{"id":63251,"date":"2015-09-07T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2015-09-07T11:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=63251"},"modified":"2015-09-13T11:49:40","modified_gmt":"2015-09-13T10:49:40","slug":"september-this-month-in-nuclear-threat-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/09\/september-this-month-in-nuclear-threat-history\/","title":{"rendered":"September: This Month in Nuclear Threat History"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"armas-nucleares-4.jpg_1718483346<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

September 4, 1978<\/strong> \u2013 War Resisters League (WRL) members and their supporters demonstrated against nuclear weapons and civilian nuclear power plants simultaneously in Red Square near the Kremlin in Moscow and on the White House front lawn in Washington, DC. WRL\u2019s antinuclear protests, marches, and demonstrations such as the one above helped the organization become one of the leaders of the June 12, 1982 Mobilization for Survival U.N.\/Central Park peace demonstration that drew approximately one million participants. That protest was followed two days later by simultaneous civil disobedience actions at the U.N. missions of the five admitted nuclear powers.\u00a0\u00a0 Founded in 1923, WRL is just one of many global organizations that are working for the elimination of the nuclear threat.\u00a0 (Source:\u00a0 War Resisters League History<\/em>, https:\/\/www.warresisters.org\/wrl-history<\/a> accessed August 10, 2015.)<\/p>\n

September 5, 1995<\/strong> \u2013 Three months after French President Jacques Chirac announced a resumption of nuclear testing in the South Pacific and after worldwide protests forced the French to scale back those tests, a 20-kiloton test explosion was conducted at the Moruroa Atoll. Further international condemnation forced France\u2019s hand. Five days after that nation\u2019s last test explosion was conducted on January 27, 1996, President Chirac announced that his nation had finished testing \u201conce and for all.\u201d In September 1996, France became one of 70 nations, including the U.S., China, and Russia, to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which it later ratified on April 6, 1998.\u00a0 In all, France conducted 210 nuclear tests from 1960-1996 which inflicted extremely harmful short- and long-term health impacts to populations in an immense region of the South Pacific.\u00a0 Increased cancer rates, groundwater contamination, and other detrimental health and environmental impacts still plague global populations decades after over 2,000 nuclear bombs were exploded below ground or in the atmosphere by members of the Nuclear Club.\u00a0 (Source:\u00a0 Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors.\u00a0 \u201cArms Control Chronology.\u201d\u00a0 Washington, DC:\u00a0 Center for Defense Information, 2002, pp. 17, 18, 24.)<\/p>\n

September 11, 1957<\/strong> \u2013 A fire in a plutonium processing building broke out at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, a sprawling facility with about 800 buildings spread out over 6,500 acres, located 17 miles from Denver, Colorado.\u00a0 Due to the failure of various safety systems, the fire spread through a ventilation system and reached a cache of highly radioactive plutonium.\u00a0 Contamination spread throughout the plant.\u00a0 Due to an official cover-up of the extent of the catastrophe by the Dow Chemical Company, and the Atomic Energy Commission, knowledge of the specific damage and contamination caused by the accident was kept from the public for years.\u00a0 Another fire in 1969 sent toxic smoke over Denver.\u00a0 Thirteen years after the 1957 accident, an independent group of scientists found much more extensive radioactive contamination than previously believed \u2013 of a magnitude 400-1,500 times higher than normal background radiation as far away as 30 miles from the plant.\u00a0 On June 6, 1989, FBI agents and representatives of the EPA raided the plant to uncover suspected environmental crimes resulting in the closure of a facility that had been part of the U.S. nuclear bomb-making complex since 1952.\u00a0\u00a0 Many of the 40,000 people who worked at the plant became Cold War casualties as cancers and other diseases were tied to excessive exposure to chemicals and radioactive toxins.\u00a0\u00a0 Rockwell International Corporation, DOE\u2019s contractor at the site, pleaded guilty in 1992 to ten environmental crimes and paid an $18.5 million fine.\u00a0\u00a0 Federal government-controlled clean-up of the site began with large amounts of contaminated soil and concrete entombed in the Central Operable Unit.\u00a0\u00a0 While the U.S. government claims it has been providing monetary compensation since around 2001 to former Rocky Flat employees, it is reported that only a small number of those claims have been adequately paid due to the unreasonably strict burden of proof imposed on those nuclear workers.\u00a0 (Sources:\u00a0 Andrew Cohen.\u00a0 \u201cA September 11th<\/sup> Catastrophe You\u2019ve Probably Never Heard About.\u201d\u00a0 The Atlantic. <\/em>September 10, 2012, www.theatlantic.com\/national\/archive\/2012\/09\/a-september-11th-catastrophe-youve-probably-never-heard-about\/261959\/<\/a> and Electra Draper.\u00a0 \u201cFeds Raided Rocky Flats 25 Years Ago.\u201d\u00a0 Denver Post.<\/em>\u00a0 June 1, 2014, www.denverpost.com\/news\/ci_25874064\/feds-raided-rocky-flats-25-years-ago-signaling<\/a>, both accessed August 10, 2015.)<\/p>\n

