A South Korean passenger watches TV news reporting an earthquake in North Korea, at the Seoul train station. Picture Source: AP.

A decade ago, after George W. Bush lumped North Korea into the "Axis of Evil" alongside Iraq and Iran, Kim Jong Il withdrew from the Nuclear Weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and accelerated North Korea's nuclear weapons development program. It was based on plutonium extracted from a so-called, Soviet-supplied civilian research reactor's irradiated nuclear fuel.

In a C-SPAN radio interview, a George W. Bush speech writer admitted that North Korea was added to the "Axis of Evil" as a last minute afterthought, to avoid accusations of merely singling out Muslim countries.

"The Axis of Evil" phrase was unveiled in a George W. Bush State of the Union speech, during the ill-fated build up to the 2003 Iraq invasion. President Barack Obama is poised to deliver the State of the Union tomorrow night.

The satellite image released Friday shows the traffic flow pattern at the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Facility in North Korea. AP Photo/DigitalGlobe via 38 North.

The article quoted Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, as saying: "With an additional nuclear test, North Korea could advance their ability to eventually deploy a nuclear weapon on a long-range missile."

Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and President ObamaAs reported by the Associated Press, on the very eve of U.S. President Barack Obama's historic visit to Burma, the still entrenched military leaders of the long-isolated country took a small step towards transparency, by indicating they would disclose certain aspects of its nuclear activities. The U.S. government, and nuclear weapons non-proliferation groups like the Center for Strategic and International Studies, have long suspected Burma's military regime of nuclear weapons cooperation with North Korea's military regime.

As reported by The Japan Times, John Hamre, the president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington D.C. based think tank, has urged that Japan remain committed to nuclear power, despite the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe and the groundswell of anti-nuclear activism it has inspired. Oddly, Hamre argued that Japan should remain devoted to nuclear power, in order to stem the tide of nuclear weapons proliferation worldwide.

The article reports:

Hamre also said the policy poses a security concern from the viewpoint of international control for nonproliferation of nuclear materials.

"Nuclear power from the very beginning was (not only) a source of promise, but (also) a source of great threat because nuclear power electric generation is also the base for making nuclear weapons, and it's a great risk to the world to have commercial nuclear power plants because there is a possibility of diverting the material and turning it into weapons.

"So for the last 40 years the U.S. and Japan, along with Europe, have been leaders in creating an international system to monitor and control the use of commercial nuclear energy so that we know if people were illegitimately going to divert it and turn it into weapons," he said.

If Japan is to give up nuclear energy — and if nuclear power is to wither in the U.S. due to competition with cheap natural gas and in Europe as in the case of Germany — "the countries that have given us the security system are going to diminish, and who's going to replace them?" he said. "Americans cannot afford from a security standpoint to have Japan abandon nuclear power. It's too important to us."

Of course, the United States is the only country to have actually ever used atomic weapons in warfare -- against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

Hamre's arguments that renewable energy cannot replace nuclear power have been disproved, as by Arjun Makhijani's Carbon-Free/Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy.

Kevin's research in preparation for the debate depended on: a Beyond Nuclear backgrounder compiled by Linda Gunter; "Thorium Fuel -- No Panacea for Nuclear Power," by Dr. Arjun Makhijani of Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and Michele Boyd of Physicians for Social Responsibility (2009); a Science Friday program entitled "Is Thorium a Magic Bullet for our Energy Problems?" featuring Dr. Makhijani (May 4, 2012); "Thinking about Thorium" by Dr. Gordon Edwards of Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (Sept. 16, 2012); "Thorium Reactors: Back to the Dream Factory," by Dr. Edwards (July 13, 2011); and "What is the Thorium Cycle?" by Dr. Edwards (1978).

