SPECIAL FUKUSHIMA UPDATE: Arnold Gundersen and Dr. Helen Caldicott
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Arnie Gundersen
In this special program about the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, we present two interviews recorded last week followed by a speech about nuclear radiation given by Dr. Caldicott in 2009. In the first 20-minute segment, If You Love This Planet’s Australian producer Jasmin Williams chats with Arnold Gundersen, energy advisor with Fairewinds Associates Inc., and former nuclear engineer. Gundersen explains the events that have crippled the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan following the March 11th, 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
Helen Caldicott, M.D. (William Lauer, AP)
In the next 20-minute segment, Williams interviews our host, Dr. Helen Caldicott, about the alarming increase in radiation from the Fukushima reactor. Dr. Caldicott lays out the health consequences now facing the people of Japan and the rest of the northern hemisphere. Read Dr. Caldicott’s April 11 article in The Guardian, How nuclear apologists mislead the world over radiation - George Monbiot and others at best misinform and at worst distort evidence of the dangers of atomic energy. In the last 20 minutes, we hear part of a presentation Dr. Caldicott gave in Berkeley in June 2009 about the dangers of nuclear power and the nuclear fuel cycle, including but not limited to radioactive isotopes. This segment is courtesy of TUC Radio, which recorded the lecture (the complete speech can be ordered on their Web site). As Ms. Williams says in her introduction, the major media in their coverage of the Japanese nuclear accident are not offering much information about the health effects of nuclear energy. For more information, read Dr. Caldicott’s books Nuclear Power is Not the Answer and Nuclear Madness: What You Can Do. And view the material on the Web site of The Helen Caldicott Foundation for a Nuclear-Free Planet.