September 11, 2001<\/strong> \u2013 Nineteen hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals, crashed four commercial aircraft onto U.S. territory destroying the World Trade Center in New York City and partially damaging the Pentagon in Washington, DC in an attack that killed nearly 3,000 people.\u00a0 If the 9-11 attack had been conducted using a nuclear weapon, the impact would have been incredibly worse.\u00a0 For instance, if Manhattan Island was struck by a 150 kiloton terrorist-fabricated nuclear fission bomb (although experts think it more likely the yield would be significantly smaller) exploded in the heart of downtown during daytime hours, the results would be devastating.\u00a0 Estimated fatalities would be over 800,000 people with at least another 900,000-plus injuries not including those caused by later post-blast firestorms.\u00a0 The bombing would result in 20 square miles of property damage not to mention catastrophic impacts on global financial markets if Wall Street was located in or near ground zero.\u00a0\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 While over a decade of nuclear threat reduction and similar multilateral and bilateral agreements and intergovernmental actions of sequestering and removing vulnerable nuclear materials and weapons from the former Soviet Union and other areas of the world has been overwhelmingly successful in circumventing nuclear terrorism, more must be done to prevent the criminal use of nuclear weapons by non-state actors.\u00a0\u00a0 World citizenry must push the U.S., the United Nations, NATO, the other members of the Nuclear Club, and other global entities to find a viable, comprehensive negotiated end to the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) as well as a renewed Cold War II.\u00a0\u00a0 Otherwise, the risks of another Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or a significantly deadlier nuclear Armageddon increases every day!\u00a0 (Source:\u00a0 Carrie Rossenfeld, Chris Griffith, et al., \u201cNew York City Example.\u201d\u00a0 Nuclear Pathways Project, National Science Foundation\u2019s National Science Digital Library.\u00a0 See www.atomicarchive.com\/Example\/Example1<\/a>\u00a0 accessed August 10, 2105.)<\/p>\n

September 14, 1961<\/strong> \u2013 Within months after first being authorized by President Dwight Eisenhower\u2019s December 2, 1960 signature, the first U.S. SIOP (Single Integrated Operational Plan) nuclear targeting plan went into effect around April 1.\u00a0\u00a0 Months later on this date, President John F. Kennedy was given his first expanded, comprehensive, \u201ctop secret\u201d briefing on the SIOP which featured 3,720 targets grouped into more than 1,000 ground zeros that would be struck by 3,423 nuclear weapons aimed at the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and Eastern Europe, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of millions of people.\u00a0 After the briefing, the President commented to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, \u201cAnd we call ourselves the human race!\u201d\u00a0 (Sources:\u00a0\u00a0 Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick.\u00a0 \u201cThe Untold History of the United States.\u201d\u00a0 New York:\u00a0 Gallery Books, 2012, p. 287 and Eric Schlosser.\u00a0 \u201cCommand and Control:\u00a0 Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Incident, and the Illusion of Safety.\u201d\u00a0 New York:\u00a0 Penguin Press, 2013.)<\/p>\n

