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- [00:09]
Ralph Nader
This is ralph nader and you're listening to radio powered by the people, kpfk 90.7 fm los angeles, 98.7 fm, santa barbara, and across the globe at kpfk.org.
- [00:28]
Peter Bradford
This is Ben Cohn, the Ice cream guy. And you're listening to my hero, Ralph Nader, the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
- [00:36]
Becky McLean
Stand up.
- [00:37]
Ralph Nader
Stand up.
- [00:38]
Peter Bradford
You've been sitting way too long.
- [00:44]
Steve Scrovan
Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve Scrovan, along with my co host, David Feldman. Hello, David. Hello, Steve. And our producer, Hannah Feldman. Hello, Hannah.
- [00:55]
Hannah Feldman
Hello, Steve.
- [00:56]
Steve Scrovan
And of course, the man of the hour, Ralph Nader. Hello, Ralph.
- [00:59]
Ralph Nader
Hey, everybody.
- [01:01]
Steve Scrovan
Longtime listeners know that we have done a number of episodes on the topic of nuclear power, many of which featured the late great David Freeman and former nuclear regulatory commissioner Peter Bradford, who every few years or so reports on the latest so called nuclear power renaissance. And it's the same script every time the government dumps a ton of money into the latest, greatest nuclear hope that promises to turn an uneconomical, inefficient, wasteful, polluting, uninsurable and dangerous power source into a feasible alternative to fossil fuels. Mr. Bradford joins us once again today to talk about the latest nuclear boondoggle. Our second guest will be biotech whistleblower, Becky McLean. Ms. McLean is a microbiologist who worked at Pfizer for 10 years until she raised urgent alarms about biosafety lapses at her biotech lab. She's written a book about her experience entitled A Pfizer Scientist Battles Corruption, Lies and Betrayal and Becomes a Biohazard Whistleblower and full disclosure. Ralph wrote the foreword of the book discussing how, quote, the company employed thuggish retaliatory tactics with blacklisting threats, harassments, wrongful discharges, cover ups and demands for total gag orders, end quote. We'll speak to Ms. McLean about how she herself was injured by Pfizer's lab and her fight for justice. As always, somewhere in the middle. We'll check in with our indomitable corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhyber. But first, the nuclear hustle is alive and well. David. Peter Bradford teaches and advises on utility.
- [02:44]
Peter Bradford
Regulation, nuclear power and energy policy in the United States and overseas. He's a former member of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
- [02:54]
Steve Scrovan
Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
- [02:56]
Peter Bradford
Peter Bradford, thanks very much.
- [03:00]
Ralph Nader
Welcome, Peter Bradford. We want to use this interview to update our listeners on what's going on with nuclear power. We've had programs in the past. We have, but you're right. Up to date. And there's a very nefarious linkage now between Silicon Valley companies, these giant data centers that they want to build all over the country to power their artificial intelligence, the need for more electricity. And they have descended ignorantly in terms of the facts, which we'll see in a moment on nuclear power as a savior. So you have said that nuclear power simply doesn't make sense. It's too expensive, delays too much, requires too many government subsidies and so forth. And I think your point is elaborated by my first question. Until a few years ago, there wasn't a new nuclear plant built in the United states since the 1970s into operation. In fact, in the 1970s the Atomic Energy Commission, the precursor of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, predicted there would be 100 nuclear plants in California alone, averaging 10 miles apart on the coast. And of course, now there's only one left. And it was rescued at the last minute, the Diablo Canyon plant by Governor Newsom, who got the Biden administration to subsidize it for further operation. Let's talk about the attempts and what is done to consumer utility prices. So tell us what happened in South Carolina, Florida and Georgia, and who paid for it?
- [04:39]
Peter Bradford
Well, in those three states they were the front runners in what was what's been called the nuclear renaissance. For 25 years now, even though there's been quite a shortage of masterpieces of the sort that most renaissance require. In those three states, the utilities persuaded their state regulators to to commit to going ahead with new nuclear units and importantly to shift all the economic risks of those units onto the customers. So not onto the investors normally would have borne them, but onto the customers. By permitting the utilities to charge the customers from the day they started construction rather than from the day they started providing electricity.
- [05:26]
Ralph Nader
That's called construction work in progress. And in other words, we're supposed to pay for only the electricity we get and use. And the corporations and the state legislature, as I understand it, Peter, required the customers to pay for non existent electricity. Just the shovel ready construction process.
- [05:46]
Peter Bradford
That's right. Correct. Yeah, that's absolutely right. They called it shovel ready. It turned out not necessarily to be all I shovel ready, but that's another story. Yeah, so the rates started going up from the day they broke ground. They started earning profits on plants that were only half built. I mean, imagine if your local grocery store gas station decided they wanted to include the price of their new buildings in the price of the commodities you were receiving. It wouldn't happen. But it can work for a monopoly when the customers have no choice. But in both Florida and South Carolina, the the costs ran away so badly that the utilities and their regulators thought twice about it. Even though in South Carolina, as later events showed, there was a good deal of corruption between the utilities and the state officials and both those plants got canceled. In the case, in Florida's case it was after about a billion dollars had been spent. And in South Carolina's case, a really eye popping $9 billion worth of customers money was spent to dig a hole in the ground essentially in Georgia, even though they would have been much wiser to have canceled the plants at any stage during their construction, they did plow ahead and they finished them in the end. They cost about three times what had been projected and took twice as long. And essentially Georgia wound up spending four times what they could have purchased the same amount of clean energy for if they'd pursued renewables and energy efficiency and battery storage and improvements in the transmission grid. So in all three of those states, customers took a real bath.
