California Solartopia - Monday, June 22, 2026

Follows the audio · click any line to jump

1. Learn how your gift of property can make a meaningful difference.
2. You're listening to KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles and on the web at kpfk.org.
3. Pacifica Radio for all of Southern California and beyond.
4. Was there an Adam? Was there an Eve?
5. Or did we evolve from what we conceived?
6. Either way, we got what was needed
7. When the sun shone down on the Garden of Eden
8. Don't you know we're gonna have a
9. Solitopia, Solitopia, Solitopia
10. Hey everybody, this is Sonny Wasserman back for another edition of the California Solartopia Show
11. and the Solartopia Show at Pacifica Radio Network.
12. It's broadcast worldwide and in LA at kpfk.org.
13. We have a great guest with us, Maylene Hughes.
14. Maylene has been active in Los Angeles for quite a while, a long time,
15. and is with the Physicians for Social Responsibility.
16. So we're going to talk about stuff in LA and broader worldwide.
17. I have to say that I can barely contain myself today as Donald Trump has stepped forward
18. to put more federal money into stopping wind power.
19. I wonder if anybody's going to point out that he is personally invested in nuclear power and using government money, our money, to kill a competitor, which is wind power.
20. All this stuff about he hates windmills is just a front for the fact that this is a transactional deal for Donald Trump, as is everything.
21. But we're going to move ahead here.
22. California Sawtopia originates at KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles and is broadcast worldwide over the Pacifica Affiliate Network.
23. Our co-host is Kevin Camps.
24. We also go on 90.1 FM in Columbus, Ohio at WGRN KCEI, 90.1 FM in Taos, New Mexico, KPPQ 104.1 FM Ventura, WOOL 91.5 Black Sheep Radio, Bellows Falls, Vermont, among many other places.
25. And we are grateful to have and greatly honored to have with us Maylene Hughes.
26. Maylene is with Physicians for Social Responsibility, a great activist with so much to tell us about dealing with.
27. Well, it's an operation.
28. It's a team called Back from the Brink.
29. and we who live in California are sort of accustomed to living on the brink as we are
30. with our great co-host Kevin Camps who's on the brink in Kalamazoo, Michigan
31. dealing with among other things the Palisades nuclear plant
32. and he is the executive director of Don't Waste Michigan.
33. Kevin, it's great to have you with us as always.
34. Thank you.
35. And Maylene, you and Kevin go way back actually,
36. But Maylene tell us about Back to the Brink and tell us about your work in California and elsewhere with PSR Yeah thank you so much Sonny and Kevin for having me today I Elaine Hughes and I the Senior Coordinator for the Nuclear Threats
37. Program at Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles, and I'm also an organizing team
38. member with the National Back from the Brink Campaign. And so I wanted to start off by
39. talking a little bit more about California's role in the nuclear weapons enterprise,
40. because when people think about nuclear weapons, I think most imagine distant places,
41. missile silos in the Midwest, underground test sites, international summits.
42. But what most people don't realize is that California has played and continues to play
43. a major role in the nuclear weapons enterprise.
44. So California is often imagined as the state of innovation, environmental leadership and
45. possibility.
46. But California is also deeply connected to the development, maintenance, testing, and the future expansion of nuclear weapons.
47. And that history starts in Berkeley.
48. Back then at UC Berkeley, scientists including J. Robert Oppenheimer and Ernest Lawrence helped lay scientific foundations that contributed to the Manhattan Project.
49. Berkeley researchers helped develop early nuclear science, including the discovery of plutonium and research that informed bomb design.
50. And beginning in 1943, the University of California became manager of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
51. And that lab ultimately produced the bombs that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
52. So that relationship continued for decades and remains connected today.
53. And I think Berkeley raises an important question that we are still thinking about today.
54. What responsibility do universities have not just to advance science, but to ask what science is for?
55. Because scientific achievement without accountability can produce extraordinary harm.
56. And so moving on to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
57. Lawrence Livermore helped sustain this story of the nuclear weapons. It has designed every nuclear weapon currently in the U.S. arsenal. And today, Livermore remains central to plans to modernize and rebuild the United States nuclear arsenal.
