Audio from rally in Tennant Creek marking five years since  Muckaty nomination for nuclear waste dump   http:/ beyondnuclearinitiative.com/2012/05/25/audio-from-rally-in-tennant-creek-marking-five-years-since-muckaty-nomination/

120-150 people attended the rally and speakers included  Muckaty Traditional Owners, Minister Gerry McCarthy (NTG),  Barkly Shire President Barb Shaw, Larrakia activist Donna  Jackson and Maurice Blackburn lawyer Lizzie O’Shea.

The march went from Peko Park to outside the Northern Land  Council office where Traditional Owners spoke about the  lack of consultation by the NLC before the Muckaty site was  nominated.”

Muckaty Gathering 25 May 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1J9q-OeEO4 25 May 12: “Alice Springs residents gather in support of
the Muckaty Traditional Owners and all peoples opposing the  Nuclear Waste Dump in the Northern Territory of Australia.”

Muckaty Station, about 130 kilometres north, of Tennant Creek is the site being considered for Australia’s first nuclear waste dump. Protesters marched along Tennant Creek’s main street, chanting “no dump at Muckaty, don’t waste the Territory”.

It has been five years since the site at Muckaty was first nominated for the facility but protesters say some of traditional owners of the land still have not been consulted about it.

Local MLA Gerry McCarthy stood alongside protesters and reaffirmed his commitment to fight against the dump. He says he would take part in a blockade to stop construction of the facility, if it comes to that. 

Diane Numbin Stokes is a traditional owner from Tennant Creek and a custodian of the land area that includes Muckaty station. She says the land being set aside for the nuclear waste dump is an Aboriginal men’s site, but this does not mean the women can’t voice their concerns. “We don’t want the waste to come to that land,” she said.

A Federal Court challenge against the nomination of the site is yet to be settled.

Servetnik accuses the authorities of using the Interior Ministry’s anti-terror police, known as Center E, to spy on his small group based in Murmansk.

ecologists persuaded authorities in Volgodonsk, southern Russia, to hold round table talks on the planned power increase of one reactor at the Rostov nuclear plant. In the Kaliningrad exclave, opposition is mounting to the planned 2016 launch of a new reactor at the Baltic plant. 

Nuclear-Strength Kola TOL Special Report: In Russia’s northwest, a scrappy bunch of young environmentalists faces off against a powerfulnuclear lobby. By Alexander Tretyakov  reporter for SOTV, a publicly funded Internet television channel in Moscow.24 May 2012  . MOSCOW | Murmansk Oblast in northern Russia has one of the highest concentrations of nuclear energy on earth. Nuclear submarines and icebreakers of the Russian Northern Fleet sail the White and Barents seas, and the Kola nuclear power plant is still going strong nearly 40 years after its first reactor hummed into life.

Russia’s nuclear industry is due for a massive expansion under a government plan to increase nuclear’s share in national power
production. Russia has shown no sign of wavering on nuclear power in the wake of last year’s Fukushima disaster,

On Murmansk Oblast’s Kola peninsula, however, nuclear backers face one of the strongest environmental organizations in Russia. For more than 10 years, Vitaly Servetnik and other activists at Priroda i molodezh (Nature and Youth) have battled attempts to build new reactors and extend the life of existing ones at the Kola nuclear plant, carrying out more than 100 protest campaigns, with more success than some of their fellow campaigners elsewhere in Russia. Campaigners took heart when several years ago local government seemed to be warming to their enthusiasm for wind power and other forms of renewable energy.

 ”The Kola nuclear plant is in a critical state,” said Andrei Ozharovsky, a nuclear physicist and expert with the Bellona Foundation. The Norwegian-based environmental group has long been critical of Russia’s heavy reliance on nuclear power in the far north. “Although the plant has some of the oldest reactors, there are plans to increase the output of Unit 4 by 7 percent.”

