This article examines the role of the Spanish Atomic Forum as the representative of the nuclear sector in the public arena during the golden years of the nuclear power industry from the 1960s to 1970s. It focuses on the public image concerns of the Spanish nuclear lobby and the subsequent information campaigns launched during the late 1970s to counteract demonstrations by the growing and heterogeneous anti-nuclear movement. The role of advocacy of nuclear energy by the (...) Atomic Forum was similar to that in other countries, but the situation in Spain had some distinguishing features. Anti-nuclear protest in Spain peaked in 1978 paralleling the debates of a new National Energy Plan in Congress, whose first draft had envisaged a massive nuclearization of the country. We show how the approval of the Plan in July 1979, with a significant reduction in the nuclear energy component, was influenced by the anti-nuclear protest movements in Spain. Despite the efforts of the Spanish Atomic Forum to counter its message, the anti-nuclear movement was strengthened by reactions to the Three Mile Island accident in March 1979. (shrink)

Philosophical concerns about nuclear armaments raises questions about the logical and conceptual basis for deterrence theory as well as the effects of nuclear threats on our common humanity. Most philosophical concern centers around around the morality of nuclear deterrence. It is sometimes thought that the doctrine of just war can provide a moral justification for nuclear deterrence based on threats of massive retaliation. Ye attempts to apply the doctrine of just war lead to a moral dilemma: (...) although nuclear deterrence seems justified as self-defense, there are compelling reasons for concluding that threats of retaliation are immoral. Alternative deterrence policies might be thought to overcome the moral dilemma. However, counterforce strategy and anti-missile defense, as recently proposed by President reagan, must still depend upon immoral threats of retaliation. Proposals for a nonviolent national defense offer a possible solution, and serious attention should be given to claims that nonviolent defense is relevant in the nuclear age and would deter aggression. (shrink)

Mitochondrial/nuclear transfer (M/NT) to avoid the transmission of serious mitochondrial disease raises complex and challenging ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI). In February 2015, the United Kingdom became the first country in the world to legalize M/NT, making the heated debate surrounding this technology even more relevant. This critical interpretive review identified 95 relevant papers discussing the ELSI of M/NT, including original research articles, government-commissioned reports, editorials, letters to editors and research news. The review presents and synthesizes the arguments (...) present in the literature in relation to the most commonly raised themes: terminology; identity, relationships and parenthood; potential harm; reproductive autonomy; available alternatives; consent; impact on specific interest groups; resources; “slippery slope”; creation, use and destruction of human embryos; and beneficence. The review concludes by identifying those ELSI that are specific to M/NT and by calling for follow-up longitudinal clinical and psychosocial research in order to equip future ELSI debate with empirical evidence. (shrink)

Like asteroids, hundred-year floods and pandemic disease, thermonuclear war is a low-frequency, high-impact threat. In the long run, catastrophe is inevitable if nothing is done − yet each successive government and generation may fail to address it. Drawing on risk perception research, this paper argues that psychological biases cause the threat of nuclear war to receive less attention than it deserves. Nuclear deterrence is, moreover, a ‘front-loaded good’: its benefits accrue disproportionately to proximate generations, whereas much of the (...) expected cost will be borne in the distant future. Recent surveys indicate that the US and Russian publics assign a surprisingly high likelihood to nuclear war. Nevertheless, earlier research suggests that it is probably not believed to be just around the corner. This, along with the absence of easy solutions, encourages governments and publics to give priority to more pressing concerns. The danger is that the pattern will continue clear up to the point that nuclear war arrives. (shrink)

Transport of macromolecules from the nucleus to the cytoplasm is essential for nearly all cellular and developmental events, and when mis‐regulated, is associated with diseases, tumor formation/growth, and cancer progression. Nuclear Envelope (NE)‐budding is a newly appreciated nuclear export pathway for large macromolecular machineries, including those assembled to allow co‐regulation of functionally related components, that bypasses canonical nuclear export through nuclear pores. In this pathway, large macromolecular complexes are enveloped by the inner nuclear membrane, transverse (...) the perinuclear space, and then exit through the outer nuclear membrane to release its contents into the cytoplasm. NE‐budding is a conserved process and shares many features with nuclear egress mechanisms used by herpesviruses. Despite its biological importance and clinical relevance, little is yet known about the regulatory and structural machineries that allow NE‐budding to occur in any system. Here we summarize what is currently known or proposed for this intriguing nuclear export process. (shrink)

