Nuke Test Makes Nuclear Abolition More Important Than Ever

Nuke Test Makes Nuclear Abolition More Important Than Ever
by Joe Copeland

North Korea's nuclear testing heightens and underlines the dangers of a world in which nuclear arms are spreading. The news media treats the North Korea's nuclear weapons program as a story of a bad actor threatening international security, giving it the sort of attention rarely given to calls for constructive action to eliminate the danger of nuclear weapons. In particular, the frayed Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is seldom mentioned, nor the obligation contained in the treaty for the nuclear powers, including the U.S., to eliminate nuclear stockpiles.

The contrast hits home in Hiroshima, Japan, the first city attacked with an atomic bomb. Just eight days before the North Korean test, the city's daily newspaper, the Chugoku Shimbun, released an appeal from 17 Nobel Peace Prize laureates ( http://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/mediacenter_d/en/hiroshima-nagasaki/index.html) for citizens and governments to act for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Outside of Japan, the laureates' Hiroshima-Nagasaki Declaration has received almost no media attention.

When North Korea held its nuclear test, however, Hiroshima immediately became a media stage, and legitimately so: Citizens gathered in an outdoor protest. At the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, a clock tracking the number of days since the world's last nuclear test, which had been approaching 1,000, went back to one. Reporters sought out aging survivors for their comments. Suzuko Numata, an 85-year-old interviewed by Japan's Mainichi newspaper from her bed at a home for the elderly, raised the real issue looming behind the North Korean test: a world in which nuclear weapons continue to be seen by some nations as something to be sought rather than as a threat to all humans.

Just days before the Nobel Prize winners' declaration, one of the signers, International Atomic Energy Authority head Mohamed ElBaradei, told the United Kingdom's Guardian newspaper that existing agreements on nonproliferation are out of date and that he fears big growth in the number of nuclear powers. The story received at best limited attention, despite ElBaradei's prominence and expertise.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/31-1

After Iraq, It's Not Just North Korea that Wants a Bomb

The nuclear weapons states are the main drivers of proliferation. Only radical disarmament can halt their spread

By Seumas Milne

May 29, 2009 "The Guardian" -- The big power denunciation of North Korea's nuclear weapons test on Monday could not have been more sweeping. Barack Obama called the Hiroshima-scale ­underground explosion a "blatant violation of international law", and pledged to "stand up" to North ­Korea – as if it were a military giant of the Pacific – while Korea's former imperial master Japan branded the bomb a "clear crime", and even its long-suffering ally China declared itself "resolutely opposed" to what had taken place.

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It's not just the breathtaking hypocrisy that underpins every western pronouncement about the "threat to world peace" posed by the "illegal weapons" of the johnny-come-latelys to the nuclear club. Or the double standards that underpin the nuclear indulgence of Israel, India and Pakistan – now increasing its stock of nuclear weapons, even as the country is rocked by civil war – while Iran and North Korea are sanctioned and embargoed for "breaking the rules". It's that the obligation of the nuclear weapons states under the non-proliferation treaty – and the only justification of their privileged status – is to negotiate "complete disarmament".

Yet far from doing any such thing, both the US and Britain are investing in a new generation of nuclear weapons. Even the latest plans to agree new cuts in the US and Russian strategic arsenals would leave the two former superpower rivals in control of ­thousands of warheads, enough to wipe each other out, let alone the smaller fry of global conflict. So why North Korea, no longer even a signatory to the treaty and ­therefore not bound by its rules, or any other state seeking nuclear protection, should treat them as a reason to disarm is a mystery.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22734.htm

I bet it wasn't just Brazil either and it had nothing to do with North Korea. It had to do with not wanting the USA invading them and turning their country into a scene from a Mad Max movie set. Do you blame them?

And yes they do have oil.

Don

http://www.armscontrol.org/print/1536

Brazil Denies IAEA Full Access to Enrichment Sites

Arms Control Today
Fissile Material
News & Negotiations
Dan Koik


The Brazilian government continues to refuse to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to eyeball equipment at its uranium enrichment plant, citing the need to protect its industrial secrets.

IAEA inspectors who have recently visited enrichment facilities at Resende have arrived to find portions of the site and its equipment concealed. Brazilian officials acknowledged that portions of the plant had been hidden, arguing that Brazil was not required to disclose every detail of the process. They said that inspectors would be allowed to conduct tests on uranium entering and leaving the facility as well as on the surrounding area.

Brazil claims that their enrichment equipment is up to 30 percent more efficient than previously possible and that allowing visual inspections of the equipment will allow competitors to steal its trade secrets. Brazil, which has the world’s sixth-largest natural uranium reserve, hopes that a domestic enrichment facility will allow it to save between $10 and $12 million every year on fuel for its own nuclear reactors and, eventually, to export surplus fuel.

Brazil’s actions have annoyed IAEA officials and other diplomats, who say that, although Brazil is not suspected of developing nuclear weapons, its refusal to allow unfettered access sets a bad precedent at a time when the international community is trying to compel Iran and North Korea to accept similar inspections.

The controversy comes after statements by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and former Minister of Science and Technology Roberto Amaral raised doubts about Brazil’s commitment to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). In a speech last year, Amaral said that Brazil needed to maintain scientific research capabilities in all fields, including the knowledge necessary to produce nuclear weapons. Lula quickly distanced himself from the remarks and Amaral was among the first to resign during a reorganization of the government this year. But Lula’s own nonproliferation credentials had been tarnished when he criticized the NPT as a discriminatory treaty during his campaign for the presidency in 2002. (See ACT, November 2003)

Indeed, Brazilian diplomats have echoed Lula’s earlier remarks in the controversy over inspections of the enrichment facilities. They have taken particular umbrage at President George W. Bush’s February proposal that countries which did not already possess such enrichment technology be prevented from acquiring it. (See ACT, February 2003)