For The Wild - Dr. HELEN CALDICOTT on Nuclear Narcissism ⧸203

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00:00:30.000 hello and welcome to for the wild podcast i'm ayanna young today i'll be speaking with dr

00:00:42.760 helen caldicott in the early 1980s helen was president of the group physicians for social

00:00:49.040 responsibility an organization of 23 000 doctors committed to educating their colleagues about the

00:00:55.100 dangers of nuclear power, nuclear weapons and nuclear war. So there's no net energy reduction

00:01:03.640 by using nuclear power. In fact, there's probably more as the concentration of the uranium ore

00:01:10.080 decreases. And then you've got to store this radioactive waste forever, which will require

00:01:15.700 also huge amounts of energy and transport it and the like. And it takes 10, 15, 20 years to build

00:01:23.840 nuclear power plant these days and it costs 15 to 20 billion dollars to build and the radioactive

00:01:32.160 waste will produce epidemics of cancer leukemia genetic disease and congenital deformities

00:01:37.360 for the rest of time how can they call it clean energy how dare they

00:01:45.360 she founded the women's action for nuclear disarmament in 1980 and won the noble peace

00:01:50.560 Prize in 1985. Helen Caldicott, a graduate of the University of Adelaide School of Medicine,

00:01:57.040 was a faculty member of Harvard Medical School and in 1974 founded the Cystic Fibrosis Clinic

00:02:03.360 at Adelaide Children's Hospital. In 1971, she played a major role in Australia's opposition

00:02:09.840 to French atmospheric nuclear testing in the Pacific. She is the author or editor of eight

00:02:15.360 books including Nuclear Madness, Missile Envy, and most recently, Sleepwalking to Armageddon.

00:02:22.020 She has been the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees, the subject of three award-winning

00:02:27.460 documentary films, and was named one of the 20th century's most influential women by the

00:02:32.840 Smithsonian Institute. Well, Helen, thank you so much for joining us today. Like I was saying

00:02:39.520 earlier, you have been a huge inspiration of mine from the very beginnings of this podcast. So it is

00:02:46.400 really a dream come true to have you on the show today. Thank you. So before we discuss the realities

00:02:54.300 of nuclear power plants and the proliferation and weapons that nuclear creates, I'd like to

00:03:01.980 recognize the profound nature of this topic and the ways in which the creation of this nuclear

00:03:07.640 world has induced multiple traumas that continue to echo across humanity today. In particular,

00:03:13.440 I'm thinking about the relationship between people and the land. Now, through the violent

00:03:18.140 projects of uranium mining and weapons testing, a tremendous theft of land and violation of the

00:03:25.360 body has occurred. I think about the indigenous communities across the southwestern United States

00:03:30.420 who experienced uranium contamination long before the bomb was built to completion, as well as the

00:03:37.240 women in the Marshall Islands who suffered multiple miscarriages and gave birth to severely

00:03:42.400 disfigured babies in the aftermath of U.S. nuclear testing in the Pacific. And so I feel that it's not

00:03:50.460 an exaggeration to say that each process in the nuclear fuel cycle destroys all of what it comes

00:03:57.500 into contact with. So Helen, perhaps you could begin by sharing how you see nuclearism as a

00:04:05.080 direct violation to earth itself? Well, if we have a nuclear war tonight or tomorrow, it will destroy

00:04:13.420 most of the species on the planet because Russia and America have 94% of all the nuclear weapons 0.73

00:04:23.020 in the world. They're on hair trigger alert. Donald Trump has a three minute decision time 0.73

00:04:28.940 whether or not to press the button. He's the only one who can and will. The suitcase containing the

00:04:34.780 codes for nuclear wars with him at all times he's a fairly deranged character and russia and america 0.88

00:04:42.680 because they have so many weapons and they're on hair trigger alert meaning they're ready to go with

00:04:48.460 the press of the button and it's called launch on warning if the computers and radars pick up

00:04:54.060 missiles coming from russia and this has happened many times by accident the missiles weren't really

00:05:00.480 coming but it was a mistake then during that time the button gets pressed on the other side

00:05:06.520 or america could go for a first strike and go first it would create such a huge

00:05:13.180 mass of radioactive black smog that would be pushed into the stratosphere and that cloud would

00:05:23.320 circle the earth and for 10 years block out the sun producing what we call nuclear winter and

00:05:30.200 everything and everyone would freeze to death in the dark and that could happen tonight so we're 0.76

00:05:35.580 on the verge of annihilation the verge of extinction created by e equals mc squared

00:05:43.020 the energy in an atom equals the speed of light times the mass squared and no one talks about it

00:05:51.260 and it could happen tonight the men in the missile silos in america about 240 silos i think

00:05:59.260 they take drugs before they go down there they go to sleep on the job they're run by floppy

00:06:05.380 discs not proper computers their phones don't always work i can't tell you the number of times

00:06:12.460 we've come so close to a global annihilation and nobody but nobody talks about it including

00:06:19.560 the people running for president now in the presidential debate so i'll talk about climate

00:06:24.240 change. Yeah, that's very serious. And I think that it's inevitable that we will reach three

00:06:31.600 degrees centigrade above normal by 2050 or anyway, by the end of the century. And so will we end with

00:06:41.140 a whimper or a bang? And nobody really is addressing this. Well, Helen, thank you for

