Nuclear Hotseat

Radiation warning sign in Palomares, Spain, where a U.S. bomber plane crashed in 1966, releasing four hydrogen bombs, two of which scattered radioactive plutonium over 200 hectares (@2-1/2 acres each) of farmland and residential areas.  It's still not cleaned up.

• Dr. Michael Ketterer has a PhD in Analytical Chemistry and has worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Enforcement, at University of Denver, and he is Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Northern Arizona University. Since 2000, Michael has been conducting studies of plutonium in the environment and has analyzed samples from locations worldwide, including in soils near the former Rocky Flats facility in Colorado and fingerprinting off-site contaminants near the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in southern Ohio. He has also uncovered previous unknown areas of radiation contamination by U.S. weapons in Palomares, Spain, and two counties in California.
  
  Here, he goes over which areas have been excluded, including Piketon, Ohio; two counties in California; and Palomares, Spain.  He explains why they need to be included and what is being done to push for additional compensation for the victims.
  
  I spoke with Dr. Michael Ketterer on February 9, 2026.
  
• CONTACT FOR DR. MICHAEL KETTERER:  [email protected].
  
• Veterans for Peace - Uranium Weapons Working Group - Arthur S. Ratcliffe Mobile Community Laboratory.

It may only look like a trailer to you, but this is the Mobile Community Laboratory Dr. Ketterer referenced, where he's testing for radiation in water and soil.

Nuking the moon?!  No, no, it's gonna be safe -- really!  (The "experts" say so!)

• IPPNW Global Classroom Sign-up

Los Alamos Study Group's Executive Director Greg Mello holding the group's medal (l) and sticker to promote its message. 

• Greg Mello is Executive Director and one of the founders of the Los Alamos Study Group, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The group has worked for nuclear disarmament, environmental protection, social justice, and economic sustainability, with actions including policy research, environmental analysis, congressional education and lobbying, community organizing, and litigation.
  
  Recently, Greg took himself to the belly of the beast – the DC Nuclear Deterrence Summit 2026, where front-line purveyors of nuclear weapons components, self-serving justifications, and lobbying opportunities lay plans and made alliances to grab mountains of taxpayer money while preparing the means to obliterate the world.
  
  To even walk into such an environment, Greg Mello shows himself to be a braver soul than I. We spoke on Feb. 16, 2024.

• Link to sign up for Los Alamos Study Group email
• Melissa Parke, Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nucler Weapons on why there's no such thing as nuclear "deterrence" - Nuclear Hotseat #37 from August 12, 2025
• Steven Starr's Nuclear Hotseat interview: Nukes in Space and the EMP Threat
• Steven Starr's book:  Nuclear High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse: A Mortal Threat to the U.S. Power Grid and U.S. Nuclear Power Plants - This is a non-Amazon link for purchase.

• W80-5 “just came up,” will go on SLCM-N, weapons directors say, Sarah Salem, Jan 30, 2026

Linda Pentz Gunter

Nuclear nations should disarm first before telling other countries such as Iran they can't have the bomb.

Navajo Nation children make their wants and needs clear. 

Anna Rondon on government's push for uranium extraction disguised as a "clean up":

• Anna Rondon is a dedicated lifetime advocate for the rights of Navajo Nation and all Indigenous people. For the past 40 years, she has worked in various leadership positions, including for the Navajo Nation government, the Eastern Navajo Agency-Local Government Office, the Navajo Nation Chichiltah Chapter, and the Navajo Nation Department of Health. She is currently with the New Mexico Social Justice Equity Institute.Here, she explains the current push that calls itself a "clean-up" of abandoned uranium mines, but is really a scheme to extract commercially-viable uranium to be sold for corporate profit. It’s a money-grab for extractive resources that will leave the Navajo people stuck with more waste, no clean-up, and all the responsibility.I spoke with Anna Rondon on January 31, 2026.

• Anna Rondon - Contact
• LINK to John Trudell song Anna uses for inspiration:

https://youtu.be/rHQnEyEv3gY?si=IF29ZtfQSpfsp6v0

Kevin Kamps and Holtec's Planned Palisades Nuclear Restart in Michigan:

• Kevin Kamps is the Radioactive Waste Watchdog with Beyond Nuclear and our go-to source on a wide range of radioactive waste issues. Here, he brings us up to date on the problems with Holtec’s planned restart of the shuttered Palisades nuclear reactor in southern Michigan, on the shores of Lake Michigan.
  