58. And what's striking is that this conversation is often framed as abstract national security policy, but there are local impacts.
59. This includes movement of radioactive materials, environmental contamination concerns, public spending priorities.
60. He's asking whether endless investment in nuclear weapons are actually making us safer.
61. And California has a long history of people answering that question with organized resistance.
62. Thousands protested at Livermore throughout the 70s and 80s.
63. People blocked roads.
64. Physicians spoke out.
65. Faith leaders organized.
66. People looked at the idea of preparing for a global annihilation and said, there has to be another way.
67. And this is still going on today.
68. There are great organizations working, watchdogging the Livermore National Lab.
69. And so moving on to Hunter's Point.
70. This is another place that tells a very different part of this story.
71. Hunter's Point is in San Francisco.
72. After nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands, dozens of contaminated naval ships were brought to Hunter's Point for decontamination.
73. The cleanup left lasting radioactive contamination.
74. And importantly this burden was not distributed equally The surrounding Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood has long been a predominantly Black working class community
75. And residents and advocates have raised concerns for years about the health impacts, environmental justice, transparency, accountability, and all those cleanup efforts.
76. So nuclear weapons aren't only about what happens in war, but they do and they have left impacts long before and long after any launch.
77. And I want to bring up that in Los Angeles now, the Santa Susana reactor site in Simi Valley, which blew up back in the 1950s, there's a fire there and they're spreading radioactive contaminated smoke all through the Los Angeles area.
78. It's not limited just to Northern California.
79. Yeah, and that's the thing. It's all throughout California, all throughout the United States even. And in San Jose is a great example. That is one of the sites that we have folks, activists actively working against like parents against versus San Jose's in a field lab.
80. They like to think of themselves as accidental activists because they came into this because a lot of their children had childhood cancers from the runoff.
81. And they never heard about the Santa Susana Field Laugh.
82. And then these fires, especially the Woolsey Fire that happened, spread that contamination.
83. People got sick.
84. And so they became activists because they're fighting for the health of their communities, the health of their children.
85. They want this to be cleaned up.
86. They want Boeing and DOE, NASA to clean up this site.
87. And, you know, this is an ongoing, very real fight that's still happening to this day.
88. And we do work a lot with the parents for the Santa Susana Field Lab.
89. Well, Kevin Camps here in Michigan trying to stop a nuclear reactor from being restarted.
90. And it certainly has nuclear weapons reaching over issues as well.
91. and you've just had a fire in Michigan at the Fermi reactor, which almost blew up in 1966.
92. How are you feeling about Maylene's work here? You two have known each other a while,
93. and Kevin, you're certainly familiar with her organization.
94. Well, it's astounding the waterfront that Maylene is covering, as she described,
95. and that's probably just the tip of the iceberg. It's been a real honor and privilege to
96. work with Maylene and her co-workers from PSRLA at the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability
97. DC Days. We just had another one of those a couple weeks ago, and they've been very rightfully
98. awarded and honored for their tremendous efforts on projects like Back from the Brink.
99. So yeah, these fires, you know, it's not just the Sandy Fire so recently that was so precariously
100. close to the major contamination that's still at Santa Susanna Field Lab. It's wildfires at many of
101. the Department of Energy nuclear complex sites in Idaho and Washington. And then if you look
102. internationally at places like Chernobyl, where they have multiple wildfires every year, and it
103. used to be just extreme weather from climate change that was setting those zombie forests on
104. fire because they won't degrade. They won't break down. The insects and the microbes that used to
105. break down the dead plant matter aren't in the ecosystem anymore. This has been documented by
106. biologists Timothy Mousseau and others. Then you bring up the reactor fires. You know,
107. there was a major near miss in Alabama in 1975 And many reactors including Palisades in southwest Michigan have never instituted the fire protections that were a no after what happened at Browns Ferry in Alabama more than a
108. half century ago. And yet they're still dragging their feet on these issues. So we're dodging
109. bullets left and right, both on the nuclear weapons side and on the nuclear power side. But
110. one of these days it's going to catch up, and in fact already has in certain places.
