150 episodes
NukeTalk Ploughshares
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4.6 • 93 Ratings
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Nuclear weapons aren't just a national security issue; they are also a human rights issue. Building a safer future requires an examination of past and present nuclear policy. NukeTalk investigates nuclear weapons policy by looking at the human impact of nuclear weapons. And brings the stories of those affected to you. NukeTalk is hosted by Ploughshares.
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Atomic Assembly: Hanford, Washington
Over 80 years ago, Hanford was miles and miles of open farmland. Now, it’s known as the most contaminated site in the Western Hemisphere.
This episode features Steve Olson, author of the book Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age, and Britany Lindley, staff attorney at Hanford Challenge.
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Atomic Assembly: Rocky Flats, Colorado
In 1989, a team of FBI agents raided and shut down the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant after nearly 3 years of investigation into its environmental and waste practices. It was the first-ever raid of one government agency by another.
Featured guests include Kristen Iversen (Author of Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats), Jon Lipsky (Former FBI Special Agent who led the Rocky Flats raid), and Dr. Deborah Segaloff (Colorado Physicians for Social Responsibility). -
Atomic Assembly: Amarillo, Texas
The Pantex Plant sits just 17 miles northeast of Amarillo, Texas. It's the only remaining assembly and disassembly plant for nuclear weapons in the United States.
Guests include Barbara Kent (downwinder and advocate), Kaysie Kent (downwinder and advocate), and Lucie Genay (author of Under the Cap of Invisibility: The Pantex Nuclear Weapons Plant and the Texas Panhandle). -
Atomic Assembly: Oak Ridge, Tennessee
It was the uranium enriched at the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee that was used in Little Boy, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August of 1945. Today, every single weapon in the US’ nuclear arsenal, all 5,000, has parts that were built or maintained at Y-12.
Guests include Tanya Kardile (Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance) and Emily Strasser (author of Half-life of a secret: Reckoning with a hidden history). -
Atomic Assembly: Savannah River Site, South Carolina
The US government poured $8 billion dollars down the drain when politics and poor planning left its efforts to dispose of Cold War-era plutonium at the Savannah River Site a failure. Now, it wants to produce plutonium pits at the site.
Guests include Tom Clements (Savannah River Site Watch) and Taylor Barnes (Field Reporter for Inkstick Media). -
Atomic Assembly: RECA
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was created by the federal government to partially compensate Americans who developed certain diseases as a result of being exposed to radiation from nuclear weapons production.
Advocates are working to save the program, which is expiring on June 7.
Guests include Christen Commuso (Missouri Coalition for the Environment) and Sofia Guerra (Friends Committee on National Legislation.
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Countdown to Armageddon
Apart from climate change, there is no greater existential threat than the use of nuclear weapons. Press The Button is a weekly deep dive with leading experts about the nature of the nuclear threat and what scholars, lawmakers, think tanks, governments and civic organisations are doing to (hopefully) reduce the threat. Organized by the Ploughshares Fund, Press The Button sometimes feels too close to the Beltway, but its heart is in the right place. I eagerly await each episode, and gain knowledge and enlightenment from each. Thank you to the producers!
Not really a national security podcast
This is coming from a center left person here, but this is really a political pod about the big grab bag liberal wishlist of policies, with a patina of foreign policy. It’s not a nuclear / foreign policy pod.