Sunday Meeting

Sunday, April 3 at 11:00 am

No Nukes is Good Nukes

Presented by Sterling Bunnell

Sterling’s talk this morning will be about the history and consequences of using nuclear power to generate electricity.

All of Sterling’s talks manifest his brilliant command of both abstract explanations and historical examples — both theory and fact — and they exhibit the amazing broad scope of his mind, encompassing so many fields: the hard and soft sciences and earth and biological sciences, spirituality, psychology, philosophy, history, at alia. Sterling is a rare generalist, a philosopher, freely sharing his thoughts in our world of guarded specialists. Hear Sterling talk, participate in the group discussion, and get the education you might have missed in the course of your life!

Our Sunday talks are accompanied by optional pot luck refreshments. Please feel free to bring scrumptious food, organic and local, suitable for brunch. Our doors open at 10:30 am and talks begin at 11:00 am.

by

Joel Nakamura

To learn more about Sunday Programs held

at Humanist Hall

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Wednesday, May 4 at 7:30 pm

The Battle of Chernobyl

by Thomas Johnson

This is the film that describes the Chernobyl catastrophe most thoroughly.  Chernobyl was the most significant nuclear reactor failure in the history of nuclear power, to date.  Thursday, April 26, 1986, was the momentous day when one of the reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in northern Ukraine exploded.  The nuclear plant, just 20 km away from the town center, was made up of four reactor units each generating an output of 1,000 megawatts.  The reactor in question exploded due to operational errors and inadequate safety measures and the meltdown was directly linked to routine testing on the reactor unit’s turbine generators.  The test required reactor activity and the thermal reactor output to be run down to a lower level.  During the procedure, however, the reactor plummeted to an unexpectedly low and unstable level of activity.  At this point, it should have been shut down.  But the operators chose to continue with the test, and subsequent events proved to be catastrophic.

More than 200 people died or were seriously injured by radiation exposure immediately after the explosion.  161,000 people had to be evacuated from a 30 kilometer radius of the reactor and 25,000 square km of land were contaminated.  As time went on millions of people suffered radiation related health problems such as leukemia and thyroid cancer and around  one million people have died as a result of the long-term effects of the accident.   Forth percent of the European land mass has been devastated by radiation.  Nobody was prepared for such a crisis.  For the next seven months, 500,000 men waged hand-to-hand combat with an invisible enemy – a ruthless battle that has gone unsung, claiming thousands of unnamed and now almost forgotten heroes.  Yet, it is thanks to these men that the worst was avoided:  a second explosion, ten times more powerful than Hiroshima, would have wiped out more than half of Europe.  This was kept secret for twenty years by the Soviets and the West alike.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-battle-of-chernobyl/

To learn more about Film Series held

at Humanist Hall

click here

Thursday, March 25 at 6:00 pm

Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club

Monthly Meeting

Presented by Pamela Drake

This is the monthly meeting of the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club (WDRC). The Club works to renew and reform the Democratic Party. The evening begins with a social hour and delicious potluck supper at 6:00 pm — bring your favorite healthy dish to share! At 7:00 pm the Club begins its program and all guests of the evening, members and non-members alike, are invited to participate in the discussions.

This evening’s program is about The Copenhagen Climate Summit and American Politics. The featured speaker will be Claire Greensfelder, co-founder of the Plutonium Free Future International Women’s Network.  Claire is a former Nuclear Free Future Campaign director for Greenpeace USA and a lifelong peace, ecology, and justice activist, writer, editor, and radio journalist based in Northern California.  She graduated from U.C. Berkeley with an emphasis on environmental education in 1975 and has spent 27 years organizing locally, nationally, and internationally for a phase-out of nuclear power and weapons and promotion of renewables, energy efficiency, conservation, and nonviolent resolution to conflict.  She most recently collaborated with Congresswoman Barbara Lee to create the Martin Luther King, Jr. Freedom Center for Nonviolence, Equality, Youth, and Ecology in Oakland.

Wellstone Newsletter

http://www.wellstoneclub.org