Rob Edwards

Britain used DU in 1950s 'nuclear guinea pig' tests

from Sunday Herald, 27 May 2001

Tonnes of depleted uranium (DU), the toxic radioactive metal blamed for causing cancers in the Gulf and Balkan wars, were blasted into the environment by Britain's nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific and Australia in the 1950s, the Sunday Herald can reveal.

The disclosure has shocked veterans of the nuclear tests, who now suspect that DU may be implicated in the illnesses that many of them have suffered in the years since. And scientists are calling for the government to reopen its inquiry into the health of the 21,000 British servicemen who took part in the tests on Christmas Island and at Maralinga in the Australian desert.

“It beggars belief,” said Sheila Gray, the secretary of the British Nuclear Tests Veterans Association. “They gave us the impression that DU had never been used before the Gulf war and now it turns out it was used in the 1950s. It's yet another hazard our men had to face.”

Review of quarries launched

for Sunday Herald, 20 May 2001

In a move which could foreshadow the end of superquarries in Scotland, the Scottish Executive is preparing to review its controversial seven-year-old guidance on mineral workings.

Environmental groups have been pointing out for years that the 1994 national planning guidelines on quarries were past their sell-by date because the demand for minerals had long since slumped. The guidelines envisaged four massive superquarries around Scotland's coast by 2009.

Plan to put troops close to nuclear explosion

from Sunday Herald, 20 May 2001

The British government planned to put up to 800 troops "as close as possible" to nuclear explosions in Australia during the 1950s in order to test the effects of the bomb, the Sunday Herald can reveal.

In a top secret experiment codenamed Operation Lighthouse, British and Australian servicemen were to occupy networks of trenches dug around the sites of four nuclear tests scheduled for September and October 1959 in the Maralinga desert. They were to man command posts, weapons pits and accommodation huts to see what happened when the bombs were detonated.

130 terrorist groups capable of nuclear attack, says UN

from Sunday Herald, 13 May 2001

Up to 130 terrorist groups could threaten the world with the ultimate nightmare of a home-made atomic bomb by tapping into the growing black market in nuclear explosives, according to a secret new report by the United Nations.

They include notorious organisations like Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida in Afghanistan and the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan, along with a host of lesser known ethnic, political and religious groups. The most likely to develop weapons of mass destruction are religious and right-wing extremists.

Boom in nuclear smuggling

from New Scientist, 09 May 2001

Attempts to smuggle radioactive materials have doubled over the past five years, according to figures released this week by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. The revelations bolster fears that the threat of nuclear terrorism is increasing.

The IAEA's database on trafficking in nuclear materials has logged more than 550 incidents since 1993, it revealed at a conference in Stockholm. The rate of incidents in 1999 and 2000 was twice that in 1996. In the first three months of 2001, there were 20 confirmed cases, including thefts in Germany, Romania, South Africa and Mexico.