The highly acclaimed movie Oppenheimer has piqued interest in a new generation pertaining to the start of the Atomic Age and Nuclear Arms Race. As people flock to the cinemas, I urge us to remember the human impact of Robert Oppenheimer’s work, along with that of Albert Einstein, which culminated in the development of the first weapons of mass destruction with the capacity to wipe out civilisation in a single act.

This weekend, we will commemorate the annihilation of hundreds of thousands of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which was the direct result of Oppenheimer’s work stemming from the secret, military funded Manhattan Project.

Now, 78 years later, we can hear the nuclear sabres rattling once more.

Unfortunately, nuclear proliferation is an ever-increasing threat to humanity, which for example we are now seeing unfold in Ukraine…except now nuclear power stations are being added to the nuclear mix as they are being weaponised.

The takeover at Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plants has put the world on a precipice, indicating to the World that the nature of modern warfare has changed forever. This cavalier act weaponises and militarises nuclear power and is akin to making a deadly nuclear threat without making a nuclear threat. The world is essentially being held to ransom.

This is a first in the history of modern warfare and the atomic age, which could have catastrophic consequences for the entire World.

We need to call on our politicians to invoke the Hague Convention declaring these actions at Chernobyl and Zaporizhia as ‘war crimes’ and to further demand and negotiate a ‘no war zone’ around all nuclear facilities now and in the future.

I am urging people to fully inform themselves of the wider picture of Robert Oppenheimer, who became a vocal and passionate opponent to the creation and use of nuclear weapons. He, along with Albert Einstein and others, were horrified by the nuclear bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Lest we forget, the current situation in Zaporizhzhia has a cataclysmic potential beyond anything of the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We need to act on peace now, before it’s too late.