Nuclear Hotseat

New film by Heidi Hutner has world premiere: RADIOACTIVE: The Women of Three Mile Island

• It’s hard to get the full picture of what nuclear is and what it does across to the general public. Disconnected news stories, nuclear industry full-press spin, ADHD news cycles and the public’s general lack of memory obscures the horrible truth about what happens when a nuclear reactor goes off the rails.
  
  Thus it is cause for celebration when a full length documentary appears that tells the nuclear story clearly, completely, with human focus and all the compelling arguments in place.  That’s the case with the new film RADIOACTIVE: The Women of Three Mile Island. Produced and directed by ecofeminism professor-turned-visual journalist Heidi Hutner, the film follows four mothers who lived through and next to TMI as the focus for this crucial film.
  
  TMI was the worst nuclear accident in US history - so far - and has been buried under decades of nuclear industry spin-speak. Now, at last, the truth can come out, and word is that the film is brilliant.  As the press materials explain:
  Though this disaster took place in 1979, the life and death implications continue in the spiritual, physical, and political DNA of the community, its residents, and their descendants.
  
  To bring you the sense of the world premiere as part of the Dances With Films Festival, two long time Nuclear Hotseat listeners and supporters stepped forward to help out:  Priscilla Star, a foiunder of the Coalition Against Nukes (C.A.N.) and Joe DeMare.  Joe is the host and producer of For A Green Future, a radio program that covers a wide variety of environmental and ecological issues. His show is Broadcast in Toledo and Columbus, Ohio, then posted as a podcast and on a youtube channel. He also organizes an annual event remembering the Fukushima nuclear disaster called Unplug Nuclear Power which is a 24 hour boycott of grid supplied electricity every March 11.

On International Anti-Corruption Day, the Museum of Political Corruption honors the fight of all of those who stand up against corruption, with a special screening and discussion of the documentary "Power Struggle," on the fight to shut down the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station. 

REGISTER NOW to receive a one-time exclusive access to the film and join us online on Friday, December 9th, at 7PM (EST) for a live in-depth conversation with very special guests:

• director Robbie Leppzer
• Tony Klein (retired Vermont State Representative who led the fight in the Vermont Legislature against the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant)
• Linda Pentz Gunter (editor, writer and curator at Beyond Nuclear International)
• moderated by Libbe HaLevy, host and producer of the Nuclear Hotseat Podcast.

The president of France, Emmanuel Macron, was in Washington, DC last week peddling, yes, a new French nuclear renaissance. Sacre bleu! Did he miss the complete flop the last time around? And has he not noticed that half his current reactor fleet is down?

How does the head of the country that experienced Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Fukushima justify all this nuclear expansion? 

• Situation at Ukrainian nuclear plants worrying as shelling and power cuts threaten containment
• Nuclear waste ravaged their land. The Yakama Nation is on a quest to rescue it
• Karl Grossman article - New Nukes?
• The Surprising Afterlife of Unwanted Atom Bombs
• Comic book on nuclear waste in Canada - distributed by Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR)

Cel from comic book on Nuclear Waste in Canada

Professor Emeritus Michael Ketterer, via Zoom with Nuclear Hotseat Producer/Host Libbe HaLevy

• The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS) in Piketon, Ohio, was the site of uranium enrichment for the US nuclear weapons program. It operated from 1954 to 2001, and now the Department of Energy is in charge of cleaning up the site. But how good a job are they doing? How contaminated is the site - and how far has that radioactive contamination spread?
  
  To learn more, we spoke with Michael Ketterer. He is professor emeritus of chemistry and biochemistry at Northern Arizona University, and the former Ohio resident studies the sources and behavior of radioisotopes in the environment. He’s been in the thick of discovering problems around the Ports plant - and there’s more coming.
  
  I spoke with Michael Ketterer on Friday, November 25, 2022.

• Michael Ketterer CONTACT 
• Reporter Duane Pohlman's latest report on cancer rates in Piketon County.
  He interviewed Joseph Mangano of Radiation and Public Health Project.

When it comes to nuclear stories, even the revered
60 Minutes can get it really, really wrong

60 Minutes' Leslie Stahl interviews Rafael Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)... and repeatedly drops the ball.  Even good journalists are fooled by the nuclear nonsense. 

