Nuclear Hotseat

A symbol of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

Anti-nuclear activists are often isolated from each other because we focus on what’s most important to us – a local issue with radioactive waste dump, or uranium mining, or weapons, or a spike in health crises, or any one of dozens of other nuclear issues. Or we’re working on the same issues as other groups, but not necessarily in communication with each other to coordinate what we’re doing and saying to make a bigger media splash with our limited resources.

Today’s guests are among those making a difference in terms of all of us working together and strategizing so we’re all on the same page and creating our own echo chamber.

• Bonnie Fisk is Director of Development for the Ploughshares Fund, a public grant-making foundation that supports initiatives to prevent the spread and use of nuclear weapons, and to prevent conflicts that could lead to their use.
• Mac Hamilton is Program Director, Peace and Security, for ReThink Media, which builds capacity across movements, works to minimize competition, maximizes resources, and raises the voices of underrepresented spokespeople.

Together, they produced the six sold-out previews of the Oppenheimer film around the country which featured panel discussions on the issues raised – and huge leg up that led to news stories and features on what the movie did not cover. Now is a great time to review their strategies and talking points and apply them to the latest batch of issues.

I spoke with Bonnie Fisk and Mac Hamilton on Friday, August 18, 2023 for Nuclear Hotseat #635.

• Sign up for ReThink Media’s AM Nukes Roundup, sent weekdays at 8:15 AM ET.
• Other organizations to receive action alerts from:
  
  • Take action with the Union of Concerned Scientists
  • Take action with Global Zero
  • Sign up for action alerts with Physicians for Social Responsibility
  • Join Win Without War and take action for nuclear frontline communities
  • Follow the work of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium
• Ploughshares.org – where you will find more information about what they fund)
• Ploughshares.org/pressthebutton  – the Ploughshares Fund’s podcast)
• The ballet that includes nuclear storytelling: Yvonne Montoya’s production, “Stories from Home”

Japan on 7th release of tritium-contaminated radioactive waste water from Fukushima into the Pacific. 

The latest on work to implement the work of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, direct from ICAN headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. 

• Why cost should not be an obstacle to compensating nuclear survivors
• From sheep camp to the city to study uranium’s damage to Navajo people
• Nuclear danger is growing. Physicists of the world, unite!

Diane D'Arrigo, Radioactive Waste Project Director for Nuclear Information Resource SErvice (NIRS.org)

• Diane D’Arrigo is Radioactive Waste Project Director for Nuclear Energy Information Resource Service, or NIRS, where she has worked since 1986.  Her main area of expertise is radioactive waste and radiation issues. She has closely followed so-called “low-level” nuclear waste issues for decades, the national and international moves to deregulate nuclear waste that would allow it to be made into everyday household items and be dumped as regular trash. Diane has been deeply involved with tracking and fighting the backwards ADVANCE Act, and was eager to share her insights with the Nuclear Hotseat audience.
  
  I spoke with. Diane D'Arrigo on Monday, June 24, 2024.

Fukushima saki?  That's right - get drunk to ignore the radionuclides that might be in your alcohol!

The ADVANCE Act will gut nuclear safety and keep the Nuclear Navy happy.  Hardly anyone on Capitol Hill opposed it.

Thomas the Stank Engine illustrates the dangers of nuclear waste hauling in the UK and is the cartoon creation of Cumbrian campaigner Marianne Birkby of Radiation Free Lakeland.  Thomas got his name because he hauls train wagons which contain very stinky, very dirty, and very nasty nukiller waste (unshielded nuclear waste can kill a human in a minute). This deadly stuff is traipsed around the country to Sellafield.”  Perhaps an image for Haul No? 

Veterans for Peace Webinar:

https://youtu.be/oedv9hlsNIk?si=DLY0oITd_ndSoMS0

Veterans For Peace No Nukes webinar on Nuclear Power and Weapons in a Time of Rising Tensions
with presenters William Hartung, Linda Pentz Gunter and Greg Mello.

