Nuclear Hotseat

Cover photo:  Toxic cloud from "controlled burn" of toxic materials at train derailment

Toxic cloud from "controlled" burn of materials spilled from East Paletine, Ohio train wreck.

• On February 3, 2023, a Norfolk Southern train derailed near East Palestine, Ohio, a town of about 4,800 people near the border with Pennsylvania. About three dozen cars derailed overall, 11 of which were carrying hazardous material.  As one resident said, ““This is our Chernobyl.”  While the materials on board were not radioactive, they still provide evidence that supports concerns of those who oppose the shipping of nuclear waste materials by train to the proposed so-called “interim” storage facilities in the American southwest. 
  
  To learn more, we spoke with Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Watchdog for Beyond Nuclear.  Kevin specializes in high-level waste management and transportation; new and existing reactors; decommissioning; environmental and public health risks associated with government and industry efforts to dump commercial irradiated fuel rods on Native American lands in the western United States.
  
  We spoke on Saturday, February 18, 2023

Kevin Kamps, Nuclear Waste Watchdog with Beyond Nuclear

Link from interview:

• BOOK - People of Three Mile Island by Robert del Tredici

It's a year since Russia invaded Ukraine and new developments in the war there have put the country's 15 nuclear reactors in ever greater danger of meltdown.

With Japan adamant about extending licenses for reactors to 80 years (twice what they were designed to be safe to operate), who's the one voting cabinet minister they don't listen to?  The one responsible for the kinds of messes that will result if any nuke malfunctions!  I mean, really, what could anyone like that actually know??? 

• Former DOE Nuclear Security Official Says Wyoming Reactor Not Safe
• Hiroshima G7 Youth Summit
  Video on the impact of nuclear war
• Netflix series on Fukushima: The Days

• Last year, a report revealed that Fukushima child thyroid cancer rates had skyrocketed - but still, the government of Japan and the nuclear industry refuse to take these statistics seriously. 
  But in truth - how bad is it?  We interviewed a genuine expert to find out.
  
  Joseph Mangano is Executive Director of Radiation and Public Health Project.  He is an epidemiologist – one who searches for the cause of disease, identifies people who are at risk, determines how to control or stop the spread, or prevent it from happening again. Joe has over 30 years of experience working with nuclear numbers and comes from a history of teasing out health information from data.  We spoke on Friday, February 11, 2022.

• Chernobyl: Consequences of the Disaster for People and the Environment by Yablakov, Nesterenko, Sherman.
• Excerpt from a book on Jerome Wiesner, JFK science advisor (who, among other things, received a copy of an article on St. Louis baby teeth results on the buildup of Strontium-90 in teeth, and who presented these to JFK). Go to page 58, and you’ll see the JFK quote about radioactive fallout: “You mean it’s in the rain out there?”
• LINK to address by President John F. Kennedy Address to the Nation on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, July 26, 1963
• Transcript of President Kennedy’s speech. 
• National Cancer Institute 1999 study on Iodine-131 in bomb test fallout, and the estimated 11,300 to 212,000 thyroid cancers among persons age 0-19 from 1951-1962, from Nevada testing.

Turkey's Akkuyu nuclear power plant escaped disaster during last week's major earthquake,  but continuing the project is reckless.

UK funnels billions into building new "improved" nukes that are unapproved, unbuilt, untested, and untenable, but somehow can't seem to find the money to take care of storing the radioactive waste they've already created. 

• Cleaning Up After the Nuclear Accident: The Changing Face of Interim Storage Facilities - links to article with excellent photos that I cannot post here because of copyright. 
• The latest edition of Nuke Info Tokyo
• Report Says Holtec Workers Exposed to “Unplanned” Radiation Intake at Pilgrim Decommissioning Site in Massachusetts. 
• Karl Grossman interviews Dr. Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility  He is an expert on nuclear technology, refutes the claims of the nuclear industry as it pushes purportedly “new and improved” nuclear power plants, so-called “advanced” nuclear power plants, and particularly small modular reactors. He explains that these smaller nuclear power plants are not new and not improved, but were “things that were tried 50 and 60 years ago” and didn’t succeed then.  " class="text-nh underline hover:text-nh-dark" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Enviro Close-up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYbX3IwWmco&t=2s

Cathy Iwane of Coalition for Nuclear Safety for San Onofre UPDATE

• FOR SAN ONOFRE UPDATE:  Cathy Iwane is co-founder of Coalition for Nuclear Safety who works closely with San Clemente Green and Public Watchdogs.  Formerly from Japan, she and her family moved to southern California in the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear triple meltdown disaster.
• FOR THREE MILE ISLAND UPDATE:  Eric Epstein is Executive Director of Three Mile Island Alert.