111. Well, let's take a short break and we're going to come back and talk about some of those places, including the 10 reactors in the war zone in Ukraine, where drones are flying left and right.
112. And we're all sitting, waiting for the next Chernobyl, God help us.
113. This is the California Sowertopia, Sowertopia Show, Pacifica Radio Network.
114. And we'll be back after this brief musical break.
115. Everybody's wondering
116. If mankind is cursed
117. He's ruining the sky
118. And the ocean even worse
119. But I'll predict the cause of his eradication from the earth
120. Oh, plutonium is forever
121. Okay, we are back at the Solartopia show, California Solartopia.
122. I'm Sonny Wasserman.
123. My co-host here is Kevin Camps.
124. We've got a great guest with us, Maylene Hughes from Physicians for Social Responsibility in L.A.
125. And I mentioned before the break, we're now in an unprecedented situation where there are 10, count them, 10 atomic reactors in Ukraine in a war zone where drones in two separate instances have threatened the future of atomic reactors.
126. You know, we just had this or we're continuing to have this war in Iran where Trump claims he's trying to deal and stop the spread of nuclear weapons when, in fact, with 400 atomic reactors plus worldwide, including two at Diablo Canyon in California, all it would take, God help us, is a single drone that would turn a nuclear plant into yet another, any nuclear plant, including the two at San Luis Obispo.
127. into another Chernobyl.
128. Maylene Hughes, how do you deal with the idea of nuclear power plants
129. being essentially potential weapons, pre-deployed weapons
130. of nuclear mass destruction?
131. Yeah, and that's some of the work that we are working with,
132. with our partner organizations, trying to help them fight that fight
133. of, you know, resuming what's happening at Diablo Canyon. The California State Legislature, they
134. are actively, you know, there's members that are actively trying to resume what's happening at
135. Diablo Canyon. And there are great organizations that are fighting that fight, especially
136. Mothers for Peace in San Luis Obispo, Committee to Bridge the Gap. And we help however we can.
137. Most recently, we're teaming up with our Energy Justice team at PSRLA and trying to put on a webinar series for our EJ partners in California to inform.
138. inform them of nuclear power and the history there and, you know, the consequences of having nuclear power and like fighting that false narrative there is out there in regards to that and letting them know that there's a reactor in our backyard that is actively hurting communities and is a danger if it were to be fully commissioned again.
139. So we're working on that.
140. Well, it's insane. And Kevin, you're a very windy state in Michigan. And I'm certain that when most of the energy, if not all the energy needs of Michigan, be supplied by wind and solar. And now we have a guy in the White House is using our tax dollars to stop wind projects. What is happening in your backyard in terms of the proliferation of nuclear power as well?
141. You know, I give credit when credit is due. And Governor of Michigan Jennifer Granholm in 2010 commissioned an offshore wind study. MSU had a hand in it, Michigan State University, and they identified that Michigan had access to over 300,000 megawatts of offshore wind on the Great Lakes.
142. and even just tapping a small fraction of that would make enough electricity to turn off all
143. the atomic reactors in Michigan easily. But when she became energy secretary under President Biden,
144. she took a whole nother direction. She became the Wizard of Oz behind the curtains who whispered in
145. the ear of Gavin Newsom to keep Diablo operating, whispered in the ear of Gretchen Whitmer to keep
146. palisade, to restart palisades from closed status, which has never been done in the Western world.
147. So, you know, if only she had pursued offshore wind and onshore wind, Michigan could be nuclear
148. free as we speak. And certainly the whole country could go that route. There are a dozen states on
149. the Great Plains, any one of which could provide 10% of America's electricity supply from wind
150. power. That's been documented by folks like Dr. Arjun Makkhajani of Institute for Energy and
151. Environmental Research for decades now. So we've taken the wrong direction in this country, and we
152. may pay a high price for that unless we turn the ship around. Well, we got the same situation in
153. California. Gavin Newsom in 2018, when he was lieutenant governor, signed on to an omnibus,
154. very detailed broad-based plan that was concocted with Jerry Brown, governor then,
155. to phase out the two reactors at Diablo Canyon in 24 and 25 and phase in 100% renewables,
156. primarily based on solar coming from the Central Valley. And all of California,
157. virtually every day, part of the day, gets 100% of its electricity from solar power.