The nuclear disaster that Japan suffered at Fukushima in the months following March 11, 2011 has been compared with other major nuclear disasters, especially, Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986). It is more like Chernobyl in severity, the only other 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale; more like Three Mile Island in long-term effects. Yet Fukushima is not just another nuclear disaster. In ways important to engineering ethics, it is much more like Katrina’s destruction (...) of New Orleans than like any nuclear disaster. It is (primarily) a consequence of a natural disaster, the enormous earthquake and tsunami that wrecked much of northeast Japan. One lesson of Fukushima, one shared with Katrina, concerns the different roles engineers have at different stages in an engineering project (planning, designing, management, and operations). In the planning stage, engineers seem to have relatively little power to affect certain early large-scale trade-offs between public safety and public welfare. Another lesson may be the importance of not leaving complex technical systems untended. The events that made the disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl inevitable lasted only a few minutes or hours; the events that made the disasters in New Orleans and Fukushima inevitable were spread over several days. Fukushima avoided a more serious disaster because the plants were not abandoned in the way New Orleans was. A third lesson concerns our ideas of heroism, especially our sense that heroism is sometimes one’s duty. An engineer’s duty sometimes includes protecting others from harm even at the risk of the engineer’s life. (shrink)

Since mitochondrial replacement techniques were developed and clinically introduced in the United Kingdom, there has been much discussion of whether these lead to children borne of three parents. In the UK, the regulation of MRT has dealt with this by stipulating that egg donors for the purposes of MRT are not genetic parents even though they contribute mitochondrial DNA to offspring. In this paper, I examine the way that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act in the UK manages the question (...) of parentage. I argue that the Act breaks the link typically made between genetic causation and genetic parenthood by redefining genetic causation solely in terms of nuclear genetics. Along with this, mtDNA is construed as a kind of supplement to the nuclear family. Drawing on the account of the supplement developed by Jacques Derrida, I argue that mtDNA and the women who donate it are seen as both essential to establishing the nuclear family but also exterior to and insignificant for it. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that there is no compelling therapeutic ‘need’ for human nuclear genome transfer to prevent mitochondrial diseases caused by mtDNA mutations. At most there is a strong interest in this technology on the part of some women and couples at risk of having children with mitochondrial disease, and perhaps also a ‘want’ on the part of some researchers who see the technology as a useful precedent – one that provides them with ‘a quiet way station’ (...) in which to refine the micromanipulations techniques essential for other human germline interventions and human cloning. In advance of this argument, I review basic information about mitochondrial disease and novel genetic strategies to prevent the transmission of mutated mitochondria. Next, I address common features of contemporary debates and discussions about so-called mitochondrial replacement. First, I contest the cliché that science-and-technology is fast outpacing ethics. Second, I dispute the accuracy of the term ‘mitochondrial replacement’. Third, I provide a sustained critique of the purported ‘need’ for genetically-related children. In closing, I call into question the mainly liberal defense of human nuclear genome transfer. I suggest an alternative frame of reference that pays particular attention to issues of social justice. I conclude that our limited resources should be carefully expended in pursuit of the common good, which does not include pandering to acquired desires. (shrink)

Invited media scholars and journalists examine the general issue of nuclear waste, risk and the sicentific promises that were made, but not kept, about safe disposal. The mass media uncovered and reported on nuclear waste problems at Rocky Flats in Colorado and Hanford in Washington. Two environmental journalists review efforts to expose problems at these sites, how secrecy hampered reporting, and the effects of media coverage on nearby residents. An environmental communications scholar evaluates media coverage, the role of (...) the U.S. Department of Energy, and the impact of secrecy on public risk perceptions and attitudes toward government nuclear waste policies. (shrink)

Nuclear power has never been free from the stifling involvement of government. Heavy regulation has reduced the ability of entrepreneurs to develop and provide new means for the generation of energy using nuclear fuel. The strict parameters dictated by government officials are based upon outdated technology, an improper regulatory philosophy, and preclude innovation in nuclear power generation. Anti-market environmentalists misunderstand the implications of a free market in nuclear power and argue against it based on problems that (...) are actually caused by government involvement. Our position is neither for nor against nuclear power. We advocate a hands-off policy where the nuclear industry is left to its own devices, free from governmental regulations and subsidies: free to succeed or fail on its own. Thus, our position is neither right-wing conservative (removing regulations), nor left-wing liberal (removing subsidies). Very much to the contrary of both positions, we propose a free-market in nuclear power. (shrink)

Nuclear deterrence requires objective ethical analysis. In providing it, the authors face realities - the Soviet threat, possible nuclear holocaust, strategic imperatives - but they also unmask moral evasions - deterrence cannot be bluff, pure counterforce, the lesser evil, or a step towards disarmament. They conclude that the deterrent is unjustifiable and examine the new question of conscience that this raises for everyone.