LINKS for San Onofre Information mentioned in interview:

• https://nuclearhotseat.com/20201013-final-2-206-petition-on-not-credible/" class="text-nh underline hover:text-nh-dark">Petition to NRC on their claim that events are 'not credible'
• https://nuclearhotseat.com/2019-12-11-final-pmb-2-206-songs-3/" class="text-nh underline hover:text-nh-dark">2019-12-11- Paul Blanch Letter to NRC re: Petition Regarding Potential Violations of Regulations SONGS 3
• https://nuclearhotseat.com/paleoseismic-features-san-onofre-tsusami-seismic/" class="text-nh underline hover:text-nh-dark">Paleoseismic features San Onofre Tsusami seismic
• Drop-In Meeting Minutes with NRC Chair Hanson

Building small modular reactors; nuclear powered rockets to Mars; nuclear power plants on the Moon -- They're all Really Bad Ideas. So why do governments insist on pursuing them?

• Article in Santa Fe New Mexican on Greg Mello of Los Alamos Study Group
• Health Experts Warn Against Releasing Indian Point Radioactive Wastewater Into Hudson River
• They handled nuclear missiles. Now they’re getting cancer.
• There is no alternative: US-Russian nuclear arms control must restart. Now.
• WHO Suddenly Updates Medicines List For Nuclear Emergencies

UPDATE:  Before last week's Numnutz - the tiny radioactive capsule gone on walkabout in Australia - was found, its journey was memorialized in this piece from First Dog On the Moon:

Los Alamos Study Group's Executive Director Greg Mello

• Greg Mello is Executive Director and a founder of the Los Alamos Study Group (LASG). He has led its varied activities since 1992, including policy research, environmental analysis, congressional education and lobbying, community organizing, litigation, advertising, and the nuts and bolts of funding and running a small nonprofit. From time to time he has served as a consulting analyst, writer, and spokesperson for other nuclear policy organizations. Greg was educated as a systems engineer with a broad scientific background and as a regional planner with emphases in environmental planning and regional economics.
  
  In 1984 Greg led the first regulatory enforcement at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), and that lab has kept him busy ever since. Here, we talk first about LASG and then get to his upcoming trip to the Nuclear Deterrence Summit, the annual trade show for nuclear contractors, warmongers, war criminals, and the boys who love all things nuclear.
  
  I spoke with Greg Mello on January 27, 2023
  
  Link:  Don't Bank on the Bomb - Simple steps you can take to stop your bank from investing in nuclear weapons-producing companies. 

A year into the war in Ukraine, a nuclear power plant disaster has only been averted due to luck. So why is Ukraine ordering more nuclear reactors?

Needle in a haystack, radioactive pellet lost along 870 miles of Australian roadway...

Missing radioactive pellet (l) vs. Australian dime.  Needle in a haystack, anyone?

• Samuel Lawrence Foundation is hosting a online forum 11:30 a.m. PST Feb. 3 with physicist Edwin Lyman, PhD, Director of Nuclear Power Safety for the Union of Concerned Scientists. The online forum is free and open to the public. 
  Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86148500220#success
• ​Ukraine’s reactors remain at risk as one-year anniversary of war looms

Alfred Meyer of Physicians for Social Responsibility being Zoomed by Libbe HaLevy

• 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.

• Alfred Meyer article from The Progressive in October-November, 2022:  It's All About the Bomb: Why Civilian Nuclear Power is Merely a Cover for Producing More Nuclear Weapons

• The January 24, 2023 announcement of the resetting of the Doomsday Clock by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - an annual event to help us gauge how close to Armageddon we really are.   (Personally, I would have gone for 50 seconds, but then, The Bulletin seems to be far more conservative in pushing the panic button.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxB9dM0u4mU

If you're a nuclear weapons producer/promoter and have all the money in the world - the world that you are positioning yourself to take out, once and for all, finito - why not throw yourself a 3-day party and call it a "summit?" 