- [07:30]
Ralph Nader
Peter, tell us what that was in dollars in time in Georgia so people get an idea of the enormity of it. Yeah, in Georgia had to pay for.
- [07:40]
Peter Bradford
Yeah. So the Southern company applied for the license. Georgia Power technically, but part of the Southern company applied for the construction license back in 2006, 2007, I think they broke ground around 2010, originally expecting to be online by 2016. 17 and the two units came online in 2022, 23. And instead of costing the approximately 14 billion that the regulators had expected when they approved the plants, they cost over 30 billion for those two units. And so the electricity cost easily twice, maybe three times what other low carbon or zero carbon alternatives would have cost and essentially crowded those solutions out of the Georgia power supply picture. Recently, the elections that just ended, two of the five Georgia utilities commissioners who had been part of that long and expensive process were thrown out of office Republicans and replaced by Democrats who pledged to do a much better job of scrutinizing Southern companies rate increase proposals in the future.
- [08:57]
Ralph Nader
How long were the delays in years compared to what they projected when they started these two nuclear plants?
- [09:03]
Peter Bradford
They had projected seven or eight years. It took 15, 16 years. So during all that time, if they'd gone for renewables, they would have been avoiding carbon discharges into the atmosphere from year one and two onward in growing amounts. As they built more and more with the nuclear plants, they went 15 years of avoiding absolutely nothing because all they were doing was building and spending. And they only started avoiding discharged the environment 15 years after they began. Given the urgency of climate change and global warming, that's just nuts. If we wait 15 years from now to begin reducing carbon discharge in any area that's so far behind the goals that we've set for ourselves that it just guarantees we'll never make them.
- [09:53]
Ralph Nader
Wall street understands the danger and risk of nuclear power operations from the bottom line. They don't want to invest in it. So this money was played by coercing through legislative and regulatory mandates. In Georgia, the consumer, the residential and business electric consumer, they had to pay for this even though they didn't get any electricity year after year. Let's hear you on the arguments against nuclear power. Then we want to talk about the counter responses by the pro nuclear power, which will illustrate why supposedly smart people like Bill Gates and Governor Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania have ignorantly or for other reasons bought in to building more nuclear power plants.
- [10:41]
Peter Bradford
Okay, so the arguments against fall into, I'd say four general categories. There's the economic argument that we've already touched on. Basically it's like trying to stop world hunger with caviar. It's too expensive, takes much too long, you wind up buying too little of it, and you displace all of the better sources. Second argument, reactor safety. If you have a Fukushima type accident anywhere in the world, it doesn't just take those plants off the board. It has reverberations in lots of other countries. I mean, Germany eliminated its nuclear power sector largely in response to Fukushima. Construction slowed down all over Europe. So you have the big unpredictable uncertainty over nuclear power, even putting aside the threats to the environment and to human health from an accident like that. Third concern is the spread of nuclear weapons. Some of the reactor designs now being proposed as advanced involve relying on fuels that bring a country much closer to the ability to develop nuclear weapons than the historic types of nuclear power have done. So they increase the danger of spread of nuclear weapons. And then the fourth is that there are only a couple of countries, Finland and Sweden, that are anywhere near being able to say that they have a method of disposing of the nuclear waste. We certainly don't. And as a result, the problem of what to do with the spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants continues to overhang any potential new sites which are in danger of joining the existing sites which have become long term waste repositories, even though they never thought that that would be something that would occur back when they agreed to house the reactors in the first place.
- [12:30]
Ralph Nader
In addition, the alternatives which are winning all over the world are renewable energy, wind Energy and energy conservation, hands down. Nobody can compete oil, gas, coal or nuclear for new generating capacity. That's a recognized fact. So what are the pro nuke people? And they get some real fanatics. The Governor of Pennsylvania, he's a fanatic. He's not just going along, he wants to reopen the plant at Three Mile island that was shut down. So what are the arguments that they're using?
- [13:06]
Peter Bradford
Well, they're heavily based on climate, except in the Trump administration, which doesn't believe in climate change. So they have to find other arguments and they, they really hardly bother to try to make them. They just say, well, we like nuclear power, it's a manly thing to do. And, and then they commit a ton of public money. We've moved now from putting customers on the hook. We still do that. But the federal government has added taxpayers to those who are being tasked to pay for it. And that allows them to spread the impact a bit more because what they're not socking the customers with, they're now soaking the taxpayers as well. But anyway, if you're Governor Shapiro, if you're Governor Newsom, talking about Diablo Canyon, the argument is heavily that we have to do everything in order to combat climate change. But again, you can't do everything then. It's the same point about using caviar to combat world hunger. If you decide to spend your money on your most expensive sources, you wind up buying much too little of the sources that really could help, as you say, the renewable sources, the storage that smooths out their, the variability in light of sunshine and wind variability, the transmission enhancements that allow you to take advantage of the diversity of wind between one place and another, all those expenditures would get you a lot more, a lot more quickly. In addition, people throw in jobs and taxes. But the fact is there are plenty of jobs associated with renewables and efficiency and battery storage as well. And in addition, you don't sock the big electricity consuming industries with the same cost penalty, so they have more money to hire more people. I mean, no state, no country ever got rich by paying too much for electricity. The electricity industry gets rich that way, but not the country as a whole. So the jobs and tax arguments really don't hold water either. And then there are the various hopes associated with advanced reactors. And some well meaning people like Bill Gates and Governor Shapiro seem to have swallowed those arguments hook, line and sinker, despite the fact that there are none of these reactors in operation. So they haven't demonstrated what they can do. They have nothing going for them but vendor estimates of what they will cost and vendor estimates of how well they'll perform. And vendor estimates in the nuclear power industry have been an unvarying road to disappointment. I mean, you cited the claims that there would be 100 reactors in California in the Nixon years. They said there'd be a thousand reactors in the US by the year 2000. In fact, we had about 100. They cost on average three, four times what they were projected to cost. And as a result, the jobs, the taxes didn't really materialize. Some of the plants didn't work well and had to be shut down. A number of them shut early. And despite that track record, the nuclear enthusiasts just don't seem to learn from it. They embrace designs that were abandoned in the 1970s. They persuade politicians at both the state and the federal level to put really massive sums of taxpayer support behind these plants. They used the taxpayer support to attract some Wall street investment, which is really like shooting fish in a barrel. Because of course you can build a nuclear plant if it's 100% taxpayer supported. But the fact that some banks are willing to lend money into that arrangement doesn't prove that you've got a sustainable private enterprise model going. It just proves that bankers know a good thing when they see it.
