Nuclear Power Plants As a New Type of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
How to Stop Danger?
Nagasaki, August 9, 2023
Oleg Bodrov, physicist, ecologist
Public Council of the Southern Coast of the Gulf of Finland
International Peace Bureau Board member
Sosnovy Bor, St Petersburg, Russia, e-mail: obdecom@gmail.com
Dear participants of the conference!
First, I express my gratitude to Gensuikyo for the invitation and the honor to behere today. Today, I feel the need to discuss the new challenge of nuclear technology.
Nuclear power plants are becoming weapons of mass destruction. This statement
may seem like an exaggeration, but I will try to justify it.
The number of victims of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 70 years after
the tragedy reached 450 thousand people.
Twenty years after this accident at the Chernobyl NPP, additional deaths in theworld reach about 1 million people1.
Thus, the destruction of one nuclear power plant reactor caused more deaths
than two atomic bomb explosions in Japan!
On February 2022, Russian troops captured Zaporozhye NPP. This act turned thenuclear power plant into a potential "dirty radiation bomb". These bombs can be usedeven by countries that do not have nuclear weapons. It is enough to capture a nuclear
power plant in a foreign country and you can blackmail the whole world.
If the military destroys the operating Zaporozhye NPP, vast territories of theNorthern Hemisphere may be polluted. And this pollution will last for thousands ofyears, and the area may be several times larger than after the Chernobyl disaster.
After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the cities were reborn in theiroriginal place, and it will not be possible to live near the Chernobyl nuclear power
plant for hundreds, or maybe thousands of years!
Thus, the destruction of nuclear power plants has more serious and long-term
consequences than the use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
How can civil society influence such a development scenario? In Russia it is notpossible now.
In the first week after the invasion of Ukraine, more than 1,200,000 Russian
citizens signed an anti-war petition. But very quickly the political situation changed:
11A.V. Yablokov, V.B. Nesterenko, A.V. Nesterenko, N.E. Preobrazhenskaya, Chernobyl: consequences of thecatastrophe for man and nature. 1986-2016, KMK Scientific Publications Association, 2016, 826 pages. (А.В. Яблоков,В.Б. Нестеренко, А.В. Нестеренко, Н.Е. Преображенская, Чернобыль: последствия Катастрофы для человека иприроды. 1986-2016, Товарищество научных изданий КМК, 2016, 826 стр.)https://www.yabloko.ru/files/chern_8_vsya_kniga_25_marta.pdf

• Opponents of the "special military operation" in Ukraine are in jail or paying hugefines. This money goes to support the military.
• Approximately 1 million young Russian citizens left the country fearing mobilization.
• Courts are politically engaged.
• All non-state media closed or emigrated to Europe.
• All government media are promoting “special military operation” in Ukraine 24hours a day.
• The most active and effective NGOs were given the status of "foreign agents" or"undesirable organizations" and closed.
Civil society in Russia is going through very difficult times.
The whole world is in a systemic crisis. The famous physicist Albert Einstein said:
If a crisis has developed in the system, then a way out of the crisis cannot be found if
the same stakeholders who caused this crisis are involved in this.
The world needs new ideas and new stakeholders. A few ideas that can stimulate
recovery from the crisis.
1. It is reasonable if Peace Movement to unite with environmental, human rights
organizations and organizations that support the traditional way of life ofindigenous peoples.
2. Our countries need "Ministries of Peace" to form a new culture of relations
between countries. This culture should be based on non-violent mechanisms forovercoming the crisis.
3. We need not only a ban on nuclear weapons, but also a gradual phasing out ofnuclear energy.
And last, but not least: at present politicians in Russia and Western countries areforming an image of an enemy in the countries of their political opponents.
They see in it an opportunity to consolidate the society inside the country. But
can we, workers, fishermen, scientists, artists be enemies in Japan, Russia, and othercountries? We are neighbors on our common living planet Earth.
Let us hold hands and act together for the health of our living planet!
I support the traditional slogan of the conference: NO MORE HIROSHIMA, NOMORE NAGASAKI, NO MORE FUKUSHIMA; NO MORE HIBAKUSHA!