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CORE Statement on the Risk to Nuclear Reactor Sites in Ukraine During Wartime

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

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Managing Nuclear Memory: The Journey from Hiroshima to Fukushima

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)

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Nuclear power was born violent

The first 13 nuclear power plants built in the United States were built to manufacture plutonium and tritium to use in nuclear weapons. The 14th nuclear power plant built in the U.S. was the first one built as a commercial plant that would produce electricity for civilian use. Nuclear power was born violent. Nuclear power plants were invented in Manhattan Project laboratories for the sole purpose of making plutonium to be used in nuclear weapons. Nuclear power plants were invented as part of an

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My interview for the Atomic Heritage Foundation

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

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The Birth of Nuclear Power in the Manhattan Project: CP-1 and Hanford

Nuclear power plants were developed as part of a large project working to kill human beings. They were born violent. Whatever one thinks of nuclear power, their origins were not beneficent. This talk examines that history.Lecture delivered at the Hiroshima Peace Institute on 11 January 2019, introducing framing mechanisms for my upcoming journal article.Note: misstatement that PU-239 comes from U-235 rather than

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Trisha Pritikin talks about growing up in the shadow (and plumes) of Hanford

Trisha Pritikin is a native of Richland, Washington, the bedroom community for the professional class employees of the Hanford plutonium production facility of the US government in Eastern Washington. Hanford is where the first nuclear power plants on Earth were built in the 1940s. These plants were built to manufacture plutonium for the Manhattan Project, and subsequently for the bulk of the US nuclear arsenal throughout the Cold War. The production of plutonium, and specifically the

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