Nuclear Hotseat

Idaho National Laboratory in the southeastern portion of the state has, in the past, disposed of radioactive waste in 55 gallon drums by dumping them and covering them with dirt - pictured above.  Are you feeling safe?  

The Idaho National Laboratory - a major Department of Energy site in the nuclear complex - has appeared in stories about waste and submarines and a smattering of other issues, but it’s never been a real focal point on Nuclear Hotseat… until now.  We learn details of the site and the decades of activist pushback for clean-up by talking with three members of the Snake River Alliance, which serves as Idaho’s nuclear watchdog and clean energy champion.  We spoke on Friday, February 4, 2022:

• Beatrice Brailsford grew up on a ranch in southern Idaho, graduated from Cornell University, and taught at the University of Idaho. She started volunteering with the Snake River Alliance in 1987 and retired from her position as its program director in 2019. During those years, the Alliance helped stop construction of nuclear weapons plants at the Idaho National Laboratory and across the DOE complex, helped limit shipments of nuclear waste to Idaho, and was a leading advocate for cleanup of nuclear contamination at INL.
• Leigh Ford is a 4th generation Idahoan and both her grandfathers worked at the Idaho National Laboratory. Now, she serves as Executive Director of the SNAKE RIVER ALLIANCE.
• Amy O’Brien was a professional dancer who performed on Broadway, was a member of Twyla Tharp’s Company, choreographed for and toured with Mikhail Baryshnikov and his White Oak Dance Project.  She serves on the Board of the Snake River Alliance and is a member of the Days of Action working group for the Nuclear Ban Collective, which was formed after the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entered into force on January 22, 2021.We spoke on Friday, February 4, 2022

Idaho National Laboratory, site of the first nuclear reactor in the world to make useable amounts of electricity.  It lit these four lightbulbs on Dec. 20, 1951.

• Beatrice Brailsford on the history of INL:  OUR RADIOACTIVE BACKYARD
• International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN):  New report on Schools of Mass Destruction. 
• ICAN University Pledge
• Nuclear Blues:
  
• Nuclear Blues lyrics
• Art Exhibit in Santa Fe, New Mexico:  Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology 

Nothing like getting your nuclear information from a former Brazilian model with a "non-profit" that does not show up anywhere as a non-profit.

• Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is hiring!
• Also Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:  Doomday Clock remains at 100 seconds to midnight. 

Nuclear Ukraine - 15 nuclear reactors, Russian troops massing on the border only 120 miles from a six-reactor complex, and the possible weaponization of nuclear energy facilities.  Oh - and then there's Chernobyl in the north... 

Nuclear Ukraine - No, not bombs, but 15 nuclear reactors on the ground, including six of them just 120 miles away from where Russia has amassed troops on the Ukrainian border.  And let's not forget the radioactive remains of Chernobyl in the north.  What are the risks?  What is behind this sudden military build-up?  While the United States and Russia ramp up the rhetoric and the threat, might there be another narrative going on here?

This week, two guests with knowledge, expertise - and a very different perspective - provide an alternative interpretation of what's going on... and why.

• Karl Grossman is an 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.
• Bruce Gagnon is the co-founder and Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.  He follows international issues, the threat of war, and the dangers posed by nuclear anything in space.

• Book recommended by Karl: Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril (Studies in International and Strategic Affairs) by Bennett Ramberg
• Karl's March 28, 2016 Counterpunch article: Nuclear Power Plants: Pre-Deployed WMDs 
• Bruce Gagnon's Blog:  Organizing Notes

A non-toxic, fungi-based means of cleaning up radioactive nuclear waste seems to be possible.  So why are scientists saying it would be great in space as a food source, rather than trying it out on earth to clean up the radioactive waste problem we already have?

