Nuclear Hotseat

Radiation/Radioactivity – learning the difference, getting it straight:
Dr. Gordon Edwards, Joseph Mangano

Radiation/Radioactivity - it's all nuclear madness, no matter what you call it.  But here, two experts give us background on each term, as well as some of how the nuclear industry does not want us to know or talk about any of it.

• Dr. Gordon Edwards, a Canadian scientist, mathematician, and nuclear consultant, is head of of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.
• Joseph Mangano is a health researcher, an epidemiologist who has served as a director of Radiation and Public Health Project 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). He managed the study of Strontium-90 in baby teeth, and now manages the citizen-based radiation monitoring programs near the Indian Point NY and Oyster Creek NJ nuclear plants.

To the International Atomic Energy Agency, radiation dangers are not radiation dangers... until they think it's convenient to frighten people with the ongoing, ever-present threat of them.

• Collapsed Florida Condo Sends a Giant Nuke Warning by Harvey Wasserman.
• Nuclear Weapons Have Always Been Illegal; It’s Long Past Time to Abolish Them by Jacqueline Cabasso is Executive Director of the Western States Legal Foundation, an affiliate of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms. 

Plutonium Pit (revered to above as the "core") is the detonator at the heart of nuclear bombs
-- and the United States is planning to make up to 80 pits a year for NEW nuclear weapons,
in addition to the 1,500 ready-to-use devices already in our arsenal. 

It's not often that I prep a show's interviews and then throw them out on Tuesday morning because something more important has happened -- but that's the case this week.  On Monday, June 28, a coalition of community and public interest groups filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) regarding plans to more than quadruple the production of plutonium pits - the detonating core of nuclear weapons - and split production between the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. 

Today, June 29, representatives of this lawsuit held a press conference on a lawsuit filed against the Biden administration over nuclear bomb core (pit) production plans.  Nuclear Hotseat attended, asked questions, and was so impressed with the clarity of the information, we asked for permission to carry excerpts on this week's program. 

• Jay Coughlin, Executive Director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, who explains what plutonium pits are and what’s wrong with the plan to create more of them.
• Tom Clements is director of Savannah River Site (SRS) Watch in Columbia, South Carolina. He speaks about the specific problems and inappropriateness of selecting SRS as a site to produce plutonium pits.  
• Queen Quet, the Chieftess and head of state for the Gullah/Geeche Nation and founder of the Gullah/Geeche Sea Island Coalition.  Her people live in proximity to SRS and she speaks on the human toll of ramping up nuclear pit production.
• Marylia Kelley of Tri-Valley CARES in Livermore, California, connected the dots as to how a new, untested change in nuclear weaponry developed at the Livermore Labs is being used to push through these new plutonium pits – and why they are not needed.
• LINK to Full Press Conference:  https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=864853474103335&ref=watch_permalink

Note to Chinese water distributor:  "Fukushima" is not positive branding for your product, whether true or not. 

Nuclear Guinea Pigs - Marshall Islanders in the south Pacific were bombarded with 106 nuclear bombs, getting hit by the radiation equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima atomic bombs every day for 12 years.  Now, they want their story told and "justice" - whatever that can possibly mean.

Nuclear Guinea Pigs:Desmond Narain Doulatram, a citizen of the Marshall Islands, is co-founder of the nonprofit organization REACH-MI (Radiation Exposure Awareness Crusaders for Humanity- Marshall Islands), where he serves as Research Director and Advisor. REACH-MI  provides information and explores ways to address unresolved nuclear issues to improve community conditions, people's lives, and achieve "Nuclear Justice."  Desmond is an in-kind researcher for the Republic of the Marshall Islands' National Nuclear Commission and has presented at anti-nuclear related conferences, workshops, trainings, and seminars at the University of Basel in Switzerland, Oregon State University, University of San Francisco, Melbourne University, University of Tokyo, Toronto’s Humber College, and College of the Marshall Islands.  He is currently a Social Science Instructor  at the College of the Marshall Islands teaching Issues in Pacific Studies and Contemporary Social Issues in Micronesia, where the Nuclear Legacy of the Marshall Islands and the greater Pacific Region continue to be hotly debated issues amongst its people. We spoke on Sunday, June 6, 2021.

Desmond Narain Doulatram (l) and Nuclear Hotseat's Libbe HaLevy (r)

• Keyoka Kabua, Secretary for the National Nuclear Commission [email protected]
• Arianna Tibon, Education Coordinator for the National Nuclear Commission 
  [email protected]
• Adam Jonas Horowitz' powerful documentary Nuclear Savage, which tells of the    https://www.nuclearsavage.com/

Locations of atomic bomb blasts in the Marshall Islands.

UFOs and Fukushima?  Hey, why not...!  (Oy!)

• Tooth Fairy Project on Fermi Radiation - article by Radiation and Public Health's epidemiologist Joseph Mangano and Christie Brinkley

Nuclear Hotseat 10th Anniversary, and there's more nuclear news than ever:
San Onofre lawsuit, China radiation leak info contradictions, Exelon Illinois bailout may be scuttled by French EDF's concerns. 

• San Onofre owners Southern California Edison plan to dismantle spent fuel pools - the last line of defense in a radiation accident on the California coast.  Now a lawsuit filed by Samuel Lawrence Foundation seeks to retain spent fuel pools and have a "hot cell" - repackaging unit - built on-site in case of future radiation accidents.  To learn more, we spoke with Cathy Iwane.  She has a post-graduate degree in Japanese, taught English in the public and private sector in Japan for 25 years, and co-founded Gaia English Academy in Wakayama, Japan. Since moving to Southern California from Japan after Fukushima, she was interpreter for Former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan for the public education panel entitled, “Fukushima: Ongoing Lessons.”  Cathy is a Board Member of the Samuel Lawrence Foundation and remains engaged in the effort to educate the public about the risks of nuclear waste, especially at San Onofre.  We spoke on Sunday, June 13, 2021.

Lawrence O'Donnell report on San Onofre problems and lawsuit:

https://youtu.be/sNlEOqCRTMI

• San Onofre One Pager on the SLF Lawsuit, going to trial June 16 in LA Superior Court:
  *Includes Petition (click-to-send email form letter; can be edited) to each CA Coastal Commissioner telling them why the issues in the lawsuit are important to listeners: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/protect-our-coast/
• California Coastal Commission Meeting Agenda & Speaker Submission Request link for listeners:  Meetings are held each month over a period of 3 days. Unless San Onofre is already on the agenda for future meetings, speakers must specify that they will speak in General Comments.
• Link to sign up to speak and/or attend Southern Cal Edison's Community Engagement Meeting on June 17, 5:30-8:30 to voice support for SLF Lawsuit :

• BLOCKBUSTER DEVELOPMENT:  Exelon's New York nuclear business partner, France's EDF, is not pleased with the company's plans to spin off all their money-losing nuclear reactors into a separate company... for which EDF would continue to be liable.  Dave Kraft of Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS) in Chicago gives us a five minute update.

• Downloadable PDF of the Crane's article:  Exelon's corporate partner seeks to slow down spinoff train.
• Downloadable PDF of article outing Exelon lobbyist bragging about how lobbying pays off, big time, in taxpayer dollars. 

Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer at Fairewinds Energy Information, being interviewed
on Al Jazieera regarding the nuclear radiation leak at China's Taishan Nuclear Power Plant.
CLICK ON PICTURE OR THIS LINK TO ACCESS VIDEO.

• Karl Grossman article:  Automation of Space Warfare