Nuclear Hotseat

Physicist and Activist Lynda Williams - a foe of nuclear greenwashing

Lynda Williams is a Hawaii-based physicist, activist, writer and performance artist - AKA The Physics Chanteuse.  She battles against nuclear greenwashing (aka lying) with public presentations, lectures, theatre, and a ferocious activist spirit.  Lynda is bringing her new one woman show, ATOMIC CABARET, to the 2025 Edinburgh International Festival this spring. Think of her as Bette Midler meets Carl Sagan, with a touch of Tom Lehrer and Mae West — but understand that underlying her musical theatre irreverence, her science background is rock solid and when she talks about nukes, she’s dead serious.

Here, she brings us new insights into a strategy for fighting against nuclear industry greenwashing disinformation (aka "propaganda") and how other countries, including Canada, are fighting back using readily available media tools. These techniques are not yet being implemented in the U.S., but can be - and soon!

I spoke with Lynda Williams on November 24, 2024.

A NUMNUTZ TWOFER!

• FEMA keeps trying to tell us that "shelter in place" will allow us all to survive a nuclear bomb attack .
• Writer and veteran activist Noel Wauchope points out the futility of staging 30" wide nuclear reactors under major cities.  I mean, what could go wrong? 
  
  Noel Wauchope's Substack LINK: "SMRs underground - long drop nuclear toilets? - a chance to use that beaut new word - enshittification"

Writer and activist Noel Wauchope

• Fifty years ago, in a classic case of civil disobedience, a young anti-nuclear activist toppled a tower and blazed a trail through the courtroom that nuclear resisters have followed ever since.

The ICAN logo

The monthly ICAN UPDATE with Alistair Burnett, covering the past month's progress on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and some of what the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons has planned leading up to its meetings at the United Nations in March.

Wanna help stop nuclear weapons?  It's as easy as a phone call to your bank - no minimum deposit required!  Susi Snyder once again fills us in on the highly successful Don't Bank on the Bomb program. 

• Holtec: Criminality, Corruption, Incompetence, and Inexperience - Compiled by Kevin Kamps,Nuclear Waste Watchdog, Beyond Nuclear.
• I wanted to run this Tom Lehrer song, SO LONG MOM, at the end of the show, but was unable to get a clean MP3 recording of this PUBLIC DOMAIN song. Digital gremlins spoiling all the fun. So here's a video of the song from Youtube. Enjoy! After 50 years, Lehrer is still the most spot-on voice to help us sing our way to Armageddon. (CLICK ON IMAGE)

Tom Lehrer, musically enlightening us about nukes

• What is "radiophobia?" It's a lie that says that fear of radiation is more dangerous to human health than radiation itself. Prof. Majia Nadesan rips this nuclear industry propaganda talking point to shreds and shows how it has been used against the people of Japan after Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and now Fukushima. 
  
  She is a professor at Arizona State University and a researcher on a wide range of interconnected topics including Governmentality, Biopolitics, and Risk Cultural Studies; Autism and Bioethics; Globalization; and Political Economy, Energy Politics, and Organizational Communication.  Her books include: Fukushima: Dispossession or Denuclearization, Fukushima and the Privatization of Risk.  She provided a chapter on “Radiophobia and the Politics of Social Contagion” for the book, Transforming Contagion: Risky Contacts among Bodies, Disciplines, and Nations – and that’s what we’re focusing on today – Radiophobia. 
  
  I spoke with Majia Nadesan on June 6, 2019.

Majia Nadesan’s LINKS:

• Nadesan, M. (2018). Radiophobia and the Politics of Social Contagion, a chapter in the collection: Transforming Contagion: Risky Contacts among Bodies, Disciplines, and Nations, edited by B. Fahs, A. Mann, E. Swank; Rutgers University Press.
• “Lessons of Fukushima” presentation and draft versions of radiophobia chapter
• BOOK: Fukushima and the Privatization of Risk. Palgrave Pivot.
• VIDEO : “Fukushima’s Genetic Legacy” – Interview produced by EON – Ecological Options Network.
• BLOG: Majia’s Blog https://majiasblog.blogspot.com/

Like pie? You won't enjoy this one and it's nothing to be thankful for.

• Project 2025 calls for massive changes to Hanford nuclear cleanup
• Congress wants to turn the nuclear regulator into the US industry’s cheerleader—again
• NASA discovers secret US military base buried 100-foot deep in Greenland ice
• Revealed: how a San Francisco navy lab became a hub for human radiation experiments
• From NEWSWEEK: Map Shows Safest Countries if There Is Nuclear War and Famine

Those isolated green dots mark the areas on earth best suited to survival of a nuclear war. 

