Nuclear Hotseat

New Mexico's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad

• New Mexico's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) radioactive waste problems examined in Libbe HaLevy's interview with Don Hancock, Executive Director of the Southwest Research and Information Center, a nuclear watchdog group headquartered in Albuquerque.  The group  focuses on the goings-on at WIPP, this country's only deep geological repository for low level nuclear waste.  He gives us an update on conditions at WIPP since its 2014 accidents closed it down, along with the intense political wrangling going on right now about changing  regulations to allow WIPP to take high level waste it’s not designed to handle. We also go into the battle raging right now over the threat of the world’s largest radioactive waste dump being situated in New Mexico and/or New Mexico-adjacent in West Texas.

If you're in a nuclear submarine and high enough in the water to be able to look out the periscope, don't you think you should be able to notice that you're on a crash course towards a 1,300 person/660 vehicle ferry boat?

• New Film on Sister Megan Rice and the Plowshares movement:  The Nuns, the Priests, and the Bombs. 
• Five Reasons NOT to Invest in Nuclear by Bob Alvarez
• At Least 340,00 Americans Died from Radioactive Fallout Between 1951 and 1973
• When ALL of America's New Nuclear WArhead Designs Will be Active -- and How Much They'll Cost

Nuclear Hotseat host Libbe HaLevy's book about having been one mile from the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in 1979.  Filled with personal narrative of having been ground zero at almost-Armageddon, stories from her career in show business, how Nuclear Hotseat came to be (and some of its more notable stories), and a guide to how to fight back against the nuclear industry.  Available now on Amazon.

Rogue Nuclear Regulator: Former Chair of the NRC, Greg Jaczko

• Greg Jaczko, the former Chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has published an explosive new book: Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator.  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.
• "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 want to sell Fukushima food propaganda, what better spokespeople than... children!  Children, who are 5-10 times more vulnerable to radiation damage to their bodies than adults!  Can you say, "MMmm... MMmm... WRONG!"?

• Excellent program on the anniversary of Hawaii's nuclear missile false alarm, when one text message turned the state of into a state of emergency.  It aired on NPR's SNAP JUDGMENT last Friday, January 11: THIS IS NOT A DRILL.  It provides interviews with families affected, including a Hibakusha woman living in Hawaii who, as a schoolgirl, lived in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped... and then experienced this Hawaiian alarm.  A truly chilling perspective on the reality of nuclear war dangers and fears, from people who lived through this ham-handed notification "oops" when an inattentive worker clicked the wrong item from a drop-down computer menu.  The episode is well worth your time to listen.

UChicago's Henry Moore Statue "Nuclear Energy" was surrounded by body outlines
representing the civilians who were killed by atomic bomb blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Photos: Brittney Dorton

• UChicago's India Weston, a remarkable young anti-nuclear activist, fills us in on the new-media way she first discovered the hidden nuclear history, how she grew in her understanding nuclear issues under the mentorship of Prof. Norma Field, and not only what motivated her to head-up two extremely effective protests at UChicago, but what they were and what they did.  It’s an encouraging story, for a change, of how to engage a younger generation in learning about nuclear issues and continuing the legacy of anti-nuclear work.

Two views of India Weston's most recent anti-nuclear action, at the Henry Moore sculpture "Nuclear Energy" on the campus of UChicago.  On the left, the blacking in of outlines of the die-in demonstrators from 2017.  On the right, the "ghosts" left behind after either rain or campus-mandated scrubbing of the paint - an eerie reminder that the true legacy of the atomic bomb is not in the sky, but on the ground.  View from adjacent scientist-filled building:

Original Die-in Body Images in black.

"Cleaned up" ghost-like body images - a different       kind of nuclear legacy.

LINK to India Weston's paper, "Artistic Interventions in UChicago’s Nuclear Media Ecology: Methods and Analysis."  Clumsy academic title; interesting read.

Two words:  Chernobyl.  Rave.  Final thought:  Oy!