- [16:56]
Ralph Nader
And what about the argument they're making, like Microsoft and all the Silicon Valley companies building data centers, Apple Meta, and they say it's going to be a huge demand for electricity. So we have to build these nuclear plants. Of course the answer is, well, you want to wait 15 years assuming there isn't an accident.
- [17:17]
Peter Bradford
Well, that's exactly right because the data centers want their power quickly. I mean, you can build a Data center in 1, 2, 3 years and you can't build a nuclear plant that quickly. You can't build an advanced reactor that quickly because there aren't any. So they aren't licensed, they aren't permitted, and there's no construction experience. The situation in Pennsylvania is different because they want to reopen a plant that closed fairly recently. Even that is going to take two or three or four years. And it's questionable whether the economics of doing that are better than building something newer and cheaper than reopening essentially a 40 some year old nuclear reactor and running it for a while longer. But the real mismatch is between cost and the cost of alternatives. We aren't seeing the, the detailed contracts between the AI companies and the proposed power suppliers. But it's hard to believe that these sophisticated customers aren't putting ceilings on the price that they're willing to pay for the nuclear power. And nuclear power has never been able to live with meaningful ceilings in the past. So there's a good chance that a lot of these nuclear plants, the whiz bang advanced reactors, aren't going to get built. The companies are floating along on an ocean of taxpayer subsidies right now. But once they have to start getting paid by sophisticated private customers, there's a good chance a lot of them won't happen. We've been through that with nuclear power twice already. Once in the 1980s and again in the period 2010 to 2015 when there were like 30 plants queued up at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2007. And all but the two at Vodal got canceled because in the end they were just too expensive for what the customers would pay for them. The incredible thing is that neither the governmental entities that we expect to scrutinize these things before they make big commitments of taxpayer and customer money, nor the media, and there are various reasons for that, are looking closely at this story at all. The really great story that no one's writing is just how in the world the nuclear industry succeeds in fooling the government and the public over and over again for what's essentially the same old story.
- [19:36]
Ralph Nader
Well, let's get to the government. I think they're calculating Peter, Microsoft and the suppliers on Donald Trump. Number one, Donald Trump has declared war on the sun and on wind power. He thinks wind power is uglier, so he's undermining in every way, trying to block wind power projects, taking away tax credits, etc. He's trying to depress the renewable power industry in favor of the fossil fuel giants, oil, gas, coal and nuclear, number one. Number two, he's come out strong for the reviving of nuclear power and has said he's going to invest $80 billion in these efforts. 80 billion taxpayer dollars. Of course that's illegal. He can't appropriate money from the White House, although he tries to every day. That's Congress. It's got to go through Congress. However, they do sense that this is a part of our economy that can be called government guaranteed capitalism. If there's a disaster, the government has to pay for it. If there's an insurance need, the Price Anderson act, the government has to pay for the insurance because the insurance industry won't touch it because it's too risky. So they have government insurance. So that's what they're relying on, that nuclear power is too big to fail. It will always be bailed out, either by coercing the consumers coercing the taxpayers and other kinds of guarantees, including weakening the agency. You once were a commissioner on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, so that these permits are speeded up, and that's when you get a higher risk of catastrophe if the permits are speeded up and the regulations are weak. Can you comment on all this?
