Nuclear Hotseat Hosted By Libbe Halevy

INTERVIEWS: Christian Levesque, organizer of the 2015 Uranium Film Festival in Quebec; and Chuck Johnson, Nuclear Campaigner for Physicians for Social Responsibility in Oregon and Washington State, on the problems at the Hanford site and with the Columbia Generating Station. NUMNUTZ OF THE WEEK: Japanese PM Shinzo Abe has come up with $4 billion in aid to disaster victims... of any and every disaster but the one on the northeast coast of Japan. PLUS: Fukushima at 4 - triple the number of people impacted by radiation in Japan as compared to Chernobyl; thyroid cancer rates 50x higher than normal in Fukushima children; TEPCO admits rainwater radiation levels at Fukushima surge yet again; WIPP site going for "bananas" faux comparison; Utah radwaste company tries to convince South Carolina to re-open tritium-leaking atomic garbage dump w/a media blitz; and Korean hacker demands money or he'll leak country's nuke info to other countries - and no, Sony is not involved.

Special Voices from Japan to mark the fourth Anniversary of the start of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster. Interviews and direct address from actress/star Midori Kiuchi; No-Nukes Occupy tent stalwart Taro Fuchigami, who has been sued by the government for over $260,000 dollars for his activism; Professor Hiroake Koide; head of the Tarachine Citizen's Radiation Monitoring Center Kaori Suzuki; businessman and former member of the Japanese Diet Upper House Seiichi izuno; and actor and member of the Diet Upper House, Taro Yamamoto. NUMNUTZ OF THE WEEK: Wanted: Japanese blogger with a deathwish. PLUS: Fukushima at four - radiation rundown; Breaking scandal at Diablo Canyon NPP on California coast over 30 years of seismic lies; Navajo Nation slams door on deal that would have allowed uranium mining on trust lands.

SPECIAL: Full length report on Dr. Helen Caldicott's Symposium on the Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction, held Feb. 28 - March 1 at the New York Academy of Medicine in Manhattan. 24 presenters on all aspects of nuclear war, nuclear winter, the psychology of nuclear weapons researchers, along with tactics and strategies to turn back the possibility of human extinction from this internationally suicidal technology.

INTERVIEW: Alicyn Gitlin, who coordinates the Campaign to Restore and Protect the Greater Grand Canyon Ecoregion Campaign for the Sierra Club Grand Canyon Chapter, on uranium mining and "zombie mines" at the world's greatest hole in the ground. NUMNUTZ: Yet another reason to hate airline meals... PLUS: Diablo Canyon court case charging NRC and PG&E collusion allowed to go ahead by US Court of Appeals; CA Public Utilities Commission damned by collusion with Southern California Edison over San Onofre settlement; Fukushima radiation suspected of link to Alaska infant death spike by Mangano, Sherman; Fukushima shows record level spikes of radiation from tritium, strontium 90; submerged Soviet nuke waste a ticking time bomb; UK nuke sites vulnerable to drone attacks.

INTERVIEW: Mary Olsen, Director of the Southeast Office for Nuclear Information and Resource Service, or NIRS, on the greater danger faced by women and girls to exposure to nuclear radiation. DNA damage, and a phenomenon she labels "Atomic Eggs." NUMNUTZ OF THE WEEK: When is a flawed nuclear evacuation plan not a flawed nuclear evacuation plan? When the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gives it a "White Finding," basically saying this snafu has only a "low to moderate safety significance." Try telling that to the 46,000 people who live there and who'll have to get outta Dodge on a four lane road! Can the NRC spell "homicidal gridlock?" PLUS: NE Japan experiences 6.9 quake, one meter high tsunami. TEPCO water woes at Fukushima Daiichi so bad, even the nuclear-promoting International Atomic Energy Agency admits, "The situation remains very complex." Chernobyl re-releases 0.5 PETABequerels of radiation from smoke released during forest fires. That's half of a million-billion Bequerels. Do the math. Nuke

NTERVIEW: Don Hancock, Executive Director of Southwest Information and Research Center, provides an update on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) accident of Valentine's Day, 2014 and perspective on the magnitude of the problem, the contaminated workers, and the likelihood that it will ever be able to be cleaned up. NUMNUTZ OF THE WEEK: Tennessee's senior senator can't imagine a world without nuclear, even as a dam in his state is continuing to show signs of possible failure... and it's upstream from seven nuclear reactors, all of which could be flooded to create a Fukushima-style scenario. PLUS: Lots of anti-nuclear news.