 The two oldest reactors at Kola have been in operation since the 1970s. Unit 4 went online in 1984. All four units are pressurized-water reactors, similar to those used in many countries, but Russia is the only country that still uses graphite-moderated RBMK reactors such as the one that exploded at Chernobyl. Eleven RBMK units are still in operation at the Kursk, Leningrad, and Smolensk power plants. Anti-nuclear campaigners can boast of one victory in the post-Fukushima era: Russia’s state nuclear energy conglomerate Rosatom said in March it was stopping work on a fifth RBMK reactor at the Kursk plant which had been under construction since 1985, a year before the Chernobyl disaster.

Servetnik accuses the authorities of using the Interior Ministry’s anti-terror police, known as Center E, to spy on his small group based in Murmansk.

 “The most active members of our organization are under surveillance by Center E,” he said in a recent interview.

 “The pressure increased after 4 March,” he said, in a reference to the day Vladimir Putin was elected to a third term as president. “This may be connected with the participation of members of the group, as well as my own, in activities of the regional Golos [election monitoring group].”

Despite the pressure, over the years activists from Nature and Youth and the allied Kola Environmental Center have thrown a number of wrenches into the plans of the nuclear lobby. In 2006, Servetnik and colleagues from Nature and Youth challenged Rosatom’s bid to expand the nuclear plant, partly to service a power-hungry aluminum smelter. They managed to persuade Rosatom head Sergei Kirienko to meet with them. It turned out to be the last time Kirienko met members of the group, but the expansion plan was shelved. 

 The Murmansk region may be unusual only in that anti-nuclear campaigners have had marginally more success here. With hardly a blip after last year’s nuclear disaster in Japan, Russia is pressing ahead with plans to extend the lives of old reactors and build new ones. Just weeks after the earthquake and tsunami struck Fukushima, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin set a goal of increasing nuclear’s share of national electricity generation from 16 percent to 25 percent. Such a step would have been hard to imagine when Putin came to power in the late 1990s. Nuclear energy had gone into a deep slump as the combined blows of Chernobyl and the collapsing economy put most expansion plans on hold. Since 2000 the state-controlled industry has been on the rebound, but even so, 23 of the country’s 33 active reactors predate Chernobyl.   ……….

Fortunately for local environmentalists, Scandinavia with its comparatively powerful anti-nuclear groups lies just across the border. Opposition to expansion of the Kola plant has been spearheaded by Nature and Youth’s parent group and by Bellona, both based in Norway. Anti-nuclear groups elsewhere in Russia are more isolated and their protests are generally more muted. Nevertheless, ecologists persuaded authorities in Volgodonsk, southern Russia, to hold round table talks on the planned power increase of one reactor at the Rostov nuclear plant. In the Kaliningrad exclave, opposition is mounting to the planned 2016 launch of a new reactor at the Baltic plant.      http://www.tol.org/client/article/23174-nuclear-strength-kola.html

The Cloncurry project was originally to be based on solar thermal
tower technology, but was switched to solar panels after significant
reflective glare issues became a concern. The previous Bligh
government announced it would provide financial support for the
revamped project in November 2010.

The 2.128MW Cloncurry Solar Farm was to have cost $6.76 million and
generate 3,700MW hours of electricity annually; enough  to power
approximately 500 households. The solar farm would have offset

Minister McArdle claims the government is working towards a “stronger
renewable and alternative energy sector with a targeted focus on
practical research and development of Queensland’s abundant renewable
energy resources.”

Soon after the Bligh government’s defeat, Queensland Premier Campbell
Newman set his sights on dismantling green energy programs deemed to
be redundant and a waste of taxpayer’s money. The news of Premier
Newman’s razor gang stirred up concern Queensland’s solar feed in
tariff may also be hobbled or axed for new connections; but appears to
be safe for the time being.

Currently the most generous in Australia, the incentive pays
households installing home solar power systems 44c per kilowatt hour
for surplus electricity exported to the mains grid. According to
information from Energy Matters, a 3.04kW solar panel system installed
in Brisbane can slash over $1,600 from a household’s electricity bill
annually.

