Why Nuclear Harm Reduction ?
BASIC’s focus on Nuclear Harm Reduction has its origins in the work of our Emerging Voices Network (EVN), and is now a separate project in its own right, developing and formalising a nuclear harm reduction framework. At a time where there arguably is little progress within the non-proliferation and disarmament regime, it is a perspective that invites us to reckon with, and address, the human cost of nuclear weapons. Irrespective of political and diplomatic developments, a harm reduction approach focuses on human need: the moral imperative to find solutions commensurate with the scale and depth of harms that currently exist.
The EVN’s 2023-2024 policy cycle on ‘Strengthening the Humanitarian Impacts Agenda within the NPT’ uncovered a breadth of mechanisms and measures to reduce the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons, and ultimately tackled questions around the responsibility of nuclear weapon states to address these impacts. However, the EVN’s work also highlighted the need for a perspective that looks beyond the direct consequences of nuclear explosions, and also considers a broader set of issues. The genesis of thinking around nuclear harm reduction was in this desire to draw on existing research and knowledge, chronicle the life cycle of a nuclear weapon, from mining to decommissioning, and chronicle the harms that arise in each stage.
The idea was to create a holistic tool, such as a framework, that states, civil society, and affected communities could use – for a comprehensive understanding of the range of harms associated with a nuclear arsenal, and in turn raise important questions for reflection – and tangible actions. What mechanisms already exist to address these harms? What gaps exist? Where there are gaps, what are the underlying reasons for them? A key priority has been to devise a treaty-agnostic tool and methodology that can be useful to multiple stakeholders: affected communities, experts, and both nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states.
The term intentionally invokes harm reduction approaches in other fields, both those related to armed conflict, and beyond, such as drug use and sexual health. While the approach and methodology may be very different, there is a shared focus on immediate questions and solutions. How could these harms have been prevented? What could be done to prevent future repetitions of these harms? Who and what has been most impacted, and can they be given agency to determine the appropriate remediation and redress for the harms? What are the implications of these harms for those who might arguably be held accountable for them? Fundamentally, what does reducing the risks of these harms look like in a world that does continue to have nuclear weapons?
It is on this last point that the nuclear harm reduction approach diverges somewhat from harm reduction approaches in some other fields, such as harm reduction in drugs policy. It is not the intention to accept the existence of nuclear weapons ad infinitum, or to normalise their existence. But, in the current security context, irreversible nuclear disarmament will likely not happen in the short term. Our aim is to ask, in the meantime, what are the implications and impacts of these weapons on people and the planet? What can we do to prevent, reduce, and respond to the harms they engender?
Ours is avowedly a short-term approach, and is intended to complement a long-term solution, not preclude or act as a substitute for one. Similarly, it is in no way seeking to replace and reproduce the work of the humanitarian impacts movement. We are instead using its findings and momentum to build on this work outside and beyond any specific multilateral treaty context.
Initial Work
BASIC’s first work in this area was an expert briefing by Sebastian Brixey-Williams and Anahita Parsa to diplomats and missions in June 2023, hosted at the Austrian Embassy in London. The briefing covered the ‘Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons (HINW) and Autonomous Weapons Systems’, and two EVN speakers, Elia Duran-Smith and Shounak Set, discussed the role and relevance of early-career voices in HINW. Alongside this a draft nuclear harm reduction framework was presented, and feedback gathered. The positive engagement at the event demonstrated that there would likely be interest in further work on the topic.
From October 2024 to June 2025, BASIC’s EVN carried out a policy cycle on ‘Reducing Nuclear Harms’. This cycle involved working groups collaboratively writing policy papers on different categories of nuclear harm, and making recommendations for mitigation. The topics covered were radiological waste, uranium mining, the implications for deterrence thinking of the climatic effects of nuclear weapons, the displacement of people due to nuclear testing, and the case of ‘Atomic Veterans’.
An anthology published at the end of the cycle collected together these policy papers, and covered harms ranging from the potential radiation dose to intruders entering a radioactive waste repository in the distant future, to the nuclear winter effect, to the loss of traditional fishing methods due to the displacement of the Bikini Islanders. The recommendations are similarly broad, ranging from technological, to the institutional, legal, and philosophical. The papers seek to consider the perspectives of all stakeholders, particularly those with less agency, and suggest ways in which this relative lack of agency could be redressed.
The involvement of the EVN in this work is particularly vital. Many of the harms, and routes for addressing them, have very long timescales that require an intergenerational perspective. Today’s early career experts are not only the next generation to be affected. They will inherit the responsibility for addressing these harms, and for passing on that responsibility in turn. While the NHR research focuses on the past and present, it is in essence a future-orientation, ensuring harms are not repeated or exacerbated. It was important to us that we gave the EVN an opportunity to contribute with its thinking around this concept, whilst we engaged in wider work.
Nuclear Weapons Harm Reduction Project
As is often the case with the topics that we bring to the EVN, asking the Network to explore the idea has been an extremely fruitful process. Gathering fresh perspectives for our members and encouraging them to think outside the box can feed into our work, which then references back to their findings. This is the case with NHR, and we are currently underway on a project, ‘Nuclear Weapons Harm Reduction’, which is kindly funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. The project, led by Policy Fellow Aisling Burns, with Anahita Parsa, aims to examine and identify the past, present, and potential future harms associated with nuclear weapons programmes across the entire nuclear weapons lifecycle. The project takes an objective approach to the research, with the view that the framework can be used by a wide variety of UK-based and international actors for a range of harm reduction activities. Our intentionally holistic approach includes and builds on earlier work on humanitarian and environmental impacts, and seeks to identify social and political impacts, highlighting the interconnection between these areas.
The first iteration of this project, ‘Scoping British Nuclear Weapons Harms’, will explore the United Kingdom as a pilot case study. This was a natural starting point, given that BASIC is a UK-based organisation.The project will publish a ‘Nuclear Weapons Harm’ framework, identifying these harms, and, in turn, proposing a ‘harm reduction’ approach. On the basis of this framework, we will then produce three reports, applying the framework to the context of the United Kingdom’s nuclear weapons programme. We hope to continue our research beyond this first iteration, to further develop the framework and apply it to other relevant national contexts; we are seeking funding to do so. To read more about the project, please find the one-pager here. We welcome feedback on this work as the project progresses.
Anahita Parsa and Dave Cullen
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