158. And with the revolution in battery storage, California's electric rates would plummet overnight if the Avila Canyon was shut and the transition to solar was completed.
159. But Gavin Newsom has sold his soul and apparently our soul to PG&E.
160. And here we are today.
161. Maylene, with PSR, how do you account for the idea that we could drop our electric rates in California and nationwide by shutting the atomic reactors and converting with battery backup to wind and solar?
162. Just before I answer that question I want to refer back to when I said EJ For those of you who don know EJ is the shorthand acronym for environmental justice Yeah by shutting down these nuclear power plants we can
163. do so much with the taxpayer dollars that is going into the upkeep of nuclear power.
164. And even if this is a false narrative, if we were to rebuild or to even turn back on the nuclear power plants that already exist, that would cost billions of dollars.
165. And that would be coming out of the pockets of our communities.
166. And so looking to clean and like truly clean energy that will help sustain us for our future would be the best thing for us.
167. And how does that play in?
168. You know, PSR has a focus on nuclear war.
169. How does all that play in with your ongoing campaigning, including your grassroots organizing, which is a very big deal?
170. I do want to mention in passing, by the way, Lawrence Livermore, there was a truly great person at Lawrence Livermore who actually participated in the Manhattan Project.
171. His name was John Goffman, and he was the first health commissioner of the Atomic Energy Commission.
172. I actually had lunch with him once in San Francisco.
173. We knew each other pretty well, and I'm sure Kevin did too.
174. And John warned around 1970 that 32,000 people a year were being killed by nuclear radiation from atomic reactors.
175. And he was also concerned with nuclear war.
176. How does that segue into your work, Maylene, with PSR and nuclear war?
177. Yeah, so I do mainly focus on the weapons side of the issue, but the two issues were against everything nuclear, nuclear power, nuclear weapons. I do mainly focus on the weapons side. When issues regarding the power side come up, we lend support to the organizations who, you know, focus heavily on that.
178. But Back from the Brink mainly works on nuclear weapons. And so just to finish up, you know, what I was saying earlier in terms of the sites, we have Vandenberg, where the intercontinental ballistic missiles are tested. And these launches are often described as routine demonstrations of readiness. But I think it's worth pausing on what that actually means.
179. These are delivery systems designed for weapons capable of catastrophic humanitarian consequences.
180. And these tests remind us that nuclear weapons are relics of the Cold War and their active systems being maintained today.
181. And then bouncing all the way down to the San Diego Harbor, there is also a deep nuclear story there.
182. Historically, nuclear weapons in the past were deployed through submarine systems connected to San Diego.
183. That hasn't been the case for many years. But today there are ongoing conversations nationally around the sea launched nuclear systems and the future role of the naval infrastructure may play.
184. So, again, California is central to nuclear policy.
185. And that means as Californians, we do have the responsibility and opportunity to shape what comes next.
186. And so that leads into what we're doing now and the California organizing that I'm a part of, especially with Back from the Brink.
187. And how do people get a hold of you through for Back to the Brink and Back from the Brink and the NPSR?
188. What are your contacts?
189. Yes So the website for Back from the Brink is www And you can email the info account there or you can email me personally at mhughes at psr That an easy way to get a hold of me
190. If you email the info account at Back from the Brink, you can ask them to connect you with the
191. folks in California doing that work, and they will most likely connect you with me. And so to explain
192. a little bit more about what Back from the Bank actually is, it is a national grassroots campaign
193. working to prevent nuclear war and to move us toward a world free of nuclear weapons.
194. It was originally inspired by the freeze movement and that the idea that ordinary people,
195. local communities and local governments can influence national policy. And it's exciting
196. because we're seeing that momentum happen again. And California is one of the strongest organizing
197. regions in the country when it comes to that. So over the last several years, communities across
198. the state have passed local back from the brink resolutions. Cities like Los Angeles, Berkeley,
199. San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, Ojai, and many others have all taken public positions
200. calling for actions. And we believe that these resolutions matter because local governments are
201. saying that this issue isn't too big for us and that nuclear weapons affect our communities too.
