nuclear-news

Area exhibits will focus on nuclear issues by  Aly Brown Iowa City Press-Citizen  Iowa residents can learn more about America’s current nuclear proliferation and the hazards of nuclear weapons at several multimedia exhibits throughout Johnson County from August through September. Iowa Physicians for Social Responsibility representatives sponsored “Nuclear Neighborhood, 11,000 Generations” — an exhibit combining art, history, and science — to start a conversation about our nuclear history and future.

The exhibit will combine paintings, watercolors, posters, and poetry with historical artifacts such as maps and letters from Iowa nuclear assembly workers and veterans dating to the 1940s.

Maureen McCue, Iowa Physicians for Social Responsibility coordinator and university Global Health Studies professor, said “Nuclear Neighborhood, 11,000 Generations” is meant to spark a conversation.

“To begin to talk about it again, and begin to ask whether or not we’re going in a direction we need to go, for ourselves, our children, and future generations.”

McCue compared our current focus on expanding nuclear power and medicine while preventing weapons proliferation to the Sword of Damocles, a Greek myth emphasizing the balance between great power and extreme peril.

“We’re not going to get rid of nuclear power overnight,” she said. “But when you’re in a hole, stop digging.”

The project will include six displays at UI’s Hardin Medical Library, the Iowa City Public Library, Solon Public Library, and the Iowa Memorial Union. McCue said each exhibit will focus on different issues within nuclear proliferation.

McCue said the Hardin Medical Library will focus on nuclear power’s health implications and the history of nuclear plant workers in Iowa.

“It’ll show the kinds of illnesses and chronic morbidity that they suffered working in the nuclear assembly plant,” she said. “People forget you don’t get weapons without workers.”

McCue said in order to cater to the higher population of children visiting the Solon Public Library this time of year, the exhibit will feature children’s projects and art work. Children submitted posters reading “Bombs Stink Worse than Pigs” and “Make Ice Cream Not Bombs,” which will be shown alongside university associate art professor Susan White’s color washes of the Fukushima disaster aftermath.

The Iowa City Public Library will explore the community and environmental impacts of nuclear energy, featuring displays on the airborne and waterborne pollution resulting from the Hanford Site, a mostly defunct nuclear production complex and artifact of the Manhattan Project in Washington state.

During September, the Iowa Memorial Union will host artwork, poetry, and other materials produced by university faculty, students and staff.

John Rachow, assistant clinical professor at the university College of Medicine and Iowa Physicians for Social Responsibility member, said the exhibit combines art, history, and science to allow viewers to experience the message, rather than just reading facts and figures out of a textbook.

“We wanted to explain a little bit of a different human perspective on the very complex issue of radiation and health,” he said. “To go back 100 years when the knowledge of radiation and what it was and its effect on human health and living organisms was only in its early stages.”

The exhibit will begin in August to remember the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Rachow said he hopes the exhibit will bring awareness to what he sees as the lack of long-term nuclear waste storage worldwide, the dangers resulting from natural disasters as seen at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown, and the real threat of nuclear winter.

“How do you think about something that if it happens, it would be a kind of Armageddon, a kind of unnatural disaster we have never seen?” he asked. “It’s not happening today, but it’s such an existential threat to all of us. It’s very important.”

A celebratory opening reception will be held at 6:30 p.m. Thursday in Room A of the Iowa City Public Library. Rachow said the art exhibit will be joined by Thursday night film screenings and Tuesday night lectures throughout August at the Iowa City Public Library.

Rachow said the hazards of nuclear power are “broad, yet invisible,” and the public can help just as much as medical professionals.

“It begins with education and awareness,” he said. “It isn’t penicillin that is going to save civilization. It will be the people getting together in small groups and talking.”

To learn more about the exhibits or the lecture and film series, visit www.psriowa.org.

Reach Aly Brown at 887-5413 or abrown11@press-citizen.com

August 2, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | ACTION