00:06:50.600 being so direct and clear with us about something that i agree is not being talked about

00:06:56.960 nearly enough for the severity of um it's not talked it's not talked about at all right

00:07:04.420 exactly the threat of nuclear war and our global annihilation is not being discussed period

00:07:11.260 and the bulletin of the atomic scientist has a clock and it's had it for all many 40 50 years

00:07:18.660 and it's moved to 100 seconds to midnight it's the closest it's ever been to the threat of

00:07:25.680 nuclear war we're closer than we've ever been and partly because it's been totally ignored by the

00:07:30.780 media you know jefferson said an informed democracy will behave in a responsible fashion

00:07:37.160 and i was responsible for educating the american people during the 80s about the medical implications

00:07:44.060 of nuclear war and so everybody knew about it we got a million people in central park in in 82 i 0.93

00:07:50.020 mean the biggest rally in the history of the united states but now everyone's supremely ignorant

00:07:56.120 and unless mr and mrs joe six-pack understand what the dangers are nothing's going to happen

00:08:02.240 and i said that will we end with a whimper or a bang whimper global warming you know everyone

00:08:10.840 and dies of heat prostration, and the animals and plants die,

00:08:16.060 or like that with a nuclear war.

00:08:18.780 This is where we are, and no one's talking about it.

00:08:22.300 They're vaguely mentioning climate change,

00:08:24.440 but they're not really talking about the real issues.

00:08:26.720 I agree with that.

00:08:28.800 Now, I want to talk about uranium,

00:08:31.740 and I know that uranium is vital to the development of nuclear energy and weapons,

00:08:36.100 as it is the only material that can sustain a fission chain reaction.

00:08:40.840 meaning that we have mined uranium thoughtlessly over the past couple of decades.

00:08:46.880 Across the United States, there are over 15,000 abandoned uranium mines,

00:08:52.300 and currently no existing federal laws require any cleanup of these sites

00:08:56.620 because they were established under the General Mining Law of 1872,

00:09:01.200 which requires no remediation of abandoned sites.

00:09:04.660 So while I frame this question in context to the United States,

00:09:08.280 I'm wondering if you could speak to the severity and length of uranium mining globally.

00:09:13.980 And can mines ever meaningfully be remediated?

00:09:18.060 Well, I don't know.

00:09:18.940 I mean, uranium 238 and 235, the two isotopes, last virtually forever.

00:09:26.720 How many did you say?

00:09:28.140 17,000 uranium mines across America?

00:09:31.320 15,000 abandoned uranium mines.

00:09:34.640 Yeah, abandoned.

00:09:35.380 And many are occupied by Indigenous populations. 1.00

00:09:41.620 It's just a horrifying scenario, and clearly they'll never be remediated 1.00

00:09:48.060 or cleaned up, and they'll be polluting the water supplies

00:09:51.740 and the food and the air and the like forever.

00:09:55.500 So what can I say?

00:10:00.200 It's terribly, terribly, terribly dangerous,

00:10:03.140 And the government is absolutely corrupt and negligent, to say the least, leaving these abandoned mines open to the air and the water and populations, particularly Indigenous people.

00:10:19.220 Uranium is highly carcinogenic.

00:10:21.680 What can I say?

00:10:23.200 And we've got a lot of uranium in Australia too.

00:10:25.900 But the point, the truth is that nuclear power is clearly on the wane.

00:10:31.560 it's terribly expensive it takes 15 to 20 years to build a nuclear power plant

00:10:38.220 i love the way they call them plants it's a nuclear reactor and renewable energy now is so

00:10:47.320 much cheaper than nuclear or coal or anything else and it's growing in leaps and bounds solar

00:10:55.400 wind geothermal so nuclear is on the way out but the problem is there's still they're still

00:11:01.520 building a few more and there's a huge amount hundreds of thousands of tons of high level

00:11:07.660 radioactive waste and no one knows where to put it it must be isolated from the ecosphere for a

00:11:14.280 million years according to the epa and uh no one knows where to put it there's nowhere to put it

00:11:22.400 And as it leaks over time, leaking the isotopes, cesium,

00:11:28.260 strontium, plutonium, americium, I mean,

00:11:30.460 there are over 100 specific radioactive elements

00:11:35.380 into the air and water.

00:11:36.960 These elements concentrate in the food chain like algae 100 times,

00:11:43.180 crustaceans 100 times, little fish 100 times, big fish 100 times,

00:11:49.060 and then us.

00:11:49.860 you can't taste smell or see these radioactive elements they lodge in various organs liver

00:11:56.940 lung bone testicles ovaries the like and mutate genes called the regulatory genes in cells

00:12:07.920 when they're mutated the cell will after some time some years start reproducing without any

00:12:15.700 regulation producing trillions of cells and that's a cancer also it can damage the fetus

00:12:22.760 plutonium crosses a placenta because it's seen by the body as iron placenta lets nothing through

00:12:30.720 into the developing embryo but it does let iron in and like the drug thalidomide plutonium can

00:12:37.220 kill a cell that's going to form the right arm the left half of the brain and the like

00:12:41.180 that's called teratogenesis we had a bumper sticker in australia called plutonium is

00:12:47.300 thalidomide forever um and and so we're going to see and then genetic diseases there are over

00:12:55.080 2 600 genetic diseases including my specialty cystic fibrosis now and so what the radioactive

00:13:03.480 waste will do is produce random compulsory genetic engineering for the rest of time

00:13:10.640 not just in humans but in all animals and plants because all our genes operate the same way

00:13:16.820 random compulsory genetic engineering epidemics of leukemia cancer congenital abnormalities

00:13:25.880 genetic diseases forevermore that's and because the american nuclear society doesn't know what

00:13:36.440 to do with its radioactive waste they've got a bill in congress called the radioactive

00:13:42.400 oh i can't think of it now uh they assume that they will find the answer to storing radioactive

00:13:51.000 waste over time but they won't and they can't as every nuclear reactor keeps operating it makes

00:13:58.140 more and more of this filthy dangerous toxic carcinogenic material it's absolutely obscene

00:14:05.440 from a medical perspective well thank you for speaking to the health just travesties that come

00:14:14.240 from it's called the radioactive it's called the radioactive waste confidence bill saying that

00:14:21.620 they've got confidence over time that they'll work out what it's disgusting it's classic classic male

00:14:29.820 thinking it's terrible and we need women to take over that well i agree with that and

00:14:36.520 yeah you know the men are on to abortion and stuff if they don't want abortion they all

00:14:44.140 should have vasectomies because they're the ones that make the babies. They're the ones that 0.99

00:14:49.080 initiate the babies. They should have vasectomies. It's insanity, Helen. It really is. When I think 1.00

00:14:56.740 that there are 428 nuclear reactors globally, 103 of them are in the United States. And currently

00:15:04.620 it's estimated that over one in three Americans live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant.

00:15:11.220 So it's astonishing to think of how many of us are in proximity to radioactive elements in our air and water.

00:15:17.960 Well, it's been shown in three studies in France, America, and I think Britain, that children living within five miles of a reactor double the incidence of leukemia because nuclear reactors continually emit tritium.

00:15:32.820 now tritium is h3o water is h2o tritium is very carcinogenic it can be absorbed through the skin

00:15:44.220 if there's a fog around a nuclear reactor and the tritium's in the fog they can't operate reactors

00:15:50.700 without tritium being extruded continuously into the air and the water and tritium can be absorbed

00:15:58.700 through the skin it gets into the body through the gi tract it can be inhaled and it's very

00:16:05.200 carcinogenic and if you want to know what the nuclear industry thinks of it go to the journal

00:16:10.260 of health physics every year they close the reactor down and replace the they call it spent fuel but

00:16:18.380 the fuel has become so radioactive and packed with radioactive elements that make the fuel rods

00:16:24.820 inefficient to produce power they take them out and during that time the shutdown large amounts

00:16:31.640 of radioactive material are emitted into the air and water surrounding the reactor what else can I

00:16:37.860 say I mean and then of course there are always there's always a possibility of an accident minor

00:16:44.340 or major like Three Mile Island like Chernobyl where over a million people now have died in 0.96

00:16:53.060 europe and and russia from cancer leukemia uh there are homes full of grossly deformed children

00:17:01.060 who have been impacted by the radioactive elements getting into them when they're

00:17:05.880 fetuses the epidemics of diabetes cancer leukemia progeria early aging in children

00:17:15.580 heart attacks i could go on and on and the best document to read about this is called chernobyl

00:17:22.880 published by the new york academy of science it comprises 5 000 papers written by russian

00:17:31.440 physicians and epidemiologists and the like on the ground data whereas the who world health

00:17:40.680 organization they just work out how much radiation got out by equations and etc they don't actually

00:17:48.820 measure it and then they extrapolate from how much radiation got out to the amount of dose that

00:17:56.320 people would have received you know a mile away three miles away a hundred miles away

00:18:01.000 it's all by calculations it's not actually looking at the patients so don't take any notice of the

00:18:07.980 WHO and what they talk about in terms of abnormalities relating to Chernobyl and in Fukushima

00:18:17.300 they are only looking at thyroid cancer radiation causes every sort of cancer and leukemia and all

00:18:27.180 the other abnormalities i've described so and and if a doctor tells a patient that their symptoms

00:18:34.520 may be related to fukushima and radiation the doctor loses their government funding in japan

00:18:39.980 there's a big lockdown on what actually is happening to the people in japan and the olympics

00:18:47.980 are going to start in fukushima that's where the torch relay starts the ground is extremely

00:18:54.340 radioactive with radioactive elements on the ground emitting what we call gamma radiation

00:18:59.800 like x-rays and these lovely young olympians you know trained all their lives are going to be

00:19:05.900 exposed to this and by inhaling radioactive elements coming up in the dust and in their food

00:19:12.140 let alone all the others now I have to say that with the epidemic that's now occurring with the

00:19:19.540 coronavirus I think they'll be cancelling the Olympics that's what I think and wouldn't that

00:19:25.200 be wonderful the reason that Prime Minister Abe sought to have the Olympics near Fukushima

00:19:32.200 was to whitewash the whole thing he's a wicked wicked evil man and the and the nuclear industry

00:19:39.960 really runs the parliament in in tokyo wow oh my goodness that is some intense truths and i really

00:19:48.920 appreciate you explaining that and i was actually reading this past month that it was announced that

00:19:55.580 the japanese government made a case for dumping contaminated water from the fukushima nuclear

00:20:01.180 power plant into the ocean, arguing that there is no other...

00:20:04.700 No, I think they're going to do that.

00:20:06.380 Right.

00:20:06.600 They're going to do that.

00:20:07.640 They've got a million tons of very radioactive water in thousands of tanks right next to

00:20:15.680 the ocean.

00:20:16.200 If there's another earthquake greater than seven on the Richter scale, those tanks will

00:20:21.000 collapse.

00:20:21.560 They're only built to last not very many years, and they're running out of space.

00:20:26.080 Now, that water comes from the three molten reactors that melted their way into the ground, into the earth, and they have to pour water in all the time to keep the reactor cores cool or else they'll melt down again and release huge amounts of radiation.

00:20:43.960 that water is extremely radioactive and that's the water that's in the tanks that they want to

00:20:49.540 release into the ocean and that's where the fish live and the you know the algae and all the rest

00:20:55.760 it's absolutely obscene and this is a situation that will never end in fact i held a conference

00:21:02.980 at the new academy of medicine on fukushima and a book came out of it called crisis without end

00:21:09.440 and it will never be resolved they'll never clean it up they'll never decommission the site

00:21:15.120 they'll never get those molten reactors out of the earth because if any man goes near it for a

00:21:21.120 few seconds the radiation dose is so high he'll die in a few minutes and who's addressing this

00:21:26.520 and the pacific will get more and more radioactive and the fish swim thousands of miles and we in

00:21:34.160 australia live on the pacific coast you live on the pacific coast you know you can't taste smell

00:21:40.520 or see the radiation in the fish and we fight like mad to save the life of one patient with cancer

00:21:48.580 one or with a genetic disease like cystic fibrosis this is a medical issue

00:21:55.180 always starts with a trickle then begins to

00:22:01.560 Blow

00:22:02.400 If I make it out alive

00:22:09.000 The sickness hits in my bones

00:22:12.200 I've been dwelling in my head

00:22:18.160 Maybe my bed can't let go

00:22:21.120 My freshly lit cigarette

00:22:26.880 Calls me

00:22:28.200 Eyes low and blow

00:22:30.860 Ground is frozen and time begins to slow

00:22:52.280 I can't help that I'm growing cold

00:22:58.100 I feel the sting of the trigger trying to blow me down

00:23:07.000 I never thought you'd take the shot

00:23:12.780 Now I'm on the ground

00:23:15.580 Oh my gosh, it's unbelievable

00:23:18.700 the inability to deal with the nuclear waste

00:23:23.620 and the health impacts

00:23:25.620 and just the blatant industrial vandalism of fukushima and how little media attention it gets

00:23:35.000 like it's nobody is talking about fukushima it's so under wraps that they're fighting not i mean

00:23:42.500 probably not even fighting hard to dump the nuclear waste into the ocean that it will affect

00:23:47.920 everybody the oceans circulate the fish circulate like you were saying so it's it's just disgusting

00:23:54.760 And it's astonishing that in the 70 years or so of the creation of nuclear material, we have yet to come up with any solution for storing it.

00:24:04.120 And in the United States, there will be no solution.

00:24:08.240 There's no solution.

00:24:10.040 And the other thing is that America is threatening Russia all the time.

00:24:16.420 And all the little countries in Eastern Europe that got liberated after the Berlin Wall fell down and the Cold War ended,

00:24:23.840 they all joined NATO and America's got missiles in all those little countries threatening Russia

00:24:32.060 right on the border they're sending ships and aircraft carriers into the Pacific Ocean to

00:24:38.360 challenge China I mean these men in the Pentagon I won't use a rude term but they're unbelievable

00:24:46.820 it's insane and it's them that run the world I mean they're into they're all fighting against 0.52

00:24:52.780 each other all the time and men have done that ever since we became humans and now they've got

00:24:59.240 nuclear weapons that's it well so going back to the storage you know there's um currently the

00:25:07.620 nuclear regulatory commission is considering a proposal by whole tech international a private

00:25:13.240 company to build an interim storage facility that would hold up to 100 000 metric tons of spent

00:25:18.620 nuclear fuel so i'm wondering if you could continue where you know i where i don't know

00:25:27.040 where that is but i'm wondering if you could also haven't got a site they haven't got a site but

00:25:33.680 even if they did get a site i mean just the potential catastrophe that could happen in the

00:25:39.840 transportation of the material you know i i just i could only imagine the threats of even

00:25:46.240 transporting that material to a site could be devastating correct correct trains have crashes

00:25:53.680 trucks have crashes whole tech makes canisters to put the radioactive spent fuel rods in and they're

00:26:02.500 they're not very thick and within a few years they can break down whereas in europe the canisters

00:26:09.320 they use are much thicker in width that the material storing them that i suppose it's steel

00:26:17.340 whole tech i wouldn't trust as far as i could kick it it shouldn't be done by a private company

00:26:23.280 anyway yeah well i'm thinking back to a series of photographs that were taken of mutated flowers

00:26:32.580 in the aftermath of the 1979 three-mile island incident or accident and these images reminded

00:26:39.640 me of the ways in which nuclearism creates its own kind of nature. On the expanse of lands that

00:26:48.000 surround the Los Alamos National Laboratory in present-day New Mexico, scientists have found

00:26:53.320 the shrub chamisa contains a quantity of strontium-90 that is 300,000 times that of normal

00:27:00.640 shrubbery because Chamisa mistakes strontium-90 for calcium. And I'm also wondering how our

00:27:07.540 understanding of, you know, quote, nature changes in relation to nuclear proliferation.

00:27:13.840 How does Chamisa, in this case, also exemplify that nuclear byproducts cannot be contained or

00:27:21.500 managed? It's a very, very good point you've made because our bodies think strontium-90 is calcium

00:27:28.140 that's laid down in bone where it irradiates immature white blood cells which can mutate

00:27:35.180 to produce leukemia which is cancer of the white blood cells white blood it can produce

00:27:41.360 osteogenic sarcomas which are ghastly tumors of bone which spread to the lung and so the plants

00:27:49.520 mirror us and they treat these radioactive elements not knowing they're radioactive as

00:27:56.360 ordinary calcium and potassium and the like. So you're right. And I wish I had my book,

00:28:04.060 my Chernobyl book handy, but I don't think I do, which would show you photographs 1.00

00:28:10.340 of the grossly deformed children at Chernobyl. 1.00

00:28:15.740 Well, to continue along this thread, I'm thinking about how contamination spreads to our more than

00:28:22.380 human kin through the food chain. Now, in the past year, I believe that there has been an increase in

00:28:28.760 radioactive boar globally. In the Czech Republic, boars have been consuming mushrooms made up of

00:28:35.460 cesium-137, which bled into the soil in the aftermath of Chernobyl. And then Japan have 0.70

00:28:41.100 also reported radioactive boars. So I'd like to ask how radioactive isotopes make their way into

00:28:47.760 the food chain well you've just said it the boars or wild pigs eat mushrooms uh and there are wild

00:28:55.340 boars in germany that's so radioactive they almost glow in the dark the reindeers eat the lichen in

00:29:02.680 the arctic circle which concentrates radioactive elements and they become radioactive people love

00:29:09.040 reindeer meat and if people say oh look the wildlife's all come back around chernobyl well

00:29:15.660 There's a wonderful biologist called Timothy Mousseau

00:29:20.580 who's been looking at the wildlife around Chernobyl,

00:29:23.800 particularly the swallows, and he's finding that 40%

00:29:30.020 of the male swallows are sterile, that many of them have cataracts

00:29:34.700 and humans are developing cataracts now.

00:29:37.340 That's what they found in the studies for that book, Chernobyl,

00:29:41.060 that they have mutations crooked wings white feathers they have tumors all over them and

00:29:49.940 what happens to swallows happens to us and the work he's doing he's an evolutionary biologist

00:29:56.540 Tim Rousseau Dr. Tim Rousseau it's amazing the work he's doing he's going into the exclusion

00:30:02.700 zones around Fukushima and Chernobyl looking at the butterflies at the birds at the plants

00:30:08.920 at the animals and he really should be getting a nobel prize because the work he's doing

00:30:14.700 will undo the nuclear regulatory commission and all the regulations that those people who don't

00:30:20.840 understand radiation biology have developed he is in highly radioactive areas so he's in that way

00:30:29.060 threatening his own life and health he should get the nobel prize well thank you for mentioning him

00:30:36.380 He's definitely been put on my list.

00:30:39.420 And now, Helen, I'd like to turn to weapon sites that have been converted into wildlife

00:30:44.300 refuges.

00:30:45.180 And I believe in the United States, there are now six contaminated sites that have purposefully

00:30:50.700 been reclassified as wildlife refuges, which seems like a really bizarre reshaping of nuclear

00:30:57.760 sacrifice zones into sanctuaries. 0.65

00:31:00.040 And I'm thinking about the way nuclearism creates these very unique geographies. 0.95

00:31:05.340 And I'd like to ask if there is any success to be found within this sort of model of letting a poisoned place be, or if these refuges actually spread contaminated biota through migratory fauna. 0.96

00:31:20.620 Well, the answer to that is obvious, isn't it? 0.99

00:31:23.840 I mean, it's just obscene what they're doing at Rocky Flats, which is littered with plutonium.

00:31:29.700 they had two huge fires of plutonium at rocky flats and the plutonium actually reached denver

00:31:36.280 and you're right that the fauna the rabbits and the moles and transport the radioactive material

00:31:42.920 off-site in their faeces and the like that people live around rocky flats as a higher incidence of

00:31:49.840 normal of testicular cancer and other sort of cancers and it's absolutely obscene what they're

00:31:55.300 doing absolutely obscene i know about rocky flats what are the other five sites

00:32:01.920 there's the big oaks national wildlife refuge in indiana i also have the uh

00:32:09.860 the hanford reach national monument but it's just you know there's an epidemic

00:32:16.900 of ananaphalic babies born to the east of hanford now ananaphalic babies are babies born with no

00:32:25.040 brains they have a base of a skull they have a midbrain i delivered what such a baby they'll cry

00:32:31.980 suck and breathe but they die after a few days there's an epidemic of them caused by hanford 0.81

00:32:40.200 hanford is the most radioactive site in the world that's where they manufactured plutonium

00:32:46.800 for most of the bombs that they built in the cold war do you know over the years of the cold war 0.54

00:32:52.560 America made 77,000 nuclear weapons.

00:32:58.280 77,000.

00:33:02.260 What can you say?

00:33:04.600 Absolute nuclear madness.

00:33:07.020 And I wrote a book called Nuclear Madness.

00:33:09.320 Absolute nuclear madness.

00:33:11.540 No one, no one is talking about it.

00:33:15.080 I wish I was running for president and I could be on those platforms.

00:33:19.320 Me too.

00:33:19.820 In fact, I wish I was president because it's very hard

00:33:24.220 to fix the issues that we've been talking about, I have to say.

00:33:27.600 But we should stop making nuclear weapons now

00:33:30.300 and we should abolish the ones we've got by undoing them.

00:33:34.000 And I don't know where you put the plutonium, et cetera,

00:33:36.280 that lasts for half a million years and is one

00:33:39.240 of the most carcinogenic materials that we know.

00:33:42.160 There is a law developing in the United Nations

00:33:46.260 to abolish nuclear weapons.

00:33:47.920 it needs the ratification of 50 countries i think they've got ratified they're up to about 28 now

00:33:55.880 and when it becomes law that means all countries have to abolish nuclear weapons however

00:34:02.260 they developed a similar law on landmines at the united nations and guess what trump

00:34:09.180 has violated that law and says we can use landmines again that man is evil he's evil 0.86

00:34:15.460 he's a hitler it's insanity it is it is absolute insanity and it's important that we're talking

00:34:22.580 about this because i agree if i don't hear you talking about it i don't hear it being spoken 0.68

00:34:28.660 about which is crazy and in preparing for this interview i came across a commissioned report by

00:34:35.300 sandia national labs which asked two interdisciplinary teams to create multiple

00:34:39.980 scenarios and designs that could effectively mark sites as being deadly without solely

00:34:44.780 relying on language, the premise being that radioactive sites will exist for thousands of

00:34:49.960 years, perhaps outliving this iteration of civilization. And if so, we have a responsibility

00:34:56.140 to deter human intrusion into these deadly spaces. Now, I think this report reveals a tremendous

00:35:02.000 amount about our ideals, projections, and how we are consciously reflecting upon sacrifice zones.

00:35:08.300 And I'm curious if you have any reflections on this, or perhaps whether or not you think

00:35:13.320 nuclearism embodies our ideals or humanity's ideals well it's not an ideal is it nuclearism

00:35:21.120 yeah it's an aberration that's a madness um it's a psychosis nuclear psychosis i know that they've

00:35:31.780 been trying for decades to develop signs to put on nuclear sites so that future generations won't

00:35:38.200 dig in and find out what what's the stuff is in them uh but they i mean how do they know how people

00:35:44.200 in future generations will will think or feel or what their knowledge will be and there's no sign

00:35:51.760 you can put on a nuclear site to say don't get in here because we don't know what languages they'll

00:35:57.220 be speaking or it's nuclear psychosis you could put this site is a sign and declaration of nuclear

00:36:06.040 psychosis anyway you can't do that because you don't know if they'll be speaking English or

00:36:11.700 language they'll be speaking if there are any people left if we haven't had a nuclear war and

00:36:17.260 annihilated ourselves or if global warming hasn't killed off all the human beings on the planet

00:36:24.200 which is quite lucky yeah well conversations on nuclear energy have somewhat subsided in

00:36:35.720 popularity, like you were mentioning earlier in our conversation. However, nuclear energy is still

00:36:41.180 often hidden within the category of so-called clean energy. And I suspect that the next time

00:36:47.900 there is widespread concern about our nation's energy situation, support for nuclear could rise

00:36:53.920 again. So why is it impossible to consider nuclear energy a form of clean energy? And why are

00:37:00.640 arguments that suggest nuclear energy can produce a self-reliant country completely baseless?

00:37:08.180 Well, by the time you dig up the uranium, you separate it from the ore, you enrich the uranium

00:37:16.840 two, three, five to three percent for nuclear power plants, you manufacture the zirconium

00:37:24.340 fuel rods you make the uranium in little pellets you build the reactor eight percent of global

00:37:31.860 warming co2 comes from the manufacture of concrete a reactor is built of concrete as the uranium ore

00:37:40.480 degrades in concentration they've mostly dug up all the highly concentrated uranium ore and they're

00:37:48.280 getting down to low ones so it takes a huge amount of energy to enrich the uranium to three

00:37:54.180 percent you use the amount of co2 produced in producing all of this fuel chain that i just

00:38:03.280 described is the same as probably a coal fire plant and then you've got the radioactive waste

00:38:10.900 to store for a million years so there's no net energy reduction by using nuclear power in fact

00:38:18.800 there's probably more as the concentration of the uranium ore decreases and then you've got to store

00:38:25.980 this radioactive waste forever which will require also huge amounts of energy and transport it and

00:38:32.960 the like and it takes 10 to 15 20 years to build a nuclear power plant these days and it costs 15

00:38:41.460 to 20 billion dollars to build and the radioactive waste will produce epidemics of cancer leukemia

00:38:47.860 genetic disease and genital deformities

00:38:50.140 for the rest of time

00:38:51.640 how can they call it clean energy

00:38:53.840 how dare they

00:38:56.200 as Greta Thunberg would say

00:38:58.160 how dare they

00:38:59.540 how dare they

00:39:00.920 I found you in the trash

00:39:19.720 Huddled in a corner

00:39:23.300 Across from me

00:39:27.460 You held out your hand

00:39:32.740 Told me not to be frightened

00:39:39.860 You explained how we'd been thrown away

00:39:52.120 So I let you take me home

00:39:59.440 This may be killing us

00:40:06.740 But at least it kills the pain

00:40:09.880 If I could soak up all the blood

00:40:13.920 I would soak up all the blood

00:40:22.120 I'd like to draw in a conversation that is perhaps a bit more personal in nature and invite you to speak to your own experiences organizing with physicians for social responsibility.

00:40:38.260 And why was it so important that the medical community intervene in the conversations on nuclear proliferation?

00:40:46.360 And as an existential threat to humanity, can you speak to the parallels between nuclear war and climate change?

00:40:53.920 Do you think that as humans, we have the capacity to understand these threats?

00:40:57.740 And if so, why is it that generally these are two issues which have really only gotten worse?

00:41:05.420 Well, you know, I've spoken to audiences throughout the world of thousands of people as a doctor.

00:41:12.760 and what i do when i start talking is i give them fact after fact after fact and i educate them

00:41:19.520 about radiation about mutation about global warming the whole thing

00:41:23.940 and then towards the end when i've developed my credibility and you can feel them sort of

00:41:29.740 relaxed thinking who is this mad doctor to thinking oh she really knows what she's talking

00:41:34.860 about then i go for their souls and i talk about what value they put on their own lives let alone

00:41:41.320 their children and what responsibility they have and in that way I got round through what we call

00:41:47.860 grand rounds every week hospitals have a meeting where they all the doctors come and they learn

00:41:54.520 about the latest in nephrology or cardiology or brain tumors and I would do the grand rounds this

00:42:01.300 week on the medical implications of nuclear power nuclear war and that way by one-to-one

00:42:08.520 engagement i was able to recruit 23 000 physicians two physicians for social responsibility and they

00:42:15.320 were totally pliable i mean there's nothing you can say that would negate the facts and i would

00:42:21.800 do that to a lay audience too like of 2 000 people or i addressed a million people in central park

00:42:28.100 in 1982 and i thought what am i going to talk to them about and i had three minutes so i dropped 0.75

00:42:33.440 the bomb on them and and vaporize them all and and you know describe the medical implications

00:42:40.440 of bomb dropping on New York so it was relatively easy to use the medical terminology and transcribe

00:42:49.500 that to the lay language for lay audiences but medical for the medical audience to engage

00:42:55.280 hundreds of thousands if not millions of people and that was my experience and that's what needs

00:43:00.960 to happen today I was lucky to have an agent in New York in Hollywood who represented the film

00:43:07.880 stars like John Cruz and Lily Tomlin Sally Field and she worked for me for free and she used the

00:43:14.540 film stars to get me on Donahue and Merv Griffin and the Today Show and 60 Minutes and the like

00:43:21.380 they don't want a boring old doctor in a tweed suit with an Australian accent talking about

00:43:27.840 nuclear war because that turns the audience off

00:43:29.780 and then they won't buy their toothpaste 0.59

00:43:31.780 or their missile

00:43:33.740 erectors. No.

00:43:35.320 What's it called? 1.00

00:43:37.040 When they have trouble getting their penises 1.00

00:43:39.760 erect. Anyway 0.99

00:43:41.820 that's stuff that they take.

00:43:44.720 So

00:43:45.000 but they all wanted Sally or Lily

00:43:47.800 so that was

00:43:48.920 the vehicle by which Pat

00:43:51.620 got me to address millions and millions

00:43:53.800 and millions of American people and I'd

00:43:55.720 go to the checkout counter

00:43:57.660 at the airport and signed in and the guy said,

00:44:00.440 I saw you on 60 Minutes last night.

00:44:02.540 You're absolutely right.

00:44:04.160 So it's once again what Jefferson said,

00:44:06.580 an informed democracy will behave in a responsible fashion.

00:44:12.660 And I taught the doctors themselves how to talk on radio,

00:44:17.080 on television, how to write letters to the editor,

00:44:19.400 how to write op-ed pieces, you know,

00:44:22.160 how to educate their own communities.

00:44:25.520 That was in the 80s.

00:44:26.740 And the Cold War ended and everything stopped.

00:44:30.540 In the States, we're accustomed to a lot of rhetoric that positions Americans as the only global power responsible enough to regulate nuclear weapons and to be trusted with nuclear weapons.

00:44:43.240 That it's our responsibility to gatekeep the proliferation of any further weapons without relinquishing our own, of course.

00:44:51.280 Yet historically, the U.S. is the only country to have abused these weapons.

00:44:56.740 So I would love if you could just speak to the absurdity of this notion and perhaps also

00:45:02.240 make reference to deterrence as a concept and some of the obvious fallacies of deterrence.

00:45:09.000 Deterrence is ridiculous. 0.98

00:45:11.440 We've got enough bombs to bomb you out of into extinction. 1.00

00:45:15.820 That's our deterrence. 0.97

00:45:17.040 Don't you do anything that we don't want you to do.

00:45:19.920 Let us come in and mine your lithium.

