Did you know that the nuclear fallout in Fallujah is worse than in Hiroshima or Nagasaki? Brian Haw did. We start with a few words from the recently departed one man political protest. Then Chris Busby speaks on the dangers of radiation that authorities and the media conspire to cover up, and we hear from Jeff Donn about the real risks and radiation releases in US nuclear power stations. Our title feature, in hour 2, is a radio adaptation of the sombre and philosophical film, Into Eternity, about the Finnish efforts to build the world's first long term nuclear storage facility.
Thanks to Tony Gosling for the recording of Brian Haw, to John Barkhausen for the Chris Busby interview, to Democracy Now! for the Jeff Donn interview, and to Chazk for the Into Eternity soundtrack and a couple of the nuclear commercials.
We start this week's show with an interview (well, more of a rant really) from the late Brian Haw, whose presence in London's parliament square for almost a decade was such an embarrassment to the warmongers opposite that they drafted special legislation in an unsuccessful bid to get rid of him. In this short recording, made at a protest by Tony Gosling, he vents his emotion and the pain he feels for the suffering of the children in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his frustration about the the UK public and the murderous foreign policy they support by their apathy. He repeatedly warns of the dangers of depleted uranium weapons.
Then we hear an interview with from blackballed researcher into the health risks of radiation, Chris Busby. He speaks on depleted uranium, as one example of how other interests trump safety concerns. By his estimation, about 65 million extra cases of cancer in humans have resulted from nuclear pollution from 1952-1994, and over 400,000 extra cases will result from the Fukushima leaks so far. He discusses various aspects of the health impact of radiation, and some of the organisational dynamics which cause health risk to be consistently minimised and systematically underestimated by the nuclear regulatory agencies. He also mentions that the academic establishment has never disputed the accuracy of his research, but merely attempted to ignore and suppress its dissemination.
Our title feature is a radio adaptation of Into Eternity, a thought provoking film about the hazards of nuclear waste disposal, which centres on Oonkaloo, an underground Finnish nuclear waste repository now under construction, which must last for at least 100,000 years. This film asks questions and is reflective in a way that our usual, more fact-centric, shows are not. The soundtrack is sombre and I removed the parts that are purely visual but inserted some soundbytes from pro-nuclear commercials, as a stark contrast with the earnest, long term, clear thinking needed for Oonkaloo to be a success.
=================================== BRIAN HAW'S RANT CONTAINS THE WORD "BUGGER" ON MORE THAN ONE OCCASION. IF YOU (OR YOUR FCC-REGULATORS) ARE EASILY BE OFFENDED, BE ADVISED!
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