News, #hibakusha, #hiroshima, #hiroshimaanniversary, #indianland, #nagasaki, #nagasakianniversary, #nevadatestsite, #nuclearenergy, #nucleartesting, #nuclearweapons, #shoshone, #weaponstesting, #yuccamountain
Wednesday’s regular segment, Beyond Nuclear, is about nuclear issues, including weapons, energy, waste, and the future of nuclear technology in the United States. Kevin Kamps, the Radioactive Waste Watchdog at the organization Beyond Nuclear, Sputnik news analyst and producer Nicole Roussell, and special guest Ian Zabarte, Principal Man of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Indians, the secretary of the Native Community Action Council, at NativeCommunityActionCouncil.org, and a leading voice nationally against the Yucca Mountain dump, join the show.
Towards the end of the show, Kevin speaks about three Native American leaders: Corbin Harney, Western Shoshone spiritual leader; Grace Thorpe, co-founder of National Environmental Coalition of Native Americans (NECONA); and Al Puckett, Cherokee, a nuclear whistleblower at the Paducah (Uranium Enrichment) Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky, and a founder of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability member group, Coalition for Health Concern. Thorpe's Sauk and Fox Reservation in Oklahoma was targeted for a high-level radioactive waste dump, which she put a stop to, then helped other targeted reservation communities do the same; Puckett saw nuclear wrongdoing on the job, and spoke out, at great personal cost. When Kevin asked them how they became anti-nuclear, both responded with single word answers: "Nagasaki." They were both deployed to Nagasaki shortly after the atomic bombing, as U.S. service members in World War II.