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

"Full Body Burden" the movie is coming

Full Body Burden is based on the award winning autobiography of the same name by Kristen Iversen. It tells the horrifying story of the then secret Rocky Flats plutonium pits production facility in Colorado which poisoned workers, residents and the land in the name of "protecting" Americans during the Cold War.

Full Body Burden combines an enthralling personal memoir with a detailed and shocking account of the United States government’s ongoing attempt to conceal the effects of the toxic and radioactive waste released by Rocky Flats, and of local residents’ vain attempts to seek justice in court. Years of protest, lawsuits, and health studies culminated in a dramatic federal raid in 1989, as the FBI and EPA entered the plant to investigate alleged environmental crimes. The lawsuits and investigations that flowed from the raid began to uncover decades of negligence and deception along with the toxic threat lurking in areas where residential development continues unabated.

For more information visit fullbodyburdenfilm.com

Full Body Burden: Teaser from HaveyPro Cinema on Vimeo.

The lessons of those 38 nightmare minutes in Hawaii

The 38+ minutes of terror felt by the residents of Hawaii after receiving a text alert about incoming nuclear missiles that proved to be a mistake, was a reminder that so-called civil defense is fundamentally useless. People sheltered in their bathrooms. There was nowhere to run to and no time to go. It also reminded us that our nuclear warning and even launch systems are vulnerable, too. This was a human error. The same thing could happen along the chain of command, or in a nuclear silo. A human or systems error could even lead to an accidental missile launch instead of an accidental message about one. The Hawaii incident further brings home the one inalienable truth: that no one should have to live with the traumatic prospect of “inbound” nuclear missiles and the only way to avoid that is for the world’s nuclear powers to disarm. And that’s also why diplomacy with North Korea is the essential and only option. The UN has called for an Olympic Truce. Beyond Nuclear is endorsing the Ploughshares Fund organizational initiative — Call for Olympic Truce Actions: Diplomacy NOT War. As an individual, you can also sign the People’s Peace Treaty with North Korea, here. 

Hawaii’s Nuclear Wake Up Call (And Why We Should Take MLK’s Advice)

An op-ed by Joe Cirincione published in Defense One.

Cirincione is president of Ploughshares Fund and the author of Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It Is Too Late.

On this Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, Cirincione reflects on King's visions for a way out of the Atomic Age:

This is a time to have faith in our power to challenge these ominous trends. A time, in fact, to heed the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.

For King, the struggle against racism was part of a larger struggle for peace and justice. He repeatedly spoke out against nuclear war. As early as 1957 he said, “I definitely feel that the development and use of nuclear weapons should be banned.”

Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, King eloquently spoke to the hopes of many.

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history…I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction…we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative nuclear arms race which no one can win to a positive contest to harness man’s creative genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all of the nations of the world.

Amen, brother.