• PILGRIM WASTE - Shape of Bay Means Poisons Would Linger by Christine Legere.
• Former Nuclear Leaders: Say "No" to New Reactors
• European Green Taxonomy and Nuclear Power:  5 Former Prime Ministers of Japan have Taken A Public Stand Against Inclusion
• Nuclear Warfare Without Bombs by Linda Pentz Gunter of Beyond Nuclear
• Atomic Cover-Up - free viewing of 29-minute version of award-winning film - good until February 15:  https://bfcfilmfestival.org/short2022, scroll down.

Nuclear Arctic Radiation Dangers - Pictured above is 1981-2001 average polar icecap (yellow outline) compared with the impact of global warming and record temperatures on the Arctic as of 2020.  (Graphic:  Scott Duncan)

• 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]

Tim Deere-Jones post-interview with Libbe HaLevy

If drinking beer brewed from Fukushima rice gives you anxiety about consuming anything grown in Fukushima (because of radiation concerns), and you drink enough of the beer, does it drown out your anxiety?

• Fulfill the NPT: From Nuclear Threats to Human Security - open letter
• Nuclear Waste Risks can be "Minimized" and Other Myths by Linda Pentz Gunter
• California Tsunami Alert was a Wake-Up Call on San Onofre Flood Risk by Paul Blanch
• OPEN LETTER to nuclear nations, pledging no first use of nuclear weapons.  Available for you and your group(s) to sign. 
  
  
   
• Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 2022 Doomsday Clock statement

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Doomsday Clock, 2022 -
Still 100 seconds to midnight... meaning apocalyptic nuclear doom! 

Tonga Tsunami nuclear dangers erupted from underwater volcanic explosion, seen here from space.  This week's episode explores this massive natural disaster's real and potential impact on nuclear reactors at Fukushima in Japan and San Onofre in southern California.

Tonga tsunami nuclear dangers are explored in two featured interview this week.  We look at the possible impact both on Fukushima and United States domestic nuclear reactor sites, most specifically San Onofre in southern California

• Nancy Foust is Communications Manager & Research Team Member SimplyInfo.org, a not-for-profit research collective that holds and manages the world’s largest public archive of data on the Fukushima disaster.  We spoke about the Tonga underwater volcano eruption of January 15 and what's currently known about the impact of its resulting tsunami on Fukushima in Japan.
• Public Watchdogs is a nonprofit advocacy group focused on the shuttered San Onofre nuclear generating station in southern California.  San Onofre is now, in essence, a nuclear waste dump, with 3.6 Million pounds of deadly radioactive nuclear waste stored on site, on the beach, 108 feet from the Pacific Ocean, in a USGS designated tsunami inundation zone. We talked with its two heads to find out how the Tonga tsunami has affected San Onofre and point out what other problems could be manifest:
  
  • Public Watchdogs Executive Director Charles Langley holds as his personal vision to:  "unscrew the inscrutable” through lucid communications on complex regulatory and infrastructure issues. I embrace the conviction that access to clean water and affordable, sustainable energy is a fundamental human right, that when honored, sustains life, nourishes human dignity, and encourages world
    peace."
  • Board member Nina Babiarz began her career in journalism and has high level experience in: Training Development/Delivery Coordination, Facilitation, Project and Program Management, Strategic Planning, Negotiation, Marketing Materials Development and Outreach Delivery.
    

Does France actually think those new, untried nuclear reactor designs from EDF are going to be approved by 2023 and operational by 2037???  On time and on budget will be new concepts for any nuclear new build... but from EDF?  Sacre bleu! 

• Can Santa Fe Survive as a Nuclear Weapons Suburb? - Op-ed by Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group.
• New Mexico Archbishop Pushes for Nuclear Disarmament
• Why is the Santa Susana Nuclear Accident Still Being Covered Up? by Warren Olney

Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator - Gregory Jaczko, former Chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, spills the beans and his guts.  A REALLY important book - and we talk all about it in a SPECIAL extended interview. 

