Join us for the People's Conference on
Nuclear Power Reactors
June 12 - June 13, 2026
Four experimental nuclear power reactors are proposed at Dow in Seadrift, Texas.
Get the facts and learn how you could be impacted.
Friday, June 12, 2026
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Documentary Screenings
Saturday, June 13, 2026
9:30 AM – 3:30 PM
Presentations & Panels
501 S Main St
Seadrift, TX 77983
Register Now. Lunch provided Saturday. Seats are limited.
Presentations & Panels Schedule
Program Start
9:30 AM
NUCLEAR POWER FROM THE COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVE (Tim Judson)
RADIATION, WASTE, AND WEAKENED REGULATIONS (Diane D’Arrigo)
9:40 - 10:40 AM
NUCLEAR ENERGY: GLOBAL LANDSCAPE AND RISKS (Dr. M.V. Ramana)
THE PEBBLE BED REACTOR: NOT ALL IT’S CRACKED UP TO BE (Dr. Ed Lyman)
10:40 - 11:50 AM
LUNCH
11:50 - 12:50 PM
PROXIMITY TO NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS AND CANCER RISK: A MULTI-SCALE EPIDEMIOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION IN THE UNITED STATES (Dr. Yazan Alwadi)
1:00 - 2:00 PM
PANEL DISCUSSION: PROTECTING OUR COMMUNITIES
2:00 - 3:00 PM
Speaker Panelist
David Weisman
David Weisman recently retired as Executive Director of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, a utility ratepayer watchdog organization where he served for 21 years. Before his advocacy career, he produced award-winning environmental documentaries for PBS and directed the Texas Legacy Project, an oral history of prominent Texas environmentalists. He also spent four years organizing with the Oaks Project, including petitioning, legislative lobbying, and media outreach. At the Alliance, Weisman wrote legislation adopted into California law and played a key role in the shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station and negotiations to retire the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant.
Diane D'Arrigo
Diane D'Arrigo is Radioactive Waste Project Director at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS). She holds degrees in chemistry and environmental studies, and began her career studying pollutant bioaccumulation in the Great Lakes before working as a community organizer and researcher for environmental groups. For decades, D'Arrigo has tracked nuclear waste issues, including high-level and so-called "low-level" commercial and weapons waste, leaking burial sites, and the threat of irradiated fuel reprocessing. She has challenged unnecessary nuclear waste transport and coordinated national and international opposition to deregulating nuclear waste that would allow it to be dumped as ordinary trash or made into everyday household items.
Edwin Lyman
Edwin Lyman is an internationally recognized expert on nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism, and nuclear power safety and security. Based at the Union of Concerned Scientists since 2003, he has testified numerous times before Congress and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and has published in Science, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and Arms Control Today, among others. He co-authored Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster (New Press, 2014) and is a member of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management. Dr. Lyman received the Leo Szilard Lectureship Award from the American Physical Society in 2018. He holds a doctorate in physics from Cornell University.
M.V. Ramana
M.V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He is the author of Nuclear is not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change (Verso, 2024) and The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India (Penguin, 2012). Ramana is a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials and the International Nuclear Risk Assessment Group, and contributes to the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Leo Szilard Award from the American Physical Society.
Tim Judson
Tim joined NIRS September 2013 as Associate Director, and has served as Executive Director since 2014. Tim leads NIRS’s work on nuclear reactor and climate change issues, and has written a series of reports on nuclear bailouts and sustainable energy. Chair of the Board of Citizens Awareness Network, one of the lead organizations in the successful campaign to close the Vermont Yankee reactor; co-founder of Alliance for a Green Economy in New York.
Yazan Alwadi, Ph.D., S.M.
Yazan Alwadi, Ph.D., S.M., is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His research focuses on the health impacts of environmental exposures, including nuclear power plants, extreme heat, air pollution, and climate-related hazards. Drawing on training in engineering, biostatistics, and environmental health, he integrates exposure science and epidemiologic methods to address complex public health questions. Prior to academia, Dr. Alwadi spent a decade leading multidisciplinary teams on major international energy infrastructure projects across the Middle East, Europe, and Asia before completing his Ph.D. in Environmental Health and S.M. in Biostatistics at Harvard University.