- [21:21]
Peter Bradford
Yeah. I mean, Trump has added a couple of new arrows to the nuclear quiver, and it was a quiver that was barely full of subsidy arrows already. But as you say, he is kneecapping the competitors to nuclear power, including the low carbon competitors. So he professes not to care about carbon anyway. But whereas Biden, Biden and Shapiro, the Democrats who've been supportive of nuclear power, have always said they're doing it as part of an all of the above strategy, and for reasons we've already touched on, doesn't make much sense there. Trump is doing something else. He's not really saying all of the above. He's saying only nuclear because I'm going to pull all the permits for wind and solar, so they just aren't going to be available, period. And then on top of that, as you say, he's going after what little is left of the safety strength of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by essentially claiming that it is not an independent agency anymore. He's already fired the one commissioner who was showing any signs of a safety concern about advanced reactors. He's out of a job. You can imagine what a message that's sending to the employees and the other commissioners and at the nrc. And Trump, in fact, has gone so far that even the industry is getting nervous. And some of their strongest supporters have said, wait a minute, he's stripping the veil away. We want to be able to say that we're strictly regulated, even though, in fact, we're fairly lightly regulated. And with what Trump's doing, no one's going to believe us when we say that. So they've made some extraordinary public statements opposing the firing of the NRC commissioner and Trump's various proposals to other undermine nuclear regulation. But that is absolutely new. On the other hand, it doesn't really save nuclear energy the kind of money that it needs to save in order to be competitive with the other sources. So it's part of the same spinning of the wheels that nuclear power has been doing for 40 years. They run endless campaigns seeking to discredit you, me, Amory Lovins, Helen called the cotton. But their real problem isn't us at all. It's Wall street skeptics who won't advance them the billions and Billions of dollars that have to be put at risk unless they're absolutely guaranteed that all the risks will fall on the customers or the taxpayers, then get away with that for a while. But as we're seeing in Georgia now with the two commissioners being unseated, there's a limit before the public gets exasperated even with that.
- [23:58]
Ralph Nader
Well, you know, the argument that is also used by the pro nukes, and this has been picked up by some uninformed environmental groups, is that it's either nuclear or coal. If you burn coal, you're going to create more global warming, more pollution on the ground, more slags and mountain replacements and strip mining and all. And of course the answer to that is it isn't nuclear or coal. Coal is dwindling in terms of its share of electricity and it's very high price. But the alternative is conservation. Solar and wind power, including passive solar. And people often are not told about the huge amount of energy we waste. We can cut our energy consumption in half and become more efficient economy. And you don't need, you know, as they say, a megawatt you save is a megawatt you don't have to produce. And so playing some of the environmental groups dropping their opposition or actually saying all of the above, we need all forms of energy, including nuclear.
- [25:03]
Peter Bradford
Yeah, it's really disappointing because there was a time when folks like you and me and Amory Lovins would have to make the argument based on sort of dueling studies and predictions and hopes that renewable energy would come along, energy storage would come along and energy efficiency would help to fill the gaps. But in the last 20 years that's happened. I mean we now have energy markets that cover more than half the kilowatt hours sold in the US they run competitive processes all the time. And the winners over and over again are the renewable sources, the wind, the solar power carried up with battery storage and the efficiency enhancements in the transmission system and behind the customer meter. And those savings are round the clock savings too. It's no longer true that renewable energy is disadvantaged by its variability of its output. And we have clear proof of that. Whenever a state or a power market runs an auction, those are the winners. Nuclear doesn't even bid. And of course it doesn't bid because it costs twice as much as as those alternatives. So why would you go to the trouble of putting a proposal together when you knew you were going to lose? What nuclear does instead is to go to the Congress and go to the state legislators, try to scare everyone to death, try with some success. To scare everyone to death over carbon and lost tax revenues and promises of jobs and basically get the government to insert it into the market on a sort of must take basis. But they're subverting the very power markets that the nuclear cost overruns of the 1980s led us to develop. It's a crazy cycle, but at least on paper it seems to be working for them. I think we'll look back on this in 10 years and say that it was crazy, but it certainly is expensive to go through it right now. Expensive and disappointing.
- [27:06]
Ralph Nader
Peter, here's an argument. Often it doesn't get much currency. The pro nukes say that we can't run the economy without nuclear power electricity. In fact, nuclear power only provides 20% of the nation's electricity. It's been stuck at that level for years. The other thing is that nuclear power plants have been shut down because they're too old, too brittle, too expensive. We've had over 15 nuclear power plants at least shut down in the last 20 years, and one cluster was 30 miles north of Manhattan. And when there was pressure to shut it down because it was near an earthquake fall, both Governor Cuomo and Hillary Clinton backed shutting it down. And the argument was, but that supplies New York with critical electricity. You want to have blackouts? Well, tell us what happened that they did shut it down. What happened?
- [28:00]
Peter Bradford
You're absolutely right. There were claims that there would be blackouts, brownouts, price increases. And what happened instead was that an a number of different alternatives, again renewables and transmission enhancements have been built. Some gas fired plants have stayed on for longer also, and the result has been seamless as far as the reliability of the power supply. Don't forget also that the same claims were made for the Shoreham nuclear plant about 20 miles out on Long island, that it too was going to be needed to supply the downstate New York electric region in the 21st century. It never operated at all, even though $5 billion were spent on building it. And again, there was no reliability impact whatsoever. The fact is that when nuclear plants close, the system has enough resilience to call into being more resources and to redeploy the resources that are already there. And it has to be that way when you think about it, because nuclear plants come offline to be maintained. They come offline to be refueled. They come offline sometimes because of an emergency event. So the system has to be able to function without them. And indeed it can. Most importantly, look also at Germany, which in the wake of the Fukushima accident recommitted itself to closing its entire nuclear industry and has now done so as of 2022. And the German power supply, which is heavily now reliant on renewables and efficiency and transmission enhancements, has also been perfectly reliable since then. So there you have an example of a really major economy, one of the largest economies in the world functioning smoothly without nuclear energy, even though at one time it was, I think, also about 20% dependent.
- [29:52]
Ralph Nader
All right, so now nuclear plants are being pushed to feed data centers that are being opposed by people in their neighborhoods all over the country, by the way, and now as a political issue in the elections. But these data centers are devouring electricity.
