Nuclear Hotseat

ICAN Digital Campaign Coordinator Lucrero Oyarzun

• Next week's UN meetings on the TPNW will be accessible online in large part through the work ICAN's of Digital Campaign Coordinator Lucero Oyarzun. She is in charge of coordinating that coverage, which includes livestreaming regular updates on the day's highlights, so you can stay in touch with all the developments no matter where you are. 

• nuclearbanweek.org - This is where people can find the calendar, resources, easy posts to share on social media, and more.
• MSP-TV - the ICAN "channel" on the meetings with regular recaps for people at home - live at noon EST on Monday 3 March, Wednesday 5 March and Friday 7 March. You can watch episodes on your favourite ICAN social media, or catch them at https://www.icanw.org/msp_tv
• UN Web TV: https://webtv.un.org/en/schedule/2025-03-03 - for full length real time presentation of the meetings. 

• Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern. He has been a member of the United States House of Representatives since 1997. A Democrat, he is the ranking member of the House Rules Committee. Here’s our interview, done at the UN on December 2, 2023:
• Frank Cownie served as mayor of Des Moines, Iowa from 2004 to 2024. He was also the Mayors for Peace U.S. Vice President. He was still in office when we spoke at 2MSP in December, 2023.
• Kazumi Matsui, mayor of Hiroshima. We spoke through his interpreter:

• State Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa of Massachusetts
• Bill Kidd of Scottish Parliament.

Photo of the fabled Fukushima debris particle removed from Reactor 1.  Note the lack of comparison for scale - it's not a boulder; it's only 0.7 grams, or the equivalent in weight of 1/3 of a U.S. penny.  Still to be removed from the site: 880 tons of radioactive material. 

In 1980, the Plowshares Eight hammered on nuclear warhead nosecones and sparked a global movement of direct action for nuclear disarmament.

The Plowshares 8

LINKS:

• In the King Of Prussia: The Trial of the Plowshares 8 - A Film by Emile de Antonio
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUph8GWFupE&t=671s
• A Plowshares Movement History and Chronology
  https://kingsbayplowshares7.org/plowshares-history/

Keystone Photo:  President John F. Kennedy signing the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.  We haven't had an atmospheric nuclear test since 1962.  BUT - under current threats, atmospheric tests may soon resume.  Journalist Karl Grossman spells it out. 

Project 2025 fan and implementer Elon "Nuke Mars" Musk making his pro-nuclear bias - and ignorance - painfully obvious.

• Project 2025, Musk & DOGE, resumption of atmospheric bomb testing - nuclear dangers dominate our current bad news cycle. To help us understand what this means, we talk with veteran environmental journalist Karl Grossman.  He breaks down the threats this current moment holds, gives it an historic context, and walks us through thoughts on how to survive - both as people and a planet. 
  
• LINK:  Nuclear Hotseat #596 interview with Joseph Mangano of Radiation and Public Health Project on the baby tooth study that proved the impact of nuclear test fallout radiation on children's teeth and led to the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. 

Membership card which was sent, along with a lapel button with the gap-tooth child logo, to all children who donated their baby teeth to "Operation Baby Tooth."  Better than the tooth fairy!

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad nuclear world!

Oops! Maybe DOGE's Digital Muskrats should check employment files and job descriptions before firing NNSA's guardians of nuclear safety. And while they're at it, make certain they have home email addresses for everyone so they can be contacted to come back in to work ASAP when it's - HA HA! Just kidding! - shown that their work is essential to US nuclear safety. 

Russian drone with a high-explosive warhead crashed into the Chernobyl containment vessel, blowing a hole in the roof and putting the safety of the entire complex at risk.

Bright yellow-white light coming from the curve of the Chernobyl "New Safe Containment" vessel was damage caused by a Russian drone. 

Activists from around the world gathering to demonstrate against U.S. nuclear weapons housed at the Buchel Air Force Base in Germany (Susan Crane far right, Nukewatch's John LaForge behind Nukewatch banner in red hat)

• Peace activist Susan Crane, 81, is a member of the California Catholic Worker movement and the Plowshares anti-nuclear-weapons and Christian pacifist movement. After decades of civil disobedience to bring attention to the need to rid our planet of nuclear weapons, she was arrested in Germany for protesting US nuclear weapons stored and maintained at Germany’s Buchel Air Force Base. She was sentenced to jail time in German prison in 2024. She was released last month, on January 17, 2025 and we spoke with Susan Crane just four weeks later, on Friday, February 7, 2025.

• Regular listeners to Nuclear Hotseat will have heard me mention a play I've been working on, ATOMIC BILL AND THE PAYMENT DUE, centered around the Trinity test blast in New Mexico on July 15, 1945. Theatre being at best a slow motion endeavor, I didn't put much emphasis on it because you never know what will or will not happen in the arts, and I hate to feed false hopes - yours or mine. .
  
  That is why I am thrilled to tell you that ATOMIC BILL AND THE PAYMENT DUE has been selected by the internationally respected Wilmington College Peace Resource Center as one of the events of their 50th anniversary celebration. It will be presented as a staged reading on September 9, 2025, produced in cooperation with the Wilmington College Theatre Arts Department.
  
  
• ATOMIC BILL AND THE PAYMENT DUE is the Oppenheimer-adjacent true story of media manipulation at the dawn of the Atomic Age and the New York Times reporter who sold his soul to get the story.  It asks and answers the question: How do you hide an atomic bomb blast  in plain sight?
  
  For the record, I spent 35 years in theatre - 50 productions internationally, many awards, one show on incest survivors that ran 2-1/2 years in Santa Monica.   I co-founded a musical theatre development lab and interviewed dozens of musical theatre legends in front of live audiences. When my last musical production deal fell apart - after 12 years of writing and too many dashed hopes - I gave up on theatre.  Shortly thereafter, Fukushima happened, I started Nuclear Hotseat, and that's been the "theatre" with which I've been involved ever since.
  
  ATOMIC BILL tells a story I stumbled across while doing research for the show on the Trinity blast, the first nuclear bomb explosion on, July 16, 1945.  It took me more than eight years of digging to find the play hidden within the history, and another 4+ years to get it to the current draft.
  
  As this continues to move forward, I'll keep you informed.  Meanwhile, even in these desperately difficult times, in my little corner I am dancing the Happy Dance.  I hope you are, too.

Leave it to DOE to hand-hold nukesters and boost them up by providing grants to underwrite their applications for funding from... DOE! 

• John LaForge on his protest and imprisonment in Germany for protesting Buchel Air Base, from Nuclear Hotseat #602, January 4, 2023.
• Video promoting the Lakenheath Peace Camp in the UK, April 14 - 26, 2025) featuring the Nuclear Hotseat #709 audio of Jack Cohen-Joppa giving the history of the successful Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MK_JWT0aVM

https://www.youtube.com/embed/3MK_JWT0aVM?si=v_zG865kHo4NwsJN

Melissa Bumstead of
Parents Against Santa Susana Field Lab

• Great news: A recent critical hearing was held before the Los Angeles Water Board regarding the clean-up of Boeing’s Santa Susana Field Lab site, which sits at the base of the hills only 30 miles from downtown Los Angeles.  And lo and behold - sanity prevailed and we won one!  Melissa Bumstead, Founder and Co-chair of Parents Against Santa Susana Field Lab fills us in. 
• Veteran Peace activist Alice Slater proposes that we replace the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Doomsday Clock with a Peace Clock.  Audio problems on our interview prevented the use of the recording, but we have Alice's thoughts and concepts from her recent article, Stop Imagining Doomsday and Start Imagining Peace, read by Libbe HaLevy.

Doomsday Clock reveal, 2025 - 89 seconds to midnight

A trifecta!  From the Onion... and then unfortunately, NOT the Onion:  New Orleans has a National Nucleaer Security Administration helicopter scanning the city for nuclear weapons (say what?  In Mardi Gras beads?); and NRC's updated mission statement turns the already captured regulator into a full-on pro-nuclear enabler.  Sheesh! 

Trump could launch a nuclear first strike all on his own. But there's a bill that could stop him.

Preparing for the United Nations Third Meeting of States Parties on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.  Includes interview with ICAN's Susi Snyder. 

• How Fukushima’s radioactive fallout in Tokyo was concealed from the public
• New U.S. Hydrogen Bombs May Have Arrived at NATO Bases - John LaForge
• Beyond the visitor entrance:  A newcomer’s guide to the TPNW 3MSP - A zoom call on Tuesday 11 February, 8:00 & 20:00 GMT  Registration required::
  
  • Call 1 → 08:00 GMT (convert your time zone here): Register
  • Call 2→ 20:00 GMT (convert your time zone here):  Register
• Mayors for Peace - an international "Peace Education Webinar" to promote youth-led peace activities - February 18 (Tue.), 2025, from 7:00am to 8:30 am (UTC) / 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm (JST) Register
• A New Generation of Nuclear Lies: Small Modular Reactors and Nuclear Plant Relicensing - Webinar with Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear; M.V. Ramama, Simmons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security, University of British Columbia; moderated by Linda Pentz Gunter of Beyond Nuclear and Nuclear Hotseat.  Mon March 24 @ 7:30 pm - 8:45 pm EDT REGISTER

Harvey Wasserman showing off his iconic Solartopia tee shirt

Anti-nuke icon Harvey Wasserman is a veteran of five decades of activism against nuclear reactors. He has authored books, organized demonstrations that deeply impacted the movement, helped successive generations of activists to learn the issues, the talking points, and the actions they can take. In recent years, he has included a major outreach on alternative energy issues, especially solar, in the battle to eliminate nukes and reverse climate change.

Now, he has a new project - to create our own coordinated media platform - the Eco Broadcast Network, or EBN - an ingathering of existing nuclear and eco-podcasts, youtube channels, substacks, and the like - to make this information available to the public. so they can learn the truths we know to contradict the enormously subsidized nuclear industry media propaganda platform.

This network began organizing on January 27, 2025, and I spoke with Harvey Wasserman the next day, January 28, 2025.

A right-wing "think tank" associate of Trump proposing open air nuclear bomb testing over Nevada, the Pacific, or (choking on this one!) "uninhabited atoll"?!?!???  WTF?!?!???

In a legendary anti-nuclear victory, British women came together at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, and succeeded in kicking U.S. nuclear missiles out of England. Links: https://lakenheathallianceforpeace.org.uk/

We all accept as proven scientific and medical fact that human exposure to ionizing radiation from nuclear weapons and their production is damaging to human health. But how do we know that? Who figures out how bad it can be? How much radiation we can be exposed to without risking our health? And how valid are those measurements? 

We learn the alarming truth behind how those numbers were generated and what needs to be done instead from today’s guests, co-authors of the new report for the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, Gender and Ionizing Radiation: Towards a New Research Agenda Addressing Disproportionate Harm:

• Mary Olson holds a degree in Evolutionary Biology and has been an educator on radiation health impacts while serving nuclear-impacted communities… and so much more. Her website is http://GenderandRadiation.org
• Amanda M. Nichols, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Environmental Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Nichols research focuses on illuminating the role of women in the North American anti-nuclear movement.

Gender and Ionizing Radiation: Towards a New Research Agenda Addressing Disproportionate Harm is cornerstone information in the movement to rid our planet of nukes.  It is available for free downloa or pdf HERE. 

Co-author Amanda Nichols holds up copy of the report

Further References mentioned in the interview and additional Resources:

• Nichols, Amanda M. Women on the Edge of Time: Grief and Power in the Nuclear Age. PhD Dissertation. University of Florida (2021). https://original-ufdc.uflib.ufl.edu/UFE0057378/00001.
• Nichols, Amanda M. “Nuclear Energy,” in Chad Seales (ed.) The Handbook of Religion and American Culture. 2025.
• Nichols, Amanda M. “Uranium and Religion: Toward a Decolonial Temporality of Extraction,” Religions, 16(1). 2025. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16010016.
• Olson, Mary. “Atomic Radiation Is More Harmful to Women,” Nuclear Information Resource Services, 2011. https://www.nirs.org/wp-content/uploads/radiation/radhealth/radiationwomen.pdf.
• Olson, Mary. “Disproportionate Impact of Radiation and Radiation Regulation,” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 44, no. 2 (2019): 131–39.https://doi.org/10.1080/03080188.2019.1603864. 
• Gender and Radiation Impact Project Website: https://www.genderandradiation.org/.

For BEIR VII Reports

• NAS-NRC. “Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII – Phase 2,” Committee to Assess Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation, Board on Radiation Effects Research, National Research Council of the National Academies. National Academies Press, 2006. http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=030909156X.
• NAS-NRC. “National Research Council - Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiations: Health Effects of Exposures to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR V.” National Academy Press, 1990. http:// www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309039959.

On International Radiological Protections and Reference Man

• ICRP. International Commission on Radiological Protection. 2002. Basic Anatomical and Physiological Data for Use in Radiological Protection Reference Values (2002). http://www.icrp.org/publication.asp?id=icrp%20publication%2089.
• ICRP. International Commission on Radiological Protection. Publication 103: The 2007 Recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (2007). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/ANIB_37_2-4. 
• ICRP. International Commission on Radiological Protection. Publication 147: Use of Dose Quantities in Radiological Protection. 50, no. 1 (2021): 9–82. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146645320911864.
• ICRP. International Commission on Radiological Protection. “Official Definition of Reference Man.” Report of the Task Group on Reference Man. [ICRP Publication] No. 23. Oxford: Pergamon Press (1975). Adopted October 1974. Page 4. https://ieer.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/definition-of-reference-man.pdf.

Announcing the 2025 laureates of the Nuclear-Free Future Awards!

TO ATTEND THE MARCH 4, 2025 AWARDS RECEPTION AND CEREMONY:

• The Nuclear-Free Future Awards will be held on Tuesday, March 4, 2025 at The Great Hall at Cooper Union in New York City (7 E 7th St. NY NY.)
• A reception at 6pm will be followed by the awards ceremony starting at 7pm.
• Both events are free admission and open to the public.
• Media are welcome.

The Laureates are:

• S.P. Udayakumar is the convenor of the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy in India and a committed advocate for environmental and social justice, with a focus on protecting vulnerable communities from the adverse impacts of nuclear energy. In particular, he helped galvanize and lead a grassroots movement in 2011 that involved thousands of local residents, fisherfolk and farmers, who challenged the construction of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu, India. Since then, he has worked tirelessly to raise awareness within communities all over southern India about the dangers of nuclear power, including radiation risks and ecological degradation.
  
• Márcia Gomes de Oliveira and Norbert Suchanek are the co-founders of the International Uranium Film Festival which began in Rio de Janeiro in 2010 and has to date presented more than 300 films in over 40 cities around the world covering a wide range of nuclear-related issues including uranium mining, nuclear waste, nuclear war and nuclear accidents. The festival offers prizes and serves to connect filmmakers with each other and to other activists. Norbert Suchanek is a German-born journalist on human rights and environmental issues, a writer and filmmaker. Márcia Gomes de Oliviera is a Brazilian-born social scientist, educator and filmmaker.
  
• Edwick Madzimure of Zimbabwe campaigns for the voices of women to be heard, especially in areas of militarism, nuclear weapons and climate change, given that women are disproportionately harmed by wars and colonialist practices. Emerging from poverty and a family of artisanal miners, she became in 2016 the founding director of the Zimbabwe chapter of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, a feminist centered organization now more than 100 years old. She participated in the First Meeting of States Parties to the TPNW in Vienna in 2022 and has also spoken and led workshops at the COP conferences.
  
• Klee Benally was a Navajo activist and musician and member of the Navajo Tódich'ii'nii Clan and the Nakai Diné Clan. In addition to a musical career with his siblings in the band Blackfire, Klee was a passionate campaigner and filmmaker exposing the colonialist legacy of uranium mines and working for the cleanup of the more than 500 abandoned uranium mines that continue to contaminate the Navajo reservation. A month before his death on December 30, 2023,  Klee published his book, “No Spiritual Surrender: Indigenous Anarchy in Defense of the Sacred.” Klee’s award will be accepted on his behalf by his mother, Berta Benally.
  
• Joanna Macy, a deep ecologist and Buddhist scholar, began her anti-nuclear activism in the 1960s, leading to her hopeful 1983 book, Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age — published at the height of the Cold War. More recently, she has written, “The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world—we’ve actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship with our world, with ourselves and each other.”