Helen Caldicott and Michael Madsen: Into Eternity – from the TUC Archives

A meditation on nuclear danger and war, and the 100,000 year legacy of nuclear waste
The shelling around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine and the managed acceptance of Onkalo, the underground storage site for nuclear waste in Finland, are in the August 2022 news while I am updating this re-broadcast.

Helen Caldicott called Madsen “One of the more extraordinary people I’ve ever interviewed”. This is a thought provoking exchange between the veteran campaigner, Helen Caldicott, who dedicated her life to alerting us to the nuclear danger, and the young Danish artist. In his documentary film he introduces thoughts about civilization, language, danger and eternity.

Into Eternity is a film about the building of the world’s first permanent repository for nuclear waste in Finland. It shows not only the construction under way that will take 140 years, but introduces the people involved, the scientists, regulators and corporate executives who oversee this project. None of them will be alive when Onkalo, as the repository is called, will be finished in 2120; and they must expect this repository to remain intact and untouched by future humans for at least 100,000 years.

This is a re-broadcast of Helen’s interview from her weekly radio program, If You Love This Planet, first broadcast in July 2011.

DATE: 2011-07-11

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