Nuclear Hotseat

The remains of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb destroyed the city, 1945

ATOMIC COVER-UP – Director Greg Mitchell is the award-winning author of a dozen books including 2020’s “The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood–and America–Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” His previous books on the atomic bombings were “Hiroshima in America“ (with Robert Jay Lifton) and “Atomic Cover-up.” His film, ATOMIC COVER-UP, was released in April, 2021 and won the Best Archival Documentary award from the International Uranium Film Festival.  I spoke with filmmaker Greg Mitchell on how this remarkable film came to be on Saturday, May 15, 2021.

• You can view the documentary ATOMIC COVERUP here.
• Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists video, How many people were killed by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
• What happened to the bodies at Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Hiroshima bomb survivor Setsuko Thurlow, accepting the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize
on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

Setsuko Thurlow is a dedicated campaigner against nuclear weapons for ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear War.  She was a 13-year-old child in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, in school when the United States dropped the atom bomb on that city. 

As a hibakusha – atomic bomb survivor – Setsuko has worked tirelessly with ICAN.  When the group received the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its work in realizing the successful UN negotiations for a Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, Setsuko – along with ICAN Executive Director Beatrice Fihn – accepted the award on behalf of the group.  Here is the deeply moving speech Setsuko Thurlow gave on behalf of ICAN at the Nobel Peace Prize Awards Ceremony in Oslo, Norway, on December 10, 2017.

• Full Nobel peace prize ceremony link
• International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons – ICAN – www.ICANw.org

• World Beyond War – www.WorldBeyondWar.org
• Don’t Bank on the Bomb – www.DontBankOnTheBomb.com
• Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – www.WagingPeace.org
• VIDEO:  Obstacles to Nuclear Abolition — a discussion with David Swanson, Alice Slater, and Bruce Gagnon

As we remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki we must also look to the present as the dehumanization of people "not like us" continues.

• Flooding at Uranium Mine Near Grand Canyon Tops 66 Million Gallons - great charts from Grand Canyon Trust

A map of the San Onofre nuclear waste station, showing earthquake faults and the 50 mile radius that would be most impacted by an accident with the current on-site storage of radioactive waste. 

The Samuel Lawrence Foundation, in cooperation with the Scripps Oceanography Institute, held a one-day symposium on Radioactive Wastes (from Nuclear Reactors) in San Diego, California, on July 24, 2024: Radioactive Waste: Growing Threats, Emerging Solutions. Nuclear Hotseat's Libbe HaLevy was there to cover the speakers and talk with the audience.  You.  Are.  There. 

Interviewees include: 

• Larry Agran, Vice Mayor of the city of Irvine and a candidate for mayor.
• Rear Admiral Len Hering, a prominent military and civilian sustainability leader with a broad. background in energy and environmental issues.
• Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear.
• Dr. Gordon Edwards, a mathematician, physicist, and founder of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. Dr. Edwards provided a transcript of his speech, available as a pdf download HERE.  He also provided a list of Educational Resources on High-Level Radioactive Waste, compiled by CCNR.
• Jan Boudart, a member of NEIS, in from Chicago for the event.
• Gary Headrick, co-founder with Laurie Hedrick of San Clemente Green.

Videos of the presentations can be found on the Samuel Lawrence Foundation Youtube channel. 

Want to pay for the most expensive electricity on earth? Then go nuclear!


Lucero Oyarez of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) sits in for the vacationing Alistair Burnett and interviews Florian Eblenkamp, Advocacy Officer at ICAN, on the latest progress on the United Nationsl Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons.  The Swiss Initiative page is available in German: https://atomwaffenverbot.ch/ and in French https://interdiction-armes-nucleaires.ch/ 

• Back from the Brink - actions to take in commemoration of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 
• Podcast - The Nuclear Reactor Next Door - interview with Joseph Mangano of Radiation and Public Health Project. 
• Podcast - six episode series on Boom Town: A Uranium Story, which explores uranium mining and how yellowcake, or concentrated uranium, winds its way through the West including at the Hanford radioactive cleanup site.
• United Nations Association Film Festival

The shuttered Zahn's Corner Middle School, shuttered for contamination with nuclear materials from the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, only 3 miles away.  And now the school district is trying to auction it off "AS-IS" without explaining what the "AS-IS" is?!?!???  

• Latest radiation findings near the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in southern Ohio show increased radiation levels in Little Beaver Creek water, sediment, plants.  Interview with Dr. Michael Ketterer, who has a PhD in Analytical Chemistry and has worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Enforcement, and at University of Denver. Since 2000, Michael has been conducting studies of plutonium in the environment, publishing and lecturing extensively, and has analyzed samples from locations worldwide. He is currently studying plutonium dioxide particles in soils near the former Rocky Flats facility in Colorado, and fingerprinting off-site contaminants near the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in southern Ohio. Michael is Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Northern Arizona University. We spoke on July 22, 2024.