202. And so now we're asking what happens when those local efforts start talking to each other.
203. And over the past several months, we've been building something new across California through
204. Back from the Brink. We started as four regional Back from the Brink hubs in Southern California,
205. Fresno, the Bay Area, and Sacramento and Davis, and just simply trying to be better
206. in conversation with one another, and this has grown into something much bigger. At first,
207. we were asking, how do we stop organizing in silos? How do we share strategy, learn from one
208. another, and just build collective power? And as those conversations grew, more people started
209. joining, not because they belong to one formal hub, but because they care deeply about this issue
210. and wanted to help shape the future of this work in California. And now our organizing space
211. include students, physicians, retired educators, lawyers, former legislative staff, longtime peace
212. activists, and community members from across the state. We have people who spent years watchdogging
213. Lawrence Livermore and raising those concerns about the plutonium pit production and the
214. development of new warheads, organizers who live near Vandenberg and regularly protest missile tests,
215. leadership connected to Mayors for Peace, and we have people who simply looked at the current
216. moment and decided they wanted to do something. What I love about this work is that everyone
217. enters through a different door, whether they come through public health, environmental justice,
218. local government, or just live near one of those impacted sites and has seen that and witnessed it
219. firsthand. But we arrive at the same conclusion that reducing nuclear threats isn't someone else's
220. responsibility and that it belongs to all of us. And so now we are, that's where that momentum
221. comes from. Not just one moment, but thousands of conversations, thousands of people deciding,
222. you know, that this issue belongs to them. You know, folks assume that nuclear weapons are
223. inevitable because they've existed for our whole lives currently, but the history shows
224. that change happens when people organize. Nuclear weapons, just like nuclear power,
225. these are things that were created by people and policies created by people can be changed
226. by people too So thank you so much for having me
227. into as well, yes? PSR was one of the first hooks that hooked me when I was in junior high. They
228. put a letter to the editor in the newspaper about what would happen to my hometown in a nuclear war,
229. and I've been hooked ever since on this work. Well, this has been a great conversation with
230. you, Maylene Hughes. Thank you for your California focus, but also our nationwide focus. Again,
231. This is California's Solar Topia based at KPFK in Pacifica in Los Angeles.
232. This is 90.7 FM.
233. This has been done.
234. This radio show has been produced by Milo Reeson and engineered by Gary Scott at the virtual studios of KPFK Los Angeles.
235. us and we need to lower our electric rates in California and lower the danger of nuclear war,
236. not only in California, but nationwide and worldwide by shutting the atomic reactors,
237. especially for our purposes, the two at Diablo Canyon. We thank the crew at KPFK and all the
238. Pacifica Radio Network, the affiliates for getting this out there. And we look forward to the day
239. in a week in which the president of the United States takes our taxpayer dollars to shut wind
240. energy, a competitor to an industry in which he, nuclear, has personal investments. That cannot fly
241. in a democracy. And let's move ahead and shut these reactors and go to solar-topia,
242. 100% green energy. Thank you, everybody, for listening. This is Sonny Wasserman. We will see
243. you next week at California Solotopia and on the Pacifica affiliate Solotopia show. No nukes,
244. everybody.
245. Don't you know we're gonna have a solitopia, solitopia, solitopia.
246. Don't you know we're gonna have a solitopia all over Gasby.
247. You're invited to tune in to The QR Code with your hosts, Ramses Jha and Q Ward.
248. The Q in The QR Code goes by the name of Q Ward.
249. The voice you just heard is the R in the QR code.
250. He goes by the name Ramses Jha.
251. Every Monday through Thursday at 6 a.m.
252. Be sure to join us next time as we share our news with our voice from our perspective.
253. And until then, peace.
254. Hello, and you are listening to Eco Justice Radio.
255. Our show presents environmental and climate stories from a social justice frame featuring voices not necessarily heard on mainstream media.
256. Welcome. I am Jessica Aldridge.
257. On today's show, Renegade Economics for a more just world,
258. Carrie Kim will be interviewing Della Z. Duncan, Renegade Economist.
259. and host the Upstream podcast, uplifting stories.