• Nuclear Guinea Pigs:  NRC's Licensing of Experimental Nuclear Plants by Karl Grossman
• War Puts Cleanup of Russia's Radioactive Wrecks on Ice by Charles Digges of Bellona Foundation

Just one record from one file box from just one of 30+ boxes from the original  baby tooth study of the  1950's-60's .

• Joseph Mangano is a health researcher who has served Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP) since 1989. Mangano is author or co-author of 33 medical journal articles on radiation health, and is the author of the books Low Level Radiation and Immune System Damage: An Atomic Era Legacy (1998) and Radioactive Baby Teeth: The Cancer Link (2008). Now, he’s involved with putting together a landmark examination of the impact of reactor radiation releases on children living in the area - a study made possible by an amazing discovery of an epidemiological treasure hidden since the Cold War.
  
  I spoke with Joseph Mangano on Monday, November 21, 2022.

Epidemiologist Joseph Mangano of Radiation and Public Health Project

• I Gave My Baby Tooth to Science: Project Sunshine's Role in the Limited Test Ban Treaty by Robert Alvarez and Joseph Mangano

In a rare victory, the US Department of Energy turned down Holtec's request for funding to reopen the dangerous Palisades reactor. Now the reactor should be thoroughly "autopsied" before any more license extensions are issued to other operating US nuclear power plants.

It's a bomb shelter!  It's a kid's room!  Wait - it's both!

• Karl Grossman Enviro Close-up #671:  Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (OREPA)
• Karl Grossman - Nuclear Guinea Pigs: NRC's Licensing of Experimental Nuclear Plants
• DOE awards millions to restart nuclear operations in southern Ohio as contamination concerns continue
• Fallout from a Nuclear Past: a new book on the human toll of "nuclear colonization" - Nuclear Nuevo Mexico by Myrriah Gomez.

UK-based Marine Biologist Tim Deere-Jones

Given the pro-nuclear doubletalk at COP 27, which is drowning out the voices of actual informed activists, it's important for us to understand the consequences of the climate catastrophe already in evidence around the world - and how much of it is created by nuclear contamination that the so-called "experts" would rather we not know.

For that reason, we're revisiting an interview from the beginning of this year on the consequences of nuclear radiation on the Arctic ice.  Our interviewee is a regular resource for Nuclear Hotseat, and he always comes up with clear explanations of complex issues.

• Tim Deere-Jones is a marine biologist – a radiation researcher and consultant – who specializes in analysis of the radiation threats to our planet’s waters from a wide range of nuclear sources. Here he provides a SPECIAL report produced exclusively for Nuclear Hotseat on the Nuclear Arctic radiation dangers.  Tim has agreed to come on board with the show to provide regular updates on oceans, rivers, and other water sources being negatively impacted by nuclear radiation, so you’ll be hearing more from him in the coming months.  We spoke on Monday, January 24, 2022.
  
• PDF DOWNLOAD of the text of this presentation – CLICK HERE
  
• CONTACT for Tim Deere-Jones:  [email protected]

The United States has used the occasion of the COP27 climate summit to announce new nuclear power deals, including one, incredibly, with Ukraine. The summit is also “awash” in fossil fuel representatives. None of this bodes well.

Pro-nuke fitness freestyling?!?!??? How low can you go?   Oh, wait - it's coming from pro-nuclear interests.  There's no limit. 

https://twitter.com/aruna_sekhar/status/1592445221169958913?s=20&t=VrYQZ8J7MgF46P-j5hgd4g

Check out this twitter link of pro-nuclear interests at COP27
attempting to be relevant to a younger demographic.  I mean - SHEESH! 

Hi All:
On December 20, 2022, Nuclear Hotseat will hit its 600th episode! - quite the milestone, and one I never could have imagined 11-1/2 years ago when I started.  To commemorate the event (and to give myself a week "off" from active reporting), I'd like to compile a "greatest hits" episode.  And because my perspective is different from yours, I need your input on what to include.

So what are some of your favorite Nuclear Hotseat moments? Memorable interviews, exchanges, flubs, bad jokes, jaw-dropping revelations,  musical theatre moments, or...?  Let me know!  Send them to me at: [email protected].  If you can, provide the show number/date.  And if you really want to be an angel and help me through pre-production, let me know the time in the episode that it took place.  The more input I get on this, the smoother will be the edit to create this commemoration. 

