convention. Many of us have addressed how this could be done. Why it must be done can only be fully appreciated if we pause to reflect on what the phrase “catastrophic humanitarian consequences,” present in both the 2010 Review document and the Red Cross/Red Crescent resolution, actually means.

Echoing the 1996 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, the resolution begins by citing “the destructive power of nuclear weapons, the unspeakable human suffering they cause, the difficulty of controlling their effects in space and time, the threat they pose to the environment and to future generations and the risks of escalation they create.” Indeed, as we learned from the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even a single nuclear explosion over a modern city would indiscriminately kill tens of thousands — even hundreds of thousands — of people immediately. The immediate casualties of a nuclear war in which even a small fraction of today’s arsenals are used would reach into the tens of millions.

Moreover, nuclear weapons eradicate the social infrastructure required for recovery from conflict. Roads and transportation systems, hospitals and pharmacies, fire fighting equipment, and communications would all lie in rubble throughout a zone of complete destruction extending for miles. People in neighboring and distant countries having nothing to do with the conflict would suffer from the effects of radioactive fallout, even if they were at a safe distance from the blast and thermal destruction near ground zero. Nuclear weapons explosions also have extreme and long-lasting environmental consequences, including disruption of the Earth’s climate and agricultural productivity.

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[kristopher]

1. "NTP ..(is) the midwife of the nuclear power industry’s dreams of global expansion"

I overlooked this one, bananas. Thank you it is an interesting read, even if it is the perspective of those leftwing greenie so called "nonprofits" that are in the pocket of the coal industry... (sarcasm)

...Many states—nuclear- and non-nuclear alike—will point the finger at Iran and the DPRK rather than stigmatize the weapons themselves in anyone’s hands. Proliferation and alleged proliferation will be discussed in isolation as an obstacle to disarmament rather than as a consequence of the failure to comply fully with Article 6. Some states will change the subject entirely to the global promotion of a dangerous and obsolete technology for producing electricity, as though the NPT were first and foremost the midwife of the nuclear power industry’s dreams of global expansion.

...The twin attempts to provide security with nuclear weapons and to meet global energy needs with nuclear power share the same flawed premise: that we can prevent the most dangerous technologies ever created by human hands from ever failing. The premise regarding nuclear weapons is that deterrence works and will never fail. The premise with nuclear energy is that plant designs and safeguards keep getting better, and will stop failing. Neither premise holds up to logical scrutiny or to experience. The lesson of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that nuclear weapons must be abolished before they abolish us. The lesson of Fukushima—and of Chernobyl before that—is that we can no longer afford to roll the dice on a technology that cannot be allowed to fail, when failures are inevitable, with catastrophic consequences....