Australian Conservation Foundation calls on Labor to reverse decision to sell uranium to India
And none of this was clear or apparent at the time that 55, only 55 per cent of delegates at the ALP national conference put their hand in the air and said let’s sell uranium to India.
India has given nothing away and in return India has eroded global will, including Australia’s, and has been welcomed into the nuclear fraternity. …
ACF concerned by change in India’s nuclear regulation, http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2011/s3397198.htm ABC Radio – The World Today Samantha Donovan reported this story , December 23, 2011
TANYA NOLAN: Environmentalists are urging the Federal Government to reverse its decision to sell uranium to India after that country announced it will dismantle its independent nuclear watchdog. The Australian Conservation Foundation says it’s to be replaced by a new government-run body.
Samantha Donovan reports. SAMANTHA DONOVAN: The Indian parliament is considering legislation to replace the expert panel that acts as its nuclear watchdog with a body largely made up of government ministers and chaired by the prime
minister.
It’s only a couple of weeks since Labor’s national conference voted to overturn its longstanding ban on selling uranium to the subcontinent and the Australian Conservation Foundation’s national nuclear campaigner Dave Sweeney says he’s deeply concerned by India’s plans.
DAVE SWEENEY: It is a troubling development. It is a development that has a material bearing and interest on the decision made by the Australian Labor Party narrowly at the start of December to open the door to uranium sales to India. We have started the month with the Australian Government opening the door to uranium sales; we’ve ended the month with the Indian government closing the door on nuclear
scrutiny. Continue reading
India dismantles Nuclear safety Regulator, replacing it with a puppet for the nuclear corporations
”The bill aims at a formal ‘regulatory capture’ of the nuclear sector so that a few top 
people in the executive branch, in collusion with some of the senior atomic scientists, bureaucrats and politicians, can help the Indian and foreign corporate sectors in importing foreign power reactors into India on their terms, irrespective of their
relative safety or cost merits.”
Safety fears for new uranium customer SMH, Ben Doherty, Som Patidar, Som Patidar December 23, 2011 NEW DELHI: India, Australia’s newest uranium export destination, is to dismantle its nuclear regulator, replacing the
expert panel with a government-controlled body critics say will be a ”sham” and ”no regulator at all”. Legislation before the Indian parliament would replace the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, which has monitored the use, transfer and disposal of nuclear material in India for 28 years, with the Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority.
The NSRA will be answerable to a clutch of government ministers who can direct the regulator, even sack its members, giving rise to allegations that the new body will be captive to government. The controversial move comes as Australian officials prepare to begin negotiations with India about the sale of uranium to its civilian nuclear program.
This month the Labor Party overturned a long-standing ban on selling uranium to India because it refused to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
India remains steadfastly outside the treaty Continue reading
Law in Japan recognises victims of low level ionising radiation
The 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine deepened the understanding of internal exposure. When thyroid cancer surged among children there, it was traced to contaminated cows’ milk they had consumed. ..
Since 2006, about 300 hibakusha [in Japan] have won in 30 class-action suits nationwide. In many, judges ruled “early entrants” should also get benefits. In effect, this was the first official acknowledgment that internal exposure could cause health problems, given that these people weren’t exposed to the blasts, but to later fallout.
Discovery of radiation in autumn rice crops from Fukushima has put people on alert. …..
Extended low-level exposure might actually be more hazardous than a one-time blast if a brief, high dose just kills cells, whereas internal exposure could damage them even at low levels, ultimately causing cancer.
Past Haunts Tally of Japan’s Nuke Crisis, WSJ By YUKA HAYASHI, 23 Dec 11 KASHIWA, Japan—The struggle to understand the health consequences of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown carries an eerie echo of Japan’s past: The nation is still debating who is a victim of the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.
On Wednesday, in the latest in a series of high-profile lawsuits, four of five people who were exposed to radiation from the bombings—but weren’t present at the actual blasts—won official recognition as victims. Until recent years, Japan held that only people who experienced the actual blasts at close range were victims, because secondary radiation posed negligible danger.
This debate resonates today because many potential victims of the Fukushima disaster will have received only secondary radiation, for instance from eating tainted food or inhaling dust. Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 