- [30:09]
Peter Bradford
Apparently the Chinese are saying that they have the ability to produce data centers that use only a fraction of the electricity that the US Data center would be builders are suggesting. So I've seen numbers as low as 2 or 3%, but let's say it's 20 or 30%. If that's true, then right away the energy impact is going to be a lot less than the data center proponents are urging. And on top of that, demand forecasts, we've seen it over and over again. Demand forecasts just aren't destiny. All these claims about how we're going to need this or that kind of crash on the rocks. When you think we were told we had to have nuclear power in order to get off of oil fire generation, well, we did that, and we did it without adding new reactors. We had to have nuclear power to stay ahead of the Soviet Union. Well, the Soviet Union is what fell apart, and it wasn't because we had nuclear power. So we keep being told there are new things that we need lots of nuclear energy for, and then they turn out either to be capable of going forward without it or to be nowhere near as compelling as the forecasts made them seem to be. It's extraordinary that the reaction should be, oh, the industry's telling us we need all this electricity, so let's go out and build them something that's going to take 10, 15, 20 years to produce in substantial quantity when they need it in the next two, three, five years. There's just a complete mismatch there. And it's almost like there's a bubble being built on top of a bubble, because there's a real chance that we're not going to see all the artificial intelligence demand that people have been saying. And then on top of that, it's for damn sure that we're not going to see successful companies developing all the small reactors that are on the Drawing boards right now.
- [32:03]
Ralph Nader
Peter, the last argument that the anti renewable energy cliques are using to foster fossil fuels and nuclear power is the wind doesn't blow all the time and the sun doesn't shine all the time. Been hearing this for decades. It's total nonsense. Listeners would like your response.
- [32:23]
Peter Bradford
Well, it's fair enough to say that the sun doesn't shine all the time. I think we can stipulate that. But that's why the development of storage and sophisticated load management and substantial transmission enhancements are so important. We're not going to replace nuclear with solar generation every hour of the day. But you don't have to between what you can store, what you can save, and what you can make up in other renewable ways. Thinking geothermal, for example, you can create what are called virtual power plants, that is blocks of power as big as a nuclear plant that's just as accessible on a 247 basis, even more reliable because it doesn't shut down all at once if something goes wrong and it can't be wiped out by some one accident in a facility a thousand miles away and it underbids nuclear. The virtual power plant components are bidding successfully in auctions all over the US Every day. New Nuclear never bids in those auctions because it can't win, because everyone acknowledges it's at least twice as expensive as the other low and zero carbon components. And there's clear proof of that. Now, this was all speculation 20 years ago. Nobody knowledgeable now says that the problem with renewables is that they aren't available around the clock. Of course the wind doesn't blow all the time, and of course the sun doesn't shine all the time. But there are lots of ways to integrate them into a system that does work all the time.
- [34:04]
Ralph Nader
And Trump has scuttled a proposal funded under the Biden administration for a grid system from the upper Middle Northwest wind power into the more urban areas of demand. Isn't that correct?
- [34:19]
Peter Bradford
Yeah. I mean, what could be a clearer confession of the failure of fossils fuels and nuclear energy than the fact that they have to have the federal government step in and kneecap their cleaner, cheaper competitors? When the history books of energy policy are written, I think people's jaws are just going to hang open at how we can have missed what's really going on here, which is that nuclear and fossil fuels, possibly not peak natural gas, but all other fossil fuels, simply cannot compete. And the only way they're being kept in the race is because the federal government is tying the ankles of all their competitors together.
- [35:04]
Ralph Nader
We're talking with Peter Bradford, former nuclear regulatory commissioner, former regulator of electricity in New York State and Maine, and a constant proven watchdog over the nuclear power industry and much safer and cheaper alternatives. I'm going to thank you very much. And before we leave, is there anything else you want to tell our listeners?
- [35:28]
Peter Bradford
Actually, yeah, I just want to thank you, Ralph, for your persistent attention to this field for all the years since I first met you, which was 1968.
- [35:37]
Ralph Nader
Thank you, Peter.
- [35:39]
Steve Scrovan
We've been speaking with Peter Bradford. We will link to his work@ralphnaderradiohour.com up next, whistleblower Becky McClain describes her fight for justice against Pfizer. But first, let's check in with our corporate crime reporter, Russell Mulcaiber.
- [35:54]
Russell Mokhyber
From the National Press building in Washington, D.C. this is your corporate Crime Reporter Morning minute for Friday, November 21st, 2025. I'm Russell Mulcaiber. Plastic is everywhere, wrapped around our food, stitched into our clothes, even coursing through our veins. What began as a marvel of modern science has become a toxic industry that is a affecting our health, polluting our planet and driving climate change. Now Judith Angk, president of Beyond Plastics, and reporter Adam Mahoney are out with a new book, the Problem with Plastic, laying out the problem and the Solutions in 180 page book that could serve as the basis of a prosecution, a lawsuit or a movement. According to a recent report in the Lancet, the world is in a plastics crisis, causing disease and death from infancy to old age and covering the planet with 8 billion tons of plastic waste. For the corporate crime reporter, I'm Russell Mulcyver.
- [36:53]
Steve Scrovan
Thank you, Russell. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. I'm Steve Scrovan along with David Feldman. Hannah and Ralph how widespread is the problem of workers being exposed at genetic engineering labs?
