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Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad: Animals Return to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

by Bo

I've just published a short article at Arcadia, an online journal at the Environment and Society Portal of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, a joint initiative of LMU Munich and the Deutsches Museum.The article examines the discourse around large mammals being seen in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), especially in the heavily contaminated Red Forest area. When the mammals are wolves, foxes, or other non-human animals, invariably the discourse is foregrounding the

Tags: Chernobyl Radiation Fallout
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Podcast Interview: The Comfortable Spot

by Bo

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Ken Sweeney on his podcast "The Comfortable Spot." Ken interviews folks from all walks of life about their work and journey. We had an engaged discussion about my path from Chicago to Hiroshima, issues around the nuclear attack in Hiroshima, issues raised in my book Nuclear Bodies: The Global Hibakusha, and the use or lack of use of nuclear weapons in warfare—including in the current war in Ukraine. You can find the interview on any podcast app, and

Tags: Nuclear Bodies Nuclear Testing Radiation Hiroshima & Nagasaki
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Allied Troops Prepared for Radiological Warfare on D-Day

by Bo

Long before the completion of a working nuclear weapon by the United States at the end of World War Two, the United States contemplated the use of radioactive materials in warfare.From my book Nuclear Bodies:In a meeting of the Subcommittee of the S-1 Executive Committee (formerly the Uranium Committee of the US government’s Office of Scientific Research and Development) in October 1943, several of the top scientists overseeing the Manhattan Project considered methods of weaponizing radioactive

Tags: Radiation Radiological Warfare Fallout Hibakusha
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CORE Statement on the Risk to Nuclear Reactor Sites in Ukraine During Wartime

by Bo

CORE Statement on the Risk to Nuclear Reactor Sites in Ukraine During WartimeWe are disturbed by reports of targeted Russian attacks on nuclear reactor sites within Ukraine, at Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia.Nuclear reactor sites house active as well as spent fuel and other radioactive waste onsite. Multiple, redundant backup systems work to keep these facilities running safely during standard operations. Yet these back-up systems have failed catastrophically in the past from combinations of design

Tags: Nuclear Power Hanford Radiation
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How Internal Exposures to Radiation Make People Invisible: Video

by Bo

I was honored to be invited to give a lecture in the "Night with the Experts" series of the Nuclear Education Information Services (NEIS) group based in Chicago (my hometown). The title of my talk is, "How Internal Exposures to Radiation Make People Invisible." There are several parts to the lecture:-The effects of nuclear weapons-How internal and external exposures to radiation are experienced differently and affect people differently-External exposures affect our whole bodies-Internal

Tags: Fallout Fukushima Radiation Chernobyl Nuclear Power Nuclear Testing Nuclear Weapons Nuclear Production
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Nuclear Colonialism: Selecting the Irradiated, video of online lecture

by Bo

On October 28, 2020, I presented an online lecture at Whitman College in their 2020 series on the academic theme of Race, Violence, and Health. The lecture was titled "Nuclear Colonialism: Selecting the Irradiated." In the talk I survey the selection of atmospheric nuclear test sites by the first five nuclear weapon states. These test sites were invariably located nearby to populations that lacked the political ability to stop the effort. Often these sites were in colonial or postcolonial

Tags: Nuclear Testing Fallout Radiation Cold War Hibakusha Nuclear
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Managing Nuclear Memory: The Journey from Hiroshima to Fukushima

by Bo

Webinar!I will be in dialogue with scholars Norma Field and Yuki Miyamoto for an online discussion that you can join via Zoom next weekend, in part commemorating the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also exploring the public management of nuclear understandings since then, especially as relates to Fukushima, and the Global Hibakusha.Time:August 7 (Fri) 11 am (EDT) East Coast USAAugust 7 (Fri) 10 am (CDT) Central USAAugust 7 (Fri) 8 am (PDT) West Coast USAAugust 7 (Fri) 5 pm (CET)

Tags: Hiroshima & Nagasaki Fukushima Nuclear Testing Nuclear Weapons Nuclear Power Nuclear Waste Radiation Fallout Hanford
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My interview for the Atomic Heritage Foundation

by Bo

Cindy Kelly, the founder of the Atomic Heritage Foundation, visited to Hiroshima, Nagasaki and other cities in Japan earlier this year. I had the pleasure of meeting up with Cindy and having a long chat at Kissui, the kaiseki restaurant in the Sunroute Hotel in Hiroshima, overlooking the Hiroshima Memorial Peace Park. Here is the interview:The interview is up on the AHF webpage and includes a transcript. You can find it here. Here I am with Cindy across from the Peace

Tags: Hibakusha Hiroshima & Nagasaki Nuclear Testing Nuclear Weapons Nuclear Production Hanford Radiation Fallout
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Why Wildlife Returning to Chernobyl Tells Us Almost Nothing

by Bo

Several years ago, I was speaking with a prominent Anthropocene scholar in Uppsala, Sweden. We were in disagreement about the risks to the environment of nuclear power. For both of us, Chernobyl was part of making our case to each other. He told me that if the radiation around Chernobyl was so dangerous, it would not now be as full of returning wildlife as it has become. Animals are becoming more abundant there, he explained, so it shows that things are not as dangerous in the Exclusion Zone as

Tags: Chernobyl Nuclear Power Nevada Test Site Radiation Fallout Fukushima
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Pay no attention to that radiological disaster behind the curtains

by Bo

The government of Japan is clearly intending that the 2020 Olympics will function as a public relations win in which the image of Japan, and especially of Northern Japan and Fukushima are cleansed of images of radiological contamination. Even as the Fukushima Daiichi site itself, and the traces where the plumes of its explosions deposited fallout throughout the area remain un-remediated, the public perceptions will be remediated. This is typical of the behavior of governments in the developed

Tags: Fukushima Japan Radiation Nuclear Power
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