Description
The use, testing and production of nuclear weapons have been and continue to be associated with extensive and pervasive harm to people and their natural and social environments. The long half-life of radioactive remnants continues to violate the rights of affected communities, thereby creating persistent nuclear injustices. However, despite increasing international attention to the consequences of nuclear weapons uses and their production, the legacies of the nuclear past have not been adequately addressed, particularly by those states that bear historical responsibility for nuclear harm. This paper examines how nuclear weapon states and survivors of nuclear violence deal and have dealt with nuclear injustices. The paper specifically focuses on the persistence of nuclear injustices and seeks to understand what has prevented the coming to terms with the nuclear past. In order to understand how nuclear weapon states deal with their nuclear legacies and justify their actions or inactions in dealing with the past, the paper analyses discourses and practices of legitimation, justification and normalisation on the part of these states. In this way, the paper highlights the continuity and structural embeddedness of nuclear injustices that continue to shape international nuclear weapons politics to this day.