• I spoke with Kevin Kamps on January 16, 2026

Alistair Burnett, Head of Media for the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) provides a look back at issues from 2025 and a summary of where we are now, including the latest on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, or TPNW. He reports directly from ICAN's headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. It includes an interview w/Florian Eblenkamp, ICAN’s Advocacy Coordinator.

Jack Cohen-Joppa, co-coordinator of the Nuclear Resister, presents another story about activists who stood their ground, taken out of our shared nuclear past - with this one still active in our present: the ongoing and still current tale of Mordechai Vanunu in Israel.

The 2024 film NUKED presents the story of the US nuclear betrayal of the people of the Marshall Islands after WWII. The film  won several awards, including Best Documentary at 2024 International Uranium Film Festival and has been picked up for international distribution by the Al Jazeera Media Network.

March 1 marks Marshallese Remembrance Day, formally known as Nuclear Victims' Day and Nuclear Survivors' Day. It’s a national holiday in the Marshall Islands which honors the victims and survivors of nuclear testing done in the area in the 1950s. With March 1 just around the corner, we thought the timing was appropriate to bring your attention to the issues as told through this film.

I interviewed NUKED director Andrew Nisker and Rhea Moss-Christian, a Marshallese Islander interviewed in the film who is executive director and former chair of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) She previously chaired the Marshall Islands National Nuclear Commission and advised the Marshall Islands Government on oceans and trade.

I spoke with Andrew Nisker and RHEA MOSS-CHRISTIAN on January 16, 2026.

• LINK to view NUKED

Doomsday Clock jumps four seconds to 85 seconds to Midnight and planetary annihilation.

Atomic scientists set their "Doomsday Clock" closer than ever to midnight, citing aggressive behavior by nuclear powers Russia, China and the United States, fraying nuclear arms control, conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, and AI worries among factors driving risks for global disaster.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the clock to 85 seconds before midnight, the theoretical point of annihilation. That is four seconds closer than it was set last year. The Chicago-based nonprofit created the clock in 1947 during the Cold War tensions that followed World War Two to warn the public about how close humankind was to destroying the world.

• Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock Statement
• Video of the January 27, 2026 announcement and speakers

In trying to focus on nuclear issues, we need to melt ICE... but not reactors!

Demonstration in New Mexico against the High Level Radioactive Waste Dump

• Last week, we learned that the US Supreme Court has refused to hear a petition by Beyond Nuclear to block the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) license approval for construction and operation of Holtec International’s highly radioactive waste consolidated interim storage facility (CISFs) targeting southeastern New Mexico.
  
  Despite the federal court rulings, hard-won state laws in both New Mexico and Texas block the opening of these environmentally unjust CISFs, by prohibiting the issuance of state permits needed to break ground, unless the state consents. Still, the way to maintain this block to creating these nuclear waste dumps has been made more difficult, and an outcome that supports and maintains the current situation is not guaranteed.
  
  To learn more, we spoke with Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Watchdog - some of us think its more like bulldog - with Beyond Nuclear. He’s a veteran of this battle, knows where all the nuclear bodies are buried, and keeps trying to bury more of them… metaphorically speaking, of course.
  
• We spoke with Kevin Kamps on January 16, 2026

Screen shot from the film Kuannersuit / Kvanefjeld, on mining in Greenland.  Local resident shown in front of
Kvanefjeld mountain; site of one of the richest rare earth mineral resources deposits in the world.

• Professor Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway made the 2017 film Kuannersuit / Kvanefjeld, exploring the divisive debate over a proposed uranium and rare earth mine at Kvanefjeld mountain in Narsaq, Greenland, highlighting the conflict between potential economic independence and threats to traditional farming and culture, with the film acting as part of a larger art project to encourage dialogue on nuclear and mining impacts in the indigenous community.
  
  Narsaq is located next to the pristine Kvanefjeld mountain (above0; site of one of the richest rare earth mineral resources deposits in the world, and one of the largest sources of uranium. For generations the farming near Kvanefjeld has been Greenland’s only agricultural industry. At the time the film was made, this way of life was in danger of being threatened, as Greenland considered foreign investments in an open pit mine that could become the fifth-largest uranium mine and second-biggest rare earth extraction operation in the world.
  
  Autogena and Portway’s film portrays a community divided on the issue of uranium mining. It explores the difficult decisions and trade-offs faced by a culture seeking to escape a colonial past and define its own identity in a globalised wdorld. While this film was released ten years ago, it is one of the few resources we have for actually hearing from the residents of that country, what they valuem and the threats their mineral resources have already put them through. While the dangers expressed specificallty in this film have passed, current events are bringing it back into play.
  
