Nuclear Hotseat #195: Uranium Film Festival – Quebec, + PSR NW’s Chuck Johnson on Hanford, CGS and Libbe HaLeveyhttp://www.nuclearhotseat.com/2484/

FEATURED INTERVIEWS: Christian Levesque, organizer for this year’s Uranium Film Festival in Quebec, explains how he coordinated the timing of this year’s event with an international scientific symposium on uranium issues and a political gathering of Canada’s Prime Minister and political elite of the Provinces. http://uraniumfilmfestival.org/ Chuck Johnson, Nuclear Campaigner for Physicians for Social Responsibility NW, representing Oregon and Washington state, goes over the history and problems at the Hanford Site and Columbia Generating Station.

NUMNUTZ OF THE WEEK:
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has come up with $4 billion in aid to disaster victims… of any and every disaster in the world EXCEPT Fukushima on the northeast coast of Japan.

PLUS: Fukushima at 4 – triple the number of people impacted by radiation in Japan as compared to Chernobyl; Thyroid cancer rates 50x higher than normal in Fukushima children, w/more than 100 cases confirmed or suspected; TEPCO admits rainwater radiation levels at Fukushima surge yet again; Army Brigadier General James A. Blankenhorn double-dips as Deputy Project Manager for civilian contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, NM, and “goes bananas” confusing the public’s understanding of natural, background and man-made radiation. Utah radwaste company Energy “Solutions” tries to convince South Carolina to re-open tritium-leaking atomic garbage dump w/media blitz; Korean Hydro and Nuclear Power hacker releases more files from December hack and demands money or he’ll leak country’s sensitive nuke info to other countries – and no, Sony is not involved.

Myla Reson’s video, “James Blankenhorn’s Radioactive Banana”
https://youtu.be/sg8hv8915Rw
Army Brigadier General James A. Blankenhorn works for civilian contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership LLC as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Recovery Manager and Deputy Project Manager. The video “Jim Blankenhorn’s Radioactive Banana” begins with an excerpt from the Thursday, March 5, 2015 WIPP townhall meeting held in the City of Carlsbad, New Mexico during which General Blankenhorn downplays the adverse consequences of ionizing radiation and blurs the lines between natural, background, and man-made radiation. Once again we hear about one of the standard components in the nuclear village’s favorite list of false equivalencies – radioactive bananas – being trotted out in yet another WIPP dog and pony show.

WIPP is a dump for plutonium contaminated nuclear weapons waste. Although the Department of Energy convinced the Environmental Protection Agency that plutonium at WIPP would be isolated from the accessible environment for a minimum of 10,000 years. On Valentines Day 2014 WIPP failed 9,985 years ahead of schedule when at least one drum of lethal waste exploded – contaminating the underground and traveling up and out into the environment above ground – at least 22 WIPP workers suffer from internal radioactive contamination resulting from that release. Since the Valentines Day WIPP failure the City of Carlsbad, New Mexico and the Department of Energy have co-hosted townhall meetings.

Following Blankenhorn, Physicians for Social Responsibility Senior Scientist Steven Starr demystifies the significance of potassium-40 and eating bananas. Starr delivered his presentation on March 11, 2013 during the Helen Caldicott Foundation symposium titled “The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident”

The video concludes with brief comments from journalist Harvey Wasserman recorded at a March 11, 2014 Fukushima remembrance event in Laguna Beach, California.

Special thanks to EON3 for the recording of Harvey Wasserman at his talk on 3.11.2014:

Watch Harvey’s full talk here: http://youtu.be/1XElzI1hfS4

Watch Steven Starr’s full talk here: http://youtu.be/nDgnBqBJZNc