NH #557: Nuclear Downwinders (That’s All of Us): Journalist/Playwright Mary Dickson

Nuclear Downwinders - Actually, that would be all of us.  Map shows all locations where fallout from atmospheric nuclear tests landed at least three times. Map created by and used courtesy of Richard L. Miller.

This Week's Featured Interview:

• Nuclear Downwinders – and that would be more of us than you might suspect.   Mary Dickson is a Salt Lake City journalist and writer whose award-winning play, Exposed, puts a human face on the cost of nuclear testing. She has been recognized by the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility for her lifetime work on behalf of downwinders and regularly speaks out against the resumption of nuclear testing as well as her downwinder information talks.  We talk about the horrific price paid by those who were downwind of the atmospheric atomic bomb tests of the 1950’s and 60’s… and the ongoing legacy of those blasts.
• Contact Mary Dickson:  Exposed.Downwinders@gmail.com

Mary Dickson

• Richard L. Miller's book, Under the Cloud: Decades of Nuclear Testing
  It is the original source for the keystone graphic of the map, seen above.
• Nuclear Downwinder Map – An excellent explanation of the map and what it means.  It includes implications for those who live at distance from the Nevada bomb blasts, but are nevertheless at ongoing risk from the radiation it dispersed.

Numnutz of the Week (for Outstanding Nuclear Boneheadedness):

Pssst!  Wanna make a lot of money?  Forever?  Why, radioactive nuclear waste as a business is just the ticket!  Government money - mmmmmmm!

LINKS:

• Webinar on Tik Tok for Activists by ReThink Media on March 15, 2022.  To register, CLICK HERE.
• Call the Midwife episode with a story line about British sailors exposed to nuclear radiation from south Pacific bomb tests.  Suddenly, years later, they have to deal with personal health issues and devastating problems with their infant offspring.  The cause is only revealed near the end of the show.  This episode is not yet available on Netflix, but can be accessed for free (at least in the U.S.) - CLICK HERE.
• The Bomb and Us: Why Gen Z Should Care about Nuclear Disarmament by Anna Bartoux
• The Ukraine crisis could trigger a nuclear catastrophe by Tilman Ruff, IPPNW
• The Risk of Nuclear Disaster in Ukraine by Bennett Ramberg, former foreign affairs officer in the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs and author of Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy.
• OIG "Special Inquiry" Finds Fraudulent, Counterfeit Parts in U.S. Reactors by Linda Pentz Gunter.
• Canada's Big Banks Urged to Drop Nuclear from Green Investment Portfolios