Last modified 14 August 1999
Notes
The organisation is currently being maintained only in survival mode by
Dr Bob Hunter who is the current National President. He is an Honorary
Associate Professor in the School of Chemistry at the University of Sydney
and has been with the organisation essentially since its inception. He has
previously held the positions of National Vice President and National
President and spokesman on current issues. The immediate Past President
is Dr Cathy Foley of the CSIRO Division of Applied Physics in Sydney.
Check the current policy of our organization and its origins in the organisation called Scientists Against Nuclear Arms or SANA.
Since the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the "Cold War" there has been a decline in interest in organisations like ours but we feel it is necessary to keep the public informed of the continuing dangers of our inability to control, much less reduce nuclear armaments.
We are going backwards in the matter of nuclear arms control. Apart from the breakout in India and Pakistan there is the following little snippet which recently came in (June '99):
UKRAINE REVERSAL ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Ukraine was the first and only country in the world to renounce
nuclear weapons and unilaterally disarm. However, following the
NATO bombing campaign on Kosovo, the Ukraine Parliament voted
unanimously to revert to its former nuclear status, citing the failure of
the US to follow through on its promise of a norm-based and
inclusive security system.
FIRST USE OF NUCEAR WEAPONS
Meanwhile on April 30, the National Security Council in Russia
approved the modernisation of its tactical and strategic nuclear
weapons (ie development of new nuclear weapons). The Defense
Ministry has also authorised changes to its nuclear doctrine so that
'First Use' is no longer excluded [The Guardian (London) May 26 1999].
China has also reversed its 'No First Use' nuclear doctrine. [Note that the US has always maintained the right to "First Use" of nuclear weapons and recently extended that even to non-nuclear states, if they were suspected of having "weapons of mass destruction".]
THE PANGEA PROPOSAL
The proposal by Pangea to set up a repository for high level nuclear waste
in Western Australia has generated interest not only in WA but across the country. A critique of the proposal has been given by John Veevers of Macquarie University on the Ockham's Razor program on ABC Radio National on Sunday July 25.
Also Grant Keady of the Mathematics Department in the University of Western Australia is proposing to set up an organisation called "Scientists and Engineers for a Nuclear Free WA".
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