Question and answer with Jody Williams, anti-nuclear activists

Comment: We need to get Ms. Williams to come speak about the problems of the nuclear cycle which begans uranium mining in Virginia! There is uranium in Fredericksburg too!

August 9, 2009
Question and answer with Jody Williams, anti-nuclear activists

By Tim Johnson
Free Press Staff Writer

Jody Williams, 58, a native of Brattleboro and a graduate of the University of Vermont, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. In 2006, with five other peace-prize laureates, she co-founded the Nobel Women's Initiative, in support of women's organizations worldwide working for peace, justice and equality.

She divides her time between homes in Fredericksburg, Va. and Westminster West, Vt.

Williams was in Burlington last Thursday -- the anniversary of the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima -- to speak at a Nuclear Disarmament Day rally sponsored by area peace groups. She sat down with the Free Press before her speech to discuss her views on nuclear energy. Her discourse was sprinkled with obscenities. "You can edit my lovely language," she said at one point. "When I get worked up, I swear a lot."

Tim Johnson: What are your thoughts on nuclear energy as a power source?

Jody Williams: I am not pro nuclear energy. I think looking backward in time for a response to today's problems is ridiculous. I really take offense at the lies that it's clean, sustainable, etc. Mining uranium is not clean. Building the plant is not clean. Decommissioning the reactors is most definitely not clean, and where ... do you put the radioactivity, which can last for hundreds of thousands of years? So, putting it forth as a clean alternative is (b.s.), and I hate being lied to, quite honestly.

TJ: Suppose someone said it was relatively cleaner than coal, oil, fossil fuels?

JW: I don't care. Without taxpayer money, it wouldn't exist at all. Private investors don't invest in it, as with most everything that's full of crap. Look, I'd rather have my billions of dollars going to finding really clean, sustainable energy, not looking back to nukes. I'm really terrified about where you're going to put all the crap. Last I checked ... there's no place in the United States that nationally will accept nuclear waste now.

The last I knew, there were two regional facilities that would accept waste from contiguous states, but the one that accepted waste nationally closed, so where is the nuclear (stuff) going? It's sitting there, polluting. And to be told that it has no impact defies my intellect, quite frankly. I understand that at Vermont Yankee, which is in my back yard, I don't want Chernobyl in my neighborhood with Mom ...

TJ: What about Vermont Yankee, which is near your hometown. Have you kept up with news about it?

JW: I'm keeping up with it a little bit. I know that they're supposed to end in 2012. I fully support that. I do not support 20 more years of them. I don't like the fact that they're a moving target in terms of where you measure the amount of radiation. Of course, they want to measure it far enough away that it comes up fairly negligible. I don't trust anything a radioactive plant tells me, to be quite honest. It's already had quite a few problems, and they're going to license it for 20 more years of problems? It makes no sense to me.

TJ: Did your life in Brattleboro overlap with Vermont Yankee?

JW: Oh yeah, my dad used to go there. My father ran Brattleboro Vending Corporation, which was a food and amusement vending company, and he supplied food to Vermont Yankee, so he used to go there every day and fill his machines. Dad died of cancer, by the way. Metastasized throughout his entire body, a month after he was diagnosed. Forever in my little peanut brain is the question: Was it because of Vermont Yankee?

TJ: When did he die?

JW: He died in 2004. ... I was just in Los Alamos, by the way. ... I was there for a protest, or a positive message about, it's time to follow Obama and get rid of nuclear weapons, and saying to the people of Los Alamos, who are supposedly phenomenally brilliant -- I think they're a little tunnel-visioned, but brilliance is said to be that way -- that they can use their brilliance in order to figure out ways to decommission safely nuclear weapons, as well as nuclear plants. Let's put their little brains on that one, too, and to figure out meaningful verification and compliance regimes for a nuclear treaty. So we're not saying get rid of your jobs. Everybody freaks out about jobs. I'm not saying that. You can keep your job. Start thinking about positive things instead of ways to destroy humanity.

TJ: There are many people who are opposed to nuclear weapons but sympathetic to nuclear energy as a power source. Is there a connection you can make? Even Obama wants to restrict nuclear weapons but is sort of pro nuclear energy. Is that a contradiction?

JW: In my book, yes. Why was my least favorite president in the history of the United States -- which would be W -- why was he all torqued out about Mr. Ahmadinejad and his nuclear energy plant? He was torqued out because he said that with that nuclear power plant, he could manufacture weapons. OK, if he (Ahmadinejad) could do it, everybody else can do it. Why then would logic say it's OK to have nuclear energy in enemy countries? ... There was a relatively recent article in the Washington Post ... making the same argument I'm making. There are between 30 and 40 countries that have petitioned for the right to start nuclear energy plants. I think a dozen are in the Middle East. ... Every one of those can turn those plants into the fundamentals for making nuclear weapons. Hello! If Iran can do it, anybody else can do it, and why ... would we want to do it? It is not sane. And where are you going to put the nuclear waste?

TJ: Do you think the U.S. is hypocritical in taking the stance it does toward Iran, when the U.S. already has nuclear weapons and is promoting nuclear power?

JW: Of course. I'm no fan of Mr. Ahmadinejad. I just spoke on July 25 in front of the Capitol in support of the people in Iran. There were demonstrations in over 110 cities. ... But if I were a state that has been declared an enemy of the United States, I'd be thinking, what can I most do to possibly protect myself? It would be a nuclear weapon. That is logical. And it offends me also that if you say that you're called a traitor here, because you can put your brain in the brain of someone on the other side of the planet ... We need to learn how to think, how other people think. We need to step outside the United States and look at how people look at us. They don't look at us with great joy and friendship, except that now we've got Obama and it's making them a bit less unhappy.

Contact Tim Johnson at 660-1808 or tjohnson@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com, and follow him on Twitter at @flyonthe.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20090809/NEWS05/908090310/1001