INTERVIEW: Dr. Helen Caldicott shares compelling reasons for producing her upcoming Symposium on the Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction and gives us a glimpse as to the importance in her life of the film, "On the Beach." NUMNUTZ OF THE WEEK: Mmm mmm good – Fukushima rice balls fed to British Commonwealth ambassadors! Just shut your eyes and think of England, Dearies... PLUS: TEPCO's Fukushima water woes; 50% of children tested in Ibaraki Prefecture showing A2 or B thyroid nodules and cysts; former California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey's home raided in investigation by state's Attorney General on his dealings in the $3.3 Billion San Onofre bailout of Southern California Edison; Pilgrim NPP shut down by blizzard; and manga artist of Oishinbo tells nosebleeding Fukushima residents: Get out. Now.

Full show dedicated to the January 24-25 Diablo Canyon Shutdown Strategy Conference, which took place in San Luis Obispo. Speakers heard in this program: Jane Swanson and Linda Seeley from San Luis Obispo Mother's for Peace, which hosted the event and has been fighting Diablo Canyon for more than 40 years; Daniel Hirsch's testimony before Sen. Barbara Boxer's Committee on Environment and Public Works; Jerry Brown of World Business Academy on Radiation and Public Health Project's epidemiological study on cancer rates in San Luis Obispo County; Damon Moglen of Friends of the Earth on shutdown strategies and talking points; Donna Gilmore of San Onofre Safety on the false safety promises of dry cask storage; Attorney Mike Aguirre on the need to find and protect whistleblowers; veteran activist Harvey Wasserman on transition to solar; Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds.org on focusing our shutdown strategies; and Chumash elder Fred Collins and Japanese Buddhist monk Sawada-Shonin blessing our efforts

Interviews: Author Kristen Iversen on her book, Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats; and the US government program for compensating atomic industry workers whose health was damaged by their jobs - IMPORTANT PRECEDENT FOR CURRENT CASES AT WIPP, USS REAGAN, HANFORD, MORE! Plus: Tweet the Pope to come out against nukes as part of climate change encyclical and in support of Sister Megan Rice; Two worker deaths in a single day at Fukushima Daiichi; sea animals dying in Tokyo aquarium, Hawaii, Pacific west coast; and if you eat Fukushima rice, YOU are the Numnutz of the Week!

INTERVIEW: Kimberly Roberson of Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network joins Nuclear Hotseat's Libbe HaLevy to discuss a program they created, Radiation Awareness Protection Talk, or RAPT, which covers ways to best help protect from nuclear radiation. NUMNUTZ OF THE WEEK: Lettuce now consider the lunacy of Panasonic and Fukushima. PLUS: Beta radiation (cesium 134/137) spikes 57 times higher than four days earlier at Fukushima, w/TEPCO analysts unable to ID the reason (DUH!); record level of "flesh-eating bacteria" cases in Japan; 5 Japanese nukes heading for decommissioning scrap heap (YAY!); Cataclysmic bird die-off litters West Coast US beaches; Thyroid cancer rates in US increasing; Obama increases allowable levels of radiation in drinking water; Savannah River Site operators divert $3/4-million from cleanup to develop mini-reactors; and Exelon's longed-for bail-out from Illinois taxpayers ain't about to happen when agencies report, "We'll do fine without you!"

Audio montage of celebrating activists at Vermont Yankee party - includes Leslie Sullivan Sachs, along with Paul Gunter and Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear; Marylia Kelley of Tri-Valley Cares on today's (1/6/15) successful vigil at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to protest their plans to vaporize plutonium ; and Dr. Sheila Parks explains why all of us need to TWEET THE POPE! For example: @pontifex Nuclear power is not clean, green or sustainable. Don't support nuke energy in your encyclical! #nonukespope #nuclearhotseat

Special encore presentations of interviews with Dr. Alex Rosen of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, who takes on and eviscerates the United Nations' UNSCEAR report that criminally underplays the radiation dangers from Fukushima; and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano, executive director of Radiation and Public Health Project, who explains why TEPCO's interpretation of radiation data is wrong as it tries to undermine the legitimate claims of the USS Ronald Reagan sailors, who were hit with catastrophic radiation while on an humanitarian aid issue.

