Events

“Hibakusha” is the term for those who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But in recent years, it has come to be applied more widely to all who have been exposed to radiation from nuclear bombs and other sources of contamination from manufacturing, uranium mining, nuclear reactors, and radioactive waste. And, as this week’s…

On this week’s Nuclear Hotseat, Libbe HaLevy replays interviews with individuals affected by the July 16, 1979 Church Rock uranium mill disaster. On that day, the Navajo Nation suffered the worst radioactive materials spill in US history — 90-million gallons of uranium mining waste and eleven hundred tons of solid mill waste that burst through…

July 16 marks the commemoration of the first atomic bomb detonation — the 1945 Trinity test in Nevada. The eagerly anticipated feature film, Oppenheimer, about Robert Oppenheimer, the later regretful “father of the atom bomb”, will open in cinemas on July 21.  And it is now six years since the historic Treaty on the Prohibition…

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has given its blessing to Japan to start the release of more than a million tonnes of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. On this week’s Nuclear Hotseat, Linda Pentz Gunter’s Hot Story looks at how the IAEA’s conflict of interest — it is at once a watchdog and…

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has – no surprise – given its stamp of approval to Japan to dump 1.3 million tons of radioactive tritium-contaminated water from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean. The decision has already been strongly objected to by leaders of Pacific islands, including in earlier dialogue (pictured) with IAEA chief, Rafael…

On this week’s Nuclear Hotseat, Libbe HaLevy talks to Dave Kraft (pictured), executive director of the Chicago-based Nuclear Energy Information Service, about efforts in Illinois to repeal the 1987 Illinois nuclear construction moratorium (SB76). Kraft’s organization has been working hard to get Governor Pritzker to veto the repeal. The impetus to lift the ban is…

On the current Nuclear Hotseat, depleted uranium expert, academic and activist Damacio Lopez (pictured left with International Uranium Film Festival founder, Norbert Suchanek) explains how DU weapons were developed only two miles from his childhood home in Socorro, New Mexico; his trips to Iraq to measure radiation from DU weapons; and his drive to contact Ukraine’s President…