- [37:04]
Hannah Feldman
Hannah Becky McLean is a retired biotech worker and research scientist. She is known as the first successful biotech whistleblower who spoke and reported on biolab safety issues of public concern. On April 1, 2010, Ms. McLean won a federal court whistleblower trial against Pfizer which centered on free speech rights concerning biosafety and public health. She is the author of A Pfizer Scientist, Battles Corruption, Lies and Betrayal and becomes a biohazard whistleblower. Welcome to the Ralph Nader radio hour. Becky McLean thank you, Hannah.
- [37:43]
Ralph Nader
Thank you, Becky. Listeners should know I'm very partisan in favor of this book and what Becky has gone through over the years. And it started with my learning about her courageous demand to get her medical records in the Pfizer lab she worked in in Connecticut after she realized she was exposed to a certain virus from sloppy handling in the lab. And I began noticing everybody abandoned her. Her co workers abandoned her. They're afraid of their jobs. The superiors abandoned her inside Pfizer. Her professional societies abandoned her. She then went to osha who not only abandoned her, but betrayed her in a way that's one of the most disgraceful chapters in OSHA history and agency were instrumental in getting enacted in 1970 in Congress. She was in a very difficult situation to try to get lawyers to represent her and other state agencies were not interested. And I'm saying to myself, this is extraordinary. We all know that Pfizer and these companies are very powerful, but to that level of abandonment because she was meticulously reporting how she was exposed, who was exposed, all in this book exposed. The Pfizer scientist battles corruption, lies and betrayal and becomes a biohazard whistleblower. A successful one due to a plaintiff lawyer who took her case filed in federal district court in Hartford, Connecticut. And she won a partial victory, $1.3 million jury verdict, which was appealed by Pfizer. And they lost. But it was a victory for free speech. But the judge would not address the tort aspects, the wrongful injury aspects of what she was exposed to. And I must say, her description of the sloppiness in these labs. This happens with unsupervised routines everywhere. So she raises a larger issue of one of the least investigated areas of deadly hazard to the American people, which these corporate labs and even government labs all over the country that deal with these deadly pathogens and bioengineered research and development. So with that, why don't you describe why you think your case is so important to the American people today.
- [40:08]
Becky McLean
Ralph, thank you so much for that great introduction about the book, because the book is very detailed and complex and that's why I wrote it, because it's very difficult to describe all what happened to me. Why I think it's important is because the book really provides the public an understanding of the culture of health and safety operating within 21st century biotechnology. Once the reader reads it, they probably will feel the terrible repercussions that the public could face if it's not countered and balanced with effective whistleblower protections and improved worker health and safety rights. Also, I wrote the book to provide the biotech workers with a real picture of the state of their health and safety rights that operate within the biotech industry. The threat it poses to them and to the public due to the lack of those rights and to implore workers to take health and safety more seriously. I don't believe the public really understands what's going on inside the labs. And I hope the book can open their mind and I hope changes can happen because of it.
- [41:12]
Ralph Nader
What is the commercial motivation for this kind of. Of pathogenetic research?
- [41:18]
Becky McLean
Well, when we use pathogens, we're using them to infect cells so we can address scientific questions, so we can answer scientific questions. So they are important in biology and in research, but there's very little oversight. And workers rights, health and safety rights, if someone uses those in ill purpose or in negligence, it can cause a major problem. And that's what was going on at Pfizer. It was even more than that. It was that. You know, almost immediately on my first day at the embryonic stem cell lab, I noticed alarming biosafety elapses, unsafe break areas and offices ignored biocontainment protocols, and management was more concerned with profit and speed than safety. And it shocked me. I've never been in a lab where you would bring forward safety issues and they were ignored. You were ridiculed for bringing them up. Really soon, fear about raising safety issues became an unspoken rule in the lab. That's what happened. The safety issues continued. And these issues could impact both worker and public health and safety in the labs.
- [42:31]
Ralph Nader
When you were exposed and became sick, you tried to go to the workers compensation agency in the state of Connecticut, and their response was totally this main. They ruled that trade secrets of Pfizer superseded your rights to get exposure records from Pfizer for your health care. And if you couldn't get the exposure records, there was no remedy for you under workers compensation law. That's another abandonment. Can you describe how your members of Congress responded to you?
- [43:05]
Becky McLean
Well, the book tells the story of the major conflict of interest that was going on that was trying to silence me. And that was during the time that federal funding was in demand to work on human embryos. And since I was working in an embryonic stem cell laboratory where embryos are used, and this was a lot of money working with human embryos, millions of dollars, scientists were going to get funding. An overshadowing aspect also of why my issue was being silenced. And so I went to senators, I went to congressmen, and they also, my assumption is they also had conflicts of interest with this big money in science, and they didn't want my story to come out. Now, Senator Dodd helped me. He did review the OSHA procedure, which was Incredulous. It was just so bad what they did to me. But in general, they supported human embryonic stem cell research. Now, again, I was doing mouse embryonic stem cells, not human, but they supported that. And with that support, my case was completely silenced. So I was sick, struggling, and I was very difficult to find help.
- [44:21]
Ralph Nader
Would have been very easy for you to give up and just pay attention to your illness, but you didn't give up. You quote in one of your interviews with the corporate crime reporter, you say, quote, osha throughout my cases. During one interview, they stole all of my attorney client privileged documents. They were definitely working for corporations. That was my impression. End quote. Now, ordinarily, years ago, that would have triggered an immediate congressional investigation. Instead, it didn't. This is what happens, listeners, when people are exposed to the silent violence of corporate toxics, whether air pollution, water pollution, food pollution, or in these labs. It just doesn't have the resonance among lawmakers and regulators who should know better the that physical traumas should be like attacks and street crime and so forth. And we always have to be aware of that, that far, far more people die from silent violence of workplace environmental contaminants than are killed in street crimes every year in the United States. Tell us right now, what do you think listeners should take from your book, not only your experience and what you discovered and publicized, but in terms of future movements to put the spotlight on these labs. And they're not all corporate labs and there's government labs as well.
