Joanna Macy

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Nuclear Guardianship

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Nuclear Guardianship is a citizen commitment to present and future generations to keep radioactive materials out of the biosphere. Recognizing the extreme damage these materials inflict on all life-forms and their genetic codes, Nuclear Guardianship requires:

interim containment of radioactive materials in accessible, monitored storage, so that leaks can be repaired, and future technologies for reducing and containing their radioactivity can be applied;
stringent limits on transport of radioactive materials, to avoid contaminating new sites, and to minimize spills and accidents;
cessation of the production of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy;
transmission to future generations of the knowledge necessary for their self-protection and ongoing guardianship through time.

The Nuclear Guardianship Project is a citizens' educational effort aimed at developing the political, technical and moral understandings required for the responsible care of radioactive materials.

The Novozybkov Project dramatizes the courage, commitment and care that arise in response to a nuclear accident in this case the Chernobyl disaster.

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Nuclear Guardianship Ethic

Each generation shall endeavor to preserve the foundations of life and well-being for those who come after. To produce and abandon substances that damage following generations is morally unacceptable.
Given the extreme toxicity and longevity of radioactive materials, their production must cease. The development of safe, renewable energy sources and non-violent means of conflict resolution is essential to the health and survival of life on Earth. Radioactive materials are not to be regarded as an economic or military resource.
We accept responsibility for the nuclear materials produced in our lifetimes and those left in our safekeeping.
Future generations have the right to know about the nuclear legacy bequeathed to them and to protect themselves from it.
Future generations have the right to monitor and repair containers and to apply such technologies as may be developed to protect the biosphere more effectively. Deep burial of radioactive materials precludes these possibilities and risks uncontrollable contamination to life support systems.
Transport of radioactive materials, with its inevitable risks of accidents and spills, should be undertaken only when conditions at the current site pose a greater ecological hazard than transportation.

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Ode to my DNA, by Chelsea Collonge

Present in every living thing
You direct my growth from cell to breath
Too small for radar
your words encode my body
my tangible presence
You connect me with all life
bonobo chimpanzee to California poppy
yet make me unique
wheat-colored hair
swollen joints
Oh spiral fishing line
you connect my parents
to their maybe-grandchildren
Lie snug in my egg cell
in the pink pillow of my womb
All this wonder wound tight
in your bouncy spring

And DNA
I fear for you
bringer of order yet so mutable
mutateable
and like radiation, invisible
Another Chernobyl
bunker busting nukes
or even the cell phone in my pocket
could scramble you wisdom
make my babies born with open skulls
or heart defects like the kids of Belarus
Seaborg invented it here on Berkeley campus
plutonium
manufactured to kill enemies, it can extinct whole species
with its gamma-attack on the genetic code of life
You created us DNA
Don't let us destroy you
Encode new proteins
for a brain that thinks ahead
a heart that respects life
Help us evolve

By Chelsea Collonge

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Nuclear Weaponry DU

Facts on Uranium Weapons

International Appeal to Ban Use of Depleted Uranium Weapons

FACTS ON URANIUM WEAPONS

"Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself." William Shakespeare

The United States and Britain rely heavily on weapons made with depleted uranium (DU) to penetrate tanks and other armored vehicles and structures. Veterans groups in the US, UK, Italy and Spain consider such weapons harmful to military personnel using them and demand study and treatment of veterans exposed to DU. A worldwide movement is growing to ban the use of uranium weapons as inhumane and dangerous to civilian populations for thousands of generations.

What Is Depleted Uranium?

Depleted Uranium (DU) is a radioactive and toxic by-product of the process that separates uranium for use in nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons. DU makes up 99% of the natural uranium ore. Since it is bulky and hazardous to store, it is available to the Pentagon at very low cost. While its radiation level is lower than natural uranium, it emits alpha radiation for billions of years (radioactive half-life is 4.5 billion years).
DU is an extremely heavy metal, 1.7 times more dense than lead, with unusual ability to shield or penetrate other metals. It burns easily, creating super-high temperatures (5400 degrees F) and filling the surrounding air with sub-micron ceramic particles that remain radioactive and easily breathed and ingested for billions of years.

How is DU Being Used?

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What it does to the human mind

When Snow Mountains Wear Black Hats:
A Buddhist Response to Global Warming. Edited by J. Stanley, D.R. Loy, and G. Dorje; 2008

On Being with our World

Joanna Macy

To give full attention to the perils confronting our world invites an almost excruciating tension. It is the tension between seeing the enormity of the peril--such as climate chaos, mass extinctions, nuclear warfare-- and seeing the inadequacy of our response to it.
It takes courage to endure these tensions, yet endure them we must; for to be conscious enough to act responsibly requires being awake to the possibility of failure.

In my work in the environmental, peace, and justice movements, I share my conviction that spiritual practices can provide the moral strength to see things as they are. It is my experience that spiritual grounding, especially in the Buddha Dharma, can keep us from shutting down or succumbing to wishful thinking. Practices that steady the mind and open the heart help us to be more present to our world.

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Peoples Policy on Nuclear Waste

PEOPLE'S POLICY ON RADIOACTIVE WASTE Draft: July 23, 2002

PREAMBLE
The amount and danger of long-lasting environmental poisons produced in recent decades is unprecedented in human history. Since the beginning of the nuclear age, policy regarding all levels of radioactive waste has been set by the nuclear industry, the military and governments. Monetary gain, secrecy and militarism have consistently taken precedent over concerns about intergenerational equity, environmental and public health and spiritual well-being.

Any policy regarding nuclear waste must begin with an immediate halt to its production.

Future survival requires that we take full responsibility for nuclear waste and keep it within our sphere of control. Policy decisions must consider the health, safety and habitat of ALL living things and recognize the need for this most dangerous substance to be completely isolated from the environment for as long as it remains hazardous.
Presently, there is no scientifically sound, environmentally just or democratically defined solution to the disposal or storage of radioactive waste. Yet each day approximately ten tons of high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) is generated, which is one million times more radioactive than the original fuel. It is insanity to continue to use nuclear reactor technology that benefits only one or two generations while creating poisons that will threaten the next 12,000.
In the United States, the nuclear power and weapons industry and government agencies have consistently evaded responsibility for the development of safe methods of nuclear waste storage and containment. The federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act is a reckless pursuit of an "out of sight, out of mind" approach that ignores concerns and recommendations from both the scientific community and the public.

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"Bella" Collectively written, beginning with an idea from Skye Faris

BELLA

Collectively written, beginning with an idea from Skye Faris

Based on the work of Joanna Macy and friends

Cast

AQUARIA Member of a Guardian Community, a woman in her late 30's, early 40's

BELLA A young woman

TRO BELLA's father

Scene: a meeting room, some time in the near future, at the first Nuclear Guardian Community built after the signing of the Nuclear Moratorium. The atmosphere is one of peace and dedication to good works, not unlike that of a community garden or a monastery. In the soft light of this relaxing place,

AQUARIA is sweeping the floor and singing to herself in rhythm with the motions of the broom:

O, you who come after,
Help us remember:
We are your ancestors,
We are of you.
Fill us with gladness
For the work that we do.

AQUARIA finishes singing the verse and proceeds with her work, now humming the tune. There is an insistent knock on the door. She opens it, and BELLA rushes in.

AQUARIA: Good morning.

BELLA: [going to the window] Are we safe here?

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