Marking the 75th anniversary of the US nuclear attacks on Japan, anti-nuclear activists urged the federal government to ratify the Treaty on the聽Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, reports Jim McIlroy.
British nuclear tests
As the British government is set to celebrate 50 years of Trident, Scottish-based anti-nuclear activist Linda Pearson argues they should instead apologise for the impact of British nuclear weapons testing on Aboriginal communities and halt plans to transfer nuclear waste from the Dounreay nuclear power plant to Australia.
Nobody better reflects the military and political elites鈥 cavalier attitude to nuclear weapons than Sir William Penney, the architect of Britain鈥檚 hydrogen bomb program.
Asked how destructive the new weapons were in meetings in 1961 between US Democrat President John F. Kennedy and British Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, Penney casually answered by saying: 鈥淚t would take twelve to destroy Australia, Britain five or six, say seven or eight, and I鈥檒l have another gin and tonic, if you would be so kind鈥.
South Australian Yankunytjatjara elder and activist Yami Lester, who was blinded as a teenager by dust from the Maralinga nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s, died on July 21 in Alice Springs, aged 75.
His family said his death "leaves an incredible legacy of better global understanding of the devastation of nuclear bombs and for the ongoing battle for recognition of聽the consequences of them".