Nuclear Hotseat

• Dr. Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR) and one of Canada's best known independent experts on nuclear technology, provides a stunningly thorough history of Canadian involvement with  US development of the nuclear bomb, as well as issues involving reactors, uranium mining, accidents and attempted clean-ups, of course the waste storage issue, and more.  The first installment of a massive, multi-episode visit with Dr. Edwards, who weaves individual incidents and factoids into a clear picture of the nuclear world in which Canada and the rest of us live.

The United States doesn't know what to do with the 75,000 tons of high-level radioactive nuclear waste from domestic nuclear reactors that's accumulated over the last 70 years... but that doesn't stop our country from calling back 331 kilograms of plutonium it loaned to Japan and plunking it down in South Carolina's Savannah River Site and the ever-porous, unsecured "security" at the Y-12 site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

• Harvey Wasserman:   What Will Finally Shut Down Diablo Canyon Nukes?  Could a Bernie Win Help?
• Resuspension and Atmospheric Transport of Radionuclides due to Wildfires near Chernobyl Nucleaer Power Plant in 2015
• Chernobyl: High Radiation Levels Found in Belarus Milk, 30 Years After Disaster
• Ukranian Children Eating Food Tainted by Chernobyl Radiation

• President Obama visited Hiroshima the same day I spoke w/Rick Wayman, Director of Programs & Operations at the California-based Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  We discuss the image vs. the reality of the administration's nuclear policy; the Marshall Islands lawsuits against the nine nuclear bomb-nations, then discusses some easy steps we can all take to pressure our government to change paths and work towards disarmament.
  
  • Don't Bank on the Bomb - report on banks which have invested in nuclear technologies so you can remove your funds and raise their consciousnesses.
  • Marshall Islands lawsuit - learn what they're doing, why, and how you can help.
• Dr. Helen Caldicott talks about her February speech to the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in the most poignant terms possible.

Any nuclear reactor can "pass" inspection if the bar is lowered far enough - which is what it seems that Westinghouse, now owned by Toshiba, did with a new reactor it built for China.  Hey, 10 minutes, not at full pressure - et voila!  An officially approved new nuke!  Now, as long as you ignore that little niggling thing called "safety"...

Hey, kids, want to know what a nuclear blast would look like in YOUR home town?  Just go to: http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/   Add your city, pick the size of the bomb (from Hiroshima to Castle Bravo to the we-haven't-dared-to-test-it-yet Tsar Bomba) - make sure to click on "Casualties" and "Fallout," then let the (thankfully) virtual games begin!  Loads of fun for the whole family!   Make sure to tell Donald Trump all about it!

• Mimi German is the founder of RadCast, which focuses on collecting and interpreting radiation data. It helps helping citizen activists learn how to take accurate radiation readings, which RadCast then compiles to figure out what's going on – radiologically speaking - wherever the EPA has fallen down on the job… which is just about everywhere. Mimi walks us through the recent radiation spike(s) recorded by EPA in Richland, Washington, and parses out whether the blame rests with the Hanford site, as has been put out, or the Northwest's only nuclear working nuclear reactor, the Columbia Generating Station.
• Link to initiatives to shut down CGS.

US pro-nuke orgs plead with Obama administration not to do away with the "Nuclear Energy Policy Czar."  Did you know we had a Nuclear Energy Policy Czar?  And where's our "Alternative Energy Policy Czar?"  Our "Peace Czar?"  "Sustainability Czar?"  And why a czar?  Why not a hippie?

• How bad is the radioactive threat of the Hanford Site in SE Washington State?  Learn the facts, worthy of a Halloween horror house, from attorney Gerry Pollet, Executive Director of Heart of America Northwest, a 16,000 member citizens’ watchdog group for the cleanup of Hanford.

• Nuclear Hotseat special correspondents Terra Johnson-Douglas and Sue Lorel interview protesters outside the monthly community meeting to explain what's the latest nightmare with the illegally buried WWII highly radioactive nuclear weapons waste sitting next to an unquenchable five-year-old underground fire bearing down on it - NOT the plot device of the next Tom Cruise/"Mission Impossible" film.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch throws a whopping 18,500+ words into promoting cherry-picked "experts" trying to convince people facing the radiological threat of the West Lake Landfill that - eh! - the radiation there is "no big deal."  Oh yeah?  Buy a house and raise your kids there there, editors! 

A hole in the heart of the anti-nuclear movement at the passing of Michael Mariotte, President and Executive Director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service, or NIRS, who passed away on Monday, May 16, after a long battle with prostate cancer.  Donations in his memory can be sent to the Michael Mariotte Legacy Fund.  Here are tributes by Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, and Graham Nash, recorded for Michael's Lifetime Achievement Award Ceremony in November 2014:

https://youtu.be/RlnbTinOdYo

• The Ten Most Radioactive Places on Earth
• Internal Exposure Concealed: The True State of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident by Yagasaki Katsuma

• Just Moms StL's Dawn Chapman reports on last week's meeting with the United Nations Human Rights Commission.  Topic: whether the WWII nuclear weapons waste illegally stored at the North St. Louis West Lake Landfill and the EPA's "nobody's home!" lack of response to the crisis caused by the underground fire bearing down on the radioactive materials constitutes a human rights violation.  Ya think?

"Mothers for Nuclear" may seem like an oxymoron, but two long-term nuclear employees at Diablo Canyon in CA who happen to be mothers are just nuclear mouthpieces fighting to keep their jobs -- despite the fact that a whole slew of earthquake faults underlie the reactors and they now what could happen because one of these "mothers" works in earthquake assessment!

• Nuclear Plant Containment Failure: Pre-Existing Damage by David Lochbaum, director, Nuclear Safety Project, Union of Concerned Scientists