PRESENTER CONTACT INFORMATION:

• William Hartung, Quincy Institute https://quincyinst.org/author/william…
• Linda Pentz Gunter, Beyond Nuclear email: [email protected] https://beyondnuclear.org/ https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/
• Greg Mello, Los Alamos Study Group email: [email protected] https://lasg.org/

• Congress’s Nuclear Addiction by Karl Grossman

Welcome to the start of the 14th year of Nuclear Hotseat!

Hinamoeura Cross, 2023 winner, Nuclear Free Future Award, at ceremony in NYC, December 2023

• Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross is from French Polynesia. In her mid-thirties, she became an activist when she realized that her leukemia was a legacy of the 193 French nuclear tests in the South Pacific. She conquered her blood cancer and became a collector of unheard stories of suffering and ignored medical records from the Polynesian people. In doing so, she put pressure on the French government, which to this day lacks accountability for its actions. Hinamoera fights for recognition, medical care and financial compensation for victims, and in 2023 was awarded the Nuclear Free Future Award. In May 2023, seeking a wider base of authority for her actions, she moved into politics and was elected to the Polynesian Assembly of Representatives.

Hinamoeura Cross of Polynesia and Tina Cordova of New Mexico, both winners of the 2023 Nuclear Free Future Award, embrace in congratulations and commiseration, as both are Downwinders from different parts of the world.

The likely next UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, says Britain will be “fit to fight” with nuclear weapons within a year. So what happened to deterrence?

https://youtu.be/DBodrWwJb5M?si=Uz1f_ESwyvgtHBII

Compare and Contrast:  Picture of what the bombing of Hiroshima looked like to this one infant vs. logo outside the Atomic Museum in Las Vegas, promising all kinds of radioactive, life-destroying fun!

• Sometimes one has to go into the belly of the beast.  While in Las Vegas for the closing two days of the International Uranium Film Festival, I visited the Atomic Museum, which is dedicated to preserving the history of the Nevada Test Site (now known as the Nevada Nevada National Security Site).  I interviewed the museum's Deputy Director and Curator Joseph Kent, an historian who has risen through the ranks of the museum since joining it full time in 2019.  Here is our interview, recorded on May 1, 2024.
• Linda Lovon - An activist attending the International Uranium Film Festival from Hawaii, with her brief thoughts on the museum. 

Atomic Museum's Deputy Director Joseph Kent with his PR handler and Robbie the Robot.

The Miller Map, by Richard L. Miller, author of Under the Cloud: The Decades of Nuclear Testing.  The true impact of the above ground atomic tests at the Nevada Test Site.  This map and its information is not presented in any way at the Atomic Museum. 

I urge everyone - especially those who work with the Atomic Museum - to view the following films to fill in the blanks in the "story" told by the Atomic Museum:

• DOWNWIND - Award-winning documentary on every aspect of the Downwinder situation.  Available on Amazon Prime.  Filmmakers:  Douglas Brian Miller, Mark Shapiro
• ATOMIC COVER-UP - The earliest on-the-ground footage of the atomic aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with audio from the cameramen who shot the film.  This material was classified TOP SECRET for decades.  Filmmaker: Greg Mitchell.  Available on PBS. 
• TIME BOMBS - The story of 40 young Canadian soldiers sent to Nevada to be used as guinea pigs  when the American military wanted to know how the average soldier would hold up on a nuclear battlefield.  Filmmakers:  Guylaine Maroist, Eric Ruel

And if you prefer your information in book - which deserves to be stocked in the gift shop - check out American Ground Zero by Carole Gallagher. 

NRC "apologizes" for lying about Minnesota's Monticello nuclear reactor leaking radioactive tritium contaminated water into Mississippi River.

• Veterans for Peace webinar — Nuclear Power and Weapons in a Time of Rising Tensions —Thursday, June 20, 2024, 7pm Eastern time. Featured speakers are William Hartung, an expert on US military spending; Beyond Nuclear international specialist, Linda Pentz Gunter; and Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group.
• There will be a rally in New York in front of the Japan Consulate at 2 PM on July 6, followed by a gathering at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza at 3:30 PM, to demand a halt to the dumping of nuclear wastewater from Fukushima.

