Karipbek Kuyukov wins Nuclear-Free Future Award

Read about the extraordinary and inspiring life and work of Karipbek Kuyukov this week on Beyond Nuclear International. Kuyukov this week won the Nuclear-Free Future Award. He dedicates his life to educating the world about the terrible toll of atomic testing, not only in his home country of Kazakhstan but around the world. Recognized as an ambassador for peace, he is also an artist, painting with his mouth or feet as he was born without arms due to his parents' exposure to the Soviet atomic tests at Semipalatinsk.

Alec Baldwin and Karl Grossman blast nuclear power on Enviro Close-Up October 27

Alec Baldwin kicks off the latest “Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman” program blasting the nuclear power industry as “criminal” and being like the tobacco and gun industries in not caring about killing people. They “want to walk over a pile of dead bodies,” declares Baldwin.

The half-hour program, titled “Nuclear Power Today,” will air on Free Speech TV at 4 p.m. Eastern Time this Saturday, October 27. 

Free Speech TV is aired on nearly 200 cable television systems in 40 states  across the United States and the two major satellite TV networks, DirectTV and Dish, as well as on the Internet. 

This is the 27^th year “Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman” has been broadcast. Grossman is a professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, author of six books, a newspaper columnist, and writer of numerous articles in print and on the Internet. He has received many honors for journalism including the George Polk Award.

Producing and directing “Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman” is Frank Melli. An editor and broadcast engineer at WPIX-TV/11 in New York City, Melli has received awards for his TV work on environmental issues. He has taught media literacy in New York City.

Appearing in “Nuclear Power Today,” in addition to Baldwin, is Janet Tauro, board chairman of Cleanwater Action of New Jersey, who describes the successful fight leading to the shutdown last month—after 49 years—of the oldest nuclear plant in the United States, Oyster Creek. Amy Goldsmith, New Jersey director of Cleanwater Action, speaks about the Trump administration’s assault on the environment and of challenging it. Attorney Susan Shapiro tells of the scheme to bail-out decrepit, uneconomical nuclear plants that has included a $7.6 billion bail-out imposed on ratepayers by New York State to keep four old upstate New York plants operating. 

And, Joseph Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project, emphasizes that not only do Fukushima or Chernobyl-type catastrophes kill people, but the “routine” operation of a nuclear power plant spreads radioactivity resulting in illnesses and deaths, and his organization has documented this. 

For more information on “Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman”—and to view many scores of programs done through the years—visit www.envirovideo.com  For more information about FreeSpeech TV including what cable system it airs in your area, visit its website https://freespeech.org/  

International Uranium Film Festival returns to Window Rock

The International Uranium Film Festival, which travels the globe each year showcasing films of every genre about every facet of nuclear power and nuclear weapons, will be back at Window Rock November 29-December 1. It will then go on to Flagstaff, Arizona, Albuquerque and Grants, New Mexico, ending in Santa Fe, New Mexico on December 9.

The festival was at Window Rock in 2013. It is back, say the organizers, at a timely moment. “Now in 2018, we are returning to the United States at a time when there is renewed interest in restarting the Mt. Taylor [uranium] mine located near Laguna and Acoma Pueblos and Grants in NM,” they write on their website. “Despite no operating mines in New Mexico in the last nearly thirty years, the possibility that it could restart is tantalizing to local communities that face economic hardships. The Uranium Film Festival is an opportunity to provide education and remembrance of what actually happened during mining operations and a look at the environmental and health devastation left behind.” Read more about the Festival and how to get tickets.

Why haven't peace and disarmament treaties worked?

Nuclear Age Peace Foundation president, David Krieger, writing this week on Beyond Nuclear International, asks whether all the many disarmament and peace treaties have actually worked? There have been positive steps, like the UN Ban Treaty, the relaunch of the Golden Rule and other initiatives. But is the peace movement enough to keep moving the agenda forward, or do we need a movement of movements, a synergy between peace, environmental and economic justice movements to achieve a lasting peace? More

Mud dumped in Welsh waters could contain plutonium

Mud dredged from the Hinkley C nuclear construction site in Somerset, England, and dumped 1.5 miles off the Welsh capital, Cardiff, into the estuarine bay, could contain plutonium. But a recent motion in the Welsh Assembly to halt dumping operations until the mud was tested for plutonium and uranium, was defeated by the Labour Party whose whip mandated a "for dumping vote." The decision was viewed as a betrayal by Welsh citizenry, over 100,000 of whom signed a petition to demand a full spectrum testing of the mud. The dredge site is where Hinkley A discharged into the Bristol Challenge. Hinkley A was originally used for plutonium production for the UK nuclear weapons complex. Read our op-ed on why the vote went the wrong way and the potential consequences for health, safety and the environment.