00:45:21.860 Let us come in and take all your oil.

00:45:24.040 Let us come in and take all your gas.

00:45:25.580 let us chop all the forest down america has 800 military bases around the world and 80 countries 0.89

00:45:32.700 how dare they who does america think it is who does it think it is and yet it tells north korea

00:45:39.640 it can't have nuclear weapons when it's got over 5 000 itself i mean it's it just takes my breath

00:45:46.620 away what what can i say and they've led the nuclear arms race at every step of the way except

00:45:51.860 And Russia blindly copied and followed.

00:45:54.980 And now there are eight countries with nuclear weapons.

00:45:57.900 India, Pakistan, and the nuclear war could easily start there.

00:46:01.520 It's so volatile.

00:46:03.060 France, China, England. 0.84

00:46:05.460 England lost her empire, so she's got nuclear weapons instead. 0.78

00:46:09.180 America, Russia, and North Korea.

00:46:12.600 mm-hmm well Helen I'm so grateful for your honesty and your courage to speak so clearly

00:46:23.080 to this and in closing I'd like it's not courage darling it's not courage I'm a doctor

00:46:28.740 I have to tell the patients the truth I'm a doctor I practice global preventive medicine

00:46:36.280 well i still feel like there are many doctors and many folks who should be this direct and

00:46:47.380 honest and they aren't and so i do think that your willingness and determination to be so honest

00:46:55.420 about things that are so challenging because there are no solutions and it's not sellable and it's not

00:47:01.940 something that makes people want to consume more. And therefore, you know, people don't want to talk

00:47:08.360 about it because it is so devastating. And it is such a mess that we have created. So I am really

00:47:15.340 appreciative of your courage. And in closing, I would like to ask you about nuclear proliferation

00:47:22.800 and global politics. And interesting enough, over half of millennials globally believe that it is

00:47:29.420 likely that a nuclear attack will occur within the next decade. So if you could please speak to the

00:47:35.160 current status of nuclear proliferation. And while you spoke a little bit about the status of the

00:47:40.360 global ban on nuclear weapons in terms of the United Nations, but if there are any other points

00:47:46.620 on that matter, I would really love to hear that. Well, I don't think America will listen to anyone

00:47:50.760 in the world, especially with Donald Trump. He's a dictator. He's a fascist. He's a Hitler. We'll 0.97

00:47:57.220 be lucky if we survive donald trump we'll be lucky if we survive x a nuclear war induced by

00:48:04.240 accidents human beings are fallible and we've got weapons with which we have to be infallible

00:48:10.400 and america's spending 1.7 trillion dollars over the next 30 years replacing every single

00:48:18.940 nuclear weapon, missile, ship, plane, with new ones. Why? Because who runs your government?

00:48:28.540 Your government is full of corporate prostitutes who take money from Lockheed Martin, Boeing, 1.00

00:48:35.780 Northrop Grumman, BAE, all of these revolting weapons industries. They spend over a trillion 0.99

00:48:42.640 dollars a year on weapons on death it's not the department of defense it's the department of death

00:48:49.420 because these weapons are made to kill people half your taxes go to death every year how come

00:48:59.060 you let these evil evil corporations subsume you take your money when you don't even have a free

00:49:07.500 medical care system like we do in australia when you don't have free education where people are

00:49:13.520 starving in the streets where huge numbers of your people are homeless how can you allow that

00:49:20.280 to happen because people have shares in the military industrial complex the rich people

00:49:26.360 that bernie talks about these military industrial complexes they run the government they give the

00:49:33.860 money to the congress people to run for their elections in australia voting is compulsory

00:49:39.780 if we don't vote we get fined your government is run by the whole government's run by the

00:49:47.440 military industrial complex instead of as bernie's saying it all should be free vote for bernie

00:49:54.520 we might have a little chance of survival if bernie gets to be president yeah uh well helen

00:50:02.940 this has been a very well I wanted to say eye-opening conversation but you know I've

00:50:10.080 listened to many of your talks and so I I felt somewhat educated on the matter but I think

00:50:16.780 because this topic is not brought up nearly enough it's almost as if I can not so much forget about

00:50:23.820 it but I could put it on the far far far back burner and then speaking to you again it just

00:50:29.140 brings it so to the forefront and reminds me that this is not an issue that is forgettable

00:50:37.620 this is not an issue that can just be kind of shoved away because other things feel more

00:50:43.560 important and so I really am appreciative that you have brought this back up again so strongly and

00:50:51.060 you shook me up and I needed that you got me back into thinking about this more clearly so

00:50:57.480 i appreciate it on a personal level very good good research thank you helen well for you i'd have to

00:51:05.080 all right yeah thanks thank you have a good one bye

00:51:10.780 thanks for listening to another episode of for the wild podcast i'm audio producer andrew stores

00:51:24.380 The music you heard today was from Rupa and the April Fishes and Kat Clyde

00:51:29.760 I'd like to thank our host and founder Ayanna Young

00:51:33.500 As well as the rest of our podcast production team

00:51:36.700 Francesca Glaspell, Carter Lou McIlroy, Erica Ekram, and Melanie Younger

00:51:54.380 Thank you.

For The Wild - October 07, 2020

Dr. HELEN CALDICOTT on Nuclear Narcissism ⧸203

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