Successes of Australia’s anti nuclear movement – theme for November 2011
Right now, Australia has a somewhat secretive pro nuclear movement in both Liberal and Labor parties, in corporations, and parts of academia.
But Australia has had a proud history of anti nuclear campaigns, and successes. From preventing a nuclear reactor at Jervis Bay in 1969, through influence on the Labor Party over more than 30 years, including a forceful effect in stopping France’s atomic bomb testing in the Pacific , – Australian anti nuclear activists have been effective. They have prevented nuclear power in Australia, and have put the brakes on the uranium industry.
Australia’s anti nuclear movement has been re-invigorated over the past few years, as the nuclear lobby revved up its propaganda.
Greedy and/or ambitious individuals jumped on the pro nuclear bandwagon. Some openly - such as Bob Hawke, Mike Rann, Barry Brook, Paul Howes, and nuclear dinosaurs Ziggy Switkowski and Leslie Kemeny. Others more secretively - John White (Australia Nuclear Fuel Leasing) Ron Walker and Robert Champion de Crespigny, (Australian Nuclear Energy) - manouvreing towards Australia as a nuclear power, and nuclear waste importing country.
Then there are the wobbly ones – like Mike Rann – hoping to be famous for promoting the world’s biggest uranium mine, but also hoping to be famous for stopping uranium mining in Arkaroola Wilderness? There’s Tim Flannery – an Australian icon of climate change fame, but can’t make up his mind whether or not to back the nuclear powers that be.
Countering Australia’s well-funded pro nuclear push have been hard working voluntary organisations, notably The Australian Conservation Foundation, (ACF) the Medical Association for the Prevention of War, Friends of the Earth, (FOE) Anti Nuclear Alliance of Western Australia, (ANAWA) International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) , Australian Nuclear Free Alliance (ANFA) and may others.
Individuals stand out – Dr Helen Caldicott – who continues to take the anti nuclear struggle to the world stage. Film -maker David Bradbury. Dr Jim Green, of FOE, Professor Ian Lowe of ACF, Dr Tilman Ruff of MAPW , Dr Mark Diesendof, Dr Gavin Mudd – just some of the experts who keep the anti nuclear/ pro clean energy case before the public.
Most courageous of all – Aboriginal activists, such as Yvonne Margarula, Kevin Buzzacott, Dianne Stokes. Jeffrey Lee turned down $billions to save his land of Koongarra from uranium mining. If only Australians as a whole had Jeffrey Lee’s kind of courage – to reject money gained from dirty, dangerous uranium mining.
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This month
For international news, go to nuclear-news ion for Western Australia’s energy future
http://ifyoulovethisplanet.org/?p=5755 Mary Olson on how women are more vulnerable to atomic radiation
- Muckaty Gathering 25 May 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1J9q-OeEO4 - NuclearKop http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpMhhzkeYjk
Anti nuclear action below: - more info at Action Australia « Antinuclear and at Event details « Antinuclear
- http://www.communityrun.org/petitions/put-the-brakes-on-toxic-trucks-no-nuclear-waste-at-muckaty
- Online Petition - against the proposed national radioactive waste dump at Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory http://www.gopetition.com.au/petitions/no-nuclear-waste-dump-at-muckaty.htmlUranium Free WA Sign the online charter saying no to uranium mining in Western Australia http://ccwa.org.au/takeaction/uraniumnotforsaleSIGN THE PETITION TO STOP LYNAS RARE EARTH EXPORTS TO MALAYSIA http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/ban-rare-earth-exports/
EVENTS
- May 29 – Melbourne - Amnesty International panel on weapons and war .
- May 29 – 30 Melbourne - Wind Farms conference
- May 30 Darwin - expert Panel on Nuclear Waste Dump plan for Muckaty
- June 2 - Nuclear Abolition Day
- June 13 - Melbourne -Lizards Revenge -Shut Roxby Down
- June 14 Melbourne Beyond Zero Emissions ZCA 2020 plan.
- June 19 - Melbourne Public meeting US FORCES IN AUSTRALIA: SECURITY OR THREAT? USforcesflyer-2.pdf
The Nuclear/uranium industry and WOMEN - theme for May 2012
Deceptive information given to women about breast cancer. Women are repeatedly told about “genetic causes”, about “risks of obesity:. about “diet factors”, about “not having babies”, or “having a baby at a later age” even about “stress” – as causes of breast cancer. The not so subtle message is that it is THEIR FAULT – a problem caused by the individual woman, so – the only preventive actions must be those made by individual women.
The facts are otherwise. The single most proven cause of breast cancer is ionising radiation. After that, other environmental causes exist, amongst the wash of chemicals, and synthetic hormones, that pervade our environment. After that – probably some hereditary susceptability, amongst some women.
