Angela Bischoff is Outreach director for the Ontario Clean Air Alliance. The OCAA is working for a 100% renewable electricity system, and that means phasing out nuclear power. To make advances against the nuclear industry requires vision, persuasion, and perseverance. Her argument against nuclear power is pretty visionary and persuasive.
For over 40 years, Dr. Helen Caldicott has devoted her life to an international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age and the necessary changes in human behavior to stop environmental destruction.
We have reviewed numerous book written by Dr. Helen Caldicott. You can read those reviews here.
Mary Lou, through her art, wants to emphasize the fact that our planet is threatened by two alarming situations: global human suffering because of the ravages of man-made global warming and total extinction of life brought about by nuclear war. Mary Lou’s various forms of art has been exhibited throughout the U.S.
We discussed Mary Lou and her art on our Demystifying Nuclear Power Blog here.
Dr. Gordon Edwards has a PhD in mathematics from Queens University. Edwards is the co-founder of Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility and is considered Canada’s foremost independent expert in all things nuclear.
Paul Gunter is a lead spokesperson in nuclear reactor hazards and security concerns. He acts as the regulatory watchdog over the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the nuclear power industry. He is a 2008 recipient of the Jane Bagley Lehman Award from the Tides Foundation for environmental activism for his work on the nuclear power and climate change issue. He has appeared on NBC Nightly World News, The Lehrer News Hour, BBC World News and Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now." He was a cofounder of the antinuclear Clamshell Alliance in 1976 to oppose the construction of the Seabrook (NH) nuclear power plant through non‐ violent direct action that launched the U.S. antinuclear movement. Prior to joining Beyond Nuclear he served for 16 years as the Director of the Reactor Watchdog Project for Nuclear Information and Resource Service. An environmental activist and energy policy analyst, he has been an ardent critic of atomic power development for more than 30 years. Paul is a New Englander who was born in Mississippi and raised in Detroit, MI.
Linda Pentz Gunter founded Beyond Nuclear in 2007 and serves as its international specialist as well as its media and development director. Prior to her work in anti-nuclear advocacy, she was a journalist for 20 years in print and broadcast, working for USA Network, Reuters, The Times (UK) and other US and international outlets.
Beyond Nuclear works to support grassroots, national and international efforts to phase out nuclear power in favor of safer renewable energy choices. It also draws attention to the perpetual link between nuclear power and the pathway to nuclear weapons and advocates for a global nuclear weapons ban. In creating Beyond Nuclear, Linda’s goal was to reach beyond the immediate circle of committed anti-nuclear activists and engage those environmentalists concerned with climate change and the necessity to move away from fossil and fissile energy use.
In 2018, Linda launched a new web platform, BeyondNuclearInternational,org, which aims to reframe the anti-nuclear message through a more human lens. Primarily a story-telling website, with a strong visual focus, Beyond Nuclear International delivers not only topical news coverage but new and creative ways of communicating the humanitarian impacts of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. It showcases work on these themes in film and television, the performing and visual arts, and books, and covers personal acts of courage, group actions and protests, personality profiles, the effects on animals and nature, and other topics of broader general interest.
While focusing her writing on the Beyond Nuclear International site, Linda continues to write for Truthout, Counterpunch, The Ecologist and others. She makes occasional appearances as an expert on television and radio programs.
Originally from the UK, Linda has a BA Honours degree in English and Italian Literature from Warwick University where she also studied and wrote about film, including a dissertation on the novels and films of Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Since joining Beyond Nuclear in 2007, Cindy has focused on ionizing radiation and its impact on health and the environment. From 1994 until 2007, she served as the radiation and health specialist at Nuclear Information and Resource Service.
Cindy communicates with media, members of the public, U.S. Congress, and national and international agencies on radiation and health regulation and science. She has traveled and spoken at public meetings, conferences and academic symposia.
She has worked to ensure public participation in National Academy of Sciences panels investigating the health effects of radiation, notifying activists across the country of regional meetings for these NAS committees and informing people about interacting with the committee through both verbal and written comments.
In her work on radiation, she emphasizes the use of precaution in the face of uncertain health outcomes rather than exposing people to a substance, like radiation, that is known to cause harm. She advocates for community-based action that informs individuals of contamination levels and risks so that they may decide for themselves what risks they are willing to take, rather than being exposed without their knowledge or consent. Cindy advocates for public openness regarding contamination monitoring, and the scientific basis for determining both the harm from radiation, and regulations that are supposed to be protective. For full protection of health, a more integrated approach is needed between a number of scientific disciplines in order to get a clearer picture of how radiation harms and how the public should be better informed and protected.
Published works include “Radiation and children: the ignored victims” in Transforming Terror: remembering the soul of the world from University of California Press, 2011; and “Post-Fukushima food monitoring” in Crisis without End from The New Press, 2014.
Cindy has a Bachelor of Arts from Franklin and Marshall College and a Masters of Science in Environmental Science from The Johns Hopkins University. Cindy grew up in Florida.
Norma Field grew up in Tokyo, Japan, with an American father and Japanese mother. Listening to her parents’ conflicting views on Pacific nuclear weapons testing turned out to be her introduction to the atomic age. She first came to the US at college age. Her BA is from Pitzer Collge, MA from Indiana University, and PhD from Princeton University. Now professor emerita, she began her career at the Department of East Asian Languages & Civilizations of the University of Chicago as a scholar of classical Japanese literature. Her most recent publications are Ima, “Heiwa” o honki de kataru ni wa: Inochi, jiyu, rekishi [To seriously talk peace today: Life, freedom, history]; The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster and the Tokyo Olympics (introduction and translation of Koide Hiroaki). With Yuki Miyamoto, she maintains the Atomic Age website.
The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster occurred just as she was preparing to retire from thirty years’ of teaching at the University of Chicago. That disaster brought together questions that have always been important to her : what are people able and willing to understand, given economic, social, and political constraints, in such a crisis? How do taboos get set in place, silencing people and alienating them from profound anxieties about themselves and their children because of radiation, the invisible intruder? How do these reverberate with the still unresolved history of atomic bombing?
Until the pandemic, Field traveled on average twice a year to Fukushima. She has organized symposia, translated and written on Fukushima. Recent publications include Fukushima Radiation: Will You Still Say No Crime Has Been Committed? (editor and co-translator, 2015) and “This will still be true tomorrow: ‘Fukushima ain’t got the time for Olympic Games’” (2020).
Libbe HaLevy produces and hosts Nuclear Hotseat, the weekly international news magazine on all things anti-nuclear. She has been a TEDx speaker, an Amazon #1 Bestselling Author, hosted rallies, and led media workshops at anti-nuclear conferences around the country. She is also the co-creator of Radiation Awareness Protection Talk, or RAPT, an audio series on how to best protect from the negative impact of radioactivity on our health.
During an extensive career in broadcasting, Libbe worked for WGN-TV, WGBH-TV, 20th Century Fox Studios, Norman Lear’s production companies, and many local radio stations. An accomplished playwright and librettist, her plays and musicals have won awards, been produced internationally, and optioned for Broadway. For more than 20 years, she ran a musical theatre development organization, Broadway on Sunset, and produced shows for Joan Hotchkis and Tearsheets Productions. Now an experienced life and business coach (clients include stage and screen legend Julie Andrews), as well as a popular storyteller and sought-after public speaker, Libbe’s dream is to take Nuclear Hotseat international via satellite, cable or broadcast and continue to be a catalyst to help end all things nuclear.
Libbe is author of the Amazon #1 best-selling nuclear memoir, Yes, I Glow in the Dark! One Mile from Three Mile Island to Fukushima and Beyond.
Mark’s career has focused on better understanding air pollution and global warming problems and developing large-scale clean, renewable energy solutions to them. Toward that end, he has developed and applied three-dimensional atmosphere-biosphere-ocean computer models and solvers to simulate air pollution, weather, climate, and renewable energy. He has also developed roadmaps to transition countries, states, cities, and towns to 100% clean, renewable energy for all purposes and computer models to examine grid stability in the presence of high penetrations of renewable energy.
Dave Kraft is a safe-energy/anti-nuclear advocate, and co-founder of NEIS. He has served as its director since its inception in 1981. Prior to becoming a full-time energy activist, his academic background and training was in astronomy and psychology at Northwestern University and Northeastern University in Chicago. He worked as a para-professional therapist for 12 years in Chicago. Kraft’s interest in the environment moved him to found NEIS with seven other people, to provide the public with credible information about the hazards and effects of nuclear power and waste, and the viable means to replace them.
Kraft is an accomplished public speaker and writer on nuclear topics. He has been called upon to testify in hearings related to nuclear power at the state and federal levels. He was responsible for creating the “Know Nukes!” series of videos on nuclear topics in cooperation with CAN-TV Chicago; and is a co-founder of the Radiation Monitoring Project, designed to provide training and field monitors to communities contaminated by radioactive substances. He has received recognition and awards for his work, most recently, in May 2016, the Judith Johnsrud “Unsung Hero of the Year” award for his lifelong activism.
Kevin Kamps is a longtime leading opponent of government and industry efforts to dump nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Kevin also has extensive knowledge about the risks of radioactive waste generation and storage at reactor sites, and transportation through communities across the country. In addition, Kevin focuses on eliminating federal subsidies for new reactors and other wasteful nuclear projects such as reprocessing. Prior to joining Beyond Nuclear he was for eight years the Radioactive Waste Specialist at Nuclear Information and Resource Service. Kevin has traveled to Chernobyl in Ukraine and founded a Michigan chapter of the international Chernobyl Children’s Project, which brings child victims of the Chernobyl accident to the United States for medical help. He has also worked with radiation victims in the U.S. and Canada, including those living near uranium mines and downwind from the Nevada Nuclear Weapons Test Site. Kevin has addressed communities in the U.S. and overseas, as well as governmental forums and federal, state, and local government agencies. Kevin is a Michigan native.
Marco Kaltofen is a Massachusetts licensed civil engineer and he is the principal at Boston Chemical Data Corp. Dr. Kaltofen's research area is the study of nuclear forensics. He has a PhD in Civil Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), and a Masters in Environmental Engineering. Dr. Kaltofen is an associate research engineer in the Nuclear Science and Engineering program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Tim joined NIRS September 2013 as Associate Director, and has served as Executive Director since 2014. Tim leads NIRS’s work on nuclear reactor and climate change issues, and has written a series of reports on nuclear bailouts and sustainable energy. Chair of the Board of Citizens Awareness Network, one of the lead organizations in the successful campaign to close the Vermont Yankee reactor; co-founder of Alliance for a Green Economy in New York.
Joanna Macy Ph.D., is a scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking and deep ecology. A respected voice in movements for peace, justice, and ecology, she interweaves her scholarship with learning from five decades of activism. As the root teacher of the Work That Reconnects, she has created a ground-breaking theoretical framework for personal and social change, as well as a powerful workshop methodology for its application.
Dr. Mousseau has worked with Fairewinds for many years now. Since 1999, along with his collaborators, Mousseau has explored the ecological and evolutionary consequences of the radioactive contaminants affecting populations of birds, insects and people inhabiting the Chernobyl region of Ukraine. Their research suggests that many species of plants and animals suffer from increased mutational loads as a result of exposure to radionuclides stemming from the Chernobyl disaster.
Biologist Mary Olson is clear her life’s mission is to bring to light to the disproportionate impact of radiation on girls and women.
Mary Olson is the founder, and acting Director of Gender and Radiation Impact Project (GRIP) a non-government, educational organization based in North Carolina, USA. Originally a student of Biology and Life Science, Olson’s work on radiation is rooted in a three-decade career as an educator and advocate for better radioactive waste policy in the United States. During that work, a novel question was posed to Olson, on whether biological sex is a factor in radiation harm. In 2011 Olson undertook an independent gender analysis of the data reported in the US National Academy of Science (NAS) report on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation, which is primarily from the A-bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Her findings were striking and resulted in a series of presentations in United Nations proceedings, including the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons in 2014, the 2015 Review Conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and in 2017 during the negotiation phase of the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Olson was also hosted to present the findings that radiation is more harmful to females compared to males, by the International Committee of the Red Cross both in 2016 and 2020. She has also presented at Gender Summits (EU) in 2016 and 2018.
Charmaine White Face, or Zumila Wobaga, is an Oglala Tituwan Oceti Sakowin great-grandmother, scientist, writer, organizer, activist, and environmentalist. She lives near Mt. Rushmore. Unfortunately, Mt. Rushmore and the indigenous lands around it are surrounded by more than 169 abandoned uranium mines—and open extraction pits. The radioactive pollution from these sites is dangerous, and she's been doing everything she can to bring attention to and remedy the situation. It was due to her tireless efforts that she was named a Giraffe Hero by the Giraffe Heroes Project, a nonprofit organization that encourages people to "stick their necks out for the common good."
Throughout her life, White Face has gotten used to being threatened for speaking out. She even formed Defenders of the Black Hills, an organization committed to educating the Lakota people about their treaty rights; that did not automatically win her friends.
What has been at the forefront of White Face's work is air and water pollution from uranium and thorium (another radioactive metal): "Native American nations of North America," she says, "are the miners' canaries for the United States, trying to awaken the people of the world to the dangers of radioactive pollution." The AUMs—three quarters of which are located on federal and Tribal lands—could affect the health of more than 50 million people who live near these sites.
"This is an invisible national crisis. Millions of people in the United States are being exposed as nuclear radiation victims on a daily basis. Exposure to radioactive pollution has been linked to cancer, genetic defects, 'Navajo Neuropathy,' and increases in mortality. We . . . believe that as more Americans become aware of this homegrown radioactive pollution, then something can be done to protect all peoples and the environment."
Excerpt from the Rapid City Journal (2016):
"I'm a biologist and a physical scientist," White Face said. "I'm an environmentalist from way back. I learned about these abandoned uranium mines and the active uranium mines, and I wanted to find out how this was affecting the people."
White Face founded the environmental and social justice organization Defenders of the Black Hills in 2003. The organization advocates for the protection, preservation and restoration of the environment of the 1951 and 1868 territory treaties. The organization won the Nuclear Free Future Award (described as "the Nobel Prize for Environmentalists") in 2007.
It was 2003 when she first started learning the extent of the uranium problems. White Face says that there's a major radioactive policing problem, with pollutants in the air, water and "probably the food."
"One thing we've found from studies done by the Indian Health Services is that Native Americans in the Northern Plains regions have the highest cancer rates in the country," White Face said.
Fairewinds Energy Education is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to furthering public understanding of nuclear power and nuclear safety related issues.