• Greg Jaczko, the former Chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has published an explosive new book: Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator.  (NOTE:  Link is to Amazon, but we recommend you order it through your local independent book store.) In it, he gets honest with the American people about the dangers of nuclear technology, which he labels “failed,” “dangerous,” “not reliable.”  He particularly comes down against nuclear as having any part in mitigating the problems of climate change/global warming.  In this extended Nuclear Hotseat interview, Jaczko brings us inside the NRC’s response to Fukushima, the “precipice” on which nuclear safety balances, his own growing doubts about how safe nuclear reactors are in the United States, and how, ultimately, it was that concern with safety that probably brought him down.  Originally recorded on January 10, 2019, just after his book was published.

Former NRC Chair Gregory Jaczko - "Rogue" Nuclear Regulator, indeed! 

• “Jaczko Nixes Nukes” – A Backgrounder on Greg Jaczko’s book and the issues he addresses from Dr. Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.

If you wanna know if Ontario's aging nuclear reactors ar safe to operate, it's gonna cost you... $10,000.00.  Now - is that Canadian or USD?

If you don't agree that an environmental NGO should need to pay $10,000 to receive safety information on nukes requested from a public utility through a FOIA, please send a message to CNSC President Rumina Velshi and OPG President Ken Hartwick calling on them to release pressure tube safety assessments for independent analysis.

Picture of Google Earth Halloween lawn protest of proposed Theddlethorpe, UK nuclear storage facility.  And knowing Google Earth, this is going to be up for years!  Brava!

• Film:  The Final Years of Majuro, which features testimony on the United States bombing of Rongelap in the Marshall Islands by Bravo survivor Nerje Joseph, 74, who died recently.
• Ian Zabarte, Head Man of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation - "The most bombed nation in the world."  Recent interview with rt.com.
• Russian footage of the explosion of Tsar Bomba - the world's largest nuclear explosion.  50 million tons of TNT.  Visions of Hell on Earth, anyone?
• Our friends at the Snake River Alliance, committed to Idaho's clean energy future, offers this little ditty for us all to sing along to!

https://youtu.be/oEMYR3zJJQw

Holtec Pilgrim Radioactive Water Dump is coming up against serious community pushback.  They're hearing from Cape Downwinders (logo above), Pilgrim Watch, and government reps.
(Poster above is by graphic designer and educator Lance Hidy.  Signed posters are available as a fundraiser for Cape Downwinders if you scroll down HERE)


• Holtec Pilgrim Radioactive Water Dump - is an action that the decommissioning company has planned for the radioactive water from the reactor spent fuel pool.  But Holtec has been receiving ever-growing pushback from Massachusetts representatives and the public.  Diane Turco is Director of the Cape Downwinders on Cape Cod, a group that’s been fighting against the Pilgrim nuclear power reactor and its impact on the community for more than 40 years.  She gives us both the historical perspective and an update on what's planned for a public meeting with Holtec on January 24.
• CAPE DOWNWINDERS SPEAK-OUT
  January 24 at 5:30 pm EST at the Plymouth Town Hall.
  At 6:30 pm, the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel will meet in the same location.  HOLTEC REPS WILL BE ON THE PANEL. 

The Japanese government and TEPCO will say almost anything to create the illusion that everything is OK in Fukushima.  They want people to return to live there despite the radiation.  And now they're touting that there's absolutely nothing wrong with them dumping 1,280,000 tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean.  As for their wiggle-worded press releases and "news" stories -- yowzah!  Talk about doubletalk! 

• Can Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Help Mitigate Climate Change? by Arjun Makhijani and M.V. Ramana  (Short answer:  NO!)
• Nuclear Power Doesn't Belong in the Green New Deal - Linda Pentz Gunter of Beyond Nuclear
• Our Oceans Are Not Sewers - Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Energy Education
• Happy Birthday to Hiroshima survivor Setsuko Thurlow.  Here is a short film of her passionate call to action, delivered on the day that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted at the United Nations – 7 July 2017.