Nuclear Hotseat

San Onofre Madness: nuclear waste storage in "lemon" of a Holtec system?
No thanks!  We deserve better!

• Nina Babiarz is a board member of Public Watchdogs, a non-profit safety watchdog group which has worked closely on San Onofre issues.
  Among the testimonies given in front of Southern California Edison's tightly controlled Community Enragement, uh, Engagement Panel hearings:
  
• San Clemente resident Jeff Steinmetz
• San Diego-based attorney Mike Aguirre
  
• Public Watchdogs Executive Director Charles Langley
• Donna Gilmore of San Onofre Safety.

Just in case Japan wasn't being besieged by ongoing radiation releases from Fukushima Daiichi and you want more radioactivity, just join the Japanese online auction for depleted uranium and yellowcake uranium concentrate powder!  (What - no ebay "buy now" option?)

• Fairewinds Energy Education article refuting the Michael Shill-burger, uh, Shellenberger pro-nuclear infomercial that appeared in Forbes on March 11, 2019 (Numnutz of the Week, Nuclear Hotseat #403, March 12, 2019).  Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three MIle Island Prove Why Nuclear Power will Never Be Inherently Safe provides a stunning smackdown of Steve Forbes' favorite nuclear shill - and represents the kind of excellent work we have come to expect from Fairewinds.
• Startup promotes permanent nuclear waste storage by Christine Legere in Cape Cod Times.  A look at a possible means of permanently storing nuclear waste that will not require Yucca Mountain and just might be effective, as well as economically feasible.
• How To Survive Radiation Exposure - Guidance on Diagnosis and Treatment for Healthcare Providers - government info.  I haven't had a chance to check this one out thoroughly.  Anyone who has the inclination to do so, vet the info and send me an email at: [email protected] with your evaluation.  This will help guide future coverage.  Thanks!

Three Mile Island button protest designed by Jules Feiffer

NOTE:  I am currently in Harrisburg, PA, for events surrounding the 40th anniversary of the 1979 nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island.  Today's program, Nuclear Hotseat's Annual TMI Anniversary SPECIAL, will be followed in two weeks by another SPECIAL, this one on the result of my current trip, including current actions around TMI, what's been learned about health and safety, and the industry's frantic, high-monied full court press to extend the reactor's life beyond a scheduled 2019 closing. - Libbe.

• Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer for Fairewinds Energy Education.
  Watch a video of Arnie Gundersen speaking about the accident at the 40th Anniversary of the founding of Three Mile Island Alert. 
• Peter Bradford, who was a Commissioner at the Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner  during the TMI accident.
• Eric Epstein, Chair of Three Mile Island Alert at TMIA.org.
• Three Mile Island Alert’s Radiation monitoring at EFMR.org
• Mary Stamos (Osborn), long time Middletown resident, TMI survivor, and TMIA member, whose collection of mutated plants and flowers has just been accepted by the Smithsonian Institution.
• Walter Cronkite, anchor for the CBS Evening News at the time of TMI and known as “the most trusted newsman in America.  (Cronkite's CBS network reports on TMI have been SCRUBBED FROM YOUTUBE!)

Walter Cronkite, on the CBS network news special on the TMI accident
from March 30, 1979

• Interviews with residents, doctors, activists, audio from inside TMI as the accident was happening, media reports, and more.
• PLUS: Nuclear Hotseat host Libbe HaLevy’s personal story of having been one mile away from TMI while the accident was happening.  This is the subject of Libbe’s recently published nuclear memoir, Yes, I Glow in the Dark!  One Mile from Three Mile Island to Fukushima and Nuclear Hotseat. Available on Amazon.
  

Fukushima Anniversary UPDATE SPECIAL: Japanese anti-nuclear activist Misao Redwolf
takes a stand at the Friday night Tokyo demonstrations against reactor restarts.

Fukushima Anniversary coverage on Nuclear Hotseat continues with a series of interviews with on-the-ground activists from Japan and those who assist their work in the U.S.

• Misao Redwolf  is an Activist/Member and one of the founders of of the Metropolitan Coalition Against Nukes, which coordinated activist response after the Fukushima nuclear disaster.  In March 2012, at the one year anniversary, the Coalition began protesting the restart of Japanese nuclear power plants in front of the Prime Minister’s Residence (Kantei) on Friday nights.  Interview produced, translated and voice over by Carole Hisasue. 
  Nuclear Hotseat interview with Misao Redwolf in Japanese - 首都圏反原発連合のMisao Redwolf:  https://youtu.be/zqrR11UDAcI
  Read the English language Japan Times article about Misao.
• Carole Hisasue is a former journalist and media personality from Tokyo. Now, she is  an anti-nuclear activist living in California, where she continues to write and work on media projects. Carole has attended the Friday night demonstrations in Tokyo many times, and filed this report exclusively to Nuclear Hotseat.
• Nancy Foust is Communications Manager and Research Team Member at SimplyInfo.org. Simply Info is a not for profit research collective that holds and manages the world’s largest public archive of data on the Fukushima disaster. This is the conclusion of our interview, the full length version of which is featured in Nuclear Hotseat #401 - February 26, 2019.
  
• Dr. Caitlin Stronell is an internationally-trained nuclear lecturer who is presently working as a researcher with the Japan-based Citizens' Nuclear Information Center. She gives us a broader picture of the manipulation of Fukushima survivors and the difficulties they continue to face, eight years after having to evacuate their homes in the wake of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear triple meltdown.
• Tsukuru Fors Lauritzen, a Los-Angeles based member of the Fukushima Support Committee. Born and raised in Japan, Tsukuru graduated from a high school in Hiroshima, where 350 students lost their young lives on August 6, 1945 in the atom bomb explosion.  She came to the U.S. at age 19 and considers it a life's mission to be an active force to bring forth a nuclear-free future.  Most recently, Tsukuru has been presenting presenting documentaries about Fukushima and its impact so audiences can see and hear for themselves what people in Japan are going through since the nuclear disaster began.
  
  LOS ANGELES SCREENING:  "Fukushima Voices" by Toshikuni Doi
  1-5 p.m. includes post-film Q&A
  Saturday, March 9, 2019
  Art Share LA, 801 East Fourth Place, Los Angeles, 90013
  

To book a screening of "Fukushima Voices," contact Tsukuru Fors Lauritzen at: [email protected]

• "A-2, B, C" is the film by Ian Thomas Ash cited by Tsukuru.  It reveals radiation risks to children and damage to their thyroids following the start of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.  Interview with filmmaker as well as more information on children and Fukushima radiation risks with Nuclear Hotseat's Voices from Japan producer Beverly Findlay-Kaneko can be found in Nuclear Hotseat #178 from November 18, 2014.

Fukushima children show off their radiation dosimeters.