2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the start of the Atomic Age and all the ensuing nuclear madness covered by the show every week.  We already know that the media is going to make a “thing” out of this, because it’s an anniversary that ends in a “0.”  That’s why we need to be pro-active and take control of the nuclear narrative for 2025, starting now.

#Nuclear80 is a campaign focused on commemorating the start of all this nuclear madness: the first atomic bomb test at the Trinity site in New Mexico on July 16, 1945.  It is the moment the world changed forever, and can be the pivotal piece in .  it is a platform for international participation from local issues that will speak to our shared and varied nuclear experiences.  More is explained on the show under Activist Shout-Out, and more will be revealed as the platform grows.  What I envision is a day, perhaps spread to a week, where communities hold events on their local nuclear issues in alignment with their own culture, language, and traditions.  Mourning, Activism, Protests, Music, Art, Theatre, or whatever is appropriate - you decide. 

Just make certain all your posts, social media sites and articles contain the hashtag: #Nuclear80.

More Information will be provided on a weekly basis on Nuclear Hotseat.  And if you'd like to get our email with updates, make certain you sign up for our email list. 

Gen. Leslie Groves (r), J. Robert Oppenheimer (center) and reporters examine the first Ground Zero - the remains of the tower that held the bomb at the Trinity Site in New Mexico.  Picture taken two months after the detonation, September 7. 1945.. 

• The country is gearing up to turn Pike County, Ohio, into what they’re calling a “nuclear hub,” starting with the first launch of a uranium enrichment plant in the United States in almost 70 years. The last one was the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, on the same site in Piketon. It’s being demolished, but is still a radioactive mess, part of a multi-decade clean-up (which will never be completed). Meanwhile, a new facility has been built there and just launched to make HALEU - High Assay Low Enriched Uranium, the fuel necessary for will be able to fuel the not-yet-existing Small Modular Nuclear Reactors and contaminate even more of the land.
  
  To find out how bad it is, I spoke with Joe Mangano.  He is a health researcher who has served Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP, Radiation.org) since 1989. Mangano managed the study of Strontium-90 in baby teeth ,and is author or co-author of 33 medical journal articles on radiation health. Author of the books Low Level Radiation and Immune System Damage: An Atomic Era Legacy (1998) and Radioactive Baby Teeth: The Cancer Link (2008). He is featured in the documentary: "Silent Fallout: Baby Teeth Speak," which covers the Cold War era study of atomic bomb radiation in 320,000 baby teeth by St. Louis scientists.
  
  As you will hear, Joe has been crunching the health statistics on cancer in Pike and surrounding counties since 2021, and has now published his third report on cancer rates in the areas adjacent to the defunct-but-being-resurrected Portsmouth gaseous Diffusion Plant. I spoke with Joe Mangano on November 15, 2024

• RPHP Reports Finds Soaring Death Rate Near Ohio Uranium Plant - Piketon/Portsmouth Diffusion Plant reports by RPHP on cancer and other illnesses for 2021, 2022, 2023

New moves attempt to further gut NRC safety oversight.

(NOTE that Numnutz was recorded but I ran out of time on the show!  Next week...? Meanwhile, here's something numnutz enough: the stained glass window at the Strategic Air Command Memorial Chapel at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska, home to the United States Strategic Command.  Instead of saints or miracles, they feature bombers, a red telephone, and a mushroom cloud. Good to know what our military strategic command is praying to and for!

One panel of the stained glass windows at the Strategic Air Command Memorial Chapel
(U. S. Air Force photo)

• Nuclear Propaganda Exposed: The Dirty Truth Behind Government and Industry Claims by Linda Williams.  Clear, concise, brilliantly well done.
• Film - Britain's Nuclear Bomb Scandal: Our Story - New BBC documentary
• Dispatch from a nuclear petting zoo
• RPHP Reports Finds Soaring Death Rate Near Ohio Uranium Plant - Piketon/Portsmouth Diffusion Plant reports for 2021, 2022, 2023

• Seth Shelden is General Counsel and United Nations Liaison for ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.  The United Nations First Committee just announced that they will be putting forward a resolution to create a 21-scientist committee to examine and determine the impact of nuclear war on people and the planet. A study of this sort has not been done since 1989 - 25 years ago - and the changes in the size of the bombs and the possible impact of nuclear war on the climate are top priories.
  
