Decommissioning does not mean danger has passed

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When nuclear power plants close, and the decommissioning process begins, there can be a false sense of security that the radioactive risks have evaporated. But Libbe HaLevy’s guests on this week’s Nuclear Hotseat set the record straight on that score. Cathy Iwane, co-founder of Coalition for Nuclear Safety , talks about the situation at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station on the southern California coast. Formerly living in Japan, she and her family moved to southern California in the immediate aftermath of the March 11, 2011 Fukushima nuclear triple meltdown disaster.

Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is most famous for its catastrophic March 28, 1979 accident, the impact of which has been significantly downplayed and suppressed. But even shut down, TMI as it is known, is not without vulnerability. Eric Epstein, Executive Director of Three Mile Island Alert, explains why.

And for this week’s Hot Story, Beyond Nuclear’s Linda Pentz Gunter looks at how industry and agency propaganda delivered to those in power influences the pro-nuclear push, including the obsession with small modular reactors and NASA’s plan to send nuclear-powered rockets to Mars, power satellites with reactors and even put them on the moon.

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