Nuclear Hotseat

• 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

Zoomathon interview with Prof. Steven Starr

• Professor Steven Starr directed the Clinical Laboratory Science Program at the University of Missouri in Columbia for 11 years until his retirement in 2021. He is an Associate of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and has been a Board Member and Senior Scientist with Physicians for Social Responsibility. Starr also teaches a class for the MU Peace Studies Program entitled Nuclear Weapons: Environmental, Health, and Social Effects.
  
  Starr began making presentations at side panels at the United Nations in 2007, sometimes working as an expert witness for Switzerland, New Zealand, and Chile at the UN offices in NYC and Geneva. In 2010, Starr addressed the UN First Committee, discussing the environmental consequences of nuclear war, including nuclear winter and nuclear famine.
  
  I spoke with Steven Starr on June 19, 2023.

Steven Starr LINKS:

• BOOK - Nuclear High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse: A Mortal Threat to the U.S. Power Grid and U.S. Nuclear Power Plants
• Website – Nuclear Famine. Be sure to scroll down on home page to see all the articles available on a wide range of nuclear issues.
• Short version of talking points covered in today’s interview.
• Contact Steven Starr

• Last week, we featured an interview with UK Radiation researcher Dr. Ian Fairlie about childhood leukemia rates for children living within 5 kilometers/3 miles of  a nuclear reactor. 
  
  Now, we take a look at U.S. cancer rates for infants, children, and adults living in the same county as a nuclear reactor and into adjacent counties, up to 50 miles away.  It's an excerpt from an interview we did in 2018 with Joseph Mangano, the epidemiologist who is head of Radiation and Public Health Project - RPHP.  His studies are based in the U.S. and he crunches the numbers based on publicly available data.  Here, he explains about how the work was done on Oyster Creek, a New Jersey nuclear power facility that was shut down shortly after we spoke.  (No causality implied.)

Joseph Mangano and RPHP LINKS: 

• Elevated Childhood Cancer Incidence Proximate to U.S. Nuclear Power Plants
• Counterpunch article: Closing Nuclear Reactors Means Big Improvements in Local Infant Health
• Direct link to RPHP Journal Articles and Studies

Will a Supreme Court ruling mean the end of Democratic commissioners at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission?

Chernobyl's New Safe Containment building is no longer New or Safe - but that doesn't stop the sale of 22 tons of so-called "safe" "formerly" radioactive metal that's been reclaimed from the site.  Radioactive belt buckles, anyone...? 

Dr. Ian Fairlie speaking at Dr. Helen Caldicott's Symposium:
Fukushima Two Years Later: NYC - March 11-12, 2013

Dr. Ian Fairlie, UK-based radiation expert, compiled statistics from 60 international studies done on leukemia rates for children living within 5 kilometers/3 miles of a nuclear reactor. His shocking results - all supported by the data - clearly demonstrate the lie of nuclear industry claims of nuclear reactor safety... especially when it comes to children.  He also exposes how the industry intentionally kept that information from the public until it was forced to reveal the data.

Dr. Fairlie is an independent consultant on radioactivity in the environment living in London UK and has studied radiation and radioactivity 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.

• The Scientists Who Alerted Us To The Dangers of Radiation by Dr. Ian Fairlie and Cindy Folkers
• 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.

What's throttling nuclear power development is actually, surprise, the nuclear industry itself!

Linda Pentz Gunter

• POETIC INJUSTICE?  Poems can trick AI into helping you make a nuclear weapon if the prompts are made in the form of poetry! Where is that iambic pentameter when you need it?

• The nuclear arms race is back, and it’s testing US power 
• Post-truth disasters: We’re not ready for nuclear war on social media
• How Holtec International became an expanding (and controversial) nuclear power
• Two nuclear engineers with nearly a century of combined relevant experience have warned U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff, and the agency’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS), that one or more degraded steam generator tubes at the Palisades atomic reactor on southwest Michigan’s Lake Michigan shoreline are at high-risk of failure within a short period of time after the previously closed nuclear power plant undergoes an impending, unprecedented restart.

Filmmakers and life partners Mary Beth Brangan and Jim Heddle, who along with Morgan Peterson directed the award-winning film SOS: The San Onofre Syndrome

Some weeks, it’s personal.

