Beyond Nuclear, Nuclear Energy Information Service and Friends of the Earth USA are sponosoring the upcoming Chicago conference, "A Mountain of Waste Seventy Years High," December 1-3, 2012, at the University of Chicago's International House. The two featured plenary speakers are Japanese women with very different personal stories that are woven together by the common threat of the Atomic Age. The conference will observe the 70th commemoration of first nucelar waste generated in the development of the atomic bomb and the first experirments with nuclear fission for the Manhatten Project at the University of Chicago in 1942. Now, seventy years later, the world is confronted with the proliferation of nuclear weapons and a mountain of nuclear waste of more than 250,000 tonnes of irradiated nuclear fuel from atomic reactors alone.
Setsuko Thurlow was thirteen years old on August 6, 1945 and living in Hiroshima, Japan. She vividly recounts her experience as a survivor of the first atomic bombing of Japan and its relevance to humankind today. "The NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) guarantees the so-called “inalienable right” of states to access nuclear energy in exchange for agreeing never to acquire nuclear weapons. Thus hibakusha, survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who witnessed the atrocity of the first two uses of nuclear weapons 66 years ago, now confront the horror that sufficient nuclear fuel exists in dozens of countries to make another 120,000 nuclear bombs."
Akiko Yoshida is a young safe energy campaigner with Friends of the Earth (FOE) Japan. She brings the latest message from the frontlines of an ongoing nuclear catastrophe still emerging from the radioactive rubble of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant. It is story of the Japanese people's united struggle to end nuclear power in Japan and set an example for the world.
"Won't you please come to Chicago, no one else can take your place, we can change the world." Graham Nash
The entire weekend's schedule of events and speakers can be viewed on the Nuclear Energy Information Service website.