Atomic energy experts are beginning to raise concerns about the potential threat posed by a probable use of nuclear weapons as Russia’s war on Ukraine drags. With the massive aid that Ukraine is receiving from the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) led by the United States of America (USA), a seemingly caged Russia is not foreclosing the use of its awesome nuclear capabilities in the prosecution of the war that is going into the second year, 500 days actually.
What Vladmir Putin described as “special military operations” in Ukraine is dragging, needlessly, much to the disappointment of Moscow. With imminent defeat staring Russia in the face, there is a palpable danger that Putin may do the daring if just to make clear that his country cannot be so easily subdued. Already, the Russian leader has admitted publicly that he had approved, last month, the deployment of nuclear weapons in Belarus, its most dependable ally since the outbreak of the hostility thus ratcheting up tensions with NATO. China had cautioned against escalating the war in a meeting between its leader Xi Jinpin and Putin.
Only recently, the former president, Dmitry Medvedev, who is now deputy head of Russia’s security council, warned that “a nuclear apocalypse is not only possible, but also quite probable.” He insisted that Russia will achieve its goal of removing the “threat” of Ukraine entering NATO.
After the mutiny that threatened President Putin’s 24-year rule, there’s heightened concern abroad about potential instability in the nation with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal and possible consequences for Russia’s war strategy.
The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, (IAEA), Rafael Mariano Grossi, has consistently warned that the international community is playing with fire over the seeming proliferation of nuclear armament and the threat of its use.
As if what is going on in Ukraine is not serious enough, Japan is warming up to empty a staggering 1.25 million tonnes of supposedly treated but still radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean. The water is said to contain tritium and trace amounts of other radionuclides. The government claims that the water will be diluted and safe for the environment. IAEA has, in principle, approved the plan claiming it has concluded, after a two-year assessment, that it is “consistent with relevant international safety standards” and that while societal, political and environmental concerns have been raised, the discharged water “will have negligible radiological impact on people and the environment.”
Neighbouring countries like China, South Korea and the Philippines are not amused because, in their opinion, the flow of the water when discharged into the ocean will not be limited to Japanese shores alone. Their persistent argument is that this is a transboundary issue — that waste water released by Japan is not going to just stay in and around Japan.
As anxiety continues to mount around the world, it is pertinent, in our view, to point out that Japan, the first country in the world to experience the effect of atomic energy in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and another in 2011 following meltdowns in three of its reactors caused by tsunami waves triggered by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake should be sufficiently circumspect as it goes ahead with this plan. This controversial nuclear waste the world is glibly dismissing as water and which was used to cool the fuel rods of the plant during that disaster will take between 30 to 40 years to neutralise.
Scientists are worried that there are “major gaps in the critical information that’s necessary for us to make the final determination.” The pervasive concern is that there are harmful elements that can bind to the ocean sediment living organisms, potentially damaging their DNA as well as causing mutations. These scientists “are unanimous in our view that this has not been proven to be safe.”
In the considered opinion of this newspaper, the world has become a global village with movements of people, goods and services not exactly respecting borders. The Covid-19 pandemic ought to be a good example that what affects one, in this present world, affects all.
With these issues playing out on the world stage, African leaders, as always, are playing the ostrich in the vain hope that it is an Asian or NATO problem. It, certainly, is not. The Spanish influenza of 1918 to 1919, caused more than 550,000 deaths in faraway U.S. and 20 million more worldwide. The African Union, must begin to take itself seriously on such matters that are likely to affect Africans in the short to medium term.
Above all, in our view, it is pertinent for the international community to begin to pay attention to the warnings of IAEA and its Director General, Rafael Mariano Grossi. We had stressed on this page that it will be suicidal to insist that the war in Ukraine must willy-nilly end in the field of battle. Very few wars end that way. Diplomatic arguments are becoming increasingly inevitable as Russia and Ukraine engage in a futile show of force. It is important to emphasise that the present hardline stance between the two countries and their allies is not the only option and must be understood to be unacceptable.
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