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This article attempts to put the Ukrainian conflict in the wider context of nuclear weapons possession and potential use, to point out how its conduct should affect public perception of such use, and the urgency for effective nuclear arms control measures including a determined resolve to implement the United Nations' 2017 Treaty on the Prevention of Nuclear Weapons.

At the start of her Introduction, MacMillan quotes Belarussian journalist Svetlana Alexievich, ‘War remains, as it always has been, one of the chief human mysteries’, and confirms this at the end o...

This book analyses how the ‘triple disaster’ of Fukushima (‘3.11ʹ) (earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor meltdown) changed the literary ‘image’ (including ‘twitter-poems’) of Japan held by the J...

On 16 March 2021, the UK government published its 112-page Global Britain in a Competitive Age: the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy (HMG 2021). A paragraph in...

The Fukushima disaster of 11 March 2011 shocked Japan and the world, especially their nuclear industries. But we must not forget that the tsunami that followed the earthquake caused nearly 20,000 d...

Background According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the year 2018 saw a continuing ‘drift into global instability’ in which ‘both the USA and Russia are on a path of strategic nuclear (weapons) renewal’ with 3750 nuclear bombs globally deployed ‘ready to fire’. Treaties are being abrogated with increasingly aggressive language exchanged, and discredited tactics such as ‘limited use’ revived. These developments risk an amplifying cascade of nuclear weapon fire, whether started by intent, miscalculation or unintentionally. Results A nuclear war would cause immediate and massive loss of human life, unprecedented damage to societal infrastructures and climatic disruption resulting in a ‘nuclear winter’ or ‘nuclear famine’. Conclusions The systems defending national territory against nuclear warhead missiles do not guarantee protection, and neither would hastily erected domestic shelters. Any post-survival world would be utterly different and severely challenging. The only effective preventative measures require nuclear disarmament through treaty.

The Institute for Economics and Peace has ranked 162 territories within the United Nations according to how they score on a scale of 1.0 (most peaceful) to 5.0 (least peaceful) in a 'Global Peace Index' (GPI). The GPI 2015 values range from 1.148 (Iceland) to 3.645 (Syria). In this pilot study, we report significant correlations (Spearman rank coefficients) between each country's GPI and indicators of the health of its citizens (life expectancies, death rates and health expenditures): these significances are marginally enhanced when Sub-Saharan African countries are excluded. Our findings may indicate avenues for promoting a healthy global society, but more detailed and comprehensive analyses should be conducted in order for the factors behind the correlations to be identified and applied with more certainty.

This is an essential resource for all anti-militarization organizations, universities and other centres of learning and governments. One inevitable drawback is that in these fast moving times, even...

According to the US government’s General Accountability Office (GAO) in 2012, spent nuclear fuel (SNF) is one of the most hazardous substances created by humans. If not properly contained or shield...

The number of nuclear power plants in the world rose exponentially to 420 by 1990 and peaked at 438 in 2002; but by 2014, as closed plants were not replaced, there were just 388. In spite of using more renewable energy, the world still relies on fossil fuels, but some countries plan to develop new nuclear programmes. Spent nuclear fuel, one of the most dangerous and toxic materials known, can be reprocessed into fresh fuel or into weapons-grade materials, and generates large amounts of highly active waste. This article reviews available literature on government and industry websites and from independent analysts on world energy production, the aspirations of the 'new nuclear build' programmes in China and the UK, and the difficulties in keeping the environment safe over an immense timescale while minimizing adverse health impacts and production of greenhouse gases, and preventing weaponization by non-nuclear-weapons states acquiring civil nuclear technology.

This article summarizes the remarkable development in the science and practice of blood transfusion during the 20 years either side of 1900, progressing through the challenges of surgical vascular access, the propensity of shed blood to clot and the more mysterious apparently arbitrary acute reactions (later revealed as due to blood group incompatibility), to describe in more detail, the developments at the Western Front, then giving a precis of the advances in the interwar years through to the mid-twentieth-century 'blood-banking'.

Contemporary conflict resolution, by Oliver Ramsbotham, Tom Woodhouse and Hugh Miall, 3rd edition, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2011, 507 pp., including chapter notes, references and index, £24.99 (pap...

Jean-Pierre Allain and colleagues argue that, while unintended, the foreign aid provided for blood transfusion services in sub-Saharan Africa has resulted in serious negative outcomes, which requires reflection and rethinking.

The properties of potential biological weapon agents for bioterrorism include a consistent effect at low dosage and short incubation period in a population of low immunity, being difficult to treat, able to be produced in bulk, stable in storage and readily disseminated. Possible agents include smallpox, haemorrhagic fever viruses, anthrax, tularaemia and plague. The example of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) demonstrates the possible consequences of an act of bioterrorism, but also the necessary global response. There is scepticism about the practicability of surveillance schemes and the global elimination of biological weapons though the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention remains urgent.

Adam Curle, music-lover and peace-student extraordinaire died on 28 September 2006, three months after his ninetieth birthday. Born in France to parents who hated war (his mother lost three brother...

Between 11 00 am and 12 00 noon on 20 May 1910, Thomas Addis transfused “about 300cc of freshly drawn human phosphated blood” to a patient with haemophilia whose plasma clotting time was thereby shortened from 245 to 24 minutes (normal, 13 minutes). It was 30 minutes two days later, 32 at four days, 55 at eight days, and 200 at 25 days. Throughout 1910 Addis was Carnegie research fellow at the laboratories of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, close to the Royal Infirmary at No 2 Forrest Road. The transfusion was his only recorded foray in vivo; he was otherwise investigating the haemophilic abnormality in vitro. His methods with oxalated venous blood plasma …