- [45:48]
Becky McLean
Well, you know, I won my case, my federal lawsuit, free speech lawsuit. But the fight for worker safety and the public safety in biolabs is far from over. The risk in these labs affect everyone. Workers rights and public safety are inseparable and they're both under threat. The next epidemic could be preventable if workers had real protections. I'm hoping my book and people can understand that. My experience told in Expose the story is a warning about the need for stronger biosafety laws, workers health and safety rights, and free speech protections for scientists, for doctors, and for injured workers. Gag orders, which is prevalent in this industry, should be illegal.
- [46:28]
Ralph Nader
And explain that this is one of your most important points. How these companies force the workers to sign agreements when they settle or they leave the workplace. They're called gag orders. That means they force these workers to abandon their free speech rights and shut up for the duration. Pfizer wanted you to sign a gag order. Tell us what you did.
- [46:50]
Becky McLean
Well, from the very beginning, they wanted me to sign a gag order, and again, a gag order. I would not have been allowed to write this book. And why I knew about them because I had met other injured workers at Pfizer and they were terrified Ralph to speak to me. They couldn't really reveal much information because Pfizer can come after you and ruin your life. So what's been happening for decades is that injured workers, especially in the biotech industry, are forced to sign gag orders that they cannot speak. So the public has no clue, they have no clue of the injuries occurring, the degree of injuries occurring that the majority of time the public has to pay for these injured workers injuries because they have to go on Medicaid. Workers comp. Will not cover them. It's just, it's a way to hide the dangers in the laboratories.
- [47:45]
Ralph Nader
As you said in one of your interviews, quote, we need to increase whistleblower protections. We have to make it easier for scientists to speak out regarding health and safety issues. The first thing I would do would be to make all gag orders regarding health and safety issues completely illegal, end quote. At law school, it would make them illegal as against public policy. So that's one thing that listeners should be aware of. The government could not require you to shut up under the First Amendment, but corporations can, because the First Amendment doesn't apply to corporations. So that's one of the demonstrations of courage that Becky McLean has been reflecting over the years.
- [48:33]
Becky McLean
I never did get my exposure records for my health care. And exposure records just aren't papers, you know, they're key to medical care, into the health and the well being of an employee. Trade secrets superseded my right to them. I was exposed to a virus engineered to change my human biology and I did not get the exposure records for medical care.
- [48:54]
Ralph Nader
And that's what OSHA called trade secrets. In denying you protection under the Occupational Safety act, they called your own personal records inside Pfizer a protected trade secret by Pfizer Corporation.
- [49:09]
Becky McLean
That's right. But OSHA didn't only do that. You know, I was exposed to a dangerous virus and OSHA worked against me. My medical care was blocked, my complaints ignored. No safety inspection occurred after I had documented complaints shown to them from several scientists that they stole my documents. It seemed like every institution that I went for help, they just became part of the danger. You know, it was very difficult. The whole fight was very, very difficult. The system conspired to silence me and they do it to other workers. My story has a bigger picture than just my story. And I hope people read the book. I hope people. I'm sure people will understand once they read the book the dangers lurking inside these labs. And while dangers are lurking inside the labs, agencies are looking the other way.
- [49:58]
Ralph Nader
Let's give the listeners some time scale here. Your exposure started in 2003. That's under the Bush administration, George W. Bush. You won your lawsuit in 2010. In 2013, you got Pfizer to pay the verdict, the jury verdict, 1.3 million before legal fees. And then they lost the appeals decision. But after you won the verdict, they continued the retaliation against you and your husband Mark. Describe the retaliation against your husband, Mark.
- [50:33]
Becky McLean
Well, Ralph, it's called backdoor retaliation. And I was pre warned about this and I really didn't believe it because I thought how can Pfizer influence the government, the fda? I was very naive back then. So we had won the lawsuit, it went into appeal, the judge was delaying it to extend it for three years before I would get paid. So you have to remember I was making fairly good money. And all of a sudden both my husband and our income is cut in half. Well, the strategy with backdoor retaliation to gag someone to try to, to make them sign something so they don't talk is to then go after their spouse who has the remaining income. Now if they would have succeeded, which was hard on us for three years, we had to again hire other attorneys to protect my husband. But if they would have succeeded, then we would have lost our house. That's how critical, how malicious it can become. Now, my husband survived. It did impact his career and his the bottom line of his retirement. But thank God we survived being terminated by having attorneys to try to help us. It's a common thing too, this backdoor retaliation. All these issues in my book, it's not just me, it's other people I've spoken to what happens, they ruin people's lives. They ruin. I've talked to a gentleman that had children, wife. He completely destroyed his family. That's a different issue. I mean a different. It's not in the biotech industry. It was in the government industry when, when he was asked to do something against public health and safety, like what I was being seen in the lab. He was destroyed because out of conscience he could not do what they had asked him to do. So and this is just one out of several injured workers or whistleblowers that I've met. And so that's why again, I'm writing this book. It's a very personal story. I wouldn't tell it if I knew other people were not suffering and still going well.
- [52:42]
Ralph Nader
Other people are calling you in similar circumstances. Terrified. Tell us about the lady who called you about a year after you won your lawsuit and was so terrified on.
