Atomic Show #251 – SA Royal Commission, Diablo Canyon, Trivial Tritium, DOE budget priorities
It’s not often that the Atomic Show has the chance to be a source of breaking news, but this show includes a timely report from Ben Heard in Adelaide, South Australia. Just an hour before our show began, the South Australia Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission issued the tentative findings from the investigative effort begun in March 2015.
Ben wasn’t available when the show first started due to fielding inquiries from interested media outlets, but he was able to join us about 8 minutes into the program. He provided a clear synopsis of the reports findings in several key areas. After we talked about the report and the next steps, Ben had to depart to continue his work answering inquiries.
This show was also special because it included the return of Lisa Stiles, a former regular on the Atomic Show. Lisa has been out of the nuclear advocacy limelight for several years while serving a deep cover assignment for an undisclosed employer. We’re happy to be able to learn from her deep and wide experience as both a nuclear professional and as a skilled communicator about nuclear science and technology.
In addition to talking about the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission report, we talked about the following topics>
- The overblown reactions in New York to what amounts to a trivial quantity of tritium detected in on-site monitoring wells at Indian Point nuclear power station
- Save Diablo Canyon and the work of Californians for Green Nuclear Power (CGNP). (It was great to have a guest from California who could provide a local perspective.)
- Public outreach needs
- The way that the DOE FY2017 Nuclear Energy budget proves that the Department was just blowing smoke with its verbal support of advanced nuclear reactor development
The guests for this show included:
Andrew Benson, who blogs at Atoms For California and tweets from @atoms4CA
Les Corrice, who blogs at Hiroshima Syndrome and maintains the Fukushima Accident Updates
Lisa Stiles, recently returned from an undisclosed location
Ben Heard, the director of Think Climate Consulting and the publisher of DecarboniseSA
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:25:38 — 78.5MB)
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Great show Rod! Thank you!
Good show!
Too bad Lisa was interrupted by Ben’s super good news because she hit it on the head about nuclear public education at this late after-the-horse-has-left-the-barn stage of the PR nuclear power game, but such has to go WAY beyond the “tell your neighbor tell your friends” stage. Great laments about the Indian Point tritium fret, but if only NEI and ANS simply picked up the phone for a $.25 call to NYC metro media and straightened them out. I left email at WNBC-TV and WCBS’s blogs to correct their fright reporting on the real health perspectives and got no answer — yet under another email persona I made comments about their reports of the restriction of horse carriages in Manhattan and I got lavish thank-yous back in one day. Obviously my name doesn’t have the clout NEI and ANS does! The nuclear grass roots REALLY shouldn’t be left doing this advocacy thing to save nuclear plants and climate change and thousands of nuclear jobs all by itself! I’d thought Shoreham taught the whole nuclear community a thing about aggressive self-promotion and mass public education to counter a media dead-eyed against you!
I’d also like to see the excellent Les Corrice pick apart “reports” on sites like https://twitter.com/hashtag/fukushima?src=hash (so I can post his site and challenges on library sites if they accept them) which are being used as (anti)nuclear references for many school libraries here in NYC and the Queens Library system which is the largest in the nation if not the world.
James Greenidge
Queens NY
Here is a bit of interesting news regarding the findings of the SA Royal Commission. The leader of the Federal Labor Party, Bill Shorten, says that he would be “open” to Australia taking HL waste under the right conditions. Shorten is known to be anti-nuclear as is a fair slice of the Federal Labor Party. This leaves only the Greens in categorical opposition and they will never have the numbers.
As changes in Federal legislation would almost certainly be required and Federal Labor may have the capability to block those, I see this as an extremely positive development in the political classes. Next issue – community support.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/02/16/labor-open-nuclear-storage-shorten
Glad that Lisa is back. And she is spot on: the antis advocate for solar and wind and get the funds. There need to be more nuclear advocates making the case.