Beyond Nuclear International
Rachel Carson and the silent environmentalists
Rachel Carson spoke out against nuclear war. Why is the environmental movement so silent?
In late January, Bob Musil, president of the Rachel Carson Council, wrote an article for his organization’s newsletter, entitled: Rachel Carson and Nuclear War? The Pulse and Politics of the Environment, Peace, and Justice.
Referencing the most recent and alarming White House intentions to fund smaller and, by inference, more “usable” nuclear weapons, Musil urged the environmental community to join the disarmament movement, not the least because of the devastating environmental consequences for Planet Earth should any nuclear weapons ever be used again.
We reproduce a slightly edited version of his article here with kind permission from the author.
Rachel Carson and nuclear war? The Pulse and Politics of the Environment, Peace, and Justice
“In nature nothing exists alone.”
“The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history… It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.”
“If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed either by private individuals or by public officials, it is surely only because our forefathers, despite their considerable wisdom and foresight, could conceive of no such problem.”
— Rachel Carson
Too little information clouds real impact of TMI
By Beyond Nuclear staff
The disaster at Unit 2 of the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, began on March 28, 1979. Today, 39 years later, the reality, of what really happened, and how many people it harmed, remains cloaked in mystery and misinformation. Unlike the popular catchphrase, TMI is a story of too little information.
What happened?
The two unit Three Mile Island nuclear power plant sits on an island in the middle of the Susquehanna River, just ten miles southeast of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. TMI Unit 2 was running at full power, but had been commercially operational for just 88 days when, at 4 A.M. on Wednesday, March 28, 1979, it experienced either a mechanical or electrical failure that caused the turbine-generator and the nuclear reactor to automatically shut down.
The pressure and temperature in the reactor began to increase, but when a relief valve on top of the reactor’s primary coolant pressurizer stuck open, malfunctioning instrumentation indicated that the valve had shut. While cooling water emptied out of the reactor, operators mistakenly reduced the amount of cooling water flowing into the core, leading to the partial meltdown.
Workers deliberately and repeatedly vented radioactive gas over several days to relieve pressure and save the containment structure. Then came fears of a hydrogen explosion. But by April 1, when President Jimmy Carter arrived at the site, that crisis had been averted, and by April 27 the now destroyed reactor was put into “cold shutdown.” TMI-2 was finished. But its deadly legacy was to last decades.
A US Nuclear weapons ban?
No problem, say energized organizers of Nuclear Ban US
By Linda Pentz Gunter
When you meet Vicki Elson and Timmon Wallis, they will tell you, without blinking, that they have one purpose: “the total elimination of all nuclear weapons from the face of the earth.”
In the wake of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons — signed, but not yet ratified by the mandatory 50 countries — Wallis and Elson are determined that the US should honor the treaty. Not that there is any hope that the US government, whether the White House or Congress, will do so. But we can, they insist. City by city, and even person by person.
On the website for their new campaign — Nuclear Ban US — the banner headline reads: “How to get rid of all nuclear weapons, not just ‘some,’ not just ‘theirs’ but every single one.”
Vicki Elson and Timmon Wallis of Nuclear Ban US
And it will happen, says Wallis, without a shadow of hesitation or skepticism in his voice. He was speaking at a recent meeting with members of the Nuclear-Free Takoma Park Committee — a citizens’ advisory group for the City Council of Takoma Park, one of the first US cities to become a Nuclear-Free Zone (in 1983).
The committee’s role is to ensure the Maryland city, just outside Washington, DC, adheres to its ordinance that prohibits the city from doing business with industries and institutions engaged in the production of nuclear weapons and their components. The ordinance also bans production, transportation, storage, disposal and activation of nuclear weapons in the city, a less likely eventuality.
Yes, iMatter!
Kids’ voices are getting heard — on climate change as well as guns
By Linda Pentz Gunter
The March For Our Lives is coming up — to take place in Washington, DC on March 24. Young people are making their voices heard. They are not stepping down or giving up on the gun issue. For them, it’s personal. This could be their generation’s civil rights movement. Like their predecessors, they are seizing their moment, with eloquence and determination.