• Michael E. Ketterer, PhD; Professor Emeritus, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Northern Arizona University.Phone: +1 928 853 7188; [email protected]
• LINK to Duane Poulman WKRC Report on Dr. Michael Ketterer and recent radiation findings in water, soil, plants near the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Ohio
• Ohio Nuclear Free Network
• PRESS and Vina Colley -
• CONTACT for Portsmouth/Piketon Residents for Environmental Safety and Security (PRESS), National Nuclear Workers for Justice (NNWJ) and Vina Colley: [email protected] ; Vina Colley on Facebook

Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network Congressional Briefing:  RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINATION OF US FOOD AND WATER and what Congress Can Do About It:

https://youtu.be/Cbk-gYgVI9s?si=DwbM4XcKWM8dCZLV

Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network Petition link  https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/keep-harmful-radioactive-1.

You want to know where all the money went that should have gone to support RECA (Radiation Exposure Compensation Act), national health care, infrastructure, education - you know, the things that make our world and our lives better?  Even at a "mere" 3,748 nukes, the money to build, design, deploy, maintain, and ultimately mothball these devilish weapons - to say nothing of the new ones that are in the pipeline, being built even not - could be put to better use.  Here's a chart of our nukes, 1945 - 2023. 

Annual walk to commemorate Church Rock uranium tailings pond disaster on Navajo Nation land - from 2019.  Site of the mine and tailings pond in the background. 

Trinity Downwinder Tina Cordova grew up in her family home in the Tularosa Basin, 40 miles from the explosion of the first atomic bomb on July 16, 1945. A cancer survivor like so many in her community, in 2005, she co-founded the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium.  She and her community have been working for compensation for New Mexico atomic downwinders for the past 15 years.

• Video created by Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium in 2020. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHZWiXGwdkQ

Video creted by the Tularosa Basin Downwind Consortium on the Trinity test
and the need for the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA)

• Trinity: “The most significant hazard of the entire Manhattan Project” - Kitty Tucker/Robert Alvarez research and article on infant mortality rates around the Trinity test site caused by radiation exposure.  From the articler:  “New Mexico residents were neither warned before the 1945 Trinity blast, informed of health hazards afterward, nor evacuated before, during, or after the test. Exposure rates in public areas from the world’s first nuclear explosion were measured at levels 10,000- times higher than currently allowed.” - U.S. Centers for Disease Control

It’s been 42 years since the July 16, 1979 uranium tailings pond spill/disaster that contaminated Navajo Nation land, adding to the radiation burden already there from abandoned uranium mines.  Two brief interviews from Nuclear Hotseat #423 from July 23, 2019, where Nuclear Hotseat producer/host Libbe HaLevy covered the 40th anniversary events.

• Edith Hood grew up in the Red Water Pond Road Community, on land which had her living between two uranium mines and just down the road from the 1979 tailings pond spill. Edith worked at a different mine than the UNC facility that had the accident, but faced all of the same dangers.
• Terracita Keyanna has lived her entire life in the Red Water Pond Road Community on Navajo Nation. She was not even born when the Church Rock uranium spill happened… but that did not stop her being exposed to uranium mining waste from what was released and deposited by the spill.

Edith Hood of the Red Water Pond Community on Navajo Nation land just across from where she lives –
between two uranium mines and just down the road from the
site of the Church Rock uranium tailings spill

Terracita Keyanna next to sign warning “no uranium mining” in Navajo

• Nuclear Hotseat #423: Church Rock Uranium Tailings Pond Disaster – full show.
• Piketon, Ohio Radiation Spikes from Demolition of Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant

• How do we get a younger demographic into the movement against nuclear?  What do Youth Want to Know (to use an olde phrase)?  Nuclear Hotseat producer/host Libbe HaLevy met via zoom with students at Wilmington College in Ohio, who are studying nuclear issues with Tanya Maus, head of the Peace Resource Center.  A wide-ranging Q&A followed with some very astute, perceptive students.  They give us all hope for the future.  An excerpt from what turned out to be a 90 minute session held on July 8, 2024. 

LINKS from this feature:

• Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War by Susan Southard

An interview with Kimberly Roberson, founder/director of Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network (FFAN) and lead organizer for this Congressional briefing. 

WHERE & WHEN? The briefing will be held via Zoom on Monday, July 15 at 2pm Eastern time. 

Registration is required. For further information and to register, go to https://nislappdc.org/ffan-congressional-briefing/.

Speakers will include:

• US Congresswoman Cori Bush – Representing Missouri’s 1st Congressional District (invited)
• Arjun Makhijani -- Nuclear engineer, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, author of Exploring Tritium's Dangers, member of an independent scientists’ panel commissioned by the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat to review radioactive dumping from Fukushima into the Pacific
• Prof. Bob Richmond -- University of Hawaii Marine Biologist, expert in biological uptake of radiation in the oceans, member of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat panel on Fukushima
• Kimberly Roberson -- Project Director, Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network (FFAN). She served on the board of National Association of Nutrition Professionals and helped organize the FFAN Coalition which petitioned FDA for better food regulations​ following the Fukushima disaster.
• James Gormley -- President and Senior Policy Advisor of Citizens for Health and a leading consumer health advocate
• Cindy Folkers -- Radiation and Health Hazard Specialist with Beyond Nuclear (moderating)

The Two. Susans (Susan Crane, 80, from Redwood City, California, along with Dutch citizen Susan van der Hijden from Amsterdam) enter German prison for having peacefully protested U.S. nuclear bombs being held at Buchel Air Base in Germany. 

Looking for a fun Nuclear vacation activity?  How about a tour of the Hanford Site?