• Backgrounder on the work of Marco Kaltofen and his work measuring radioactive contamination in communities around nuclear sites.  This is the work that busted Hanford on the contamination of workers after two 2018 accidents and is now in place in a 25 mile radius of the Santa Susana Field Lab, the site of a 1959 nuclear meltdown and the start of the recent Woolsey Fire, only 30 miles from downtown Los Angeles.

Numnutz of the Year starts out with the year's first Numnutz of the Week -
U.S. Strategic Command bares all with its (yuk yuk!) New Year's Tweet!  Feeling safe yet?

A look back at 2018 through the lens of Nuclear Hotseat's most popular feature, Numnutz of the Week.  Listen to the wacky antics of the world's most dangerous technology as it sails through:

• Japan's hard work to "normalize" Fukushima and its radiation so the tourists dumb enough to show up for the 2020 Radioactive Tokyo Olympics will think that everything is AOK!
• US nuclear crews who opt for "high" crimes and misdemeanors - not once but twice!
• Ancient, decrepit or just irrelevent so-called "experts" opining to a transfixed mainstream media in support of nukes... when they have nothing to do with them
• The ongoing Fukushima Food Fight - whether it's propaganda on the ground selling Fuku sake to New York hipsters or Japan taking South Korea and now Taiwan to the World Trade Organization to try to ram Fukushima fish down the throats of safety-conscious residents of other countries.
• Department of Energy playing word games to make us believe that high level waste is really low level waste - and when the citizens arise against you, with good cause, just invest your money in a good PR firm.
• Nuclear Regulatory Commission incompetence in letting reactors operate at full power during "snow cyclones" and hurricanes, forgetting that there's no way to evacuate or get emergency crews on site because, hey, "snow cyclone" and/or hurricane.

All of it leading to that Numnutz of all Numnutz for 2018...

Well, you'll have to listen to find out!  And with all that, we still have:

Happy New Year from the U.S. Strategic Command!  Want to know what they really stand for?  C'mon down and read the tweet, not the apologia that quickly followed (but not in time to prevent screen shots!).

Anti-nuclear peace nun Sister Megan Rice, upon her 2015 release from prison on sabotage charges
for her peaceful break-in and protest - at age 82 - at the Y-12 "Nuclear  Fort Knox"

To celebrate the holidays, a reminder of one of 2015’s successes — the early release from prison of the anti-nuclear peace nun, Sister Megan Rice, one of three brave activists who broke into high security nuclear weapons at the Y-12 nuclear facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee - the so-called "Fort Knox of Nuclear"- to protest nukes and war.  She was arrested on-site and, at age 82, convicted of sabotage - a conviction that was overturned 2 years later.

We’ll hear from:

• Sister Megan Rice, the now 88-year-old anti-nuclear peace nun.  Shespeaks at length about the peaceful 2012 Transform Now Plowshares protest action.   She and two other activists broke into the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee which resulted in her being charged with sabotage and sentenced to almost three years in prison.  Recorded when she was newly out of prison pending a re-sentencing hearing.  All further charges were later dropped.  The break in was an antiwar protest referred to as "the biggest security breach in the history of the nation's atomic complex."
• Co-defendant Gregory Boertje-Obed, 60, who along with co-defendant Michael Walli, 68, was sentenced to over five years in prison for their non-violent protest.

Originally presented on May 26, 2015, for Nuclear Hotseat #205.

Anti-nuclear peace nun Sister Megan Rice & co-protestors Michael Walli (l) and Gregory Bortje-Obed (r)

LINKS to the Transform Now Plowshares statement and Indictment of Oak Ridge for War Crimes that were drawn up by these three brave activists and read at the Y-12 site.

OH NO!  They can’t POSSIBLY be telling us to follow BERT THE TURTLE again!  AAAAAAaaaahhhh….!

BUT THEY ARE!  THE ORIGINAL “DUCK AND COVER” FILM BELOW: