NH #136: DC Smackdown! Resnikoff on NRC/High Burn-up Fuel, NIRS' D'Arrigo on EPA/Radiation

FOIA email from EPA to air quality districts immediately after Fukushima obtained by Daniel Hirsch, Nuclear Policy Lecturer at UC Santa Cruz and head of Committee to Bridge the Gap

INTERVIEWS:  First-hand reports on the recent meetings between  anti-nuclear activists and top level reps of the NRC, EPA and Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

• Dr. Marvin Resnikoff, Senior Associate at Radioactive Waste Management Associates, has been an international consultant on radioactive waste management for decades.  He met with NRC Chair Alison Macfarlane and Commissioners Magwood and Apostolakis and really burned them up with the hard facts of what they don't know about high burn-up nuclear fuel in their own reactors!

Dr. Marvin Resnikoff

• Diane D'Arrigo, Radioactive Waste Project Director for Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) explains how she took on the EPA over their inability to take radiation readings on the California coast after Fukushima -- and perhaps it was something other than incompetence?

NUMNUTZ OF THE WEEK:  TRINITY BLAST HEALTH STUDY

The Trinity blast on July 16, 1945, marked the start of the nuclear age... and the US government is studying the health impact on downwinders only now...?!?  Everyone alive back then is either over 70 or dead!

PLUS:

• Sentencing for 84-year-old Buddhist nun Sister Megan Rice and her co-nuclear-disarmament activists delayed on account of snow, rescheduled for February 18.
• Alaska cites the Twinkie, uh, banana defense to radiation charges as seals die of "white goo" throughout body that even crows refuse to eat;
• Gloves come off in Tokyo gubernatorial election as a referendum on nukes as TV/radio commentator "asked" by stations to "steer clear of nuclear power issues;"
• Canada wants to ship highly enriched uranium by truck to US Savannah River Site;
• AND:  Blinky strikes again!

Blinky the Three-Eyed Fish, shows up this time in Canada

LINKS: 

•  Sr. Megan Rice Petition, asking the judge for leniency: http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=9007
• Martin Fackler Int'l New York Times article on the Fukushima farmer who defies the evacuation order to tend the prefecture's abandoned cows:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/world/asia/defying-japan-rancher-saves-fukushimas-radioactive-cows.html?_r=0
• Amy Goodman, Democracy Now from Japan: http://www.democracynow.org/2014/1/17/mayor_of_town_that_hosted_fukushima
• Robert Jacobs 3-part series on Radiation Makes People Invisible: 
  http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=12200