Lies and cover-ups in Japan’s nuclear safety program
the official who ordered the cover-up of the data is now responsible for working out safety measures at nuclear plants
Cover-up of estimated costs to dispose of radioactive waste raises serious questions, Mainichi Daily News, By Tadashi Kobayashi, Kenji Shimizu and Seiichi Ota, Mainichi Shimbun 2 Jan 2012, Revelations that officials from the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy concealed the estimated costs of disposing of spent nuclear fuel highlights the distorted logic of government officials who stick to reprocessing radioactive waste even by lying.
The cover-up is essentially similar to a case in which some high-ranking government officials hid a 2002 Russian diplomatic document in which Moscow offered to accept spent nuclear fuel from Japan, in that both helped promote the reprocessing of radioactive waste at a plant in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture. Continue reading
Australian Greens defend renewable energy schemes against fossil fuel “greenhouse Mafia”
Greens defend loans for renewables, Herald Sun, AAP , January 04, 2012 AUSTRALIAN Greens leader Bob Brown says fossil fuel industry attacks on a government loan scheme for renewable energy projects are “a bit rich” given the massive subsidies they get.
Senator Brown was defending the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which will provide finance to renewable energy, energy efficiency and low-emissions technologies…..
The corporation has been attacked by the opposition as a slush fund, with finance spokesman Andrew Robb saying it would only “fund projects that the private sector won’t touch with a barge pole”. Now a new attack has come from some of Australia’s biggest industry sectors. The Australian Industry Greenhouse Network – whose members include the Australian Coal Association, the Minerals Council of Australia and the National Generator’s Forum as well as large mining and petroleum companies – says the loans fund could distort markets, the Australian newspaper reported today…….
Senator Brown said government had a legitimate role in helping establish new markets that had wider public benefits. He cited the fact that most coal fired power stations in Australia were originally built by governments, even if they were now privately owned.
“Here we’ve got that same industry, having been built upon government financing, claiming now that the renewable energies of this century shouldn’t even be subject to assistance through loans,” he told ABC radio today. Senator Brown said the fossil fuel industry was currently subsidised to the tune of $11 billion a year.
“The subsidies involved in the clean energy finance corporation are really very restrained compared to those going to the polluting industries at the moment,” he said.
“The fossil fuel industry is largely foreign-owned, it pours billions of dollars out of the country each year and it’s complaining about domestic industries getting a $10 billion loan fund.
“It’s a bit rich isn’t it?” http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/greens-defend-loans-for-renewables/story-e6frf7ko-1226236190140
Wave Energy for Australia – the Island Continent
recent technological innovations may make that coastline as attractive to renewable energy investors as to sunbathers.
A new wave energy project is being planned for development off the coast of Garden Island in Western Australia, near Perth
Australia Developing Wave Power, Oil Price.com by John Daly, 02 January 2012 Consider. Australia’s 2,966,140 square-mile landmass is ringed by 16,006 miles of coastline. Most of the population is concentrated along the southeast coast of the country, in an arc running from Brisbane to Adelaide along the “boomerang coast.”
Virtually all of Australia’s large cities – Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide – are on the coast. About 80 percent of Australia’s population lives within 30 miles of the coast.
So, where do the Aussies get their energy to support their affluent lifestyles? Continue reading
Harvey Wasserman gives 21 good reasons to close the nuclear industry in 2012
Worldwide, the industry is crumbling. The collapse of its private investment base, and the shutdowns in Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Mexico, Israel and elsewhere are rapidly shrinking the technology’s credible reach.
Green energy will soon constitute the world’s largest industry, financially and in terms of employment.
Fukushima has taught us that as long as reactors operate, the apocalyptic clock is ticking….. we can make 2012 the year nuke power finally dies.
2012 Is the Year to Finally Bury Nuke Power Harvey Wasserman Huffington Post, 01/ 3/12 The year 2012 has opened with news that Fukushima’s radioactive cloud may already have killed some 14,000 Americans, according to a major study just published in the International Journal of Health Services.
Germany and Japan, the world’s third and fourth largest economies, along with numerous others countries, have definitively turned away from the “Peaceful Atom.”
But it hasn’t yet been buried. That’s up to us. And 2012 is the year to do it.
We are already very close. The mythical “Nuclear Renaissance” has been gutted by Fukushima, low gas prices and the escalating Solartopian revolution in green energy. Solar panels, wind turbines, sustainable bio-fuels, geo-thermal, ocean thermal, increased efficiency and much more have simply priced atomic energy out of the market.
There is virtually no private money to build new reactors — except where there are huge government subsidies and guarantees. In 2012 we must make those all go away.
Likewise, there are increasingly powerful grassroots movements focused on shutting reactors that still operate. Germany has shut 7, and the rest will be gone by 2022, if not earlier. In Japan, just 11 of more than 50 reactors now operate. Because local governments can prevent nukes from re-opening once they go down for refueling, Japan could emerge from 2012 without a single nuke on line. Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 