Nuclear Hotseat

Dr. Gordon Edwards, speaking at the United Nations

Dr. Gordon Edwards is a mathematician, physicist, nuclear consultant, and president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. He is one of our most cogent thinkers on nuclear issues and regularly puts together the pieces to give us a clear picture of exactly what is going on, why we should be alarmed, and what we can do about it.

Here, in light of Trump’s tariff tantrum and threats to annex Canada as our 51st state, Edwards spells out the problems with Ontario’s planned importation of four US-made nuclear reactors, along with the safety issues created in these units by elimination of multiple safety systems in order to be able to label them “small.” I can honestly call this one of the most important interviews I’ve conducted in almost 14 years of producing Nuclear Hotseat every week.

I spoke with Gordon Edwards on Tuesday, April 1 - and I swear, this is not an April Fools joke.

• Video of Dr. Edwards' oral testimony on the BWRX-300 licence application.
• News story on the surcharge on electricity exports to the US.

Lucero Oyarzun, Digital Campaign Coordinator at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, steps in for Alistair Burnett for this month's ICAN UPDATE.

• Three Mile Island - On anniversary of 1979 nuclear meltdown, Groups Protest Restart of Unit 1 at Pennsylvania State House

https://youtu.be/oiaYAUurSDw?si=Y7y6Am3842tU_BCc

• How a Cheap Drone Punctured Chernobyl’s 40,000-Ton Shield
• Nuclear Weapons Issues are Women’s Issues

At the 40th anniversary of the TMI accident in 2019.  Unit 1 in background was still in operation.

Eric Epstein is the Chairman of Three Mile Island Alert, Inc., a safe-energy organization based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania that was founded in 1977.  TMIA monitors the Peach Bottom, Susquehanna, and Three Mile Island nuclear generating stations.

For more than 40 years, Mr. Epstein has specialized in research, litigation and providing expert testimony on the decommissioning, decontamination, environmental safety, rate recovery, and waste isolation at nuclear reactors. We spoke on Sunday, March 23, 2025.

During the United Nations Third Meeting of States Parties on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, one of the most significant events was the annual awarding of the Nuclear Free Future Award on Wednesday, March 5. There was a special magic in the air as the 2025 laureates were honored in the historic Great Hall at Cooper Union.

With the fabulous Linda Penta Gunter at the 2025 Nuclear Free Future Awards ceremony.

Me between the 2025 Nuclear Free Future Award winners in Education, Marcia Gomes de Olviera and Norbert Suchanek, founders of the International Uranium Film Festival.

35 years ago, rural communities in Western New York took nonviolent direct action to Bump the Dump, stopping the state and the nuclear industry from trashing their countryside with 'low-level' nuclear waste.” Jack Cohen-Joppa of the Nuclear Resister Newsletter with the story the true tale of two counties that stood up and shut the door when the nuclear industry came knocking.

• Got anti-nuclear Catholic Bishops?  The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) wants to talk with them!   Contact Susi Snyder at [email protected]. 

Great webinar!  CLICK ON IMAGE TO ACCESS RECORDING

• In a letter to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., watchdog group Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network calls on FDA and other Health and Human Services agencies to confront growing radioactive contamination of U.S. food.  Read the letter HERE.   

Available on Amazon (sorry; I don't know any other way to make it available!).

ICAN Campaigner Forum at Riverside Church, March 2, 2025
(Libbe HaLevy front row, third from left behind red/blue banner)
Photo credit: ICAN | Darren Ornitz

Posing with the iconic gun sculpture in front of UN headquarteers in New York.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) held its Third Meeting of States Parties (3MSP) at the United Nations March 3-7, 2025, with a preparatory Campaigners Forum on March 2. Almost 1,000 representatives from 53 States Parties (countries that have signed and ratified), 31 Observer states, and 163 Civil Society organizations from around the world attended. 350 Campaigners (another term for "activists" but with less of a knee-jerk reaction to it) attended the Campaigner Forum on Sunday in advance of the official UN meetings. .

I attended on full press credentials (a rare accomplishment for a podcaster) and collected more than 60 interviews. No matter who I spoke with, each individual offered many insightful if not profound observations on the nature of nukes, why we need to rid ourselves of them, and what we’re all doing in our individual spheres to bring that about. The power and importance of this gathering cannot be over-stated.

This episode covers the Campaigners, who ranged in age from high schoolers in their teens to veterans in their 80's. It also shares information on programs that anyone can participate in that will help build the case against nuclear, including:

• From Dimity Hawkins, the Nuclear Truth Project, which created Protocols for working with affected communites, focusing on Rights, Respect and Reciprocity.  Essential guidance for those working with Hibakusha, First Nations and Indigenous people, and anyone working towards nuclear truth and remedy within, alongside, or in relation to victims/survivors and their communities. To learn the specifics and download a copy of these Protocols, visit their website: nucleartruthproject.org/protocols

UN breakout panel on the Nuclear Truth Panel.  Dimity Hawkins, second from left. 

