Lead Story:

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo. This grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha, is receiving the Peace Prize for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again. (Audio commentary on this award from the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) will be on next week’s program.)

This Week’s Featured Interview:

Physicist and author M. V. Ramana

• The conclusion of our two-part interview with award-winning physicist M. V. Ramana (above), author of the book NUCLEAR IS NOT THE SOLUTION: The Folly of Atomic Power int he Age of Climate Change. This week, he covers the myths about Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMNR or SMR) and reveals their direct connection to nuclear weapons.

THE NUCLEAR RESISTER:

A new monthly feature.  Jack Cohen–Joppa, who along with his wife, Felice Cohen–Joppa, publish The Nuclear Resister newsletter and have since 1980.  Here, Jack shares stories from their archive, bringing our shared activists history to life.  

NUMNUTZ OF THE WEEK for Outstanding Nuclear Boneheadedness

Cameras meant to guide the removal of radioactive debris from Fukushima Daiichi have again failed. At least this time Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) admits that they fried from too much radioactivity. So what is TEPCO’s plan to “fix” these errant cameras? Can you say, “reboot?”

Links:

• For tech geeks, more information on the robot TEPCO is using to try to retrieve samples of radioactive rubble from the rubbled remains of the Fukushima nuclear reactors.
• Nuclear Future: The Price By W.J. Hennigan – NYT Op-Ed.
• Harvey Wasserman: Nuke Power’s “Renaissance 4.0” Has Already Melted
• The radioactive legacy of the Hanford nuclear reservation will live on, even as plans for cleanup evolve
• Nuclear weapons and children