September 17, 1987<\/strong> \u2013 U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze announced in a joint statement that in addition to concluding the INF (Intermediate Nuclear Forces) Treaty for the Elimination of the Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Nuclear Missiles (later signed by President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev on December 8, 1989), both nations signed an agreement to establish Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers (NRRCs) in Washington and Moscow to reduce the risk of conflict between the U.S. and Soviet Union that might result from accidents, miscalculations, or misinterpretations.\u00a0\u00a0 The 24-hour, seven-days-a-week centers, which formally opened on April 1, 1988, featured a new dedicated communication link and included information exchange and a provision for military exercise and test launch notifications in addition to supporting the follow-through and verification requirements of a number of bilateral arms control treaties between the two sides.\u00a0 Today, the U.S. NRRC, which is staffed by the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance within the U.S. Department of State, is located in the Harry S. Truman Building in Washington, DC.\u00a0\u00a0 The State Department\u2019s website notes that, \u201cThe U.S. NRRC exchanges an average of 7,000 notifications annually with its international partners.\u00a0\u00a0 The U.S. and Russian NRRCs have exchanged nearly 5,000 New START Treaty notifications since entry into force in 2011.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 In 1998, Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin announced plans to build a Joint U.S.-Russian Data Exchange Center (JDEC) to further reduce the risks of unintentional nuclear war and specifically address Russia\u2019s faulty radar warning system that almost triggered World War III during the January 1995 Black Brant Incident (whereby a U.S.-Norwegian scientific sounding rocket launch was misinterpreted by Russian military radar officers as a possible U.S.-NATO nuclear first strike decapitation attack on Moscow).\u00a0\u00a0 But before the center could be completed, NATO\u2019s war in Kosovo in 1999 and the Pentagon\u2019s insistence that radar data be filtered first through the U.S. Strategic Command before going to Moscow created a climate of bilateral tension that doomed further progress in the matter.\u00a0 This led to an unfinished facility sitting unused in a Moscow residential neighborhood.\u00a0\u00a0 The JDEC languished further during the remainder of the Clinton Administration and for all of the years of the George W. Bush presidency as well.\u00a0\u00a0 The Obama Administration tried to revive the JDEC initiative in the form of a \u201cData Fusion Center\u201d but that proposal went nowhere.\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0\u00a0 However, the risks of nuclear conflict remain intolerably high as seen in the recent Crimea-Ukraine Crisis of 2014.\u00a0\u00a0 Despite what some envision as the beginnings of a Cold War II, politicians, military leaders, nuclear experts, activists, and a large number of nonprofit peace and antinuclear organizations continue to push for more concrete ways to reduce and eventually eliminate the risks of a nuclear Armageddon including reviving and strengthening a robust JDEC, and the priority de-alerting of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals at the earliest possible opportunity.\u00a0\u00a0 (Sources:\u00a0 Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors.\u00a0 \u201cArms Control Chronology.\u201d\u00a0 Washington, DC:\u00a0 Center for Defense Information, 2002, p. 50 and \u201cU.S. Nuclear Risk Reduction Center\u201d U.S. Department of State website:\u00a0 www.state.gov\/t\/avc\/nrrc<\/a> and Alexander Zaitchik.\u00a0 \u201cOld Nukes Don\u2019t Die, They Just Sit Around and Wait To Be Launched.\u201d\u00a0 February 20, 2004, Rense.com website, www.rense.com\/general49\/wewi.htm<\/a> accessed August 10, 2015.)<\/p>\n

