The April episode of Nature Bats Last featured an interview with Paul Gunter from Beyond Nuclear. The show is embedded here:
I asked Paul about what I believe was the murder of nuclear whistle blower Karen Silkwood. Paul reiterated my contention that she was murdered by agents connected to the nuclear industry. The police were obviously colluding with the murderers by turning a ‘blind eye’ to the disappearance of her evidence folder that she had with her enroute to a meeting with a journalist from The New York Times.
The Killing of Karen Silkwood: The Story Behind the Kerr-McGee Plutonium Case
“Challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. nuclear industry has asked the Trump administration to ensure nuclear workers, suppliers, and vendors will have access to nuclear plants and personal protective equipment (PPE) during the 2020 spring and fall refueling outage seasons and beyond.”
COVID-19 Threatens Outages Scheduled at 97% of U.S. Nuclear Sites in 2020
Chernobyl: Radioactive forest near nuclear plant catches fire
Ukrainian authorities say a forest fire is causing radiation levels to spike in the area of Chernobyl, a nuclear power plant that melted down in 1986. A Fire at Chernobyl is releasing large amounts of Radiation
“Fires are common inside the “Zone of Alienation”, a circle with a 30-kilometre radius that surrounds the old nuclear plant and is fenced in barbed wire.
But the current blazes are larger than normal and are stirring up radiation as they burn grass and forests.
Winds could spread fires to remnants of the nuclear plant and authorities are trying to protect the critical infrastructure in the exclusion zone: Radiation levels rise as fires burn near Chernobyl’s former nuclear power plant
Via Harvey Wasserman: “The COVID Pandemic has thrown America’s atomic reactor industry into lethal chaos, making a major disaster even more likely. Reports from “terrified” workers at a Pennsylvania reactor indicate vital precautions needed to protect them may not even be possible.” Terrified Atomic Workers Warn That the COVID-19 Pandemic May Threaten Nuclear Reactor Disaster
Paul mentioned that the NRA were allowing plant operators to extend workers hours and to defer repairs. Evidence for that insanity is embedded inthe following link; U.S. to Let Nuclear Plants Defer Repairs, Schedule Longer Shifts
Fairwinds.org has covered the refueling issue also:
COVID-19 & Nuclear Risk: Refueling Nukes Isn’t A NASCAR Pit-stop!
Many thanks to the team at PRN.FM who still managed to record the show remotely from the studio due to the lockdown. It’s taken a long time for it to have been uploaded to the archive which reminds me how tenuous our predicament has become. Imagine being banned off the streets in total lockdown and no internet. That time is coming, sooner or later. Think about it.
I'm an anti-imperialist, environmental activist and blue ocean sailor, who is passionate about the earth and all it's inhabitants without favour. Brace for imminent impact as we bare witness to the non-linear unraveling of the biosphere and habitability disappearing for most if not all complex life on the only habitable planet we know of. To quote President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’. Folks we have lost the Arctic.
Kevin Hester 
More recent information about the fire near Chernobyl
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1268371/Chernobyl-fire-nuclear-power-plant-disaster-fires-Ukraine-fumes-Europe-radioactive-nuclear?fbclid=IwAR0Cto6cSClqWJ_VolzUbTSm0K1UuF6uks_NH53AYIkgRkQLEulRIFOjNu4
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23 cases and growing at this one Nuke plant
https://www.wrdw.com/content/news/Coronavirus-cases-grow-to-23-at-Plant-Vogtle-569580961.html?fbclid=IwAR1I0t2iOLP3zE63TQ3W7zoR_laayRaE0muJxqdmKFW-kGdk3Rm46-cLZBI
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Amazing (not) how all information of Covid cases within US nuclear facilities has vanished from the news cycle. After I did my first round-up stats, 3 weeks ago, NRC announced it would no longer make public the figures. There were a few leaks after that, but nothing for a while now except Vogtle, which is mostly a construction site. I envision hell-on-earth inside each of these death machines.
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23 and counting;
https://www.wrdw.com/content/news/Coronavirus-cases-grow-to-23-at-Plant-Vogtle-569580961.html?fbclid=IwAR2P6O49jdNeY1te1Qb7eAg2zOxGDrckxewu3aE3BLdD7k0wxGnURkxCb_s
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Chernobyl still burns:
https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/30198/chernobyl-still-burns-forest-fires-ukraine-nuclear-radiation/?fbclid=IwAR2cskILnHe8Tz9wyYnklTOc8YQ6h21Rca_0Q-lOwxtuaxcQdTKUUjT3DnI
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Covid and nuclear courtesy of Radio Ecoshock;
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Nuclear Hotseat continues the coverage of the convergence of nuclear and Covid 19
http://nuclearhotseat.com/2020/06/16/tim-judson-on-covid-nuclear-letters-to-pence-bob-alvarez-on-us-nuclear-policy-the-election/
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Kevin, I thought you’d get a chuckle out of this one. I most certainly did, but then though about it for a while and realized Trump will probably pardon them IF they even get convicted. But then I am a pessimist! But one with good reason I think…
Ohio Nuclear Power Scandal
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/24/ohio-nuclear-power-scandal/
The U.S. Attorney’s Office and FBI this week charged the speaker of the Ohio House of Representative and four others in a $61 million scheme to use $1 billion in ratepayers money to keep two decrepit nuclear power plants operating.
And, said the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, David DeVillers, at a press conference after the arrests Tuesday: “This is by no means over. We are going to continue with this investigation.”
Those charged were involved in a “Conspiracy to Participate, Directly or Indirectly” in the scheme “through a Pattern of Racketeering Activity,” declared the “Offense Description” that headed an 81-page federal “Criminal Complaint.”
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NOTE: No doubt that EVERY one of these monstrosities are the same; political corruption underlying the whole rotten industry. But one can only hope that these fu*ks get served a portion of humble pie…
sealintheSelkirks
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This is going to boggle your mind.
So if you don’t have a local radio playing and/or a cell phone on 24 hours a day every day, you will no longer be able to know that the nuclear reactor upwind of you has broken and you are being irradiated.
Then of course they were given ‘extensions’ past their expected life spans. Then their output was increased. Nothing to see here!
sealintheSelkirks
Point Beach Reactor Courts Disaster with Sirens Turned Off
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/08/16/point-beach-reactor-courts-disaster-with-sirens-turned-off/
A change to “emergency response” has been made at the 50-year-old Point Beach nuclear reactors on Lake Michigan south of Green Bay, Wisconsin. The operators, NextEra Energy Point Beach (NextEra), have turned off the site’s disaster warning sirens.
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The local weekly paper just published my CoVid reply to the crowd of imbecile ‘Mothers Against Masks in Schools’ protest demonstration at the Board of Education building that was front page 16Aug with two photos of happy smiling right winger Trumpie moms holding signs says FREEDOM. They spelled it wrong of course, should have been FREEDUMB.
The paper does not put issues up on their website for months due to being such a marginal economic success, nobody would buy them, so it will be half a year before the last 8 weeks go up as the latest one on their site is from April2021.
Been a nasty 8 weeks, Kevin. So I thought I’d post most of my letter to a friend up in Bonner’s Ferry Idaho of the insanity I’m hiding from on this property. Quotes are from the covid articles in the paper since 16Aug with my Letter to the Editor in 30Sept issue. She’s one of the thinking people that live in this area…we talk frequently. There are intelligent beings here but most are not as visible or vocal as I seem to be.
So here it is, lots of quotes from hospital people and I’m cutting some stuff:
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Delta is screaming through the population here, Tri-County health reported the all-time high of hospitalized Covid in the little local ones on Sept. 23rd, again breaking the record of a couple of weeks earlier and a couple weeks earlier than that! And the big regionals in Spokane are in fucking dire straits, too.
I picked up both the Sept 23rd and 30th Independent paper… and, like the three I think I quoted to you (Aug 26th/Sept 2 & 16) it’s only getting worse the last two weeks of Sept. The 23rd said we are near ‘crisis care’ levels, battlefield triage, what your hospitals went to which is let the sickest die which is why Idaho flooded our hospitals. Ours don’t have the beds or the personnel to deal with our own sick now. The Colville & Chewelah Providence Chief Administrator is quoted saying “unprecedented strain on the system, highest number of patients since the pandemic started, overwhelming majority unvaxxed.”
Reports of people who AWARE that they had the virus continuing to go out into the community were also recorded. Providence Hospital PR Info Officer Beth Hodges quote: “We are seeing people get sick and then expose other people quickly.”
WTF? ON PURPOSE? These morons are TRYING to get people sick? To what, show that Trump was right it’s just the flu???
The press release goes on to say the health district and the hospitals are “overwhelmed” and the most recent deaths will not be the last. Ya think? …that “We are rapidly spiraling to a point where public health and hospital settings cannot keep up with the community’s COVID needs…nor other needs.” It added that the situation will continue to get worse unless people make a conscious effort to stay home when sick, mask up, get tested, and get the vaccine.
Somehow I don’t think any of that is going to happen. One in four cars coming in for testing at the Colville hospital drive-up site is positive… Overall “morale is low, medical people are tired, frustrated, emotional” and the decision to go to Crisis Care would be made by the State or regional level, not individual hospitals. “We’re close, we’re teetering day by day and how long can you keep pressing on our system before the dam bursts” she said.
We’ve got Texas, Idaho, Nevada all trying to transfer cases to Washington because our hospitals are so good. Alaska is trying to shift the sick to Washington, too…. EMTs in the area have been using personal cars to respond to emergency calls (non-covid I assume)…how’s that for fucked up? The ambulance service is swamped. Another issue is long-haul, sick people are reporting symptoms weeks and months or longer after testing positive.
This was all out of the Sept 23rd paper.
The Sept. 30th paper printed my Letter to the Editor that I wrote in response to the absolutely moronic shit spewed by the anti-mask crowd that picketed the Chewelah Board of Education building with two pictures that were on the front page of August 26th’s paper that just pissed me off. I could/should have taken more time but it triggered my outrage I think. Did I tell you about this already? I don’t remember. Sorry if I’m repeating myself.
The utter stupidity quoted…I couldn’t take it! You know a woman named Teagan Ewens? She said “We are not asking permission to choose what is right for our children. We are performing our absolute duty as parents to protect our children from harm.” Wearing a Cougars shirt…and the smiling happy mothers group all holding signs with FREEDOM etc etc. FREEDUMB would have been a better spelling.
So they didn’t print it until now a month later. After every paper since16Aug being screamingly bad news of this disease. Isn’t anybody paying attention?
But they did without editing a single word which surprised me. I think Jared is using my words as a foil to say what he as publisher can’t publicly say without getting people around here really pissed off at him. As he told me once when I sent in one that reamed the behavior of the ski hill management, he can’t do that as he’d lose his advertisers. Yeah, Stevens County…and no, he didn’t print that one! But he and I have talked often over the years and he knows me somewhat and has put in three articles about my written work; the Lunch Counter Trilogy novella on riverbreak.com, the North American Riversurfing Summit in Bend story, and my new Massacre Sites book. They did put a title on my Letter I didn’t write, though.
Somehow I’m thinking it won’t go over real well around here but you know what? I don’t care. Reality in the last five weeks in this paper has been absolutely scary as shit gets worse and worse.
I’m very tired of stupid. And I’m not the only one but people who are wearing masks and are vaccinated are scared of the violence of these people. Too much is coming out of attacks by anti-mask types on people who say anything they don’t like. Italian blackshirts of 1920s Italy and brownshirt behavior in 1930s Germany comes to mind but one would have to actually know some history to realize this.
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This is what they printed:
Get the COVID vaccine or stay home (their title!)
When I was a kid there were older kids in the neighborhood that caught a virus that withered a leg. Just shriveled them and crippled them for life. Polio Virus seemed to only show up in summertime. There was another virus that used to kill people everywhere called Smallpox Virus. Throughout written history it killed millions.
We stood in line at school, 1st grade, and drank a vaccine to defeat Polio created by a man named Salk who stated he didn’t own the vaccine, the people of the world owned it. Know anybody who has Polio? Nope. Now corporations own vaccines not public health. What a mistake this is! Get corporate greed out of medicine.
I also have a mark on my arm from the Smallpox vaccine. Nobody young has those marks because we BEAT Smallpox. Worldwide everybody got the shot.
My oldest grandpa survived the 1918 Pandemic while fighting the German Army. He watched his volunteer US Army buddies die coughing in the trenches of France. I heard his stories.
I ran a fiberglass repair shop for 20 years wearing REAL masks, 5 pounds of protection from lung disease. You think these skimpy masks are even worth complaining about?
To those anti-mask/vaccine people: Please don’t go to the hospital if/when you catch this disease. You HAVE made that choice and shouldn’t take the chance at living away from people whom you infect by taking a hospital bed they need to live. Don’t be selfish, take responsibility, stay home. Like your 14th Century European ancestors, keep waving those flowers in you face to keep away the ‘bad air’ of the Black Death virus. It worked so well then.
seal morgan
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Yep, I snarled. No doubt about it… well, that is a possibility, too, by the MAGATS around here. We’ve got people with Covid running around deliberately getting people sick so if somebody they infect dies, doesn’t that equate with premeditated murder? Or at least manslaughter…So get someone sick who dies what should be the consequences?
The nursing home up in Colville just had 52 cases in the last two weeks, and 22 in staff. 33 of the residents who caught it were fully vaxxed so they were breakthrough cases, Delta variant of course. Four who weren’t and one who was died. That’s almost a 10% death rate, 9.6 or so.
The Sept. 30th paper said Chewelah is still only at 41% vaxxed, 39% in Colville.
I walked into Safeway yesterday and got 15 feet into the store before realizing that fully half the customers had no masks on. Yes I was in an N95, I don’t wear my surgical ear-loop ones when I walk into public buildings around here. Not that I go anywhere much anyway. But people were crowded together in the checkout lines, two feet apart at best. Safeway is NOT enforcing the state-wide indoor mask mandate whatsoever though all their employees were masked. Not at the post office because I saw at least one woman behind the counter with no mask on! It’s a FEDERAL mandate there…
This is insane behavior, Carrie. Looney-Tune level. Cognitively impaired level.
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That’s most of it. One county hospital system nearby, Okanogan County, has gone to ‘Crisis Care’ already and more are ready to tip over the edge.
Kevin, I live around mad weasel people with a serious case of mouth-foaming rabies, Kevin. Sorry I took up so much space. Wish me luck.
sealintheSelkirks
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