  Audio is from the 2018 International Uranium Film Festival, with co-director Lise Autogena reading a letter from a Greenlander.  Pardon the sound quality.)

Even worse news at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as environmental oversight is set to be weakened.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. 

Military personnel at an Army base in Alaska responsible for protecting the U.S. homeland from nuclear missile attack has struggled to feed its soldiers in recent months.  Troops at Alaska's Fort Greely - which controls 40 of this country's 44 specialized missiles designed to shoot down nuclear missiles targetting the United States. - are getting shorted on food!  Why?  Because of the Trump administration's efforts to shrink the federal workforce,.  Nuclear deterrance on an empty stomach/. low blood sugar?  The Grumpies/. Sheesh! 

Lynda Williams

• Lynda Williams is a physicist, educator, and lifelong anti-nuclear activist who writes and performs songs as the “Physics Chanteuse,” a “science entertainer.” She battles against nuclear greenwashing (aka lying) with public presentations, lectures, theatre, and a ferocious activist spirit, as well as serving on official panels and committees considering nuclear issues in her home state of Hawaii. Here, she discusses the latest developments in Hawaii’s consideration of nuclear power.
  
• Melissa Bumstead is Founder and Co-Director of Parents Against the Santa Susana Field Lab. Here, she provides us with a brief rundown on the history - and the recent shocking development - in the fight for Boeing to provide a full clean-up of the toxic, radioactive Superfund site.

• SIGN THE PETITION:  No More Kids with Cancer - CleanUp the Santa Susana Field Lab

• Are Trump's "yes men" poised to license a dangerous new reactor?

Sambal goreng udang (Indonesian sambal shrimp) - radioactive???

More radioactive food warnings from the FDA.  You really don't want to have any Indonesian shrimp dishes! 

• Come join us as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announces the 2026 setting for thesDoomsday Clock, the symbolic masure of how close the world is to nuclear annihilation.  It will be announced on Tuesday, January 27, 2026, during a live news conference at 10 am Eastern Time/1500 Greenwich Mean Time.  You can access the Bulletin's livestream HERE.
• John Barnard, the inventive pianist heard on the Nuclear Hotseat theme, has passed away after a long illness.  We'll think of him every time we hear that jaunty memory. 

Logo for BOMBSHELL on PBS American Experience

KEYSTONE COVER PHOTO: NYTimes science reporter William L. Laurence - aka "Atomic Bill" -
with Gen. Leslie Groves at the Trinity site. Credit: U.S. Army Corp of Engineers

Atomic bomb "bedtime story" sold to Americans and the media manipulation it took to create it.
Having spent more than 13 years researching and writing my play about William L. Laurence, the NYTimes science reporter who was embedded in the Manhattan Project and who is a central source of the disinformation about the bomb from its earliest days, I was astonished to meet two people as obsessed with this obscure journalist as I was. Together, they have made a brilliant documentary film that covers not just Laurence, but the entire story of how the atomic aka nuclear story has been manipulated and how what we accept as gospel about the bomb and its use in WWII is a carefully constructed lie.

Ben Loeterman directed and Gaia de Simoni produced BOMBSHELL, which carries the tag line: “They created the bomb; then created its story.” It tells of not just Laurence, but other journalists, including John Hersey, whose work fed into or contradicted the government-approved atomic bomb narrative at the end of WWII. It’s an astonishing piece of filmmaking that premiered January 6, 2026, on PBS American Experience. 


I first met Ben and Gaia last September at the Westheimer Peace Symposium at Wilmington College in Ohio, where we shared a panel discussion and a lot of energetic side conversation. In this full-length interview, I was able to ask them all the questions I wanted to know about the film, its content, their process, and even how it relates to my play.

You can access the full film HERE.  Or go to their WEBSITE.

Devastation at the west end of Miyuki Bridge, Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. People suffering burns received dabs of transformer oil brought from the nearby Hiroshima Electric Railway. (Distance from hypocenter 2200 meters.)
Photo taken August 6, 1945, by Yoshito Matsushige, Chugoku Shimbun.  Credit: Chugoku Shimbun/Kyodo News Images

Libbe HaLevy's Play ATOMIC BILL AND THE PAYMENT DUE, dealing with William L Laurence and issues of media manipulation raised in BOMBSHELL, will be offered free of charge to the general public on Monday, January 19, 2026, 8:30 pm Eastern/5:30 pm Pacific time. REGISTER HERE to access PDF of the script and to participate in the online feedback session. Once registered, you will receive an email with links to the scripts - we ask that these by read in advance of the event.

