Indigenous Nuclear activists (clockwise from upper left) Candyce Paul, webinar producers from the UK’s Stop New Nuclear, Ashish Birulee, and Leona Morgan

This Week’s Featured Speakers:

Indigenous Nuclear Genocide:  The start of the nuclear fuel chain is uranium mining, the weight of which comes down disproportionately on indigenous people, the poor and/or people of color  This week’s Nuclear Hotseat features excerpts from a webinar produced on May 4, 2019, by Stop New Nuclear in the UK and moderated by Nikki Clark.  Participants featured on today’s show are:

• Candyce Paul is an artist and activist of the English River First Nations in Northern Saskatchewan, Canada. She works with the group Committee for Future Generations, and talks here about uranium mining and waste burial issues being pushed in what is perceived as being pristine forests and lands in far northern Canada… when it’s all being contaminated by the nuclear fuel chain.  Other groups dealing with these issues include: Say NO to Nuclear in Northern Saskatchewan and First Nations Say ENOUGH.
• Leona Morgan is of the Dineh people,  what the western world thinks of as the Navajo people of Arizona and New Mexico. She works with many groups, most recently Halt Holtec, against the proposed so-called “interim” high level nuclear waste dumps being pushed onto New Mexico.  
  • Navajo Birth Cohort Study LINK.
  • At one point in her presentation Leona refers to a map:
    
• Ashish Birulee is of the traditional Adavasi people from Jarkhand in India. You can follow his work at Jhakhandi Organization Against Radiation.  Here are links to his writing:

  • ‘I’ve Seen My Own Relatives Die Of Radiation’: Life As An Activist’s Son In Jadugoda

  • Jadugoda: Drowning in Nuclear Greed

Numnutz of the Week (for Outstanding Nuclear Boneheadedness): 

A plutonium implosion test leaks radiation, takes weeks to clean up, IDs cracks in the vessel’s fastener washers… but brags about keeping to schedule, DOESN’T do more than inspect the vessel visually, and wow, look at that test data!  The nuclear industry and those who inhabit it must be out of their minds.