It is with great sadness that this week's Nuclear Hotseat commemorates and memorializes a fierce, gentle anti-nuclear warrior who spent decades filming protests, meetings, interviewing, and documenting the work of activists - James Heddle. He and Mary Beth Brangan were life and work partners since 1983, and worked together as documentary video and radio producers, educators, community and international organizers. They co-directed EON, the Ecological Options Network,  producing video reports and blogs on activists and organizations working at local, national, and international levels for solutions to planetary challenges.

Jim died suddenly and unexpectedly two weeks ago, leaving so many of us behind mourning his loss.  To commemorate his life and activism, we present an interview from 2023 with Jim and Mary Beth, just prior to the premiere of their film SOS: The San Onofre Syndrome. 

We spoke on September 22, 2023

• TRAILER for SOS: The San Onofre Syndrome

It was a totally nutty week in DC, including -- and especially -- in the nuclear sector.
Linda Pentz Gunter explains it all in this week’s Nuclear Hotseat Hot Story.

Alistair Burnett of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), provides the latest on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, or TPNW, direct from the headquarters of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons in Geneva, Switzerland

The International Uranium Film Festival (IUFF) came to Window Rock, the capital of Navajo Nation, for the fourth time to present films focusing on all dangers of the nuclear fuel chain, with a special emphasis on uranium mining.  Fourteen films over two days, plus live performances and Navajo drumming, singing, ceremonial dancing.  For the full program, CLICK HERE. 

Two Honorary Lifetime Achievement Awards 2025 Window Rock were given to:

• At left, Jan Boudart, board member of Nuclear Education and Information Service (NEIS) in Chicago for her decades of tireless activism as she is about to turn 90 years old.
• Norman Patrick Brown or his lifetime of indigenous activism, with special focus on uranium issues and the impact on the Navajo people. 
• At right, Marcia Gomes de Olviera, co-Founder and co-Director of the International Uranium Film Festival.

Photo of the winners is the Keystone image for this episode.

Norman Patrick Brown (l) and Anna Rondon (r) - two powerful activists making an important difference for their people and the world. 

Toni Pinedo, who responded so powerfully and meaningfully to  the film The River that Harms.

Swiftbird Drum from Taos, NM, presented Native drumming, singing, and led us in a circle dance in the lobby of the Navajo Nation Museum

Damacio Lopez, a veteran of both the U.S. Air Force and decades of activism against depleted uranium, with his newly published book:  MY LAST BATTLE: BAN URANIUM WEAPONS.  We'll have a full interview with him near the book's official release date.

Outside the hogan preparing for the pre-Festival sacred ceremony.  (l-r) Front: Jan Boudart, Norbert Suchanek, Marcia Gomes de Oliviera, Nuclear Hotseat's Libbe HaLevy, CA activist Darryl.  Back:  Damacio Lopez, director Guy Morgan.  Note the clouds seeming to radiate from the sacred space. 

Libbe HaLevy with director Jeff Gipe (Half-Life of Memory: America's Forgotten Atomic Bomb Factory)

Libbe HaLevy and Haul No!'s Leona Morgan

Lynda Williams, "The Physics Chanteusse," straight from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, knocked our socks off performing excerpts from her show ATOMIC CABARET.  Then she rocked the house with the world premiere of her new song - finished just that afternoon! - HAUL NO!, in honor of Leona Morgan and Haul No's fight against uranium transport via truck through Navajo lands.

The Awards ceremony. (l-r) Norman Patrick Brown, Jan Boudart, IUFF co-Executive Directors Norbert /suchanek and Marcia Gomes de Oliviera

Mid-Zoom - Tom Clements of SRS Watch being interviewed by Libbe HaLevy

Tom Clements has been the director of Savannah River Site Watch, a public interest organization in Columbia, South Carolina, since 2014. SRS Watch monitors US Department of Energy management of weapon-usable materials, nuclear weapons production, and clean-up of high-level nuclear waste, with a focus on the Savannah River Site. While in senior positions at Greenpeace International, the Nuclear Control Institute, the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, and Friends of the Earth, Clements concentrated on international nuclear nonproliferation issues. Now, he’s watching the planned production of plutonium pits - the explosive triggers for nuclear weapons - and ever-increasing amounts of radioactive waste, with no intervention by the DOE to make anything better.