As the Athena Project explains:
Athena Project’s Read & Rant program seeks to combine the sharing of theatrical work with the wider public and the new play development aspects of our former Plays In Progress Series while also fostering collaboration between playwrights and dramaturgs. Think book club for plays! Learn what makes a good script, discuss how it affects us, and explore the ways it links to the larger world.

January 19, 2026:  Atomic Bill and the Payment Due by Libbe HaLevy

SYNOPSIS:  The Oppenheimer-adjacent true story of media manipulation at the dawn of the Atomic Age and William L. Laurence, the New York Times reporter who sold his soul to get the story.  While researching another story for her anti-nuclear podcast, Jessie stumbles across mention of a reporter embedded in the Manhattan Project who was the source for all the earliest public information about the bomb. Through her search for long-suppressed information, interactions on the spiritual plane with dead journalists, and her own time-limited future, she embarks on a secret, deadly plan to raise visibility for nuclear issues. 

"In the work Gaia and I do as documentary filmmakers, we feel we’re working with handcuffs. We can only use a picture we find. And we can only use it if we find it. We can only use the written words we find. We don’t have the creative license, we don’t have the creative spirit to think about what could have been or how to break this down more psychologically. And that (your play) is astounding to me and it’s astounding to me that you did it. So I would say the same word, “audacity,” today. It was really terrific.” - Ben Loeterman

Felice and Jack Cohen-Joppa, founders of The Nuclear Resister, staying on-brand for their shared June 26 birthday.

Yes, fighting nuclear is an uphill battle - but sometimes we win!  Here, for a year-end boost of optimism, hope and community is Jack Cohen-Joppa. He and his wife, Felice Cohen-Joppa, are co-founders and co-coordinators of The Nuclear Resister, a 45 year-old newsletter reporting on anti-nuclear and anti-war civil resistance actions, with a focus on supporting activists imprisoned for their acts of conscience.

The Nuclear Resister has become a monthly feature on Nuclear Hotseat, with Jack providing stories from our history that most of us - myself included - have never heard.  So come, let's end 2025 on a hopeful note, with visions of successful actions to stop the nukesters dancing in our heads, hearts, and minds. 

• We start with the inaugural report, on NH #695 from October 15, 2024. - In a new monthly feature.  Jack Cohen–Joppa, who along with his wife, Felice Cohen–Joppa, publish The Nuclear Resister newsletter and have since 1980.  Here, Jack shares stories from their archive, bringing our shared activists history to life.  https://nuclearhotseat.com/podcast/nobel-peace-prize-small-modular-reactor-weapon/
• Fifty years ago, in a classic case of civil disobedience, a young anti-nuclear activist toppled a tower and blazed a trail through the courtroom that nuclear resisters have followed ever since. https://nuclearhotseat.com/podcast/combating-nuclear-greenwashing/ From NH #702 - Dec 3 2024.


  BTW, that farm in Western Massachusetts had among its members a very young Harvey Wasserman, who coined the term “NO NUKES!” and used what he learned from this action to fuel his activism for decades since then.
• 717 - March 25, 2025 - 35 years ago, rural communities in Western New York took nonviolent direct action to Bump the Dump, stopping the state and the nuclear industry from trashing their countryside with ‘low-level’ nuclear waste.” Jack Cohen-Joppa tells the true tale of two counties that stood up and shut the door when the nuclear industry came knocking. https://nuclearhotseat.com/podcast/three-mile-island-reactor-restart/
• 713 - February 25, 2025 - In 1980, the Plowshares Eight hammered on nuclear warhead nosecones and sparked a global movement of direct action for nuclear disarmament. https://nuclearhotseat.com/podcast/united-nations-tpnw-nuclear-weapons-ican/

And here is a link to a film starring Martin Sheen and the Plowshares 8, just prior to their sentencing. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUph8GWFupE

