This Week on GR
April 1, 2021
Welcome back to Gorilla Radio’s Home Edition, recorded on the dates, March 29th and 30th, 2021
To some of us it may seem like just yesterday, but 42 years have
passed since the “accident” at Three Mile Island made real the
terrifying possibility of a nuclear meltdown; the very scenario featured
in the film ‘The China Syndrome’, then newly released and playing in
American theatres.
On March 28th, 1979 a routine maintenance procedure went wrong in
reactor number 2 of the atomic power plant located in Dauphin County,
Pennsylvania providing illustrative proof of the industry’s inherent
danger to people, and its potential for catastrophic environmental
damage.
The federal government was half way into its 14 year clean up at
Three Mile Island when the Soviet reactor at Chernobyl went into
meltdown, eclipsing the human and ecological cost of Three Mile Island.
And yet, neither of these industrial disasters stopped the proliferation
of the atomic power industry in America, or in the USSR, or around the
World.
Angela Bischoff is Director of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance,
a “small but mighty group aiming to move Ontario onto a 100% renewable
path” She is too a long-time environmental defender whose career in the
non-profit sector spans three decades, four Canadian cities, and
includes issues ranging from transportation, climate, mental health,
electoral reform, and the transformation of our current fossil
fuel-driven urban paradigm toward the eco-cities necessary if we’re to
have a future.
The Alliance recently released the alert, ‘Stunning Revelations about Pickering Nuclear Station’s Safety‘ that says, “There is no excuse for leaving this ticking time bomb operating for another four years.”
Angela Bischoff in the first half.
And; March marks too the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the
disaster-still-in-progress at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power
Plant. One might think, the stair-stepping of these three calamitous
nuclear failures would make shutting down and removing a facility
approaching its best before date easy. But one would have to think
again!
In March 2011, just as Fukushima was imploding, the Vermont Yankee
Nuclear Power Station’s operating license was renewed, given the
blessing from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to extend
operations 20 years, to March, 2032.
Robbie Leppzer is
a New England-based documentary filmmaker whose 40+ year catalogue
includes both short and long-form critically acclaimed documentaries.
From the burgeoning environmental protest movement of the 1970’s to the
social justice and growing global peace movements currently roiling
World capitals, Leppzer has chronicled the people who he says, “…stick their necks out to take risks for grassroots social change and build bridges across cultures“. His 2019 release, broadcast on Free Speech TV, Link TV, and Vermont PBS, and produced in association with NHK-TVJapan is ‘Power Struggle‘.
Robbie Leppzer and turning the tide on Vermont Yankee in the second half.
But first, Angela Bischoff and the time bomb in Ontario’s Greater Golden Horseshoe.
Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Thursday between 11-Noon Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: https://cfuv.ca. He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.com
