Today is the first annual National Downwinders Day, recognizing the many people across the United States--but especially in the Mountain West-who were affected by radiation exposure from nuclear test explosions in Nevada. Last year the US Senate voted unanimously to honor downwinders with a special day of recognition.

Today is also the 61st anniversary of the nuclear test code-named "Able," the first of 928 nuclear test explosions in Nevada.

There's a great collection of information on the health effects of the resulting atmospheric fallout from the CTBT Organization online here.

There is more work to be done to end the possibility of nuclear testing by anyone, any place, any time.

Please take a moment today to write or call your Senators and ask them to honor the memory of nuclear test and weapons production victims and survivors by improving the federal compensation program for downwinders and by reconsidering and supporting the CTBT.

See the Project for the CTBT Web site for more details: http://www.projectforthectbt.org/involvement

For further information, see the story "Nation Recognizes Nuclear Test Downwinders."

Today, the Indonesian parliament approved the ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, bringing the number ratifications necessary for entry into force down from 9 to 8.

We hope to “create new momentum so that the other countries in a similar position to Indonesia can also follow suit in beginning their ratification process,” Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said in September 2011.

“We believe that [the] CTBT is one of the main instruments for nuclear disarmament,” he said.

“Indonesia will use its good relations to promote the Treaty in Asia and the Middle East and beyond and at the highest political level,” Hemly Fauzy, the Indonesian Parliament’s coordinator for the CTBT ratification process said during a recent visit by an Indonesian parliamentary delegation to the CTBTO headquarters in Vienna.

“We want our country to be at the vanguard of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation,” said Fauzy. “We intend to extend our involvement in the CTBT beyond the Treaty’s ratification.” Support for the CTBT in the Indonesian Parliament was unanimous across its nine parties, he said.

Amb. Linton Brooks, the Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration during the George W. Bush administration, said there is practically no chance of the United States resuming nuclear testing.

Brooks, speaking at an ACA-sponsored Nov. 28 event on “The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty at 15: a Status Update,” described the political bar to testing as “too high” and stated that testing is not the best use of time or resources.

Brooks expressed his confidence in the NNSA's Science Based Stockpile Stewardship and Management program ability to maintain a safe and reliable nuclear arsenal, saying that it would be “extremely difficult” to conceive of a problem that could not be solved by the program and require a resumption of nuclear testing to substantiate. He noted that in the past eighteen years, no national laboratory director has ever called for a resumption of testing in their annual stockpile report to Congress.

The event, sponsored by the Arms Control Association and the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, also included remarks by Marvin Adams from Texas A & M University, Jenifer Mackby of the Center Strategic and International Studies, and Daryl Kimball of ACA.

Fifteen years after the CTBT was opened for signature, more than 160 senior government representatives gathered and 53 spoke at UN Headquarters to highlight the value of the Treaty and call upon the remaining 9 CTBT "hold out" states to sign and/or ratify to facilitate formal entry into force. The gathering is the seventh such Article XIV Conference on Facilitating Entry Into Force, which has been held every other year since 1999.

The final conference declaration “urge[s] all remaining States … to sign and ratify the Treaty without delay” and endorses bilateral, regional, and multilateral initiatives to achieve the treaty’s “earliest entry into force.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon probably summed up the spirit and substance of the meeting best. He noted the growing calls—at the international political level and from the many victims and survivors of nuclear testing—for bringing the treaty into force.

“My message is clear: Do not wait for others move first. Take the initiative. Lead. The time for waiting has passed,” he stated.

“We must make the most of existing—and potentially short-lived—opportunities,” Ban said.