• Activism against nukes was hardly limited to the United States. In a legendary anti-nuclear victory, British women came together at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, and succeeded in kicking U.S. nuclear missiles out of England. Here’s The Nuclear Resister from NH #709 - January 28, 2025. Links: https://nuclearhotseat.com/podcast/anti-nuke-eco-broadcast-network/
• 722 - April 29, 2025 - Missouri is the “Show Me!” state, and the Missouri Peace Planters did just that when they repeatedly occupied multiple nuclear missile silos in the summer of 1988, causing a furor that helped raise awareness of this hidden danger at the height of the Cold War. Here’s Jack-Cohen-Joppa with this month’s Nuclear Resister. https://nuclearhotseat.com/podcast/hb-305-new-nukes-stealth-legislation/
• 739 - August 26, 2025 - Milk and cookies time! Here’s another story of heroism in the fight against nuclear weapons with Jack Cohen-Joppa of The Nuclear Resister. This week, focus on the protest events surrounding 1985’s 40th anniversary of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• 750 - November 11, 2025 - This month’s contribution to our understanding the history of nuclear resistance: A big ELF that menaced the North Woods and threatened the world for thirty years was finally chased out by the teach-ins, petitions, lawsuits, and hand saws of popular resistance.  https://nuclearhotseat.com/podcast/savannah-river-site-nuclear-weapons/

And from the final thought:

• Ways of Knowing: A Navajo Nuclear History https://www.waysofknowing.us/ " class="text-nh underline hover:text-nh-dark"> https://www.waysofknowing.us/

Sister Megan Rice getting a well-earned hug upon her release from prison for her non-violent break-in to the Y12 "U.S. Uranium Fort Knox" to protest nuclear weapons.  She served more than two years in prison. 

• Sr. Megan Rice was a Roman Catholic nun who was arrested more than 40 times for protesting America’s military industrial complex and nuclear weapons -. She’s best known for breaking into Y-12, one of the world’s largest and most highly guarded uranium storage sites – the “Fort Knox” of the US uranium stockpile.
  
  But on July 28, 2012, this diminutive octogenarian nun and two other senior antinuclear activists used simple bolt cutters and their beliefs to walk into Y-12 – and not be noticed for more than 30 minutes! Our extremely embarrassed government threw the book at these three activists, charging them with “sabotage” – a felony with a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. She and the others served just over two years before being released.
  
  Sr. Megan passed away on Oct 17, 2021 at the age of 91, and there is no better commemoration of her life and work than her own words, recorded for Nuclear Hotseat on May 25, 2012, just after her release from prison (pictured above).

ICAN's Susi Snyder, holding the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize

Susi Snyder is Director of Programmes at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.  Her responsibilities include facilitating the development and execution of ICAN's key programmes, including the management of ICAN's divestment work and engagement with the financial sector. For more than a decade, Susi headed the Don’t Bank on the Bomb project, which was her position when we spoke for this interview on May 10, 2019.  Her information is as relevant now as it was then. The report on nuclear bomb producing companies that she references is updated every year. The 2025 report, "At Great Cost: The Companies Building Nuclear Weapons and their Financiers" is a joint publication of ICAN and PAX.

Susi has contributed to a number of recent books, including Forbidden (2023), A World Free from Nuclear Weapons (2020),  Sleepwalking to Armageddon: The Threat of Nuclear Annihilation

• Tim Deere-Jones is a marine biologist – a radioactivity researcher and consultant, and a regular contributor to Nuclear Hotseat.  He specializes in analysis of the radiation threats to our planet’s waters from a wide range of nuclear sources.  Here, he looks at the impact that the December 8 7/6 earthquake off the northeast coast of Japan may have had on the tritium-contaminated radioactive water being released from Fukushima.
  
  I spoke with Tim Deere-Jones on December 14, 2025.
  
• CONTACT for Tim Deere-Jones:  [email protected]

Helen Young is an Emmy award-winning broadcast journalist who has forged a career as a filmmaker and writer by blending a passion for investigative reporting with a commitment to illuminating critical issues of the day.  She was a staff writer and producer for CBS News and NBC News for twenty years and has also produced for MSNBC and Al Roker Productions.  Our original interview focused on her award-winning film, The Nuns, the Priests and the Bombs, which focused on the Plowshares movement and specifically the actions of Sister Megan Rice, who will be featured on next week’s show.

Having such an experienced journalist on the other end of my Zoom, I asked her about strategies for activists trying to get more nuclear coverage and her suggestions are cornerstone in their importance.  Here are Helen Young's media suggestions for activists working on the media. 

I spoke with her on Thursday, November 11, 2021

Poster for Helen Young's film, The Nuns, the Priests and the Bombs:
nunspriestsbombsthefilm.com

LINK to NH #543 - Full Nuclear Hortseat interview with Helen Young. 
WEBSITE:  nunspriestsbombsthefilm.com