Help stop another nuclear restart in Japan

Green Action Japan has started a petition to stop the planned restart of the Ohi nuclear power plant. As the petition states:

"The Japanese national government wants everything "back to normal" by the 2020 Olympics: Fukushima accident evacuees back to the Fukushima region, nuclear power plants restarted--everything back to pre-Fukushima days."

The reality is very different, with the Fukushima site still leaking deadly radioactivity and a country riddled with earthquake faults and volcanoes but a government eager to restart its nuclear reactors.

The Ohi plant -- in Fukui Prefecture which has the highest concentration of nuclear power plants in the world -- is just 37 miles from the historic city of Kyoto. The Governor and Mayor of Kyoto have petitioned the national government for the right to say yes/no to restart, to have control over Kyoto's fate. Their plea has been answered with silence.

Please help Koyoto, Japan and the world, by signing the Green Action petition today. 

PLEASE SIGN HERE.

To learn more, watch this video.

EPA orders partial cleanup at St. Louis nuclear waste site

As reported by the Washington Post.

Culminating a 27-year process, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has agreed to a $236 million partial clean up of the West Lake Landfill radioactive waste dump, rather than a complete clean up estimated to cost $700 million. (Actually, considering the wastes were illegally dumped there in the early 1970s, it's been a nearly half-century process; and considering the wastes are from the earliest days of the Manhattan Project, it's been more than a 75-year process!) The article does not report on where the radioactive contamination will be transferred to.

Dawn Chapman, co-founder of the West Lake Landfill neighborhood watch-dog group Just Moms STL northwest of St. Louis, MO, is quoted in the article:

“We were hoping for full, 100 percent excavation. But we know that would be difficult to accomplish,” said Dawn Chapman, co-founder of Just Moms, an activist group that has long pushed for an extensive excavation and relocation of families near the landfill.

She said her group views Thursday’s decision as a hard-fought victory, but one that is far from guaranteed, given that the public comment and cleanup process is likely to unfold over years. “We have to stay here and watch it and see it through,” she said. “I look ahead, and I see these other big battles coming. We’re not going to blink, because you can’t … We will continue to fight to get even more [radioactive waste] removed.”

Kay Drey, president of the board of Beyond Nuclear and a decades long watch-dog on the West Lake Landfill, located in the Missouri River floodplain just upstream from major metropolitan drinking water supply intakes, attended the early morning announcement of the EPA's decision. The radioactive waste is the oldest of the Atomic Age, originating from Belgian Congo uranium ore processed in St. Louis for use in the Manhattan Project race for the nuclear bomb in WWII. (The race was one-sided, as the U.S. learned in June 1944, when it confirmed Nazi Germany had abandoned its own nuclear weapons development program.)

EPA's announcement comes just 11 days before HBO premieres a major new documentary about the West Lake Landfill saga entitled "Atomic Homefront."

Update on February 1, 2018 by admin

CBS News has also reported on this story, as have:

• CBS St. Louis - EPA Issues Decision on West Lake Landfill, Calls For 'Excavation Plus' - Steve Stenger
• KRCU - West Lake Landfill: EPA proposal is latest chapter in long, troubled history
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch - EPA wants to do partial excavation of contaminants at radioactive West Lake Landfill Superfund site - Bryce Gray
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Editorial: EPA's solution to West Lake will leave region exposed to nuclear dangers
• UPI - EPA proposes $236M to partially excavate, cap Missouri Superfund site - Allen Cone
• Wall Street Journal - EPA Sets Plan to Remove Radioactive Waste from Missouri Dump - Timothy Puko

Update on February 2, 2018 by admin

More coverage and commentary:

• St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Editorial: EPA's solution to West Lake will leave region exposed to nuclear dangers
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch - OpEd: Ignoring landfill problems is slow genocide for area residentsIgnoring landfill problems is slow genocide for area residents - Maria Chappelle-Nadal
• St. Louis Public Radio - What's next for the West Lake Landfill - Kae M. Petrin & Eli Chen
• St. Louis Public Radio - Some pleased, others dismayed by EPA plan to clean up West Lake Landfill - Kae M. Petrin & Eli Chen

Karl Grossman receives Long Island Sierra Club's recognition as "Environmentalist of the Year"

Beyond Nuclear board member Karl Grossman was honored by the Sierra Club Long Island Chapter as “Environmentalist of the Year” for 2017. Karl is widely recognized for his investigative journalism on the real costs and danger of nuclear power and particularly the risks to Planet Earth that come with “Nukes in Space.”

