Bhopal Gas Tragedy | Who was Responsible? | Dhruv Rathee

National campaign for scientific temper

 Dear all,

On 7th November we have successfully launched our Nationwide Campaign on Scientific Temper. Though we have noticed that in all 23 states the press conferences were not held and posters not released. States may take some time for their relevant problems. But we hope quickly they should cope up with the pace needed to take this programme up to grassroot level.

The observations of 14th November are in progress through poster campaigns. But our aim is not to involve ourselves in these type of piecemeal activities only. The observations should come as a part of the collective campaign of the state. To design that all the member organisations should do their state committee meeting to plan their state level program. To initiate the activity a state workshop (at least for two days) is urgent. So, please go for your state committee meeting and plan for grassroot activity (jatha and vigyan utsav), and go for a state workshop to activate and regenerate your resource group.

Please inform me and Ms Asha Mishra,  about your state planning at your earliest. Pl feel free to place your present demand to the national campaign committee.

                                         Arunabha Misra

                                              

The Nuclearisation Process

The Nuclearisation Process

Nuclearisation is a long and complex process covering a number of stages. It begins at mining uranium and ends in exploding a bomb. The process once again poses a strong challenge to all life on our planet as a result of the revival of the nuclear energy.

During the process the ratio of uranium to the ore is only .02%. Ore undergoes various stages of purification to merely produce a tiny amount of uranium. The purified uranium concentrate at its primary stage is known as yellow cake. This is again purified in the nuclear plants to make it suitable for the use in nuclear weapons. After uranium is extracted the left-over ore, called uranium tailings, is mixed with water and flushed into the tailing dams. The ore from which uranium is taken out has a number of radioactive minerals and 85% of those elements continue to exist in the ore which are drained out in the water bodies. A few of them are thorium-230, radium-226, radon-222 the radon progeny including 210, etc. Tailings also have concentration of lead, zinc, manganese, cadmium and arsenic. Since there is no decay process the radiation effect of these elements remains active thousands of years. These radioactive minerals along with the ore/uranium tailings keep contaminating the natural water bodies over a very large area. Eventually, these radioactive minerals enter into the food chain through polluted water used in agriculture, aquaculture and domestic purposes. The solid radioactive materials in the ore attach themselves to tiny duty particles and droplets of water vapour floating in the air. The nuclearisation as a process thus contaminates groundwater, surface water, seas, oceans and air.

The second stage is transportation of purified uranium or yellow cake to the processing industries. Uranium in the stage of yellow cake' is generally dealt with less care and by unskilled or semi-skilled workers. Due to rigid fail-safe measures the containers conveying uranium sometimes burst or leak and thus remain to vulnerable to accidental risks.

During the processing of uranium, radioactive iodine is routinely released in small amounts by nuclear power plants and in huge amounts by nuclear reprocessing plants. Decommissioning and cleaning up of nuclear weapons plants also produce extra large amounts of radioactive waste. It is estimated that a disproportionate share of this burden falls on indigenous and rural people who live in the areas of processing and who are employed in nuclear industries as workers.

Misuse of Radioactive Materials

Misuse of Radioactive Materials

Misuse of Radioactive Materials

The risks linked to possible diversion or threft, for military or terrorist purpooses, of nuclear material used in the civil sector either for power production or for industrial, medical and research purposes are minimized by action taken by the IAEA and by countries concerned.

Diversion by Countries

IAEA was created in 1957 to verify the fulfillment of countries' political obligations under international agreements related to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Such obligations may result from the signing of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (83) or, for non-signatory countries, from safeguard agreements dealing with nuclear material or facilities, equipment or other materials. In addition, the countries with nuclear weapons have accepted the implementation of IAEA safeguards on their territories as part of voluntary offers specific to each country (this offer can apply to the whole of the nuclear power programme or be restricted to certain materials or facilities). IAEA uses experience acquired to adapt safeguards so that they are applicable to countries that have not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The safeguards applicable to countries that have signed the Treaty are defined in an IAEA document (84). This sets quantifiable technical objectives for the timely detection of the diversion of significant quantities of nuclear materials from peaceful nuclear activities to a manufacture of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, or for purposes unknown, and for deterrence of such diversion by the risk of early detection. The safeguards system is essentially bases on the practice of accounting for nuclear materials, together with two impotanat measures: containment (physical barriers, vessions, locks, seals, etc) and direct surveillance or instrument-based surveillance.

Source: Nuclear Power & Health

Hirosima Nagasaki

In all of earth's sixty-five-million-year history, we are living in the most dangerous of times. The fact that a bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and two hundred thousand lives were vaporized within twenty minutes has not prevented man from dreaming up more ways to fill space with weapons of mass destruction. We were not created for militarism, but to turn our swords into plowshares. We have arrived here today by no accident. We have been summoned by the universe to claim the highest common ground. As the Dali Lama said, the radicalism of our age is to be compassionate human beings. We have been called to bring love and compassion back into the equation and assist others to connect with the deepest parts of themselves. Now is the time to realize, as never before, that when any of us suffer, we all suffer. All life is interconnected, interdependent, and greatly loved by the creator, the sustainer of the universe. We are called by love, for love, and to love.
This August 6th and 9th marks the 63rd anniversary of the most brutal act of terrorism upon innocent people; America's atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the time is now to shed some light upon it.
At 2:45 AM, on August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber flew north from Tinian Island toward Japan. Three and a half hours later, the Enola Gay dropped "Little Boy" an 8,900-pound atomic weapon upon civilians in Hiroshima and leveled almost 90% of the city. On August 9, "Fat Man" was dropped on Nagasaki, and one third of that city was destroyed. "Little Boy" was fuelled by highly enriched uranium-235 and generated a destructive force of about 15 kilotons—the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT. "Fat Man" consisted of a plutonium core surrounded by high explosives wired to explode simultaneously and yielded a 22 kiloton explosion. America has a nuclear arsenal of over 10,000 weapons and nearly 2,000 remain on hair-trigger alert ever since the end of the Cold War. An estimated 150 – 240 tactical nuclear weapons remain based in 5 NATO countries and the United States is the only country with nuclear weapons deployed on foreign soil.
American taxpayers provide $54 billion annually to maintain WMD's, which is but a drop in the bucket of the overall U.S. military spending. The U.S. is also a co-conspirator in international nuclear apartheid and collaborator in Israel's policy of nuclear ambiguity.
We live in an insecure, uncertain world; it is also a time of opportunity. It is a time to put aside many of the old ways and with creativity and imagination, develop new thinking, ideas, institutions, etc. Young people and women will help this process; they know that Nuclear weapons belong to the cold war thinking, and can never be used. To do so, would be immoral, illogical and destroy the Environment. They know our real problems, are: Poverty, Environment, unethical globalization, abuse of Human Rights and International Laws, gender inequality, ethnical/political conflict, State and paramilitary acts of terror…They know that spending trillions on weapons that can never be used, while each day over 30,000 children die of preventable disease, is immoral and unacceptable.

The wisdom of non-violence teaches that:
War is not the will of God.
War is never justified.
War is never blessed by God.
War is not endorsed by any religion.
War is the very definition of mortal sin.
War is demonic, evil, anti-human, anti-life, anti-God, and anti-Christ.

On Nuclear Deal

ON NUCLEAR DEAL