Scott Sagan asked me to revisit Nuclear Ethics, a book I published in 1986, in light of current developments in world affairs. In doing so, I found that much had changed but the basic usability paradox of nuclear deterrence remains the same. As do the ethical dilemmas. To deter, there must be some prospect of use, but easy usability could produce highly immoral consequences. Some risk is unavoidable and the moral task is how best to lower it. (...) class='Hi'>Nuclear weapons pose moral problems but nuclear use is the greater evil. Abolition may be a worthy long-term goal, but it is unlikely in the short-term relations among the nine states now possessing nuclear weapons. Drawing on just war theory, I examine the three dimensions of intentions, means, and consequences to outline a ten-point agenda for just deterrence that seeks to lower risks of nuclear war. The world has changed since the book was published but the basic moral dilemmas remain the same. (shrink)

The debate over the civilian use of nuclear power is highly polarised. We argue that a reasonable response to this deep disagreement is to maintain that advocates of both camps should modify their positions. According to the analysis we propose, nuclear power is neither entirely right nor entirely wrong, but rather right and wrong to some degree. We are aware that this non-binary analysis of nuclear power is controversial from a theoretical point of view. Utilitarians, Kantians, and (...) other moral theorists make sharp, binary distinctions between right and wrong acts. However, an important argument speaking in favour of our non-binary analysis is that it better reflects our considered intuitions about the ethical trade-offs we face in discussions of nuclear power. The aim of this article is to make this argument sharp by explaining how it can be rendered compatible with, and supported by, the Capability Approach, which is quickly becoming one of the most influential frameworks for thinking about human development. (shrink)

This article looks at the ethical quandaries, and their social and political context, which emerge as a result of international nuclear waste substitution. In particular it addresses the dilemmas inherent within the proposed return of nuclear waste owned by Japanese nuclear companies and currently stored in the United Kingdom. The UK company responsible for this waste, British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL), wish to substitute this high volume intermediate-level Japanese-owned radioactive waste for a much lower volume of (...) much more highly radioactive waste. Special focus is given to ethical problems that they, and the UK government, have not wished to address as they move forward with waste substitution. The conclusion is that waste substitution can only be considered an ethical practice if a set of moderating conditions are observed by all parties. These conditions are listed and, as of yet, they are not being observed. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to consider the socio-anthropological issues raised by the deep geological repository project for high-level, long-lived nuclear waste. It is based on fieldwork at a candidate site for a deep storage project in eastern France, where an underground laboratory has been studying the feasibility of the project since 1999. A project of this nature, based on the possibility of very long containment, involves a singular form of time. By linking project performance to geology’s very (...) long timescale, the project attempts “jump” in time, focusing on a far distant future, without understanding it in terms of generations. But these future generations remain measurements of time on the surface, where the issue of remembering or forgetting the repository comes to the fore. The nuclear waste geological storage project raises questions that neither politicians nor scientists, nor civil society, have ever confronted before. This project attempts to address a problem that exists on a very long timescale, which involves our responsibility toward generations in the far future. (shrink)

Communities of nuclear workers have evolved in distinctive contexts. During the Manhattan Project the UK, USA and Canada collectively developed the first reactors, isotope separation plants and atomic bombs and, in the process, nurtured distinct cadres of specialist workers. Their later workplaces were often inherited from wartime facilities, or built anew at isolated locations. For a decade, nuclear specialists were segregated and cossetted to gestate practical expertise. At Oak Ridge Tennessee, for example, the informal ‘Clinch College of (...) class='Hi'>Nuclear Knowledge’ aimed to industrialise the use of radioactive materials. ‘We were like children in a toy factory’, said its Director: ‘everyone could play the game of designing new nuclear power piles’. His counterpart at Chalk River, Ontario headed a project ‘completely Canadian in every respect’, while the head of the British project chose the remote Dounreay site in northern Scotland because of design uncertainties in the experimental breeder reactor. With the decline of secrecy during the mid-1950s, the hidden specialists lauded as ‘atomic scientists’ gradually became visible as new breeds of engineers, technologists and technicians responsible for nuclear reactors and power plants. Mutated by their different political contexts, occupational categories, labour affiliations, professional representations and popular depictions, their activities were disputed by distinct audiences. This chapter examines the changing identities of nuclear specialists and the significance of their secure sites. Shaped successively by Cold War secrecy, commercial competition and terrorist threats, nuclear energy remained out of site for wider publics and most nuclear specialists alike. The distinctive episodes reveal the changing working experiences of technical workers in late-twentieth and early twenty-first century environments. (shrink)