I spoke with Tom Clements on November 7, 2025.

Savannah River Site Watch

LINK to Report:  Unleashing Plutonium Proliferation

For more on Nuclear Deterrence check out Nuclear Hotseat #737:  The Lie of Nuclear Deterrence, with ICAN's Melissa Parke:  https://nuclearhotseat.com/podcast/ican-hiroshima-atomic-bomb/

US priorities:  Military spending  -- especially nuclear weapons and the Golden Dome -- versus SNAP benefits and other basic human needs.  Linda Pentz Gunter parses it out.

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. 

Nukewatch founder Bonnie Urfer and Mike Sprong, as part of the Silence Trident Plowshares action, cutting an ELF pole, June 24, 2000. Note the peace sign carved into the pole.

• Kat Kramer Films that Change the World - ON THE BEACH and Judgment at Nuremberg- Sunday, November 23, 1 pm, Fine Arts Theatre, Los Angeles.  TICKETS: https://fineartstheatrebh.com/

NOTE:  I needed to go in for a medical procedure this week (don't worry; I'm fine) and was unable to produce a new episode. Given that President Trump has threatened to resume nuclear testing - with no specifics of whether that's atmospheric or underground explosions - I think this is a good opportunity to look back at the time Dr. Helen Caldicott almost convinced the United States and Russia to get rid of their nukes. The following is a compilation taken from the full interview, which appeared in two parts on Nuclear Hotseat #568 and #569, May 11 and May 18, 2022.

Nuclear Icon Dr. Helen Caldicott (r) interviewed by Nuclear Hotseat’s Libbe HaLevy next to the Bridgeton landfill in N. St. Louis. This was during a symposium she spoke at, “The Atoms Next Door.”  Back row: (l-r) unknown photographer, Mali Martha Lightfoot, Brian DeLear, Kay Dray, Dr. Caldicott, Karen Nickel

• Nuclear icon Dr. Helen Caldicott is an Australian physician, author, and for six decades has been one of the world’s most important anti-nuclear advocates. She revived or founded several associations that oppose nuclear, including Physicians for Social Responsibility and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Caldicott is a dedicated opponent to the use of nuclear power, depleted uranium munitions, nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons proliferation, and military action in general. Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Nobel-winner Linus Pauling, she is at the root of much of the anti-nuclear work being done today.
  
  We spoke on Monday, April 25, 2022.
  
• LINK: Dr. Helen Caldicott Foundation
• Nuclear Hotseat episodes with the full interview, broken into two parts:  Nuclear Hotseat NH #568 and NH #569, May 11 and May 18, 2022. 
• Books by Dr. Caldicott:
  
  • Sleepwalking to Armageddon
    Edited by: Helen Caldicott A frightening but necessary assessment of the threat posed by nuclear weapons in the twenty-first century, edited by the world's leading antinuclear activist "Dr. Helen Caldicott has the rare ability to combine science with passion, logic with love, and urgency with humor." —Naomi Klein
  • Nuclear Madness
    In this completely revised, updated, and expanded edition of her classic book, Caldicott defines the dangers of nuclear power, discusses the insidious influence of the nuclear power industry and the American government's complicity in medical "experiments" using nuclear material, and calls on us to accept the moral challenge to fight against all things nuclear.
    Nuclear Power is Not The Answer
    Of all her books, this may be Caldicott's most powerful yet -- Publishers Weekly, 17 July 2006: Caldicott's latest antinuke book searingly debunks the claim that the impending "nuclear power renaissance", purported by some to be the only answer to global warming, is "clean and green."
  • Crisis Without End
    A project of the Helen Caldicott Foundation and co-sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility, this gathering was a response to widespread concerns that the media and policy makers had been far too eager to move past what are clearly deep and lasting impacts for the Japanese people and for the world.

Hurry hurry, step right up and claim your free plutonium! 

A House of Dynamite by Katherine Bigelow

Greg Mello, Executive Director and Co-Founder,
Los Alamos Study Group

A new film, A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE, by Oscar-winning director Katherine Bigelow, follows what would happen in the 18 minutes following discovery of a nuclear missile aimed at the United States.  It exposes vulnerabilities to our purportedly 100% protection from incoming nukes and creates nail-bting tension as the sequence plays out in three venues:  SAC headquarters, the Situation Room at the White House, and the President. 

