Nuclear Hotseat

• Rachel Bronson is President and CEO of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists – the scientists behind setting the Doomsday Clock.  She explains where that image and concept came from, who decides what time to set the clock, and the criteria used to determine just how close to global annihilation we are now, then goes into the group’s many publications and programs.  NOTE: This is an interview from March, 2018, when the Doomsday Clock was set at two minutes to midnight.  It is currently set at 100 seconds to Midnight, but that was determined in January, before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 

Russia's nuclear fuel chain to the west - uninterrupted despite eight rounds of sanctions!

Need I add more?   Never miss a chance or a platform to spread the bad news...

• Miriam Pemberton discusses her new book Six Stops on the National Security Tour: Rethinking Warfare Economies in a zoominar for Peace Action New York State.  REGISTER HERE.
• Europe is still quietly importing Russian nuclear energy
• Europe Should Sanction Russia’s Nuclear Industry – Now - Moscow Times article
• Zaporizhzhia on the brink: How deteriorating conditions at the nuclear power plant could lead to disaster
• How Not to Estimate the Likelihood of Nuclear War - Brookings Institute
• Rhetoric in Ukraine has reinforced the fallacy of limited nuclear exchange
• Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, method to remove debris by submerging the buildings in water: Symbolic of project difficulties after repeated changes, with no prospects for feasibility
• Nuclear Power Is a Dead End. We Must Abandon It Completely.

Statue on banning nuclear weapons outside the United Nations headquarters in New York.

Ray Acheson

Two years ago, October 24th 2020, the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was ratified by the 50th member nation and thus qualified for implementation as international law.

To mark this anniversary, we’re revisiting an interview we did at that time with Ray Acheson. They is an organiser, activist, and writer. They are Director of Disarmament at the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the world's oldest feminist peace organization. They serve on the steering group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its work to ban nuclear weapons, as well as the steering committees of Stop Killer Robots and the International Network on Explosive Weapons.

We spoke on October 30, 2020. 

• Find out if your country has joined the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons – and which cities, parliamentarians, and local organizations are supporting it.  ICANW List of TPNW signatories and supporters.
• Report on the First Meeting of States Parties

• Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy
• Abolishing State Violence: A World Beyond Bombs, Borders, and Cages

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!” exclaimed Shakespeare’s sprite, Puck, in A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Indeed we are.  Somehow, we are still here, despite our reckless possession and use of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Who can we rely on to save us from our foolishness? Ironically, on at least two occasions, it has been Russian military men, recalls Beyond Nuclear’s Linda Pentz Gunter in this week’s Nuclear Hotseat Hot Story.

Oh, Greta!  Say it ain't so! 

Greta Thunberg, not her best look... or best stance!

• Nuclear is Not a Climate Solution  - six video excerpts from a Manhattan Project for a Nuclear-Free World webinar. 
• " class="text-nh underline hover:text-nh-dark" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IF YOU LOVE THIS PLANET - interview with Dr. Helen Caldicott
• https://secure.everyaction.com/OaadGu8OQ0-telrZV75z" class="text-nh underline hover:text-nh-dark" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act - PETITION
• Dealing with Nuclear Anxiety - from ICAN
• NEIS Night with the Experts - Dave Kraft - Thursday, October 20, 2022, 7 PM Central
• Vasily Arkhipov saved the world
• Harvey Wasserman article:  Nuclear Power Isn’t Clean — It Creates Hellish Wastelands of Radioactive Sewage

White Mesa Ute at 2021 annual Protest & Spiritual Walk against White Mesa Uranium Mill. 
Photo  and Keystone Photo used with permission by Tim Peterson

