If You Love This Planet, Dr. Helen Caldicott

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Prof. Alan Robock

This week, Dr. Caldicott interviews Dr. Alan Robock, Ph.D., a Distinguished Professor of Climatology in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University. Dr. Robock has published more than 300 articles on his research in the area of climate change, including more than 170 peer-reviewed papers. His areas of expertise include geoengineering, climatic effects of nuclear war, effects of volcanic eruptions on climate, regional atmosphere-hydrology modeling, and soil moisture variations. This week’s conversation looks at the latest models of nuclear winter after a nuclear war between India and Read the rest of this entry »

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Prof. Alex Rogers

Dr. Caldicott talks with Alex David Rogers, a Professor in Conservation Biology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford and scientific director of the International Program on the State of the Ocean (IPSO). Read the IPSO reports State of the Ocean and Implementing the Global State of the Oceans Report. Prof. Rogers’s research focuses on the diversity, ecology, conservation and evolution of marine species. He is internationally recognized for his expertise in deep-sea ecology and human Read the rest of this entry »

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Arnie Gundersen

This week, Dr. Caldicott gets an update on the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan from Arnold Gundersen, a consultant with Fairewinds Associates. Two recent items from the Fairewinds website: Too Close For Comfort - Floods, Earthquakes & Tsunamis and Newly Released TEPCO Data Proves Fairewinds Assertions of Significant Fuel Pool Failures at Fukushima Daiichi. Listen to our earlier programs featuring Gundersen here and here. As background for today’s program, read the recent news articles Read the rest of this entry »

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Bruce Gagnon

Dr. Caldicott interviews Bruce Gagnon, Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, for the second time in a month. Gagnon’s recent interview was well received, and this time the conversation explores further issues surrounding the weaponization of space, military spending and nuclear ethics around the world. Topics discussed include the U.S. military goal of Full Spectrum Dominance under the document Vision 2020, how the U.S. Space Command protects corporate interests and threatens to Read the rest of this entry »

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Jim Shields

On the program this week, Dr. Caldicott talks with Dr. Jim Shields, a senior ecologist with more than 30 years experience in wildlife management. Dr. Shields has worked within agriculture, forestry, road construction and the hospitality industries in a variety of capacities. His common sense approach to wildlife management has been applied most recently in Australia, but his experience and ecological knowledge extend to North and South America, the United Kingdom and northern Europe, Southeast Asia, and Japan. For some background on Dr. Shields, read Following His Animal Instincts.

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Bruce Gagnon

Bruce Gagnon is Dr. Caldicott’s guest this week. Gagnon is the Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, and has worked on space issues for nearly 30 years. He was the organizer of the Cancel Cassini Campaign (the Cassini Campaign was a project that launched 72 pounds of plutonium into space in 1997) which drew enormous support and media coverage around the world. In 2006 he was the recipient of the Dr. Benjamin Spock Peacemaker Award, and in 2010 Gagnon was extensively Read the rest of this entry »

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Bob Gilkeson

This week, Dr. Caldicott talks first with Robert Gilkeson, Registered Geologist, about the multiple hazards posed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The site in New Mexico is vulnerable to seismic activity, causing concerns about a new nuclear facility that is planned to be built which will make $80 billion of plutonium pits for atomic bombs in the 10 years.
Dr. Caldicott and Gilkeson, who won the Whistleblower Award from the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability in 2007, lay out the worst-case scenario in which an earthquake would disrupt the six metrin tons of radioactive material stored at the site. As background, Read the rest of this entry »

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Diane Curran (Julie Wiatt, Takoma Voice)

This week, we hear a repeat of Dr. Caldicott’s January 2010 interview with Diane Curran, an environmental laywer based in Washington, D.C. Since 1981, Curran has represented citizen groups, state and local governments, and individuals in a wide range of licensing and enforcement cases relating to nuclear power plants, factories, and waste storage and disposal sites. A nationally recognized expert in the field of nuclear safety and security regulation, Curran has litigated the requirements of the Atomic Energy Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, and other public safety and environmental Read the rest of this entry »

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David Bradbury

This week, Dr. Caldicott talks about the power of film with David Bradbury, described as “one of Australia’s best known and most successful documentary filmmakers” on his website. Bradbury’s 2007 film Hard Rain addresses the horrifying realities of nuclear power, and gets beneath the hype propounded by the nuclear industry. Watch a 25-minute clip here. Bradbury’s films have been shown widely in Australia and overseas, and he has won numerous prizes including five AFI awards and two Academy Award nominations (for Frontline, which profiled war cameraman Neil Davis, and for Chile: Hasta Cuando?, on the brutal military dictatorship of General Read the rest of this entry »

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Michael Madsen

Michael Madsen, the Danish director of the new documentary film “Into Eternity”, joins Dr. Caldicott for a riveting conversation with worldwide implications. “Into Eternity” focuses on the vast amounts of radioactive waste created every day by nuclear power plants the world over, and the constant challenge to find an adequate way to store it, with a special emphasis on the Onkalo nuclear waste repository being built in Finland (to be completed in 120 years). Read two 2011 articles about the film: ‘Into Eternity’: Effort to store nuclear waste and Nukes are forever which includes the trailer for the Read the rest of this entry »

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Dr. Arjun Makhijani

Dr. Caldicott once again welcomes engineer Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D. to the program to further update listeners on how solar, wind, geothermal and other green power sources can fully replace nuclear power and fossil fuel-based energy right now, not in the future. The need for such a transition is abundantly clear in the wake of the unprecedented Fukushima disaster and new reports that global warming is accelerating much faster than most climate scientists predicted. Dr. Makhijani is President and Senior Engineer of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and the author of the seminal report, Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free, A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy (2007), which demonstrates that the U.S. and the rest of the world could successfully meet all of its energy needs with Read the rest of this entry »

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Bridenbaugh

In this episode, Dr. Caldicott talks to Dale Bridenbaugh, a former nuclear engineer and retired energy consultant to governmental and other groups interested in evaluation of nuclear plant safety and licensing. In his role as a consultant within his own company and others, Bridenbaugh worked with many organizations in the U.S. and overseas, including the Swedish Energy Commission, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. According to a Wikipedia entry on nuclear whistleblowers, “On February 2, 1976, Gregory C. Minor, Richard B. Hubbard, and Dale G. Bridenbaugh Read the rest of this entry »

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Martin Sieff

This week on If You Love This Planet, Dr. Caldicott delves into conversation with Martin Sieff, Chief Global Analyst for the daily online magazine, The Globalist. For the past decade, Sieff has been chief news analyst for United Press International and is its former Managing Editor for International Affairs. He has received three Pulitzer Prize nominations for international reporting. From 1994 to 1999, Mr. Sieff was Chief Foreign Correspondent for The Washington Times. He was the paper’s Soviet and East European correspondent covering the collapse of communism for six years from 1986 to 1992 and for the next two years he was its State Read the rest of this entry »

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Arnie Gundersen

This week, Dr. Caldicott has an in-depth conversation with Arnold Gundersen, energy advisor with Fairewinds Associates Inc. and a former nuclear engineer. They discuss the present situation in Fukushima, where three nuclear power plants have melted down, and the continuing effects of the disaster on Japan and the rest of the world. For background, read the June 16 article, Fukushima: It’s Much Worse Than You Think: Scientific experts believe Japan’s nuclear disaster to be far worse than governments are revealing to the public, in which Gundersen states that Read the rest of this entry »