NH #773: NE Ohio Nuclear Waste Superfund Site Exposes EPA Collusion + Nuke Industry “Playbook” to Avoid Clean-up – Reporter Greg Schwartz

This Week’s Featured Interview

• Northeast Ohio superfund site Industrial Excess Landfill (IEL) has been shown to use questionable methodology, which enables the EPA to avoid observing levels of radioactivity that it prefers not to have to deal with at the IEL – despite flaws pointed out by the agency’s own Science Advisory Board. And the EPA rehires Tetra Tech for remediation despite numerous mistakes spotlighted by the Project on Government Oversight.
  
  Reporter Greg Schwartz has covered this situation and others demonstrating EPA collusion with nuclear polluters. He is a freelance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, specializing in covering environmental justice issues. He has a Master’s degree in Journalism & Mass Communication from Kent State University in his native region of Northeast Ohio. He won a Lone Star Award for investigative reporting from the Houston Press Club in 2010, for his San Antonio Current story on the city’s “toxic triangle” area, and is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists.

LINKS from interview:

Articles by Greg Schwartz:

• 2006 – Cleveland Free Times – Buried Secrets
• 2020 – SF Bayview series
• 2020 – Hindsight brings corrupted radiation testing into focus at the EPA – Part 3
• 2024 – Counterpunch story on the IEL
• 2025 – Counterpunch story on Diablo Canyon

Activist Shoutout:

From Physicist Lynda Williams:

URGENT Action Alert – COMMENT BY MAY 4:

• The @NRCgov wants to replace its independent safety review with secret DOE & DOW approvals, letting companies use a small test nuclear reactor’s safety permit to license a full commercial scale one — possibly dozens clustered at a data center coming to a community near you. This will exclude public oversight and legal action. Thismust be stopped.
• SUGGESTED WORDING:
  “I oppose Docket NRC-2025-1503. Independent NRC safety review cannot be replaced by secret DOE or DOW authorizations the public cannot access or challenge.”
• Comment by May 4:


  Access site for comments here: https://www.regulations.gov/docket/NRC-2025-1503

ICAN UPDATE with Alistair Burnett

• Alistair Burnett, Head of Media for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), reports from ICAN headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, with the latest on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
  Alistair includes brief interviews with:
  • Hans Kristensen, Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists
  • Grethe Ostern of Norwegian People’s Aid and lead author of the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor.