Latest news with #anti-nuclear
Malay Mail
01-07-2025
- General
- Malay Mail
Online memorial for children dead in Hiroshima, Nagasaki
TOKYO, July 1 — A Nobel Prize-winning anti-nuclear group launched an online memorial today for the 38,000 children who died in the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ahead of the 80th anniversary next month. It features more than 400 profiles with details of the children's lives, 'their agonising deaths and the grief of surviving family members,' said the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) in a statement. 'By sharing their heart-wrenching stories, we hope to honour their memories and spur action for the total abolition of nuclear weapons — an increasingly urgent task given rising global tensions,' it said. The United States dropped an atomic bomb on each Japanese city on August 6 and 9, 1945 — the only times nuclear weapons have been used in warfare. Japan surrendered days later. Around 140,000 people died in Hiroshima and around 74,000 others in Nagasaki including many who survived the explosions but died later from radiation exposure. Out of around 210,000 victims, around 38,000 were children, said the ICAN, citing Hiroshima and Nagasaki officials. Washington has never apologised for the bombings. Clicking a crane icon, visitors to the online platform can read the children's profiles, with photos of 132 children out of 426, ranging in age from infants to teenagers. Among them is Tadako Tameno, who died in agony aged 13 in the arms of her mother two days after the Hiroshima atomic bombing. This photo taken on June 26, 2025 shows a general view of the Atomic Bomb Dome (right) at dusk in the centre of Hiroshima, Hiroshima prefecture. This August marks the 80th anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, as well as the 80th anniversary of the end of the Pacific theatre of World War II. — AFP pic Six children in the Mizumachi family were killed in the Nagasaki atomic bombing. Only one girl, Sachiko, 14, survived. The initiative comes after US President Donald Trump last week likened Washington's strike on Iran's nuclear facilities to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. 'Actually, if you look at Hiroshima, if you look at Nagasaki, you know that ended a war too,' Trump said in The Hague. This prompted anger from survivors and a small demonstration in Hiroshima. The city's assembly passed a motion condemning remarks that justify the use of atomic bombs. Israel's ambassador to Japan, Gilad Cohen, will attend this year's ceremony in Nagasaki, local media reported. Cohen, together with the envoys of several Western nations including the United States, boycotted last year's event after comments by the city's mayor about Gaza. Russia's ambassador will attend the Nagasaki ceremony, the first time its representative has been invited since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, NHK reported. However, Nikolay Nozdrev will not attend the 80th anniversary event three days earlier on August 6, the broadcaster said, citing the Russian embassy. ICAN won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. Last year, it was awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors. — AFP
Wall Street Journal
15-06-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
The Fordow Imperative—for Trump and Israel
Israel continues to bomb key Iranian military sites, while Iran is firing missiles at Israeli cities. Central to an Israeli strategic victory will be whether it can destroy Iran's main nuclear-weapons sites, and that effort deserves American help. Israel's bombing is first and foremost an anti-nuclear-proliferation campaign. Other goals include attriting Tehran's ballistic-missile capacity, which the regime had been escalating to be able to produce hundreds a month. Israel has also begun to target Iran's domestic oil and gas supply chains after Iran's attacks on Israeli civilian populations.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The estimated cost for US nuclear weapons nears $1 trillion in new report
May 11—Rising prices aren't just coming for eggs and avocados. The estimated price tag for the country's nuclear forces is 25% more than it was in 2023, according to a new Congressional Budget Office report. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates nuclear forces will cost $946 billion from 2025 through 2034, about $95 billion every year. In 2023, the 10-year estimate was $756 billion for 2023-2032. Some of those increases are coming from the cost for modernizing production facilities for nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Projected costs for command, control, communications and early-warning systems have also seen a substantial increase. The co-founder of an anti-nuclear nonprofit called the increase staggering. A higher bar for laboratory safety standards contributes to the high price for producing new nuclear warheads, according to a professor on nuclear engineering. Many of the country's nuclear forces, including submarines that launch ballistic missiles, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, long-range bomber aircraft and shorter-range tactical aircraft carrying bombs and nuclear warheads, will need to be refurbished or replaced over the next 20 years, according to the report. "Over the coming years, lawmakers will need to decide what nuclear forces the United States should field in the future and therefore the extent to which the nation will continue to modernize, and perhaps expand, those forces," the report states. Some of the cost increase, at least $65 billion, does not reflect actual rising costs. Instead, it's simply because the new estimate focuses on a slightly later time period when nuclear arsenal modernization will be further along. Later development and production phases tend to be more expensive, according to the report. Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, overseen by the National Nuclear Security Administration, is one of two sites that will produce new plutonium pits to replace old warheads. Last year, the lab made its first new production unit plutonium pit. Spherical plutonium pits cause nuclear fission when compressed and are at the core of every nuclear explosive. The majority of the projected cost increases are associated with Department of Defense programs. But the "laboratories, plants, and sites across the nation are an integral part of our nuclear security program," an NNSA spokesperson said in a statement. President Donald Trump and Energy Secretary Chris Wright are committed to "modernizing our nuclear deterrent," the spokesperson said. "NNSA is currently executing seven different warhead modernization programs which require the national security laboratories' expertise in weapons programs, design and engineering, and production," the spokesperson said. The first-ever plutonium pits were made during the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, but many subsequent pits were produced in Colorado until the 1980s. The way pits are manufactured now has changed significantly from how it was done decades ago, said Carl Willis, a professor in the University of New Mexico's Department of Nuclear Engineering. What is considered acceptable in terms of safety for human health and the environment has changed since the country previously made plutonium pits, contributing to a higher production cost, Willis said. "We're building these new facilities from scratch, and the understanding of industrial hygiene, and particularly the hygiene of handling plutonium, has changed, and our ability to detect plutonium in the environment has gotten a lot better," Willis said. Greg Mello, with the anti-nuclear nonprofit Los Alamos Study Group, called for Congress to kill the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program based on the CBO report. The Sentinel program is replacing Minuteman III missiles with Sentinel missiles, as well as upgrading missile silos and launch control centers. Los Alamos is building plutonium pits to be used in Sentinel missiles. The CBO report does not include all the cost growth that the Sentinel program is likely to experience, because the Department of Defense is restructuring the program after its cost increases triggered a review. "As CBO notes, there will be increased competition for defense dollars as nuclear weapons programs grow. The huge expenses tallied in this report were not anticipated at the outset of the nuclear modernization program," Mello said in a statement. "Since 2015, and with every report, estimated nuclear weapons costs have increased beyond prior predictions, from $348 billion in 2015 to $946 billion today. The opportunity costs are staggering." The cost for nuclear weapons could be even higher in the next CBO estimate, Willis said, because the latest report does not consider Trump administration priorities.
