Martin Ferguson undermining climate change policy
Ministers accused of blocking energy greening
Sydney Morning Herald Marian Wilkinson, Environment Editor July 27, 2009THE state and federal energy ministers, led by Labor’s Martin Ferguson, are being accused of undermining the Rudd Government’s climate change policies in light of a report which finds the national electricity market they oversee is discouraging energy efficiency and new renewable energy.
“Energy ministers are rewarding polluting energy and blocking efficiency and clean alternatives”, said Jane Castle of the NSW Total Environment Centre which commissioned one of the leading energy consultancy firms, McLennan Magasanik Associates, to report on the role of the National Electricity Market in climate change……………………
The report comes after Mr Ferguson launched an attack on environmentalists for failing to support the expansion of Australia’s liquid natural gas projects and uranium mining, saying they did not understand, “where our electricity comes from, who pays for it and what the future of the global energy landscape looks like”.
But Ms Castle accused Mr Ferguson of thwarting the Rudd government’s climate change policies. “He heads the Ministerial Council on Energy which is actively obstructing the development of energy solutions which would bolster the economy, create jobs and protect us from rising carbon costs,” she said. “His overblown statements are intended to simply disguise his defence of Australia’s biggest polluters.”
The consultants’ findings were backed by one of Australia’s leading renewable energy companies, Pacific Hydro. Its spokesman, Andrew Richards, said the energy ministers needed to intervene to get the National Electricity Market to “transition from the old way of doing things”. As a first principle, he said, the electricity market needed to include a commitment to climate change policies.
Martin Ferguson’s climate change policy | Marian Wilkinson | Environment and ALP
Nuclear power proposal ridiculed
The Bendigo Advertiser 27/07/2009
Last week the chairman of the Federal Government’s Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Dr Ziggy Switkowski, said Australia was the best-placed country in the world to use nuclear power…………………………..Environmentalists have called his proposal “ridiculous” and unnecessary given the number of renewable, and cleaner, energy options available.
Bendigo Sustainability Group president Karen Corr said Mr Switkowski’s idea was irrelevant.
“It is a ridiculous plan to even be considering nuclear power,” she said.
“There is existing technology now for green energy and nuclearpower is not clean, there are so many problems with it, especially with the waste.”
Ms Corr said any nuclear power plant would take at least 20 years to build, which seemed pointless given that wind and solar projects were already running and could be installed relatively quickly.
Mount Alexander Sustainability Group chairman Jim Norris agreed.
“We are saying no to nuclear power, we do not see it as clean and safe, there are other solutions readily available,” he said.
“Nuclear power generation is not entirely renewable clean energy, mine site to power point energy costs are quite considerable; you have got to dig the uranium out of the ground then store it for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.”
Mr Norris said the CSIRO’s Maine’s Power project was “absolute proof” that Australia did not need to rely on nuclear energy.
“Four major Castlemaine businesses will save between 30 and 40 per cent of their energy usage by means other than nuclear power by the end of 2010,” he said.
N-power proposal ridiculed – Local News – News – General – The Advertiser
A dark dawn: the nuclear age is with us
ON LINE opinion By Jake Lynch – 27 July 2009 “…………………In Australia.. investigative reporting by the Sydney Morning Herald established that Peter Garrett,…. had approved a proposal for a new uranium mine from a “reclusive billionaire” named James Neal Blue. Blue, the paper noted, was “one of the world’s biggest arms dealers” and the supplier, through his company, General Atomics, of the Predator drone aircraft being used in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.The new Four Mile mine, in South Australia, would use the same “acid corrosion technique” to extract uranium from aquifers, environment reporter Ben Cubby wrote, as the nearby Beverley mine, which had recorded 59 separate spills of radioactive material in the past decade.
Cubby didn’t raise the point, but real fears have surfaced, over the same period, that South Australia might run out of water, with its state capital, Adelaide, afflicted by salination and drought. It seemed that the exploitation of a resource with a high market value was taking precedence over the preservation of one with unique life-giving properties…………………..
Time then, perhaps, to dredge up some of the nuances otherwise in danger of being forgotten, but emphasised usefully in two new books, Plutonium: A History of the World’s Most Dangerous Element, by Jeremy Bernstein (Cornell University Press) and In Mortal Hands: A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age, by Stephanie Cooke (Black Inc Books)…………….
…………The element at the heart of humanity’s deadliest weapons is plutonium, and Bernstein describes the science leading to its eventual production in sufficient quantities to manufacture bombs, evoking intrigues, along the way, that crossed the borders of Mitteleuropa, with protagonists fleeing Nazi persecution and heading for points west. Plutonium is a by-product of civil nuclear reactors, and Bernstein ends with a wry commentary on its sheer uselessness for any but military purposes. From the initial laboratory quantities measured in millionths of a gram, the world is now “awash” with the stuff, he says: 155 metric tons in total………………………….
Britain…. still has not settled on one site for the long-term disposal of waste from its existing nuclear plants. The cost, now estimated at well over £70 billion, or about US$120 billion, has been palmed off on the government,…
…Across the Atlantic, the Hanford reactor that produced plutonium for Los Alamos was mothballed long ago, Bernstein notes. The risk from leaks to swimmers and anglers downstream on the Columbia River was hushed up when it was operational, but it now represents a US$10 billion time bomb……………..
In the civil domain, the “nuclear renaissance” now underway creates a lucrative market for uranium suppliers like Australia, but, she observes, also multiplies the risk, of both accidents and proliferation.
A dark dawn: the nuclear age is with us – On Line Opinion – 27/7/2009
Uranium Mining Poisoning WA ’s Groundwater Forever
Dare to care, Dawn Jecks, 25 july 09
“…………..Described by Minister Garrett as being ‘world’s best practice’, the American owned Beverley Four Mile Uranium mine will use the controversial in-situ leach mining technique which involves deliberately pumping sulphuric acid into a public owned water aquifer to dissolve the uranium ore. Once the uranium is extracted from the surface the radioactive liquid waste from this process is then dumped into the aquifer. Given that the environmental regulators in the US refuse to allow this practice on their own soil, and the fact that aquifers in Eastern Europe have been heavily polluted by this practice why is our Federal government allowing it in Australia?Although Minister Garrett has talked about ’strict’ monitoring requirements ‘well after this South Australian mine ceases’, a long-term problem will undoubtedly arise from the fact that concentrated radioactive materials survive for thousands of years. How can the uranium mining company have ’strict’ monitoring for that length of time? Another WA proposal to mine uranium at the Yeelirie deposit some 550 kms east of Geraldton, will also be dependant on Minister Garrett’s approval.
As with all uranium mines enormous quantities of water are going to be needed to mine the Yeelirie uranium deposit…………………..
With more than one hundred uranium mining companies currently exploring in WA it is interestingly to note that the WA State Water Resources Minister Graham Jacobs has been urging WA householders to reduce their water consumption and to conserve our precious water resources through household sprinkler bans.Is polluting our groundwater aquifers with sulphuric acid on the one hand, and then asking householders to turn off their sprinklers, the Barnett Governments idea of being ‘water wise? I urge all West Australians to become acquainted with all the facts surrounding uranium mining before we find ourselves with a toxic legacy that never, ever goes away and the website for the Antinuclear Alliance of WA (ANAWA) is a good place to start.
Uranium Mining Poisoning WA ’s Groundwater Forever « Dare To Care – Dawn Jecks
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