Many thanks for being with me through this ride - and I look forward to seeing if I last long enough to make it through the next 100!  - Libbe.

Eric Epstein of Three Mile Island Alert with
Nuclear Hotseat's Libbe HaLevy. 
At TMI 40th anniversary commemoration, 2019. 

Eric Epstein is the Chairman of Three Mile Island Alert, Inc., a safe-energy organization based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and founded in 1977. TMIA monitors the Peach Bottom, Susquehanna, and Three Mile Island nuclear generating stations.  He is also  coordinator of  the EFMR Monitoring, Inc., a nonpartisan community based organization established  in 1992. EFMR monitors radiation levels at Peach Bottom  and Three Mile Island nuclear generating stations, invests in community development, and sponsors remote robotics research. 

For more than 35 years, Mr. Epstein has specialized in research, litigation and providing expert testimony on the decommissioning, decontamination, environmental safety, rate recovery and waste isolation at nuclear reactors.  No one knows the ins and outs of legalities surrounding Three Mile Island better than him.  We spoke on Monday, November 7, 2022.

Libbe HaLevy at TMI commemoration plaque, just across from the site of the two shuttered nuclear reactors.

In this week's Hot Story with Beyond Nuclear's Linda Pentz Gunter, we look at Poland's bizarre decision to choose the American company, Westinghouse, to build three new reactors - the same company that went bankrupt trying to build them in the US, where its track record boasts long delays, massive cost overruns and even criminal activity!

In Japan, 80 is the new... WTF ARE YOU THINKING?!?!???  And stop supporting your wrongheaded position by mis-citing U. S. policy that was revised last February!  Don't you ever Google?

• The new US nuclear posture review is a major step backward
• Local 12 investigation (Cincinnatti) uncovers family's home is riddled with radioactive contamination (LINK goes to page with video.)
• Radiation dose and gene expression analysis of wild boar 10 years after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant accident
• REPORT:  In Suttsu, Japan, the inhabitants do not want nuclear waste 

Dr. Helen Caldicott, whose presentation on the medical impact of nuclear war was turned into the 1982 Oscar-winning short documentary, "If You Love This Planet."

• Dr. Helen Caldicott has probably done more to make the public around the world aware of the dangers of nuclear weapons, nuclear war, nuclear reactors and the entire nuclear fuel chain than any other individual in history. During more than 60 years of activism, she has founded or revived organizations including Physicians for Social Responsibility; led protests, spoken to presidents, been a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and the focus of an Academy Award-winning film, as she influenced several generations of activists to stand up against these weapons of mass destruction in the hopes of avoiding nuclear war.
  
  In this extended interview, we take a look at IF YOU LOVE THIS PLANET, the 1982 Oscar-winning film for Best Short Documentary.  LINK to the film on Youtube is below.  Please view, share, tell your friends, your politicians, people in line with you at the grocery story - if people want to understand exactly what we face from the threat of even a "limited" nuclear war, this is the film for them to see.  We spoke on Thursday, October 30, 2022.

https://youtu.be/7FjgBBQFmGs

Oscar-Winning Film (1982 Best Short Documentary) featuring a presentation by Dr. Helen Caldicott. She explains in clear, no-nonsense language exactly what we will face if even one of the current nukes is exploded.  For those of us following the events in Ukraine closely, this is a timely reminder on why nuclear weapons must NEVER be used. 

https://youtu.be/hrM_1zucZIk

• Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nucler Power Plants by John Goffman, Arthur R. Tamplin
• Lynne Eden, Whole World On Fire
• With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War by Robert Scheer.
• Dr. Helen Caldicott: Missile Envy: The Arms Race and Nuclear War
• CHERNOBYL: Consequences of the Disaster for People and the Environment - Alexey V. Yablokov (Editor), Vassily B. Nesterenko (Editor), Alexey V. Nesterenko (Editor), Dr. Janette Sherman (English Editor)

When Dr. Caldicott spoke of the one journalist who managed to get into Hiroshima and report on the  ravages of radiation poisoning on the population, that story is the focus of a play that I’ve been working on, ATOMIC BILL AND THE PAYMENT DUE. I’m currently looking for a theatre workshop or development program to move the show forward to a full production, so if you know of someplace where I can continue my work on it, send an email to: [email protected].