Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster at 32: a Nuclear Hotseat SPECIAL | #NuclearHotseat

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 Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster at 32: a Nuclear Hotseat SPECIAL

This week’s Nuclear Hotseat marks the 32nd Anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disasterwith highlights from past interviews.  It bring Ukraine’s devastating 1986 nuclear accident — and its consequences — into sharp, terrifying focus.

This Week’s Special Interviews:

• Bonnie Kouneva was a 16-year-old living in Bulgaria when the Chernobyl accident started on April 26, 1986.  She was outdoors all day at a rally and got hit with the radiation plume.  Bonnie talks about Chernobyl’s impact on her life and the health of her children.  This former mountaineer and Bulgarian Greenpeace member currently lives in the United States.
• Dr. Timothy Mousseau is an evolutionary biologist and faculty member of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of South Carolina. Since 1999, Professor Mousseau and his collaborators have explored the ecological, genetic and evolutionary consequences of low-dose radiation in populations of plants, animals and people inhabiting the Chernobyl region of Ukraine and Belarus.
• Dr. Janette Sherman is well known for her work with epidemiologist Joseph Mangano on analyses of data after Fukushima.  Their work indicates that the Japanese nuclear disaster led to a spike in US infant mortality and hypothyroidism.  Dr. Sherman edited the English translation of Alexei Yablokov’s groundbreaking book, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment.
• Dr. Alexei Yablokov was environmental advisor to Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the Gorbachev administration, as well as a co-founder of Greenpeace, Russia.  His book, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, compiled and translated into English more than 5,000 separate scientific reports on Chernobyl that completely contradict the World Health Organization’s report, which undermined the seriousness of the accident.  Dr. Yablakov died in January, 2017.
• Ryuichi Hirokawa was the first non-Soviet photojournalist to document the Chernobyl disaster. The website on his humanitarian aid work with the children of Fukushima, based upon his experiences at Chernobyl, is at: kuminosato.net.

LISTEN NOW: Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster at 32: a Nuclear Hotseat SPECIAL

Havasupai Prayer Gathering: Indigenous Nations Unite Against Nuclear Colonialism

Richard Watahomigie, descendant of the first Havasupai leader | Photo: Garet Bleir

At the Havasupai Prayer Gathering, Fydel Rising Sun, member of the Havasupai Tribe, sang of resisting uranium mining to the sound of his beating drum. It was 3 a.m., and the sacred fire crackled under the dark outline of Red Butte, a site of great ceremonial importance to the surrounding native nations nations beside the Grand Canyon. The sun soon crested the horizon, and color returned to the land, as well as sweltering heat. Green shrubs poked through the red dirt, their roots a stalwart defense against erosion and increasingly common dust storms, in this parched land being robbed of millions of gallons of clean water.

As explored in our previous pieces within the series, millions of gallons of clean water have been contaminated with uranium and arsenic, directly above an aquifer feeding waters such as those pictured. Moreover, Canyon Mine is accused by conservation organizations and surrounding indigenous nations of desecrating land, medicine, and water surrounding Red Butte: just six miles from the Grand Canyon and from land held sacred by the Havasupai Tribe…

more: Havasupai Prayer Gathering: Indigenous Nations Unite Against Nuclear Colonialism

America's nuclear headache: old plutonium with nowhere to go

The U.S. Energy Department's Savannah River Site, with the unfinished building which was meant to make plutonium safe but now may not be finished until 2048, is seen in this aerial image, taken near Aiken, South Carolina, U. S. January 31, 2018. High Flyer © 2018/Handout via REUTERS

AMARILLO, Texas (Reuters) - In a sprawling plant near Amarillo, Texas, rows of workers perform by hand one of the most dangerous jobs in American industry. Contract workers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pantex facility gingerly remove the plutonium cores from retired nuclear warheads.

Although many safety rules are in place, a slip of the hand could mean disaster.

In Energy Department facilities around the country, there are 54 metric tons of surplus plutonium. Pantex, the plant near Amarillo, holds so much plutonium that it has exceeded the 20,000 cores, called “pits,” regulations allow it to hold in its temporary storage facility. There are enough cores there to cause thousands of megatons of nuclear explosions. More are added each day.

The delicate, potentially deadly dismantling of nuclear warheads at Pantex, while little noticed, has grown increasingly urgent to keep the United States from exceeding a limit of 1,550 warheads permitted under a 2010 treaty with Russia. The United States wants to dismantle older warheads so that it can substitute some of them with newer, more lethal weapons. Russia, too, is building new, dangerous weapons…

more: America's nuclear headache: old plutonium with nowhere to go

Nuclear Sacrifice Zone in New Mexico? No Way, USA! – Nuclear Hottest #356

Nuclear Hotseat Producer Host Libbe HaLevy (l) and Leona Morgan at International Uranium Film Festival, 2015.jpg

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This Week’s Featured Interview:

• Leona Morgan and Eileen Shaughnessy of the Nuclear Issues Study Group, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  They talk about pressure on indigenous people in New Mexico to accept a high level nuclear waste dump and all “interim” storage of radioactive waste for a minimum of 120 years.  Hey, nuke industry: go sacrifice your own back yard!
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• REGISTER YOUR COMMENTS WITH THE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION:
  www.regulations.gov/document?D=NRC-2018-0052-0001 

Numnutz of the Week (for Outstanding Nuclear Boneheadedness):

Fukushima Food Fight Continues!  Who’s in charge of South Korea’s food import standards — South Korea, Japan, or the World Trade Organization?  Round two, coming up!

more!

LISTEN NOW: Nuclear Sacrifice Zone in New Mexico? No Way, USA!