Radium Girls – WWI era young women paint luminous watch dials with radioactive paint
were instructed to lick the brush tips to make a sharper point.
A new dramatic film tells of our first awareness of radiation horrors in very human terms.

LISTEN HERE:

[powerpress]

This Week’s Featured Interviews:

• Radium Girls is a new film, set in 1925.  It tells the story of two young sisters who worked at American Radium Factory.  Their job?  Painting glow-in-the-dark watch dials with radioactive paint. This case marks the first public warning of the dangers of exposure to atomic radiation and was used to warn Gen. Leslie Groves of the Manhattan Project of the dangers his scientists faced from radioactivity.Radium Girls producer/director Lydia Dean Pilcher and writer/director Ginny Mohler are interviewed by Nuclear Hotseat Producer/Host Libbe HaLevy.  They talk about the historic case, the corporate lies and cover-up, and how the film – Executive Produced by, among others, Lily Tomlin – got made.  It’s a very human tale of dreams, loss of innocence, female empowerment, and the emerging awareness of the deadly toxic nature of working with radioactive materials.Radium Girls becomes available digitally and in theatres as of Friday October 23.  If you purchase a ticket through this LINK, Nuclear Hotseat receives a donation of $2/ticket.  Thanks for your help – and enjoy the film!

• COVID/NUCLEAR UPDATE:  Dave Kraft of NEIS (Nuclear Energy Information Service) brings us up to date on the Covid 19/Nuclear connection.  A group of activists have been monitoring Covid cases and circumstances in the nuclear industry for more than six months.  They’ve been working hard to tease out the kinds of statistics and issues that the nuclear industry is loathe to make public. They pulled together their current information as a press release and sent to members of Congress and the news media.  LINK to Press Release and List of Nuclear Issues
  

Numnutz of the Week (for Outstanding Nuclear Boneheadedness):

Oh yeah, sure, just pave the roads with a formerly-banned RADIOACTIVE byproduct of phosphate production!  Nothing to see here, just move along…  <!>