• From Rachel Clark, we learn of Project 1030, a plan to test and map actual radiation contamination levels across the U.S. They are looking for people who use wood stoves or burn wood in fireplaces to share the ashes for testsing by radiation laboratories in Japan. The 2025 campaign deadline is May 31. Learn more by visiting Project 1030 on Facebook and if you decide to learn more and participate (there is a fee of $50 per sample tested to cover the lab expenses), go to: PROJECT 1030

Richard Miller map of areas crossed by two or more radioactive clouds from fallout during the era of nuclear testing in the American southwest. 

• ICAN has produced an excellent pamphlet that breaks down Five Myths of Nuclear Deterrence in easy-to-understand arguments.  Great for the next time you run into a relative or friend who claims that "we need nukes for deterrence!"  (HINT:  We don't.)  Access the information and download at the ICAN site: 5 MYTHS OF NUCLEAR DETERRENCE.  Essential reading for anyone who opposes nuclear weapons! (PDF link not working; use this url instead:  https://www.icanw.org/deterrence_myths )

I was privileged to cover the Second Meeting of States Parties at the UN, held November 27 to December 1, 2023 at UN Headquarters in New York City. Two Nuclear Hotseat episodes resulted, with several additional drop-ins of interview in various others. The main ones are:

• NH #648: TPNW SPECIAL: UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons: Nuclear Hotseat Looks Back
• NH #650: EXCLUSIVE REPORT: Int’l Activists Gather in NYC for UN 2nd Meeting of States Parties on Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty (TPNW)
• NH #651: TPNW SPECIAL, Pt. 2: US Congressman, Int’l Gov’t Reps Support Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty at UN

Fukushima disaster site, shortly after the earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. 

We get all kinds of overly optimistic reports about the clean-up of radioactive water and debris from Fukushima, with Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the Japanese government, and their political enablers all claiming that things are going well!  Clean-up is not only possible, it's on schedule!  Everything is A-OK... but is it? 

There are so many inconsistencies and contradictions in the information from so-called "official" sources that it takes a report by a citizen's non-profit group, the Japanese Citizens' Nuclear Information Center, to provide us with a more accurate, less optimistic picture than the nuclear industry would rather we not know about.

This report was written by Mayu Takakuwa, editor of the CNIC newsletter Nuke Info Tokyo, and her team.  It is delivered on this program by veteran anti-nuclear activist Tsukuru Fors. 

So many choices, but whittled it down to two:  vacation options in Chernobyl-adjacent Pripyat, Ukraine would be the top numnutz in any other week, but here, it must take a back seat to Trump's ongoing assault on DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) extending to language in the most un-nuclear, counter-historical ways:

Politically "NO DEI WORDING!" correct, historically incorrect re-naming of the infamous plane that carried the men who dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima.  (They couldn't fit "heterosexual" on the nose...)

Alistair talks with Susi Snyder for background information on Don't Bank on the Bomb's new report, At Great Cost: The companies building nuclear weapons and their financiers, a joint publication of ICAN and PAX. NOTE that this report was recorded the week before the UN 3rd Meeting of States Parties on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. 

• Fukushima Pollution Solution: Spread Radioactivity Far and Wide by John LaForge
• “Difficult-to-Return” zones
• Life as a "Displaced" person
• Big Tech's big bet on nuclear power to fuel artificial intelligence
• Alice Slater:  New Report Warns of Increasing Nuclear Dangers
• Karl Grossman: The nuclear testing revival: Global fallout with deadly consequences

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Physicist M.V .Ramana being zoom interviewed by Libbe HaLevy

• A full-program interview with reknowned physicist M. V. Ramana on his new book, Nuclear Is Not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change,.
  
  Ramana is professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the University of British Columbia. He previously worked at the Nuclear Futures Laboratory and the Program on Science and Global Security, both at Princeton University. Ramana is a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials, the Canadian Pugwash Group, the International Nuclear Risk Assessment Group, and the team that produces the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report.

Available on Amazon or better yet, order it from your favorite local bookstore.

Referenced by Ramana in the interview is this TOTALLY FICTITIOUS WESTINGHOUSE ANIMATION OF A 116 WEEK BUILD SCHEDULE FOR THE AP 1000 NUCLEAR REACTOR.  Ain't no such thing possible!

This video was posted on the Westinghouse website in 2014.  The company has long since taken it down, but Ramana archived a copy. which he shares with us here.  This is a LINK to the video.

Westinghouse Propaganda video opening shot - LINK