- [52:52]
Becky McLean
The phone right now. She was a single parent, so her income being slashed was going to be difficult because she had a child. She was crying over the phone. She first didn't tell me who the company was because she said it was a gag order. She couldn't go into too many details. She said she was exposed in the lab. She became very ill and that she couldn't fight the fight. She said she had heard about my case and she said, I just can't do it. I can't do it. And but she was terrified and she was crying. So that was just Again, I've been on the streets. We went to San Francisco and we were protesting regarding biosafety in the labs. And I had biotech workers come up to me and say, yes, they're frightened, but they can't speak out. And this was an academic.
- [53:39]
Ralph Nader
Well, I've called it a corporate dictatorship, part of the corporate state. But listeners, this is why my sister, Claire Nader and others gave Becky McLean the Callaway Award for Moral Courage a number of years ago. And you can help get her story, which is relevant to thousands of workers around the country, more visibility by doing the following. Call up the NPR station and ask them to interview Becky McLean. You've heard all the silly entertainment interviews that NPR has exposed you to. Tell them to do something personal even though it might affect one of their corporate donors. The second thing you can do is call your local newspaper and ask them to review the book. And the third thing you could do is call your member of Congress and say, why aren't you having public hearings? Democrats could have shadow hearings even though they're in the minority. They could have press and witnesses, committee room in the House and Senate anytime they want. Why aren't you having hearings on the hazards in these corporate labs as well as the mistreatment and the suffocation of workers rights to speak out about it, the inability of state workers compensation agencies to do anything about it, the disgraceful record of OSHA under both Republican Democrat administrations, You know, put it all out there. Call your senators and representatives. And there are other things you can do as well. If you have a corporate lab in your community, ask them whether they provide exposure records to workers who ask for them. That's their medical records. They shouldn't be allowed to keep them as trade secrets. That's a corporate dictatorship. Protection. So there are a lot of things you can do. And we hope listeners that you will do that because Becky McLean has laid it all on the line. So spread the word, listeners. The book is exposed. A Pfizer scientist battles corruption, lies and betrayal and becomes a biohazard whistleblower, I might add, a successful whistleblower. And I was very privileged to write a forward to this book before we close. Becky, any points or last comments?
- [56:03]
Becky McLean
I just hope people read my book because Exposed shows the reader the real truth about the culture of health and safety operating inside the largest pharmaceutical company in the world and the dangers it imposes really upon all of us. And if it can happen at Pfizer, it can happen anywhere. I hope my story and the book can lead to some positive and safer changes for the future.
- [56:26]
Ralph Nader
And you're active now regularly with other concerned scientists, some of them retired, and researchers who are trying to reach Congress, state legislatures and the mass media to pay attention to something like this. Thank you very much, Becky McLean.
- [56:42]
Becky McLean
Thank you, Ralph. I so appreciate all your support for the many years that it took me to write this book. You're such a dear man. Thank you so much.
- [56:51]
Steve Scrovan
We've been speaking with whistleblower Becky McLean. We will link to her book@ralphnade.com I want to thank our guests again, Peter Bradford and Becky McLean. For those of you listening on the radio, that's our show for you podcast listeners, stay tuned for some bonus material we call the Wrap up featuring Francesco de Santis with In Case youe Haven't Heard. A transcript of this program will appear on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour substack site soon after the episode is posted.
- [57:18]
Peter Bradford
To order your copy of the Capitol Hill Citizen Democracy Dies in Broad Daylight.
- [57:23]
Steve Scrovan
It's at Capitol HillCitizen.com and remember to continue the conversation after each program. You can go to the comments section@ralphnaderradiohour.com and post a comment or question on this week's episode. The producers of the Ralph Nader Radio Hour are Jimmy Lee Wirt, Hannah Feldman and Matthew Marin.
- [57:41]
Peter Bradford
Our executive producer is Alan Minsky.
- [57:44]
Steve Scrovan
Our theme music, Stand Up, Rise up, was written and performed by Kemp Harris. Our proofreaders, Elizabeth Solomon, join us next week on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
- [57:53]
Peter Bradford
Thank you, Ralph.
- [57:54]
Ralph Nader
Thank you, everybody.
- [58:29]
Peter Bradford
This is John Crumshow with a special politics or pedagogy education report on kpfk. You hear more than a sound bite. That's education. That's our mission. Please make Your contribution at 818-985-5735 or pledge online@kpfk.org I'm on the line with Lorraine Evanoff. She is an author who has worked in the mystery field for a number of years. Welcome to Politics or Pedagogy.
- [58:56]
Hannah Feldman
Thank you.
- [58:57]
Peter Bradford
Glad to talk with you about your work because an author's work is really never done. Tell us about how you got started and what your process is. Oh, thanks, John.
- [59:09]
Hannah Feldman
I was, believe it or not, originally an accounting major in college and I was putting myself through college. I do think an author's work is never done, but that's because we can't help ourselves. We just have to write. I get really disciplined. I when I'm writing the novel, I I am a pantser, as you know that some people call it. I just write. But I know what my subject, my story is going to be, especially because they're historical fiction and I'm good. And all of by the way, the first three novels are all based on real life bankers graves, what they call bankers graves. Like prominent bankers are murdered and they're unsolved murders. So Louise Moscow tries to solve these murders and you know, I have my own theories and all that, but anyway, so, so I kind of know where the yellow brick road is leading, but I just pants and I.