Paraspeckles are nuclear condensates, or membranelees organelles, that are built on the long noncoding RNA, NEAT1, and have been linked to many diseases. Although originally described as constitutive structures, here, in reviewing this field, we develop the hypothesis that cells increase paraspeckle abundance as part of a general stress response, to aid pro‐survival pathways. Paraspeckles increase in many scenarios: when cells transform from one state to another, become infected with viruses and bacteria, begin to degenerate, under inflammation, in aging, (...) and in cancer. Cells increase paraspeckles by increasing transcription of NEAT1 and adjusting its RNA processing. These increases in NEAT1 are driven by numerous stress‐sensing signaling pathways, including signaling to mitochondria and stress granules, revealing crosstalk between the cytoplasm and nucleoplasm in the stress response. Thus, paraspeckles are an important piece of the puzzle in cellular homeostasis, and could be considered RNA‐scaffolded nuclear equivalents of dynamic stress‐induced structures that form in the cytoplasm. We speculate that, in general, cells rely on phase‐separated paraspeckles to transiently tweak gene regulation in times of cellular flux. (shrink)

The family is commonly regarded as being an important social institution. In several policy areas, evidence can be found that the family is treated as an entity towards which others can have moral obligations; it has needs and interests that require protection; it can be ill and receive treatment. The interests attributed to the family are not reducible to those of its members – and may even come into conflict with them. Using Warren's criteria for moral status, we show that, (...) although the status of the family is not explicitly described in terms of moral status, the way in which it is treated implies that it has such status. (shrink)

This paper deals with substructural nuclear (image-based) logics and their algebraic and Kripke-style semantics. More precisely, we first introduce a class of substructural logics with connective N satisfying nucleus property, called here substructural nuclear logics, and its subclass, called here substructural nuclear image-based logics, where N further satisfies homomorphic image property. We then consider their algebraic semantics together with algebraic characterizations of those logics. Finally, we introduce operational Kripke-style semantics for those logics and provide two sorts of (...) completeness results for them, one of which is based on algebraic completeness for all the logics and the other of which is based on set-theoretic one for the nuclear image-based logics. (shrink)

Nuclear weapons are different from every other type of weapons technology. Their awesome destructive potential and the unparalleled consequences of their use oblige us to think critically about the ethics of nuclear possession, planning, and use. Joe Nye has given the ethics of nuclear weapons deep consideration. He posits that we have a basic moral obligation to future generations to preserve roughly equal access to important values, including equal chances of survival, and proposes criteria for achieving conditional (...) or “just deterrence” to minimize the risk of nuclear use and help preserve these values. While Nye's conditions are laudable, they are not achievable. They rely on flawed assumptions about the nature of nuclear weapons and the inherent risks of the nuclear deterrence system. Since the Cold War ended, the strategy and practice of nuclear deterrence has grown riskier, more urgent, more dangerous, and less stable. It is time to rethink how we manage nuclear risks. A new nuclear security system must be built on the design principle that the consequences of system failure cannot threaten to end or fundamentally disrupt civilization. We owe the future a new nuclear security strategy that can prevent an existential global nuclear event. (shrink)

Il saggio analizza l'impatto che l'energia nucleare puň avere sulla relazione fra riscaldamento terrestre e generazioni future, sulla base delle prese di posizione degli organismi internazionali di regolazione del settore nucleare. Da un lato, l'energia nucleare viene vista da alcuni come contributo alla lotta al cambiamento climatico, dall'altro avrebbe impatti problematici sulle generazioni future: l'articolo illustra questo dilemma, puntando l'attenzione soprattutto sulla questione delle scorie e sulla tutela giuridica delle generazioni future. Si considera inoltre la questione dell'energia nucleare dal punto (...) di vista della sua valutazione complessiva, sottolineando la necessitÀ di una discussione ampia - che č mancata nel nostro paese. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Physicists and the Bomb Thermonuclear Weapons and the Cold War Atoms for Peace Deterrence, Détente, 9/11 and Dirty Bombs Nuclear Waste Climate Crisis Conclusion References and Further Reading.

It is now clear that two prominent nuclear domains, interchromatin granule clusters (IGCs) and Cajal bodies (CBs), contribute to the highly ordered organization of the extrachromosomal space of the cell nucleus. These functional domains represent structurally stable but highly dynamic nuclear organelles enriched in factors that are required for different nuclear activities, especially RNA biogenesis. IGCs are considered to be the main sites for storage, assembly, and/or recycling of the essential spliceosome components. CBs are involved in the (...) biogenesis of several classes of small RNPs as well as the modification of newly assembled small nuclear RNA. We have summarized data on the molecular composition, structure, and functional roles of IGCs and CBs in the nuclei of mammalian somatic cells and oocytes of some animals with a special focus on insects. We have focused on similarities and differences between the IGCs and CBs of oocytes and the well‐studied CBs and IGCs of cultured mammalian somatic cells. We have shown the heterogeneous character of oocyte IGCs and CBs, both in structure and molecular content. We have also demonstrated the unique capacity of oocytes to form close structural interactions between IGC and CB components. We proposed to consider these joint structures as integrated entities, sharing the features of both IGCs and CBs. (shrink)

Scientists and engineers often are not much interested in theoretical-ethics discussions. Frequently, like Harvard’s Cass Sunstein (2002), they propose “freemarket environmentalism,” basing environmental decisions on cost-benefit analysis and on saving the greatest number of lives for the fewest number of dollars. They say that when society overregulates, by emotively and irrationally rejecting environmental-risk decisions based only on cost-benefit analysis (CBA), it reduces manufacturing jobs, shrinks the economic pie, makes people poorer, and thus causes unnecessary deaths. To avoid these economic problems—that (...) harm everyone—Sunstein (2002, ix, 7) and others argue “for a kind of cost-benefit state” that .. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Ethics and the Use of Nuclear Weapons Ethics and the Possession of Nuclear Weapons Toward a Theory of Justified Deterrence Applying Justified Deterrence Theory References and Further Reading.

Discusses the methods of moral reasoning, the evaluation of moral arguments, nuclear war theory, the policy of nuclear deterrence, and the effect of nuclear weapons on nonnuclear powers.

"There are things that are more important than peace," Alexander Haig declared during his tenure as Secretary of State of the United States. It cannot be said that this is the most trenchant of the bellicose statements with which Reagan and his colleagues have shocked world public opinion. Nevertheless, this remark by Haig evoked a real storm of indignation. It is cited more frequently than others as a model of extreme irresponsibility and cynical belittling of the most pressing right of (...) the individual and humanity—the right to life. (shrink)

Since the end of the Cold War, international ethicists have focused largely on issues outside the traditional scope of security studies. The nuclear ethics literature needs to be revived and reoriented to address the new and evolving 21st century nuclear threats and policy responses.

In recent years, there has been an intense public debate about whether and, if so, to what extent investments in nuclear energy should be part of strategies to mitigate climate change. Here, we address this question from an ethical perspective, evaluating different strategies of energy system development in terms of three ethical criteria, which will differentially appeal to proponents of different normative ethical frameworks. Starting from a standard analysis of climate change as arising from an intergenerational collective action problem, (...) we evaluate whether contributions from nuclear energy will, on expectation, increase the likelihood of successfully phasing out fossil fuels in time to avert dangerous global warming. For many socio-economic and geographic contexts, our review of the energy system modeling literature suggests the answer to this question is “yes.” We conclude that, from the point of view of climate change mitigation, investments in nuclear energy as part of a broader energy portfolio will be ethically required to minimize the risks of decarbonization failure, and thus the tail risks of catastrophic global warming. Finally, using a sensitivity analysis, we consider which other aspects of nuclear energy deployment, apart from climate change, have the potential to overturn the ultimate ethical verdict on investments in nuclear energy. Out of several potential considerations, we suggest that its potential interplay — whether beneficial or adverse — with the proliferation of nuclear weapons is the most plausible candidate. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Recent developments allow for the creation of human stem cells without the creation of human embryos, a process called alternate nuclear transfer (‘ANT’). Pursuing this method of stem cell research makes sense for pro‐lifers if arguments for the sanctity of the human embryo do not apply to ANT. However, the technology that makes ANT possible undermines the erstwhile technical barrier between human embryos and somatic cell DNA. These advances bring home the force of hypothetical arguments about the potential (...) of the DNA in somatic cells, showing that there is not a morally relevant difference between the potential of an embryo and the potential of the DNA in a somatic cell. Therefore, the supposed distinction between entities that are potential human life and entities that are human life does not give any support to arguments for the sanctity of the human embryo because those arguments extend value to too many entities. (shrink)