International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

Macron relaunches nuclear weapons

Dominique Boury — 2026-04-09T06:12:30Z

By announcing an “advanced deterrence” and a strengthening of the nuclear arsenal, French president Emannuel Macron is reviving the logic of an arms race and turning his back on disarmament policies. On 2 March, at the Île Longue operational base, in front of the last nuclear submarine, the Téméraire, Macron announced a decisive turning point in the doctrine of the use of nuclear weapons.

- IVP615 - April 2026 / France, Ecology and the Environment, Nuclear power

The Iranian nuclear bomb: a devastating boomerang

Houshang Sepehr — 2026-03-17T17:32:39Z

In the aftermath of January 2026's crackdown, voices within and close to the Islamic Republic renewed calls for Iran to complete a nuclear deterrent, claiming the bomb would have prevented the current existential crisis. Houshang Sepehr, exiled Iranian Marxist and editor of Solidarité Socialiste avec les Travailleurs en Iran, challenges this on structural grounds. Drawing on the cases of India, Pakistan, and North Korea, he argues that nuclear deterrence only functions within security architectures backed by a great power patron --- a guarantee Iran never had. Neither Russia nor China was willing to absorb the risks of a nuclearised Islamic Republic contesting US hegemony. The bomb, he concludes, would have deepened Iran's isolation rather than protecting it.

- IVP614 - March 2026 / Iran, Nuclear power

A warning from history: ‘This is what is going to happen to you'

Allen Myers — 2025-08-06T09:45:00Z

Eighty years ago, the United States government exploded over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the only two nuclear bombs ever used in wartime against a civilian population. Never before in human history had a single weapon caused such widespread death and destruction.

- IVP607 - August 2025 / United States (USA), Japan, War drive/Anti-war movements, Nuclear power

Twelve years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster: for the world without nuclear power

Karen Yamanaka — 2023-03-24T10:18:34Z

“Nuclear disaster is ongoing. The very existence of nuclear power is a threat to the survival of humanity not only in this region but also in the world.”

- IV578 - March 2023 / Japan, Nuclear power

Ukraine and the Dangers of Nuclear War

Stephen R Shalom — 2022-08-25T08:03:13Z

“Nuclear war – along with climate change and pandemics — represents one of the existential threats facing humanity. The very future of our species could be ended in the event of a full-scale nuclear war.”

- IV571 - August 2022 / United States (USA), Russia, Ukraine, Nuclear power

Nuclear waste repository: Stay up!

Klaus Engert — 2020-12-01T07:28:59Z

“In summary, there is no safe method of disposal or “final” storage of radioactive waste.”

- IV551 - December 2020 / Germany, Ecology and the Environment, Nuclear power

Chernobyl 1986: when nuclear power came of age

Brian Parkin — 2016-04-30T05:39:34Z

30 years ago, at 1.23 am on the morning of 26 April 1986 the number 4 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear generating site near Pripyat in Ukraine went on SCRAM alert. Within 3 seconds all of the reactors safety systems had failed and with control rods jamming the reactor core, the temperature rose by 10 times its design level. The resulting first explosion destroyed the 2,000 tonne concrete containment plate and blasted it clear of the reactor building. And it was in that instant that station operator Valery Khodemachuk, his body impaled on control rods, became the first Pharaoh of the nuclear age, entombed in a sarcophagus even taller than the great pyramid of Giza and for the eternity required for the radiation to recede to safe levels.

- IV495 - April 2016 / Ukraine, Nuclear power, Historical events and figures

Fukushima After Five Years

Chie Matsumoto — 2016-03-03T09:06:35Z

Time will heal, some people say. The prospect of that looks bleak, however, for the people affected by the world's worst nuclear disaster.

- IV494 - March 2016 / Japan, Nuclear power

Help nuclear reactors Tihange 2 and Doel 3 final closing

SAP-LCR — 2016-02-27T16:30:45Z

Since the very beginning the SAP has participated actively in the struggle for the closure of the nuclear power stations at Tihange and Doel We stand for a nuclear phase-out, both because of the immediate risk posed by some reactors, as well as the long-term threat posed by nuclear waste. We will not be fooled by the interests of the 1% of the population or by the governments which together possess almost all the shares of Electrabel.

- IV493 - February 2016 / Belgium, Nuclear power

Four years after Fukushima, India is flogging a nuclear dead horse

Praful Bidwai — 2015-03-21T13:47:44Z

It's a telling comment on the state of the Indian media that most of it blacked out the fourth anniversary of the still-continuing Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, which fell on March 11. The same media reported breathlessly on the Indian government's plans to triple domestic nuclear power-generation capacity by 2020-21, and on the “breakthrough” achieved on the nuclear liability issue during Barack Obama's recent visit to India.

- IV482 - March 2015 / Japan, India, Nuclear power