The Thorium-232/Uranium-233 nuclear fuel chain shares many similarities with the Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239 nuclear fuel chains, including the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, the risk that reactors could unleash catastrophic amounts of radioactivity (particularly from intentional terrorist attacks or acts of warfare), the unsolved (unsolvable?!) radioactive waste problem, the astronomical expense of RDD (research, development, and demonstration) for "thorium reactors," and the environmental ruination downwind and downstream (as well as up the food chain and down the generations) from reprocessing facilities.

The Great Lakes comprise 20% of the world's surface fresh water, providing drinking water for 40 million people in the U.S., Canada, and a large number of Native American First NationsFrom the "Nuclear Labyrinth" conference in Huron, OH Oct. 4-6, to an Oct. 11 "Entergy Nuclear Watch" presentation in Kalamazoo, Michigan (bridging resistance from Vermont Yankee to Palisades), to "A Mountain of Radioactive Waste 70 Years High" summit in Chicago Dec. 1-3 (marking the 70th year since Enrico Fermi first split the atom in 1942, during the Manhattan Project), strong resistance to the uranium fuel chain in the Great Lakes is building! Beyond Nuclear is proud and honored to be a co-sponsor and active participant in all three events.

A cover on the 1975 non-fiction book by John G. Fuller, "We Almost Lost Detroit," about the 1966 meltdown at the Fermi 1 experimental plutonium breeder reactor in Monroe, Michigan

The intervenors have cited Atomic Energy Commission, Nuclear Power Development Corporation (Dow Chemical, Detroit Edison, et al.), U.S. congressional testimony, and documentation on how close the Fermi 1 meltdown of October 5, 1966 came to a "terrifying," catastrophic radioactivity release. The coalition's attorney, Terry Lodge of Toledo, has argued that the Fermi 1 archive must include documentation of the experimental plutonium breeder reactor's original goal of generating weapons-grade plutonium for U.S. hydrogen bombs, as well as materials for radiological ("dirty bomb") weaponry. "The 'official' narrative of this 20th century failure must not be hijacked for use as pro-industry promotion by the 21st century nuclear industry," Lodge said.

"The story of Fermi 1's nearly catastrophic failure offers a large window into the history of commercial nuclear power, an institutional void of safety culture within the primary regulatory agency, and nuclear power’s inherent weapons connection," said Keith Gunter of Livonia, Michigan, a launch partner of Beyond Nuclear and an official intervenor against Fermi 3. "After all, as John G. Fuller's book and Gil Scott-Heron's song titles put it, 'We Almost Lost Detroit,' not to mention Monroe, Toledo, and beyond," Keith Gunter added. (see image, above left)

Mushroom cloud rising above Hiroshima in aftermath of U.S. atomic bombing of Japan, August 1945

Among the findings: even a limited nuclear war, as between Indian and Pakistan, involving less than half of 1% of the world's nuclear arsenals, would cause climate disruption that could set off a global famine; 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs (see photo, left) exploded in a war between India and Pakistan would lead to the starvation of an estimated 1 billion people, one-sixth of the human race, over the following decade; each U.S. Trident nuclear submarine can destroy 100 cities and produce the global famine described in the study (the United States has 14 Tridents). 

Jayantha Dhanapala is a former ambassador to the United States from Sri Lanka, U.N. under-secretary general for disarmament and chairman of the 1995 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference. Ira Helfand is the past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) and current North American vice president of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW).

"Join us on April 21 in Oak Ridge [Tennessee] as we explore the folly of using nuclear weapons to pursue security. The day will feature a march from Alvin K Bissell Park in Oak Ridge to the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex where we will have a rally, a drama, music and action.

We will gather at 12:30pm at Bissell Park and, after a stop by the Friendship Bell, we will walk to Y12. There we will be joined by the Emancipators for music, and the OREPA puppetistas for a dramatic adaptation of the Daedalus/Icarus myth with an action for disarmament to follow.

OREPA actions are nonviolent in tone as well as action. Everyone is welcome. No drugs or alcohol."

See the OREPA website for more information.