“……..It is just a snapshot, but it is being repeated often enough that generators in Germany, Italy and elsewhere in Europe are calling for the rollout of solar to be capped to protect their earnings.
Several gas-fired plants in Germany have either been closed or marked for closure, and the largest electricity companies, E.ON and RWE, have made it clear they cannot keep these plants open, and are refusing to build new ones, without further help. So the German government has come up with a new mechanism called “capacity factors”. The details are yet to be worked out, but essentially it represents a payment to ensure that the gas-fired plants are available to balance the growing number of solar PV and offshore and onshore wind plants in the German grid, and to provide capacity as nuclear and then coal-fired power stations are removed.
It would seem inevitable that Australia will have to follow the same path. The brown coal generators are already feeling the pinch from lower wholesale prices of electricity caused by moderating demand and by the large wind capacity in South Australia. They have succeeded once in persuading the Victorian government to reduce the ambitions of its state-based renewable energy target, and are now seeking to do so again at the federal level. Already, the federal government has provided two payment mechanisms for the closure for some of the most polluting plants, and compensation to ensure that others stay open despite the impact of the carbon price (which ostensibly is designed to force their closure).
The government also has an energy security mechanism that can provide emergency financing to any generators finding themselves in trouble. Capacity payments, incentives to ensure that “peaking” generators that are flexible enough to provide energy when a coal-fired generator is offline, renewables are not functioning, or in times of peak demand, may well become part of the landscape…..

Division delays sales of uranium to India by: David Crowe and Mark

Talks on a bilateral deal are yet to begin despite assurances last year that negotiations would be under way by now and assumptions in India that talks had already begun.

Julia Gillard overcame objections from some of her cabinet colleagues to secure the policy shift at the ALP conference last December, drawing praise from India for strengthening the two nations’ strategic partnership.

But ministers are still considering whether to adopt the party platform as government policy and there is no date set for the formal negotiations to begin.

The delays come as Canberra also decides on Western Australia’s first uranium mine in the face of calls from the Greens for tougher safeguards on the Toro Energy project despite its approval by the state’s environmental regulator……
“Australia and India are not currently negotiating a civil nuclear co-operation (‘safeguards’) agreement,” a department official told The Australian.  “Before exports could take place, a civil nuclear co-operation agreement would need to be concluded to cover supply of Australian uranium to India.”…..http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/division-delays-sales-of-uranium-to-india/story-fn59nm2j-1226366170546

RENEWABLES INVESTMENT ECLIPSES FOSSIL FUELS  Radio National, The Science Show, download audio http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/the-science-show-19th-may-2012/4019492       19May  Investment in renewable energy infrastructure is outstripping that for fossil fuels. Investment was equal in 2008, but the balance has swung since. During 2011, globally, $40 billion was invested in fossil fuels. $260 billion was invested in renewables.  In the past year the price of photovoltaic cells has dropped by 50%.

Peter Newman describes the growth of investment in renewable as exponential. He says we are living through one of the most dramatic periods in history as fossil fuels are being phased out.

Robyn Williams: There’s a massive revolution underway. Steve Chu,
Nobel prize-winner and US Energy Secretary, noted this a couple of
weeks ago, he said, ‘The price of photovoltaics dropped 80% in one
year, and by 40% in another year.’ Has the world changed and we
haven’t noticed?
Peter Newman: The investment opportunities that are appearing now and
which are being funded, the reality is coal and gas are on their way
out, so globally in the last year, $40 billion was invested in fossil
fuels, $260 billion in renewables. The peak at which fossil fuels

as though there’s much change happening, whereas in fact we are living
in one of the most dramatic periods of history as we phase out fossil
fuels…..
 one of the reasons globally solar and wind have taken off is that the
mass production in China with their demand and their ability to
produce so quickly and efficiently is driving the price down. The
logistics, the processes of applying it, the systems, there are all
kinds of businesses associated with these industries, and we can do
that well in Australia and we can certainly demonstrate how to make
our cities work better with them, which requires this integration of
smart grids and all kinds of storage systems and so on that are
emerging. And that means that we need to have trials, demonstrations
everywhere, and we are doing some of that. So the solar cities program
and the smart cities program and so on, these things are leading I
think to the green economy work. But it is not nearly enough in
Australia, we could do a lot better at this…..
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/renewables-investment-eclipses-fossil-fuels/4019784