Alfred Meyer of Physicians for Social Responsibility, mid-Zoom interview

• Alfred Meyer is a long-time member of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) and has served variously as Executive Director of the PSR Wisconsin chapter, Board Member of PSR National, and President of PSR New York.  He co-authored a PSR/IPPNW critique of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) report on the health effects of the radioactive releases from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors. He has also founded, co-founded and/or served as an executive for half a dozen other major organizations dedicated to nuclear issues relating to Fukushima, Chernobyl, Ukraine, and the connection between proposed fusion weapons w/nuclear reactor infrastructure.
  
  I spoke with Alfred Meyer on December 23, 2022.
  
• LINK to Alfred Meyer's article in The Progressive: It's All About the Bomb: Why civilian nuclear power is merely a cover for producing more nuclear weapons.

Dr. Gordon Edwards, addressing the United Nations

• Dr. Gordon Edwards is a mathematician, physicist, nuclear consultant, as well as president and co-founder of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, a not-for-profit corporation established in 1975. He has served as a consultant on nuclear issues for governmental and non-governmental bodies for over 45 years, and been accepted as an expert witness by US and Canadian courts and tribunals. He is frequently invited to testify before provincial and federal bodies, and to give major addresses in various countries. He also explains complex nuclear matters in a way that is easy to understand, for which I am deeply grateful.  I spoke with Dr. Edwards on February 12, 2024.

Excerpts from last year's Halloween feature: "What Scares Me Most about Nuclear."  I spoke with more than 30 activists and concerned citizens about what they found most frightening about nuclear.  Here are just a few, from:

• Jan Boudart - Nuclear Energy Information Service, Chicago (NEIS.org)
• Kevin Hester - Veteran activist, New Zealand
• Dr. Michael Ketterer - chemist, professor, researcher
• Leona Morgan - Haul No (HaulNo.com)
• Brian Morrison - space scientist

You can access the full Halloween special, with more than 30 different speakers on what scares people most about nuclear, by going to:  Nuclear Hotseat #645

The Miller Map.  The path radioactive fallout took from the 100 above-ground nuclear tests in Nevada.  Actually, it took three or more nuclear fallout clouds overhead to make it onto this map.  Compiled by Richard Miller, author of Under the Cloud: The Decades of Nuclear Testing.

Mary Dickson at DC Press Conference for passage of RECA. 
To the right, Dawn Chapman (in green) and Karen Nichol (in blue) of Just Moms StL.

• Mary Dickson is a Salt Lake City journalist and writer whose award-winning play, Exposed, puts a human face on the cost of nuclear testing. She has been recognized by the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility for her lifetime work on behalf of downwinders and regularly speaks out against the resumption of nuclear testing as well as her downwinder information talks.  We talk about the horrific price paid by those who were downwind of the atmospheric atomic bomb tests of the 1950’s and 60’s… and the ongoing legacy of those blasts.
• Contact Mary Dickson:  [email protected]

• Speaker of the House Mike Johnson: 202-225-2777
• House Majority Leader Stephen Joseph Scalise - (202) 225-3015

https://twitter.com/senatorlujan/status/1791154873003569498?s=46

Press Conference on RECA held last week in Washington, DC.

A public "conference" on nuclear that's supported and promoted by nukesters, yet passes it off as a "public meeting" - how much honest discourse can you possibly expect?  (That was a rhetorical question...)

The Lyndon Larouche crowd cravenly promoted building a nuclear power plant in Gaza at a Free Palestine rally. No one bought it.

Latest on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons - with Alistair Burnett reporting from Nobel Peace Prize-winning ICAN headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

• The Vow from Hiroshima - Now on PBS! A bio-pic of human rights campaigner, Nobel Peace Laureate and Hiroshima A-bomb survivor Setsuko Thurlow's life.  It is also the story of the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) which she worked so hard to bring to the world.  Check your local PBS station for listings and a link to streaming.
• Sites with radioactive material more vulnerable as climate change increases wildfire, flood risks
• It’s not just toxic chemicals. Radioactive waste was also dumped off Los Angeles coast