Author Archives: Maria

Prof. Steven Starr: Radiation Contamination of Japan with Radioactive Cesium from Fukushima, TUC Archive

Replay of the Fukushima Symposium, 2013, the first comprehensive analysis of the health and environmental damage done by one of the worst nuclear accidents of our time      Steven Starr says: “Long lived radio-nuclides such as Cesium 137 are something new to us as a species. Although they are invisible to our senses they are millions of times more poisonous than most of the common poisons we are familiar with. They emit radiation, invisible forms of matter and energy, that we might compare to fire. It’s not a fire that can be scattered of suffocated because it burns at the atomic level, it comes from the disintegration of single atoms”.
Starr gives an update as to what people in Japan are facing now [ . . . ]

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Timothy Mousseau: Chernobyl and Fukushima – Biological Implications of radiation – TUC Archives

The team studies birds, insects, microbes, and plants at over 1,000 sites, returning year after year. They found significantly increased rates of genetic damage      When the biologist, Professor Tim Mousseau, concluded this talk by showing heartbreaking pictures of the birds of Chernobyl and their tumors and birth defects, the physician and anti nuclear campaigner Dr. Helen Caldicott stepped up to the podium to thank him.
She said: “I want to pay homage to Tim Mousseau, who with his colleagues is actually endangering his life by going into extremely high radioactive areas doing pioneering work, which is going to change the concept of radiation exposure to humans. What is happening to the animals, the insects and the plants is going to happen [ . . . ]

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We were told to go electric because it is safe and clean

Now campaigns across the world demand to keep nuclear power plants open.    A controversy between Helen Caldicott and Australian opposition leader Peter Dutton. He wants to build seven new nuclear reactors
On June 18, 2024, the Australian opposition leader, with his shadow cabinet, dropped the bombshell of making the upcoming elections in Australia a referendum on returning to nuclear power plant construction.
One day later ABC News Australia broadcast an interview with David Speers. They call this a decision between renewable energy and nuclear.
Only three days later, On June 22, 2024, the Australian antinuclear campaigner Helen Caldicott joined the debate with a line of reasoning that nobody had yet mentioned: Safety.
Helen Caldicott is best known for having founded several associations dedicated to [ . . . ]

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Data Centers lack the Electric Power for Artificial Intelligence. A new Law, signed by Biden, promotes Nuclear Power

Microsoft, Twitter/X, Facebook, Amazon and Google demand electricity for Data Centers –     On June 18, 2024, the US Congress passed the misnamed “Advance Act” that will provide electric power to data-centers.
The Advance Act aims to expedite the development of next generation nuclear reactors and pays to support aging ones. It directs the Department of Energy to reduce regulatory cost for advanced reactors and provides deployment incentives.
Joe Biden signed the Advance Act into law on July 9, 2024. All this while so-called modern societies have not yet cleaned up the damaged nuclear reactors at Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. And the so-called “spent” highly radioactive nuclear fuel is still piling up at the power plants. With one exception, Onkalo [ . . . ]

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Artificial Intelligence and the Resurgence of Nuclear Power and Uranium Mining – With Amir Adnani, Linda Pentz Gunter and Elon Musk

A new argument is emerging in favor of using nuclear to cover the increased power demands of Artificial Intelligence, and – almost as an afterthought – fuel the green transition to solar and wind.
Legislation in Congress, such as the Advance Act, supported by the Biden administration, has already passed, with bi—partisan support, as recently as June 2024. It is written to fund all stages of the cycle – from uranium mining to accelerated building and licensing of new nuclear power plants.
Strangely the mining industry has always prepared for the new market in uranium. And we all would have known had we attended their conferences. The program begins with an interview from the World’s Premier Mineral Exploration & Mining Convention. They [ . . . ]

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Today Tech Giants turn to nuclear for AI’s hunger for power

Helen Caldicott interviews Michael Madsen on the building of the world’s first storage site for nuclear waste – Archive      This archival TUC Radio program comes to you in August of 2024 in the face of the so-called nuclear renaissance driven by Artificial Intelligence
This is the conclusion of a conversation between Helen Caldicott and Michael Madsen whose film, Into Eternity, premiered in the US in February 2011. Helen 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. He introduces thoughts about civilization, language, danger and eternity.
Into Eternity is a documentary about [ . . . ]

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Onkalo – Into Eternity – TUC Radio Archives

Documentary on the first permanent storage for waste from nuclear power plants in the world       Blasted into bedrock of the island of Olkiluoto in Finland on the shores of the Baltic Sea, Onkalo has to remain secure for 100,000 years.
Danish filmmaker Michael Madsen’s documentary of the building in progress of Onkalo is a meditation on eternity, insanity and the impossibility of projecting anything 100,000 years into the future.
The film also proves eloquently and with expert statements the terrible danger that arises from so-called “spent” nuclear fuel from power plants and makes us see Fukushima with very different eyes.
This radio program presents excerpts from the film and its amazing sound design.
DATE: film released in 2010
CREDIT: Filmmaker Michael Madsen

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The military’s crushed morale is mirrored in Israel’s economy

Dr. Shir Hever with Nora Barrows Friedman and Ali Abunimah      On July first, 2024, the New York Times published an anonymous report from inside the leadership of the IDF, The Israeli Defense Forces. Top generals said they are convinced that an exhausted and depleted Israeli army cannot win and are demanding a cease fire.
In reaction to the NY-Times article, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the following day, that the war in Gaza will not end until Hamas is destroyed. And that the “IDF will continue fighting and improve our readiness for a war in the north with Lebanon.”  Dr. Shir Hever is an Israeli living in exile. His PhD is from the Free University Berlin. He is the military embargo [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:59 — 39.8MB)