Robert Gilkeson and Joni Arends on the alarming risk of a Fukushima-on-steroids disaster at the Los Alamos Lab and the plans for an $80 billion plutonium pit factory
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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 recent article “Another Kind of Fukushima?” Asks Whistleblower Robert Gilkeson. Also relevant is Las Conchas Fire Woke Us Up—Let Us Now Stop The Plutonium Bomb Factory and New Mexico Is Burning With Potential For Nuclear Contamination.
Joni Arends
Later in the program, Dr. Caldicott welcomes Gilkeson’s colleague Joni Arends, executive director of Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, for more on the situation at Los Alamos. Concerned Citizens’ mission is to protect all living beings and the environment from the effects of radiation and other hazardous materials. Dr. Caldicott starts the discussion by asking what potentially lethal nuclear products have been stored in and near the Lab since 1943. The volume of toxins Arends describes is mindblowing. Both of today’s guests document the potential for a nuclear disaster that could contaminate much of the Southwestern United States.