September 19, 1953<\/strong> \u2013 A New York Times <\/em>article published on this date quoted U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles who warned that, \u201cThe central problem now is to save the human race from extinction.\u201d\u00a0 By 1953, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union had successfully tested a hydrogen bomb for the first time, the U.S. had contemplated using nuclear weapons in the recent Korean Conflict, and nuclear force levels were climbing steadily.\u00a0\u00a0 The Chicago-based Bulletin of Atomic Scientists\u2019<\/em> Doomsday Clock (1947-2015) was set at two minutes until midnight, meaning two minutes before a global thermonuclear war.\u00a0 The 1953 press release by the Bulletin<\/em> read, \u201cOnly a few more swings of the pendulum and, from Moscow to Chicago, atomic explosions will strike midnight for Western Civilization.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 This dire time was the closest the world would come to doomsday in the last 68 years since the clock was started.\u00a0\u00a0 The next two most dangerous time periods, when the clock\u2019s hands were set at three minutes to midnight, were in 1984 and 2015.\u00a0\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 Despite a vast proliferation of major and alternative (including social) media sources of information on the nuclear threat over the last few decades, most Americans are either unaware or unconcerned about a threat they believe virtually ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the termination of the Cold War in 1991.\u00a0\u00a0 In reality, seventy years after Hiroshima, nuclear risks to global civilization and the human species are as frighteningly dangerous as ever.\u00a0\u00a0 The time for action is now.\u00a0 Drastic reductions and a time-urgent elimination of all nuclear weaponry and nuclear power is a firm, unalterable requirement for human survival in the 21st<\/sup> century!\u00a0 (Sources:\u00a0 Louis Rene Beres.\u00a0 \u201cApocalypse:\u00a0 Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics.\u201d\u00a0 Chicago:\u00a0 University of Chicago Press, 1980 and Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.\u00a0 \u201cDoomsday Clock Timeline.\u201d\u00a0 www.thebulletin.org\/timeline<\/a> accessed on August 10, 2015.)<\/p>\n

September 25, 1990<\/strong> \u2013 The U.S. Senate ratified the Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT) signed by the U.S. and Soviet Union on July 3, 1974, which banned underground nuclear tests that exceeded 150 kilotons and obligated the parties to continue negotiations for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and also ratified the so-called \u201cPeaceful\u201d Nuclear Explosions Treaty (PNET) signed by both nations on May 28, 1976.\u00a0\u00a0 Importantly the PNET, which reinforced the 150 kiloton TTBT test limit, also provided for verification by national technical means, information exchange, and access to test sites.\u00a0 The Supreme Soviet ratified the two treaties on October 9, 1990.\u00a0\u00a0 The leadership of past presidents and then President George Bush was important but even more critical was the push for peace by General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, who was announced as that year\u2019s Nobel Peace Prize winner in October of 1990.\u00a0 Comments:\u00a0 While today it is recognized that any<\/u> nuclear tests, no matter how small the yield or magnitude of the blast, have an overwhelmingly negative impact on public health and safety, environmental protection, and on world public perception of the testing nation(s), these treaties were nevertheless valuable in promoting continued negotiations toward a CTBT which was signed by President Bill Clinton on September 24, 1996 and by representatives of 70 other nations including the U.K., China, France, and Russia by September 26th<\/sup>.\u00a0 Despite broad international consensus among the scientific and arms control community that seismic monitoring and other national technical means of verification were becoming more and more foolproof in detecting test cheaters, the U.S. Senate rejected the CTBT on October 13, 1999 and hasn\u2019t reversed course on this unreasonable stance even with the ratification of the treaty by an overwhelming vote of 298-74 on April 21, 2000 by the Russian Duma.\u00a0 In 2015 there is no longer any legitimate excuse for the U.S. Senate not to proceed with ratification.\u00a0 Encouraging Congress to ratify the CTBT and the recent Iran nuclear deal, as well as having that body direct the Pentagon to de-alert hair-trigger U.S. strategic nuclear missiles and begin the accelerated phase-out of the U.S. nuclear triad (all through bilateral negotiations with Russia) ought to be top priority issues in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.\u00a0 (Source:\u00a0 Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors.\u00a0 \u201cArms Control Chronology.\u201d\u00a0 Washington, DC:\u00a0 Center for Defense Information, 2002, pp. 11, 14, 22.)<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 wagingpeace.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

September 4, 1978 \u2013 War Resisters League (WRL) members and their supporters demonstrated against nuclear weapons and civilian nuclear power plants simultaneously in Red Square near the Kremlin in Moscow and on the White House front lawn in Washington, DC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}