Nuclear corruption — in case you missed it

A special edition of Nuclear Hotseat focused this week on a panel discussion hosted by the The Museum of Political Corruption and moderated by Nuclear Hotseat producer/host Libbe HaLevy on Friday, December 6, 2022. The featured participants in the discussion were: Robbie Leppzer, director of the film POWER STRUGGLE, whose critically acclaimed feature-length and short documentaries about contemporary social issues,…

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The latest fusion hype

Despite the hype and the headlines, the real agenda behind the fusion “breakthrough” announced this week is to benefit the nuclear weapons sector, not electricity production. The NIF experiment far more closely resembles the process of a (very tiny) thermonuclear warhead. Since the U.S. has not tested nuclear weapons since 1992, the data from experiments…

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US keeps ‘usable’ nukes

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) General Secretary Kate Hudson outlines the US government’s latest position paper on nuclear weapons in the current edition of the CND magazine, Campaign. In October, the Biden administration published its 2022 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), much later than expected. The delay was reportedly due to differences over significant aspects of…

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Radioactive. The women tell their stories

RADIOACTIVE: The Women of Three Mile Island, a film written and directed by Heidi Hutner, received its world premiere on Sunday, December 4 as part of the Dances with Films Festival in New York City where it won the audience award for best documentary. Hutner, professor of Literature, Sustainability, Women’s and Gender Studies at Stony…

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Radiate the Truth: Informational tools on uranium, health

A new video and infographics series, Radiate the Truth, that details the history and impacts of uranium on the body and the environment, premiered December 7. Radiate the Truth delivers short, accessible educational videos and infographics to teach about the history and effects of uranium on the body and the environment. The series will be…

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“A creeping Chernobyl” at Portsmouth

This week on Nuclear Hotseat: The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS) in Piketon, Ohio, was the site of uranium enrichment for the US nuclear weapons program. It operated from 1954 to 2001. The Department of Energy (DOE) has been conducting “cleanup” at the site since 1989. Plant operations generated hazardous, radioactive, mixed (hazardous and radioactive),…

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NuScale SMR cost headed off-scale?

True to form, every new generation of commercial nuclear power development project thus far has grossly failed to control its construction cost-to-completion and maintain estimates construction time-to-completion. It was certainly the death knell in the United States for Generation III designs and the “nuclear renaissance” launched by Congress in 2005. Seventeen years later, only two…

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New Talking Points: SMRs

Beyond Nuclear has now published its 6th in the series of Talking Points: Unfounded Promises. Small Modular Reactors solve none of the challenges of nuclear power and make climate change and proliferation worse. A tsunami of license applications for new small modular (mirage) reactors is about to be unleashed in the US. But none remotely…

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An update on baby teeth and radiation

This week on Nuclear Hotseat: Writes podcast host, Libbe HaLevy: “Strontium 90 in baby teeth helped convince U.S. President Kennedy and Russian Premiere  Khrushchev to sign the limited test ban treaty in 1963, which prohibited nuclear weapons tests or other nuclear explosions under water, in the atmosphere, or in outer space. “Joseph Mangano is a…

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