This creates a unique moment of public awareness on nuclear that activist groups are already jumping on to take advantage of the media moment.  Greg Mello is Executive Director of the Los Alamos Study Group (LASG), an NGO located in Albuquerque, NM that focuses on Los Alamos - the birthplace of the atomic bomb.  Since 1989, LASG has worked on nuclear and energy policy research, environmental analysis, congressional education and lobbying, community organizing, litigation, advertising, and the nuts and bolts of running a small nonprofit.

Here, Greg explains actions LASG has already taken to take advantage of the film and its massive publicity campaign to put forth the activist position and raise consciousness about the weaknesses and vulnerabilities inherent in nukes.  He also reveals a not-generally-understood problem that underlies the entire nuclear enterprise in America, making us even more vulnerable on the ground than has been known.

I spoke with Greg Mello on Monday, October 27 2025.

• Santa Fe Reporter two-page ad by Los Alamos Study Group - 2-page ad written by LASG
• ‘Our world is combustible’: Kathryn Bigelow on AI, Andy Warhol and nuclear Armageddon

Free Plutonium!  Huzzah! 

• Trucks with uranium cross Navajo Nation, reviving long-standing fears
• Sag Harbor Journalist Karl Grossman to Be Honored
• JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG And ON THE BEACH To Screen At KAT KRAMER’S FILMS THAT CHANGE THE WORLD - includes link to purchase tickets.

Epidemiologist Joseph Mangano, head of Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP)

• Epidemiologist Joseph Mangano reveals how the nuclear industry has hidden the health impact of low level radiation emissions from the public and why there MUST be health studies on populations near reactors BEFORE any new ones get built. 


Such a national study of the health risks posed by existing reactors should:

• At a minimum, update the findings from the 1990 National Cancer Institute study;
• Estimate the time and resources needed to produce the first findings in less than two years.
• Maximize the use of existing publicly available datasets; for instance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website includes county-specific mortality data from 1968 to 2024.
• Make results available to independent reviewers so they can reproduce the study;
• Be funded by the federal government, which regulates nuclear power reactors;
• Include only researchers who have no ties with the nuclear industry or the federal government, and are experts on the health effects of reactor emissions, having published in peer-reviewed journals already;
• Make the results public by publishing them in peer-reviewed scientific journals and present them in public events alongside proposed plans for the expansion of nuclear power in the United States.

LINK:  Why a national cancer study near US reactors must be conducted before any new expansion of nuclear power - original article by Joseph Mangano and the late Bob Alvarez

LINK:  Chernobyl's true death toll, World Health Organization manipulation of data and health studies:  Alison Katz of Independent WHO.  The WHO says 31 people died at Chernobyl; Russian researchers found studies indicating approximately ONE MILLION EXCESS CANCERS resulted from the explosion and meltdown. 

The Enviro Close-Up - a 35-year program on environmental issues - features Nuclear Hotseat's Libbe HaLevy talking about her podcast, her play ATOMIC BILL AND THE PAYMENT DUE, her book YES, I GLOW IN THE DARK! and media manipulation at the dawn of the atomic age.  Shot while on location at Wilmington College Peace Resource Center/Westheimer Peace Symposium, with clips from the PRC's World Premiere Staged Reading of the play. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAE9D_MkzyE

The episode airs Saturday October 25th at 4 PM on Free Speech TV, which is on Dish network and DIRECTV. It’s simulcast on their website you can watch live and that’s worldwide and then they’re also on additionally over 200 cable TV channels nationwide and on digital platforms as well such as Apple TV and Roku amongst others.  To watch Enviro Close-up  with Karl Grossman Episode on Libbe HaLevy and her play ATOMIC BILL AND THE PAYMENT DUE, play it here or CLICK to watch on Youtube.

We won one! Holtec has abandoned its New Mexico nuclear waste dump scheme!

The latest on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) direct from the headquarters of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) in Geneva, Switzerland, ICAN 's Head of Media, Alistair Burnett, reporting.

• Dr. Gordon Edwards provides an introduction to Radioactivity, with a special emphasis on uranium:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ5lScxQWd4