• Hanford Challenge Poetry Contest
• Why so few are talking about the power grid amid extreme winter storms
• Fukushima's Toxic Dumping Flashpoint by Robert Hunziker
• Our Contaminated Future

John LaForge (l), temporarily out of German prison for the celebration of the entry into force of law
of the United Nations Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, with Linda Pentz Gunter of Beyond Nuclear -
the force behind Nuclear Hotseat's Hot Story.  

John Wayne starred as Genghis Khan (racially inappropriate casting, anyone?) in "The Conquerer."
The flm was shot near St. George, Utah, not long after Nevada Test Site "Dirty" Harry explosion contaminated the area with radioactive fallout.  More than half the film's cast and crew died of cancer, including The Duke.

MILLER MAP:  Downwind areas hit by radioactive fallout from Nevada Test Site A-bomb detonations, 1951-1992

• Radioactive fallout from the Nevada Test Site contaminated land, water, people… and John Wayne? It's probable.  Learn the stories of St. George, Utah citizens hit by radiation wafting downwind from "Dirty" Harry bomb fallout in DOWNWIND - a new documentary premiering at Slamdance.  John Wayne, Susan Hayward and a full film company shot THE CONQUERER nearby; more than half the cast and crew died of cancer in the ensuing years.  That film and the stories around it led to co-directors Mark Shapiro and Douglas Brian Miller researching the issues - and shooting the film DOWNWIND.
  I spoke with Director Mark Shapiro on Friday, January 13, 2023.
  
• DOWNWIND will premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah on January 23, 2023.  It will be followed by a panel discussion including:
       Ian Zabarte, Principal Man of the Western Tribes of the Shoshone Nation of Indians
       Downwinder Activists Playwright/Journalist Mary Dickson and Claudia Peterson
       Scott Williams, Nuclear Policy Consultant, HEAL Utah
       Co-Directors Mark Shapiro and Douglas Brian Miller

Bad bad bad bad vibrations! Vogtle 3 in Georgia, one of only 2 new reactors under construction in the US, has been delayed yet again, this time for a vibrating pipe that will add $30 million more to the already exorbitant $30 billion costs.

• A granular look a how a newspaper's rah-rah support for Japan's dumping of radioactive water from Fukushima into the Pacific gets woven into word choices, "accepted" wisdom, and yet another act of bullying against a concerned population - heck, a concerned WORLD. 

• The Doomsday Clock Playlist - songs that mention or demonstrate direct inspiration from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Doomsday Clock - all available on the Bulletin's Spotify account:
  
  • Wasteland, Baby! - Hozier
  • Easy/Lucky/Free - Bright Eyes
  • 2 Minutes to Midnight - 2015 Remaster - Iron Maiden
  • Why Did I Fall For That - The Who
  • The Call Up - Remastered - The Clash
  • Quarter Past Midnight - Bastille
  • Two Suns in the Sunset Pink Floyd
  • Seven Minutes To Midnight - Wah! Heat
  • Minutes To Midnight - Midnight Oil
  • The Circle In The Square - Flobots
  • EFFED - ESnowy, Jason Williamson
  • Russians - Sting
  • Doomsday Clock - Suicide Squirrel
• Webinar: Why Small Modular Reactors are not a climate fix
  When: Monday, January 23rd at 1:00 pm EDT
  To Register, CLICK HERE
• How did the US nuclear industry fare in 2022?
• A group of HT journalists interview Shaun Burnie senior Green-peace specialist on the impact of Fukushima’s controversial plan to dump water into the ocean
• Risky Returns - Nuclear Weapons Producers and their Financiers - a joint report of ICAN and PAX/Don't Bank on the Bomb.
• World Nuclear Report:  Russian nuclear energy, the industry that has gone unsanctioned by the West
• Libbe HaLevy appearing on BRAVE NU FUTURE with AMBER KING - 1/13/23