Why is this so? One could conclude that breast cancer is a growth industry. There’s money at every point in this sorry cycle – from the radiation from nuclear fuel through to the medical radiation used to detect and treat breast cancer. There is no money clearly involved in shutting down a toxic industry, and preventing millions of breast cancers.
How does ionising radiation cause breast cancer? Ionising radiation comes in several forms. for example, Gamma rays, x-rays, and some sub-atomic particles such as alpha particles and protons In ionising radiation, a tiny electron is released from an atom, and enters a body cell, hitting the DNA in the cell’s nucleus, and damaging it. The damaged DNA sends out ‘wrong’ messages telling the cell to divide in an uncontrolled manner – cancer develops.
“...the time between radiation exposure and breast cancer development is longest in young women and shortest for older women; young children do not show a detectable elevation in breast cancer occurrence for some 35 to 40 years after exposure. Radiation-induced breast cancers appear to occur later in life during the same ages when breast cancer rates, in general, begin to increase. It appears that a single exposure of sufficient dose during early life can increase breast cancer risk even 50 years later...
the relationship between radiation dose and breast cancer risk can be described by a straight line which implies that no matter how low the dose, there is some small risk associated with the exposure.…
The risk of subsequent breast cancer from very high doses is lower than that which might be expected from the effects of lower doses. This is because radiation at high doses is an effective killer of cells and dead cells are not able to develop into cancer…..
Young girls are at highest risk …when a young girl is exposed to radiation, she will have menstrual cycles for several decades that might enhance the development of any underlying damage caused by the radiation. There is evidence to suggest that exposure to the immature breast during early development, and around the age of beginning menstruation, carries a higher risk than at other times of a woman’s life.
It is unclear how radiation exposure of the breast during pregnancy affects a woman’s breast cancer risk. However, a recent study of women treated for Hodgkin’s disease concluded that pregnancy might be a time of increased sensitivity of breast tissue to the cancercausing effects of radiation……”
.” John D Boyce, Jr, DSc, Scientific Director,Program on Breast Cancer and Environmental Risk Factors in New York State.. Ionizing Radiation and Breast Cancer Risk
Indeed nuclear lobbyists in Australia operate by stealth – not least in Adelaide. One prolific blogger comes to mind who’s a member of an animal activist group. Impressive one thinks but hopping over to Barry Brook’s website and there he is lobbying for nuclear. This duplicitous gentleman (an animal activist no less) believes it’s quite acceptable for one nuclear plant to suck up a billion marine organisms and marine life every year in the US – the Indian Point nuclear plant.
Adding insult to injury he evaded responding to the fact that “since the advent of the nuclear age in the mid-1940s, the mass of radioactive 129I (t1/2 = 15.7 Myr) circulating in the Earth’s hydrosphere has increased nearly forty fold from its natural background level of 140 kg.
“Nuclear fuel reprocessing has been by far the major contributor, responsible for releasing 5400 kg of 129I (half-life 15.7 million years) primarily into the North Atlantic Ocean. Regional and global trends in the distribution of the 129I inventory are elucidated from an examination of more than 600 determinations of 129I in environmental samples from around the world. Because the major point sources are located in Europe and the United States, more than 99% of the present 129I reservoir is distributed in the Northern Hemisphere, where both 129I concentrations and 129I/I ratios in rivers, lakes, and shallow seawater are several orders of magnitude above the preanthropogenic background.
” …………………. We model the effect of a collapse in thermohaline circulation and project a concentration increase of more than 3 orders of magnitude in shallow oceans over the 10,000 years that follow if nuclear reprocessing is to continue at the present rate. ”
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009GC002910.shtml#citation#citation
“Filthy water cannot be washed.”
In May 2009, the U.S. Department of Labor boasted it had paid more than $1 billion in compensation and medical benefits to 9,134 Tennessee residents under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA). Since the implementation of the act (2001), the Labor Department advises they have paid 51,331 claimants more than $4.8 billion in compensation and medical benefits nationwide.
Workers who are eligible for compensation are those exposed to radiation and other associated hazards in the nuclear industry from 1951 through to “residual” radiation exposure up to October 2009.
The suffering of the victims is immense and the range of radiation cancers – horrific. These hapless people (including the deceased) have lived and are living lives in extreme misery whilst seeking justice from a duplicitous bureaucracy who play the “deny and delay” game:
http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/esa/esa20090554.htm
http://www.defendingscience.org/upload/michaels_eeoicpa_testimony_nov03.pdf
http://blogs.knoxnews.com/munger/anwag2011.pdf
The nuclear pushers in Australia crow about an “emissions free” nuclear industry whilst seeking licences to kill. They continue to falsify records and trivialise the impacts of radiation sickness and want only to bludge off a fragile biosphere which they have already contaminated in perpetuity. Let the truth be known.