Abolition 2000 – Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons

At the Abolition 2000 Annual General Meeting in Edinburgh, participants adopted the following call for a global ban on uranium mining-

Recalling the Moorea Declaration, adopted by the Abolition 2000 Conference held in Moorea, Te Ao Maohi, (French Occupied Polynesia) in 1997, which recognised that “colonised and indigenous peoples have, in the large part borne the brunt of … nuclear devastation – from the mining of uranium and the testing of nuclear weapons on indigenous peoples land, to the dumping, storage and transport of plutonium and nuclear wastes, and the theft of land for nuclear infrastructure,” we call upon all governments, local and national, to permanently ban uranium mining within their territories and to ban both the import and export of uranium.

Without uranium, nuclear reactors cannot operate; without uranium, plutonium cannot be produced; without uranium or plutonium, nuclear weapons production is not possible. Cutting off the supply of uranium will reveal the contradictions inherent in the entire nuclear chain. It will eventually reduce the availability of fissile materials which can be fashioned into weapons of mass destruction. All existing stocks should be safely rendered unusable and securely stored.

All stages of the nuclear chain, from mining to power production to testing and storage of waste, expose surrounding populations to extremely long-lived mutagenic radionuclides that can lead to birth defects, cancers and other devastating diseases.

We reject the permanent contamination of our water, land and air so that a few multi-billion dollar corporations can make short-term, highly subsidised profits.

— Adopted by the participants of the Abolition 2000 Annual General Meeting held in Edinburgh, Scotland, April 17- 18, 2013