Some young people feel this way about climate change as well. After all, it’s their future that is being destroyed. They, too, have found a way not only to speak out, but to be creative, innovative and original. They are getting things done.
The first time I saw filmmaker, author and environmentalist Lynne Cherry’s series of short films with kids working for a better world — Young Voices for the Planet — only one question popped into my head: Why aren’t these mandatory viewing in every school in the country? And not just mandatory viewing, part of the curriculum. And in every school — starting with kindergarten until graduation day.
As we despair, especially now, of our leaders and their hitherto sluggish and now outright counter-productive actions towards addressing climate change in time, these films show just how much power the young actually have. They just need to use it.
In one film, three nine-year old girls testify at their town hall to change a town law to allow solar panels on public buildings. They received unanimous support. In another, an 11-year old boy in Germany, motivated by the achievements of Wangari Maathai in planting 30 million trees in Africa, started an initiative when he was nine that saw more than a billion trees planted in his country and around the world. (But he couldn’t help admitting that once the tree planting was done, it was the tree-climbing of the mature, established trees, that was “the most fun part of the day!”)
The 3/11 kitten that wasn’t
The “forbidden life” of those caring for abandoned animals in Fukushima
By Linda Pentz Gunter
For a while, it was an iconic photo of the March 11, 2011 triple disaster in Japan. The bedraggled, mud-soaked kitten clinging to a boot, practically begging to be rescued. The picture was everywhere on the internet. Had the kitten been caught in the tsunami? Was it a victim of the earthquake? Or was it one of the many abandoned animals left behind when more than 160,000 people fled the radioactivity released by the deadly Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster?
Simple internet searches yielded no apparent source for the photo. It fell into an unspoken rights-free virtual world where many of us used it to exemplify the desperation of Japan’s triple tragedy.
And then it turned out that the kitten wasn’t in Japan at all. Thanks to some shoe-leather sleuthing by a site called pudicat.com, we learned that the picture was actually taken during flooding in Hoi An, Vietnam. (And no, the boot man didn’t take the kitten with him, but his explanation can be found here.)
Of course countless animals like this kitten were indeed abandoned in Japan due to the natural disasters and the forced exile of those living too close to the stricken nuclear plant. Some international rescue groups did go in to try to help, but early on found conditions and access restrictions challenging if not prohibitive.
Atomic Homefront
Update: Atomic Homefront is now available to book for screenings and educational use. Please find information on the Women Make Movies website.
New film, and a wealth of reporting, reveal a US community living with radioactive waste in their homes
By Linda Pentz Gunter
Compelling people stories is what we look for here at Beyond Nuclear International, and that is exactly what Atomic Homefront, the new documentary from Rebecca Cammisa, delivers. There is a lot of crying in Atomic Homefront, and with good reason. But these are tears of outrage as well as sorrow and loss. At the center of the film lies the undeniable yet shocking revelation: people in the USA are living with dangerous levels of radioactive waste in their homes. The company responsible, and even the federal government knew. And they did nothing. Worse, they rebuffed and rejected efforts by residents to get at the truth and force cleanup and reparation.
The radiation in question is not radon — a known phenomenon in homes that is usually tested for. It’s about the oldest radioactive waste from the Atomic Age. And it’s about deceit and denial. As one audience member at a public meeting shown in the film says: “I’ve been here ten minutes and I heard about it for two days and this is nuts!” The film’s viewing audience is likewise shocked, but, as a fellow meeting participant reposts wearily, “welcome to the party, pal.”
That moment comes in the midst of an already several years-long struggle by residents — mostly women — who decided to take on the environmental disaster that is the widespread radioactive contamination in their greater St. Louis communities. The radioactive waste got there because, during the Cold War, a St. Louis-based firm, Mallinckrodt, processed uranium from the Belgian Congo as part of the Manhattan Project. The radioactive waste they produced was illegally dumped in what was then surrounding countryside and at the West Lake Landfill, currently owned by a company called Republic Services.
But radioactive waste does not stay put, and countryside does not remain undeveloped. The radioactive waste seeped into creeks, and spread into parks and even homes. Alarmingly, there is now a creeping underground fire at the West Lake Landfill that threatens the nuclear waste dumped there as well.
Beyond Nuclear International 