BY FR. SHAY CULLEN
(Continued from Nov. 12-13, 2022 issue)
ALL NUCLEAR plants are susceptible to catastrophic damage from natural causes such as earthquakes, typhoons and human terrorism. This reality should make the Filipino people reject the moves and proposals to build several modular nuclear power plants now that the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant is inoperable, outdated and beyond refurbishment. Disposing of nuclear waste is dangerous and very costly. The Philippine foreign debt is in trillions of pesos already and can hardly afford to pay the annual interest payments that are provided by law no less. More debt will sink the Philippines.
The threat of a limited nuclear strike by Russia in Ukraine is real. There is greatly increased tension between Russia and the five nuclear nations US, China, Russia, the UK and France. The UN’s five permanent members of the Security Council said clearly in 2021 that “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” and yet they are all upgrading their nuclear weapons stockpiles, which reached a total of 13,000 worldwide. That is down from about 236,000 during the Cold War. Thanks to a treaty that all agreed to reduce the number. The Federation of American Scientists estimates the UK alone has 190 nuclear warheads of which 120 are ready to fire at any time. Imagine that, they are all at ready for MAD, primed to unleash a nuclear war.
That treaty was due for renewal at last month’s UN meeting in New York at the UN Security Council but after years of negotiation, Russia blocked the final document of the critical and urgent treaty because it mentioned the danger of the Russian troops occupying and the shelling of areas around the Ukraine Zaporizhzhya Power Plant. Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said she was “deeply disappointed” at the lack of agreement. “Russia obstructed progress by refusing to compromise on a proposed text accepted by all other states,” she said.
Not only does Putin threaten Europe by shelling around the Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant as we write but he has spoken of a possible nuclear strike “if provoked.” In response to this, UN Secretary-General Guterres spoke out. “Following Russia’s unprovoked and unlawful war of aggression against Ukraine, we call on Russia to cease its irresponsible and dangerous nuclear rhetoric and behavior,” he said.
President Vladimir Putin insisted that Russia remained faithful to the treaty’s “letter and spirit” and that there could be “no winners” in a nuclear war, according to the Kremlin. Guterres said at the 10th review conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, an international treaty since 1970 that is designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons: “Today, humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.”
“We have been extraordinarily lucky so far. But luck is not a strategy. Nor is it a shield from geopolitical tensions boiling over into nuclear conflict,” he added. He challenged all nations to wake up and “put humanity on a new path towards a world free of nuclear weapons.” “Eliminating nuclear weapons is the only guarantee they will never be used,” he said.
Most people live in ignorance of the terrible dangers that the powerful and intellectual humans have wrought in the world. We don’t know what nuclear radiation can do to life on earth, it can eliminate it. A nuclear war would cause a nuclear winter, the resulting black clouds would block the sun for months or years and all life would die. That’s just how bad it is.
We have to work for sanity, peace, rational dialogue and reach a consensus of nations to live with mutual respect for all life and especially human life on planet Earth and not Mutual Assured Destruction. (preda.org)/PN