  To find out more, I spoke with Seth Shelden on November 7, 2024.

ICAN's Seth Shelden

• The International Uranium Film Festival (IUFF) has been invited by the G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro to present films during the meetings, which start on Nov. 13 and run through Friday the 15th. Its involvement will also be part of a documentary covering the summit that is being shot by Academy Award-nominated David Lynch as executive director.
  
  I spoke with IUFF Founder and Director Norbert Suchanek on November 7, 2024.

IUFF Founders and Directors Norbert Suchanek and Marcia Gomes de Oliviera, via Zoom from Brazil

Films being shown at IUFF-G20 in Rio this week can be found at:
https://uraniumfilmfestival.org/en/uranium-film-festival-rio-g20-summit-2024-program

French household goods made from radioactive metal - what could go wron

• In a progressive US state (Maryland), more nukes?
• Opinion - When you combine AI and nuclear power, the results can be catastrophic
• What if the Nuclear Industry Really Isn’t Safe?
• How the War in Ukraine Could Go Nuclear—by Accident - Russian Atomic Weapons Are Dangerously Close to the Frontlines
• Britain’s Nuclear Bomb Scandal: Our Story - meet some of the contributors speaking out for the first time
• Can quake-prone Japan ever embrace nuclear energy again?

Part 2 of a talk with Doug Brugge and Aaron Datesman, authors of a brilliant new book, Nuclear Power in an Era of Climate Change.  Last week was Part 1.  This week, we focus on new information about the health dangers of so-called “permitted” radiation releases from operating nuclear reactors in easily understood science. 

• Dr. Doug Brugge is an endowed professor and chair of the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Connecticut. He has published extensively about the social and health consequences of uranium mining.

Doug Brugge

• Aaron Datesman is a researcher, mathematician, and inventor who has held technical roles at the U.S. Department of Energy and as an engineer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Aaron Datesman

• The importance of the United Nations call to form a 21-member science panel to report on the effects of nuclear war. 

Ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson claims that demons are at fault for creating the nuclear bomb... and he's not talking metaphorically.  Trying out new White House talking points...? 

Mark Zuckerberg AI data center plans derailed by... THE KILLER BEES!   (No, really!)

The late John Belushi as a Killer Bee on Saturday Night Live.

• ICAN Australia new 20-page report on the intersections between climate change and nuclear weapons.
• AP report on Aging Nukes: A 4-Part Investigative Series by Jeff Donn:
  
  • Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV
• UK says it voted against UN nuclear war panel because consequences already known

Map of radiation doses at Three Mile Island - new information from the book Dirty Secrets of Nuclear Power in an Era of Climate Change:

• An important new book has just been published on the lies of the nuclear industry, put together by  Dirty Secrets of Nuclear Power in an Era of Climate Change is a meticulously researched and detailed book that exposes nuclear lies and provides detailed scientific information in easy-to-understand language.  It was written by two scientists with impeccable credentials and decades of experience calling nuclear out.  To back up its revelations - much of it new - the work is supported by charts, graphs, and clear writing that even the non-scientific among us can understand.
  
  The co-authors are Doug Brugge and Aaron Datesman:
  
  Dr. Brugge is an endowed professor and chair of the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Connecticut. He has published extensively about the social and health consequences of uranium mining.
  
  Aaron Datesman is a researcher, mathematician, and inventor who has held technical roles at the US Department of Energy and as an engineer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

FREE download of pdf of the book: Dirty Secrets of Nuclear Power in an Era of Climate Change.  

The indoctrination of children towards nuclear starts early - but does the Environmental Protection Agency have to be this blatant about it by putting it in a comic book?  Apparently so:

Visual from nuclear propaganda kid recruiting comic book, Spark Squad.

• The passing of activist, gifted artist, and loving friend Laura Lynch.  Here's a link to her brilliant article: THE ART OF PROTEST:  A NEW REINTEGRATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Just one of Laura Lynch's memes created for Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network (FFAN)

• 10 Nuclear War Movies That Are Downright Terrifying
• Karl Grossman in Counterpunch:  The New Nuclear Push: New Package, Same Lies
• ICAN Campaigners Group for the Cities Campaign to push for adoption of the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.  Join and get your local municipality to support the international ban on nukes! 
• We Need a U.N. Study of the Effects of Nuclear War