Letter to Christian leaders

Christian CND worker Russell has generously re-written our letter to religious leaders for a specifically Christian audience. Feel free to copy, edit and share this letter to promote the London Nuclear Ban Communities initiative in your locality!

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Dear [NAME ]

You may be aware that earlier this year the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entered into legal force. This means that nuclear weapons are now illegal under international law, just like chemical and biological weapons. More than 80 states have signed the Treaty and every continent is represented among those that have ratified. Last year 130 voted in support of it at the United Nations.l

Around the world Christians have been leading the efforts to bring the Treaty into law. The Holy See was one of the first states to sign and ratify the Treaty in 2017 and the church has been an active voice for disarmament around the world, including across the Pacific and throughout Africa. At home leaders in every major denomination have spoken out in favour of the ban and called on the UK government to engage with the process.

Despite this broad international support, the UK government not only opposes the Ban Treaty but is planning to increase our nuclear stockpile by more than 40%. As part of local efforts being made around the country, [I / We] write to seek your support for the London Nuclear Ban Communities initiative, which aims to lead the city of London to join the growing ranks of cities pledging their support for a global ban on nuclear weapons internationally. Those who have already done so include Manchester, Edinburgh, Paris, Geneva, Helsinki and Washington DC

Nuclear weapons are capable of murdering millions of innocent people by the press of a button. Were there ever to be a nuclear war our world would be changed beyond comprehension forever. People of all faiths across the world have hope for a better world where we can be rid of this threat.

You will find enclosed the London Nuclear Ban Communities Pledge, which you can also sign directly on our website: https://www.londoncnd.org/sign-the-pledge. You can either sign in a personal capacity or on behalf of your church.

[I /We] would be pleased to discuss this initiative and the Treaty further with you. Please get in touch at info@londoncnd.org. 

Yours in peace,

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Links

-        For Christian leaders, link Christian CND’s page on the Biblical case against nuclear weapons https://christiancnd.org.uk/the-biblical-case-against-nuclear-weapons/

-        For leaders of other faiths, link Religions for Peace (https://www.rfp.org/)

New leaflet! - Nuclear Ban Communities

London CND has produced a leaflet with Yorkshire CND, providing background and details about the Nuclear Ban Communities initiative. The leaflet has received the approval of CND for national use.

It is freely available to all CND groups. Feel free to get in touch if you’d like us to add your local group’s contact details at the end.

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Click on the buttons below to download the leaflet. We currently have two versions: one has the contact details of CND in the final contact box, and one is left blank for local groups to add their own contact details.

Download the leaflet…

No more nuclear trains through London?

By David Polden in Kick Nuclear August 2021

(…)[I]t was announced in June that both of Dungeness B’s two “advanced gas-cooled reactors”, out of operation since September 2018, were “beyond repair” and therefore would not re-open.

This means that the end of transport of highly radioactive “spent” fuel rods removed from power stations and sent by rail through London is in sight.  It takes around five years for a power station to be defuelled, that is for all the spent fuel rods to be removed and sent up to Sellafield by train through London to be stored or reprocessed.  So this last transport of spent nuclear fuel through London should cease around 2023.

At one time there were nuclear trains, usually weekly, carrying such spent fuel rods from four different places, running through London.  They ran from Dungeness, Bradwell, Sizewell and from the Continent, primarily from Germany, but also from Switzerland and Belgium. 

The trains carrying European waste were the first to stop running.  After the train ferry from Dunkirk to Dover stopped in 1980, the Channel Tunnel refused to allow nuclear trains to use it.  Continental spent fuel rods have since been sent by sea directly to Barrow for onward transport by train to Sellafield.  The editor has been unable to find out whether this transport is still running, especially given that Germany is in the process of closing down all its nuclear power stations by the end of 2022.

The second nuclear train to cease running through London was the one coming from Bradwell power station in Essex which closed down in 2002 and was decommissioned by 2005.  The third was the one from Sizewell A in Suffolk, which shut down in 2006, but was not fully defuelled till 2014.  This meant that nuclear trains ceased running, at least regularly, along the North London line then.

It is not certain that nuclear waste trains still don’t occasionally run through London, or will not resume regularly some time in the future.

Sizewell B pressurized-water reactor (pwr), which started operating in 1997 is planned to go on operating until 2055.  However it has always stored its spent fuel on-site, first in ponds and when existing ponds became full, in dry storage in casks.  I assumed this meant that none of the spent fuel from Sizewell B was sent to Sellafield.  However in research for this article, I read somewhere that “occasionally” nuclear trains travel from Sizewell B to Sellafield, though I now can’t find the reference for this.

It is also planned that at some indefinite point in the future a deep depository for all high-level nuclear waste in the UK will be built, so if such a plan is every carried out all such waste at Sellafield will be presumably be transported to it by train.

There are plans for two new pwr nuclear reactors each at Bradwell B and Sizewell C.  However such plans have been in existence since at least 2010 and building has yet to start at either site, and there are reasons to doubt that the currently planned two reactors at Bradwell B will ever be built (see Kick Nuclear, August 2021)

It is planned that if built, the spent nuclear fuel rods from each station will be stored on site for at least 100 years it's said to "cool down", before being transferred It's not quite clear whether this means the temperature or the level of radioactivity. If it's the temperature it surely would only take a few years at most. And since many of the radioactive elements the "spent" rods contain have half-lives of many thousands of years, the rods will still be highly-radioactive after 100 years. I suspect keeping the rods on-site for 100 years is a matter of kicking the problem of final disposal into the long grass, since no local authority has been found willing to host such a deep storage facility.