• Sarah Fields is Program Director of Uranium Watch, and has worked on uranium and other nuclear issues for over 20 years.  We discuss how the White Mesa Uranium Mill is being allowed to process radioactive waste material from around the United States and as far away as Canada, Europe and Japan. There are plans in place for the mine to accept materials going back 77 years to the start of the Manhattan Project. The move is being opposed by several environmental groups, including those linked to the Grand Canyon, and is a focus for protests from the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. I spoke with Sarah Fields spoke on Saturday, October 8, 2022.
• Particularly impacted by these nuclear intentions are members of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, with lands adjacent to the mine and a water supply from an aquifer that sits below the mine. They are holding their annual Spiritual Walk and Protest on Saturday, October 22. To learn more about it, I spoke with Yolanda Badback, a member of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and the group, White Mesa Concerned Community. We spoke on Saturday, October 8, 2022.

Links from interviews:

• Uranium Watch - note that the website is currently undergoing a redesign.
• Protect White Mesa

“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” said U.S. President Biden last week. He was referring to the possibility that Russia might use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, and remembering the 13 tense days in October 1962 that brought the US and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war. In this week’s Hot Story, Linda Pentz Gunter explores the implications of the current rhetoric.

TEPCO has a perfect way to "prove" that its already-treated radioactive tritium contaminated water from Fukushima that they want to dump into the Pacific Ocean is "safe."  Just hide the truth in plain sight...

• Radiation Information for Everyone - 3 evenings, October 25, 26, and 27 at 7 p.m. Eastern time.  REGISTRATION REQUIRED.
• Best Place to Survive a Nuclear War in the U.S.

Jessica Kibblewhite, a sixth grade social science teacher at Chicago’s National Teachers Academy, works with her students using a new curriculum that explores the ethics of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.
Photo Courtesy of Aiko Kojima Hibino

Illinois has become the first state in the nation to mandate the teaching of Asian American History for grades K-12.  The intent is to combat hate crimes and racial discrimination against Asian Americans, which grew exponentially during the Covid 19 pandemic.  As nuclear plays a major part in any understanding  Japan's history -  the atomic bombs being dropped by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the use of nuclear energy and the 2011 Fukushima triple meltdown nuclear disaster -  a nuclear curriculum is crucial to teach Nuclear History Education. 

How fortunate, then, that today's guests created such a curriculum for 6th graders that was used as a pilot project in Spring of 2022 - and that it's available for any teachers, anywhere, to incorporate into their classrooms as of the 2022-2023 school year. 

• Hiroshima-born Dr. Yuki Miyamoto is a second generation Hibakusha – daughter of an atomic bomb survivor.  Her mother was in Hiroshima one mile from the epicenter of the bombing, yet survived it with what seemed like little physical damage… though other truths later emerged.   She is a professor at DePaul University in Chicago, where she introduces a new generation of young people to the hard truths about the atomic bombing and its continuing impact on survivors – especially  women – their children, grandchildren, and beyond.  She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and teaches nuclear discourse and environmental ethics at DePaul.
• Aiko Kojima Hibino - is a strong advocate for equitable public education. She serves as a board member of Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education, the nonprofit that engages, informs, and empowers parents to protect and strengthen public education for all children in Chicago and Illinois, eliminate inequities in public schools, and work at the grassroots for the public good that is public education. Aiko will start teaching "Nuclear Problems and Society" course for first-year college students starting in 2023.
  
• The two school teachers who worked with Yuki and Aiko on how to teach the material to children are social science teacher Jessica Kibblewhite and science teacher Laura Gluckman, both 6th grade teachers at the National Teachers Academy in Chicago. 

• Teaach Nuclear History - curriculum materials for teaching nuclear history to grade school and high school students.  Available without charge for any interested educators.
• Dr. Yuki Miyamoto interview on Nuclear Hotseat #528:  Hiroshima Nagasaki at 76: Prof. Yuki Miyamoto, Daughter of A-Bomb Survivor
• Should School Libraries Toss Old Books?

Discarded copies of John Hershey's book HIROSHIMA tossed in the dumpster at Senn High School in Chicago -
the photo that inspired the nuclear history curriculum in Illinois.