INTERVIEWS: Prof. Quamrul Haider, nuclear physicist from Fordham University in New York, on his op-ed calling nuclear "The sixth horseman of the Apocalypse," the dangers of Russian-made nuclear reactors, and how Bangladesh is being duped into funding nuclear technology that is both dangerous and unnecessary; and Dr. Helen Caldicott on her upcoming Symposium on The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction - cheerful stuff for the holidays! NUMNUTZ: How about using a prescribed burn at a plutonium-polluted former nuclear manufacturing site in order to control invasive weeds? That'll show 'em!

INTERVIEWS: Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear on longstanding safety and embrittlement issues at Entergy's Palisades Nuclear Generating Station on the shores of Lake Michigan and the coalition of environmental groups that has intervened against the nuke operator's attempt to get the NRC to roll back safety requirements. Then Leslie Sullivan Sachs of Vermont's Safe and Green Campaign helps us celebrate the year-end closing of Entergy's Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant -- the exact same GE Mark I reactor design as the destroyed nukes of Fukushima Daiichi. 22 days and counting!

INTERVIEW: Dr. Chris Busby on internal/external radiation doses, similarities between UK nuke veteran cases and USS Reagan lawsuit, strategies and languaging for activists. NUMNUTZ OF TH WEEK: Nuke and Frack dance the Fuel Cycle Tango and show how closely they're aligned. PLUS: Former WHO director blasts United Nations' UNSCEAR report as "unscientific;" Exelon on verge of shutting down three nuke sites in Illinois; Soaring tachyarrhythmia rates (abnormally rapid heartbeat) rates at Sendai hospital in Fukushima Prefecture now highest in Japan.

BREAKING: Second death in the USS Reagan/Operation Tomadachi case. Exclusive interview w/Charles Bonner, attorney for the sailors in the $1 Billion lawsuit against TEPCO, General Electric, EBASCO, Toshiba and Hitachi. INTERVIEWS: Don Hancock, Executive Director of Southwest Research and Information Center, again updates us on the most recent radiation release at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP site, in Carlsbad, NM. Gail Snyder, Board President of Chicago-based Nuclear Energy Information Service, provides the most recent information and analysis of the uranium hexafluoride leak at Honeywell's Metropolis, IL facility. NUMNUTZ OF THE WEEK: US House of Representatives, by voice vote led by Georgia's Rep. Paul Broun, passes bill to authorize Dept. of Energy (DOE) to do research on "WHETHER" low-dose ionizing radiation poses a risk. How is this even a question?!?!? Even worse, it appears to be a set-up to gut BEIR VII (Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation), the proof of the risk, as creating an

INTERVIEWS: Filmmaker Ian Thomas Ash on his film, "A-2, B, C" about Fukushima radiation's devastating impact upon children, seen through the eyes of their mothers. VOICES FROM JAPAN: Beverly Findlay-Kaneko voices her husband, fine artist and photographer Yugi Kaneko, on his recent revisit to Fukushima and the problems of radioactive waste incineration. NUMNUTZ OF THE WEEK: You call THAT an evacuation drill?!?!?????

INTERVIEW: Arnie Gundersen interprets the latest developments at Fukushima Daiichi and provides a stunningly simple way to deny the nuclear industry its profits on peak energy, which has the power to effectively sink the whole technology in the US. PLUS: UK correspondent Shaun McGee reports from Ireland on manipulations by the government regarding the British Nuclear Test Veterans Case, as well as actions taken against Prof. Christopher Busby and Dr. Ian Fairleigh.

INTERVIEW: Arnie Gundersen interprets the latest developments at Fukushima Daiichi and provides a stunningly simple way to deny the nuclear industry its profits on peak energy, which has the power to effectively sink the whole technology in the US. PLUS: UK correspondent Shaun McGee reports from Ireland on manipulations by the government regarding the British Nuclear Test Veterans Case, as well as actions taken against Prof. Christopher Busby and Dr. Ian Fairleigh.

INTERVIEW: Attorneys for the USS Reagan sailors, who are suing TEPCO to create a $1 Billion fund to help cover their medical costs, win big in preliminary hearing as judge decides they can not only proceed against TEPCO, but allows the addition of four corporations that designed and built Fukushima Daiichi. Hear from Charles Bonner and Paul Garner on the background of the case, the series of hearings, how they got the news -- and what this will mean to the sailors.