Read more… http://13147359.sites.myregisteredsite.com/blog/a-crusading-career/

Documentary film "Atomic Homefront" premieres on HBO Mon., Feb. 12

Just Moms STL founders Dawn Chapman and Karen Nichols with their children and neighbors, protesting the radioactive contamination of their community in St. Louis in 2015.As reported on the film's website, where you can watch the trailer and a few clips.

Watch for screenings at cinemas near you (including Annapolis, MD on 2/11; St. Petersburg, FL on 2/22; and at the Washington, DC Environmental Film Festival sometime between 3/15-25, TBA).

Learn more about the film at "Atomic Homefront's" website.

(Beyond Nuclear board president Kay Drey of University City, MO has been a decades-long watchdog on the radioactive West Lake Landfill near St. Louis. Beyond Nuclear board member Lucas Hixon has published primary research on the radioactive contamination dumped there, and its escape into surrounding residential neighborhoods. Enter <West Lake Landfill> into this website's search field, for scores of posts about these Manhattan Project radioactive wastes, some of the very oldest of the Atomic Age, dumped illegally in the Missouri River floodplain, upstream of major metropolitan drinking water supplies.)

See an interview with the filmmaker, featured on KCRU/NPR for s.e. MO:

You can learn more about the documentary from "St. Louis on the Air" with director Rebecca Cammisa: HBO’s 'Atomic Homefront' explores the citizen activist movement around nuclear waste in St. Louis.

Update on January 30, 2018 by admin

Atomic Homefront is a documentary that tells the story of the oldest atomic waste of the Nuclear Age and the threat it still poses today to the city of St. Louis. The Manhattan Project dumped uranium, thorium and radium in two suburban St. Louis communities, situated in the flood plain of the Missouri River. This waste has seeped into creeks and has contaminated the communities and sickened its residents for decades. A creeping fire at the nearby West Lake landfill where some of this radioactive waste was also buried, poses yet another threat. Now residents, led by a group called Just Moms, are fighting back, demanding that the Environmental Protection Agency either fully removes the waste or permanently relocates residents living nearest the landfill. 

Doomsday clock is closest we have ever been

This morning, January 25, 2018, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands on its Doomsday Clock closer to midnight: at two minutes to midnight, the clock is set at the closest we have ever been since 1953 when the clock was also moved forward to that same time. It sent an ominous and urgent warning to the world that we are risking a global genocide and nuclear winter should we continue on the path of bellicose rhetoric and taunts about the possesion of the most deadly and inhumane weapons ever invented. The clock's time is a sad contrast to the heroic efforts this past year of ICAN and others to secure a nuclear weapons ban at the UN, an achievement that merited the organization the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Bulletin's decision was prompted by the "perilous and chaotic year" since President Trump's election during which "we saw reckless language in the nuclear realm heat up already dangerous situations and re-learned that minimizing evidence-based assessments regarding climate and other global challenges does not lead to better public policies," said Rachel Bronson, PhD, President and CEO of the Bulletin.

"Although the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists focuses on nuclear risk, climate change, and emerging technologies, the nuclear landscape takes center stage in this year’s Clock statement," Bronson said in her statement. "Major nuclear actors are on the cusp of a new arms race, one that will be very expensive and will increase the likelihood of accidents and misperceptions. Across the globe, nuclear weapons are poised to become more rather than less usable because of nations’ investments in their nuclear arsenals. This is a concern that the Bulletin has been highlighting for some time, but momentum toward this new reality is increasing. More