Hurricane Ian caused devastation in Florida last week. Yet one 100% solar-powered town modeled exactly the path we must take -- renewables not nuclear -- as it survived Ian virtually unscathed, reports Linda Pentz Gunter in this week's Hot Story.

• TO BE DETERMINED

Dr. Ian Fairlie
(CLICK on picture for for access to website)

• Child leukemia rates near nuclear reactors have been shown to increase in 2014 report by Dr. Ian Fairlie. He is an independent consultant on radioactivity in the environment living in London UK and has studied radiation and radioactivity at least since the Chernobyl accident in 1986. He has a degree in radiation biology from Bart’s Hospital in London and his doctoral studies at Imperial College in London and (briefly) Princeton University in the US concerned the radiological hazards of nuclear fuel reprocessing. Fairlie formerly worked as a civil servant on the regulation of radiation risks from nuclear power stations. From 2000 to 2004, he was head of the Secretariat of the UK Government’s CERRIE Committee on internal radiation risks. Since retiring from Government service, he has been a consultant on radiation matters to the European Parliament, local and regional governments, environmental NGOs, and private individuals. His areas of interest are the radiation doses and risks arising from the radioactive releases at nuclear facilities. In 2014, Dr. Fairlie published a scientific paper that compiled the results of 60 studies on child leukemia rates near nuclear reactors and blew the lid off the nuclear industry’s claim that living near a reactor is perfectly safe. He also exposes how the industry intentionally kept that information from the public until it was forced to reveal the data in 2012.
• LINK to Dr. Fairlie’s article, “Childhood Leukemia Near Nuclear Power Stations”
• LINK to U.S. statistics on Thyroid Cancer Rates near NYC-area nuclear reactors from Joseph Mangano of Radiation and Public Health Project. Other articles available on that site as well.

International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

Pssst!  Wanna fool a country's vulnerable populations into approving a nuclear waste dump in their backyard?  Has Australia ever got a public relations firm for you! 

• Nine Stupid Nations - on the countries that own and operate the money pit that is nuclear weapons.
• Medicine and Nuclear Power- fact sheet written by Dr. Gordon for the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.     
• Another Close Call - Missile strike near Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine raises questions about use of nuclear energy at all. 

Countries in Europe that could be affected if Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility explodes.

• [Interview] Japanese anti-nuclear activist says fishers’ consent is crucial for Fukushima water release

Sign beside the highway going to Los Alamos

Karl Grossman and the FEMA nuclear survival propaganda brochure he picked up at a Pow Wow!

• Karl Grossman is a veteran, award-winning environmental investigative reporter, author of six books, and a journalism professor at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury. Karl hosts the syndicated television program Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman and has been covering nuclear issues for more than 50 years.  Here, we go over "nuclear survival" propaganda in the United States, which is popping up with greater frequency.  What is the purpose and what might be the ultimate goal?  Are we being conned into assuming nuclear war is inevitable? 
  
  We also discuss nuclear reactor danger in Ukraine, where not only the Zaporizhzhia 6-reactor complex has been shelled, but now also the South Ukraine 3-reactor Pivdennoukrainsk complex was shelled last night. 

LINKS from the interview:

• To learn more about Karl Grossman's work, go to his website: KarlGrossman.com
  
• FREE BOOK:  To download a copy free of Karl's book COVER UP: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power,   CLICK HERE.
  
• Copy of FEMA FLYER - CLICK HERE or on the graphic below: 

FEMA Nuclear Survival  Propaganda

HOW TO GET INVOLVED:
To learn about and get involved with the Initiative of the Nuclear Ban Treaty Collaborative to get media to report on the Treaty for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, CLICK HERE: for the landing page, and CLICK HERE for specific resources for action. 

https://youtu.be/LWH4tWkZpPU 

Climate change, sea level rise, and nuclear reactor risks. 

Oliver Stone.