Nuclear Hotseat

Alison Katz is a sociologist and psychologist who worked inside the World Health Organization (WHO) for 18 years.  Now a leader within Independent WHO, an organization dedicated to revealing the lies and coverups perpetrated by WHO, Alison dissects the history, politics and manipulations of the United Nations agency we're supposed to be able to trust to safeguard the world's health – especially in nuclear matters.  Special focus on Chernobyl and how the WHO worked to diminish our awareness of this nuclear disaster's true impact on the world's health.  This is a Nuclear Hotseat exclusive and an Encore Presentation.  (Originally broadcast on September 17, 2013.)

Independent WHO vigil in front of World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland - 10 hours a day, 5 days a week for 8 years.

Prof. Quamrul Haider of Fordham University, a nuclear physicist, authored the op-ed explaining nuclear reactor dangers and calling nukes "The Sixth Horseman of the Apocalypse."  He blasts nuclear reactors built by Russia as unsafe, reveals why Bangladesh has ordered a technology it doesn't need, and  explains why he left behind his (non-classified) work at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Laboratories to move to academia.

Then Dr. Helen Caldicott talks about her upcoming Symposium on The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction, taking place February 28 and March 1 in New York City.  An encore presentation excerpted from Nuclear Hotseat #172.  For more on the Symposium and to register, click here.

Dr. Helen Caldicott

Hey, you got a better way to nuke invasive weeds on the plutonium-laced site of a former nuclear weapons manufacturing site than nuking 'em out with a prescribed burn?   (Guess they haven't heard about goats!)

• Japan plans release of radioactive water held at Fukushima into the Pacific ocean.
• Fukushima wants to host 2020 Olympic events .
• Britain's nukes reporting average 20 shutdowns per year.
• Radioactive beagles at University of California, Davis.

Radioactively tortured beagles at UC Davis (not these two)

• How fracking is exposing people to radioactive waste

Kevin Kamps, Nuclear Waste Watchdog for Beyond Nuclear, goes into the longstanding issues against Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, a "lemon" of a nuke reactor on the shores of Lake Michigan only 70 miles from Chicago.  Highlighted is a coalition of environmental groups that has intervened against Palisades' operator Entergy Nuclear’s attempt to get the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to roll back safety requirements.  At stake - the safety of the drinking water of 40-million people.

• List of 65 Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs) like Palisades still operating in the United States:http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/list-power-reactor-units.html
  
• How close do you live to one of these PWRs?  Check it out here:  http://money.cnn.com/news/specials/nuclear_power_plants_locations/

Leslie Sullivan Sachs of Vermont's Safe and Green Campaign fills us in on the history and dangers of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant -- the exact same GE Mark I reactor design as the destroyed nukes of Fukushima Daiichi.  We also get to share the excitement the long-desired and recently announced shutdown of Vermont Yankee by the end of 2014!  22 days and counting! Yes!!!

Leslie Sullivan Sachs - two years premature, but a great visioning that is about to come true!

The Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan allowed WHAT senile representative of the British Raj to lecture them on how radiation is good for you?!?!?

Samantha Bee did a GREAT job on the nuke/frack connection only ONE DAY after it was highlighted on last week's Nuclear Hotseat.  This marks  the most nuclear information to make it on The Daily Show yet!

Samantha Bee nukes it outta the park on The Daily Show!

• New Mexico fines the Environmental Protection Agency $54 million over WIPP accidents.
• Six workers at Wyoming uranium mine receive internal radionuclide contamination dose while cleaning up accident spill... in November, 2013.
• Feds say cleaning up Hanford site will cost too much - and besides, it will "cast into doubt other nuclear projects" they fund.
• Strontium 90 spike at Fukushima up to 990,000 Bq/liter - 99,000 times higher than "permissable limits."
• German broadcaster SWR finds plutonium-laced nuke waste pumped into the ocean through miles of underwater pipes.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMoaK_2DlLQ&feature=player_detailpage#t=1497

• 50 non-governmental organizations in Japan released a declaration to protest the "Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage," which protects the nuclear power industry and technology while ignoring the lessons of the ongoing Fukushima accident:  www.foejapan.org/en/energy/doc/141206.html

Jon hasn't said it yet... but he might! (Thanks to Rainbow Warriors for their help in visualizing.)

Dr. Chris Busby has been a brilliant, reliable resource on nuclear radiation dangers since long before Fukushima began. He's a scientist, activist and has a long history of going up against the nuclear goliaths and daviding them down to size.  Dr. Busby is the scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk and for a long time was the spokesman on science and technology for the Green Party of England and Wales.

Dr. Chris Busby, chained to the fence of the Trawsfynydd nuclear power station in England (1992) in a direct action he helped to organize for the Green Party.

Nukes and Fracking are proving to be Tweedledum and Tweedledumber as they dance the Fuel Cycle Tango!

• Vermont Yankee shutting down by end of 2014!

Two veterans of Shut It Down at the end of a demo that ultimately helped speed the reactor's shutdown by the end of 2014.

• Exelon considers closing three nuke facilities in Illinois.
• Citizen monitoring group at Oyster Creek in New Jersey uncovers two major radiation spikes; Nuclear Regulatory Commission unmoved to action.
• Anencephaly (fatal neural tube birth defect) rates hit 2,860% of US national rate in Washington state  counties that contain and are adjacent to the Hanford site; health "experts" claim they don't know what's causing it.  Duh!
• In Tokyo, British researcher Keith Baverstock blasts United Nation's Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) report that pooh-poohs Fukushima radiation as having any potential impact on Japanese cancer rates... which no one will ever know with any certainty because radiation is not allowed to be discussed in any doctor's office in Japan!

San Onofre Safety's Donna Gilmore's presentation to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the impact of high burn-up fuel on long term dry cask storage: