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SAFE ENERGY: The Pursuit of a Renewable Resource

Fukushima and the Future of Safe Energy

  Description: In the face of the ongoing Fukushima tragedy, our country continues to pursue a “nuclear renaissance” as an answer to our energy problems. Although nuclear power has been claimed as a way to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, it comes at a heavy cost and will not solve the climate problem.  And as we have just witnessed, nuclear reactor accidents do happen, and the consequences are devastating and long lasting. 

We are at a moment of grave danger as well as opportunity and the decisions we make in the next 5 years about how to fuel our world will impact our very survival.  Pursuing carbon-free, nuclear-free energy is more than just protecting environmental resources; it is about protecting our current and future health, lives and communities.  

Goal: The keynote speakers will help us understand in greater depth the events that have unfolded and continue to unfold at Fukushima as well as the basic effects of radiation on populations worldwide.  They will then explore the threat of a similar nuclear tragedy in the United States and what these recent events imply for future energy policy in the United States.

 

 

 

Keynote Speakers:

Dr. Andy Kanter

PSR Affiliation: Member, National Board; President Elect (2012)

Professional Affiliation: Assistant Professor of Clinical Biomedical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology at the Earth Institute, Columbia University; Director of Medical Informatics / Health Info Services, Millennium Villages Project, Earth Institute, Columbia University
Areas of Expertise:

    * Global warming mitigation and clean energy solutions
    * Nuclear power, nuclear waste, radiation exposure
    * Iran nuclear crisis
    * Nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament
    * Nuclear war, terrorism and preparedness
    * Medical student activism
    * Global/international health

Dr. David Richardson

Dr. Richardson is Associate Professor of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  His research focuses on the health effects of exposure to ionizing radiation.  He has conducted studies of cancer among nuclear workers at several U.S. Department of Energy facilities, as well as studied cancer among the Japanese survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  He has served as a visiting scientist at the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France and at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima, Japan.  He is an Associate Editor of the journals Occupational and Environmental Medicine and Environmental Health Perspectives; and, he is a member of the President’s Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health.