Antinuclear

Australian news, and some related international items

Lasting toxic legacy of France’s atomic bomb tests in Polynesia

France’s upper chamber approved a motion that provides for Mururoa and Fangataufa, currently under the control of the defence ministry, to be restored to the Polynesian public domain, though the bill stands little chance of becoming law. “We realise that they are the two largest nuclear dumps in an ocean environment. But in Oceania you cannot separate human beings from their ecosystem,” says the author of the bill, Senator Richard Tuheiva. “Restitution [of the atolls] is a way of soothing the psychological wounds [caused by the nuclear era].”

France urged to clean up deadly waste from its nuclear tests in Polynesia, Guardian UK,  7 Feb 2012, 193 nuclear tests carried out on the Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls between 1966 and 1996 have left a dangerous legacy Seen from the air, the coral ring that separates the deep blue of the ocean from the lighter water of the lagoon lends Mururoa andFangataufa atolls a sense of normality. But the picture changes dramatically as you come closer. Parts of the islands are covered in concrete and the vegetation usually found in the Tuamoto archipelagohas given way to aito trees, a form of she-oak. “At home on Tuamoto we depend on the island for our livelihood but here it is dead,” says an indignant Tuamotuan.

France carried out 193 nuclear tests on these two atolls from 1966 to 1996: 41 atmospheric and 137 underground tests, with a further 15 “safety trials”. In 2006, the French ministry of defence acknowledged that 22 underground tests had given rise to the release of radioactive gases. Radioactive waste has been collected and buried in 27 pits on Mururoa.

Despite the repeated demands of the Polynesian authorities, a bill passed by the French parliament in 2010 disregarded the environmental consequences of the nuclear tests. It did, however, acknowledge their impact on public health and provide for compensation.

In January, the territorial assembly of French Polynesia voted in favour of a bill to rectify this omission. The next day France’s upper chamber approved a motion that provides for Mururoa and Fangataufa, currently under the control of the defence ministry, to be restored to the Polynesian public domain, though the bill stands little chance of becoming law. “We realise that they are the two largest nuclear dumps in an ocean environment. But in Oceania you cannot separate human beings from their ecosystem,” says the author of the bill, Senator Richard Tuheiva. “Restitution [of the atolls] is a way of soothing the psychological wounds [caused by the nuclear era].”

The bill provides for lasting “environmental remediation and constant monitoring of radiation and geological movement on the two atolls”.

Every year the nuclear test centre monitoring department (DSCEN), a branch of France’s arms procurement agency (DGA), takes samples from the land and lagoon of both atolls, and the surrounding ocean, publishing the results within two years. The most recent report, for 2009, notes “a low level of artificial radioactivity”. But about 5kg of plutonium is trapped in the sediment at the bottom of the Mururoa and Fangataufa lagoons, according to the spokesman for the bill, the Socialist senator Roland Courteau. There is no question of them returning to “normal” use.

The test cavities still contain fission products and various radioactive substances. Two pits have been dug specially for the storage of nuclear waste.

 

The total activity of the waste that has accumulated in the Mururoa subsoil amounts to 13,279 terabecquerels (TBqs), according to a June 1998 assessment by the International Atomic Energy Authority. “That’s 371 times the threshold for the classification of basic nuclear installations,” says Bruno Chareyon, head of the committee for independent research and information on radioactivity (Criirad), a French non-profit laboratory. More than 3,200 tonnes of various types of radioactive waste was tipped into the Pacific, sinking to depths exceeding 1,000 metres off the coast of Mururoa and Hao island. In February last year, the defence ministry admitted that it was possible that part of Mururoa atoll might cave in, sapped by the underground tests. A landslide could lead to radioactive matter currently enclosed in rock being released into the sea.

“Mururoa is a real nuclear tip,” says Maina Sage, a representative of the pro-autonomy Ia Ora te Fenua party in the Polynesian territorial assembly. She is demanding an independent study to assess the scope for consolidating the storage facilities and criticises the bill’s failure to provide for declassification of the atolls. If the same rules for the treatment of nuclear waste applied here, as elsewhere, it would prevent the persistence “double standards”.

For a long time the Polynesian authorities were fooled by the official story of clean tests and the prospects of economic development. Government secrecy neutralised their efforts too. But now they distrust what they are told. In July 2010, the former leader of the territorial council, Gaston Tong Sang, wrote to the then environment minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, and dared to suggest that the environment ministry – which would enjoy “greater independence and legitimacy” – should take charge of environmental monitoring.

To guarantee the transparency of information available to Polynesian residents, the bill requires the military authorities to task the Nuclear Radiation and Safety Institute (ISRN) with a specific mission for Mururoa and Fangataufa. Courteau thinks that the rules on military secrecy should be adapted to suit “the reality of the risks incurred”, in which case a national commission would be set up “to monitor the impacts and effects of climate change on geomechanical stability and emissions of hazardous radioactive nuclides”.

In his letter, Sang also asked for clarification of the radiation status of Hao, which was used as a forward base for the Pacific Experimentation Centre (CEP) and France’s Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). This request was repeated in June 2011 by the DSCEN delegate from French Polynesia. A month later, on 11 July, the high commissioner, Richard Didier, refused to initiate further observations. He said that “all the results obtained show the absence of radioactive contamination”. Contacted by Le Monde, the government representative in French Polynesia refused to answer questions.

Some 1,500 people live on Hao island. In 2009, the defence ministry started a huge environmental remediation scheme. A study of the extent of pollution, in particular by hydrocarbons and heavy metals, is due to be published by June.

This article originally appeared in Le Monde     http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/07/france-polynesia-atolls-nuclear-tests?newsfeed=true

February 8, 2012 - Posted by | Uncategorized

4 Comments »

  1. GREAT FRENCH, BRITISH, BRITISH EUROPEAN, BRITISH AUSTRALIAN & BRITISH AMERICAN APRATHEID ATROCITIES.

    These on-going despicable barbaric, low-life, savagery, Laws and Practices of their Gross immense satanic power abuses of gangsterism, mafiarism, thuggery, bullying evilness against we decent, innocent, vulnerable Aboriginal and mixed race peoples, is the reason why we do NOT respect, approve of or trust you lot even less now than previously.
    Yesterday, I saw those beautiful, decent, innocent and vulnerable looking [unlike your evil selves], Polynesian Coloured people on TV, protesting against these despicably evil Nuclear Testing on/ around their beautiful islands. What is this damned waste of our stolen wealth on Nuclear Arms, Testing, Space programmes for another planet to over-populate and abuse and destroy as well, while we are still suffering, exploited and abused covertly and overtly, systematically via Great British laws and practices, with their accomplices in France, South Africa, America, Australia, Canada etc.

    You evil gangsters simply cannot be human beings or animals at all, or normal at all, despite your having been born as such, but your so-called ‘education’ and ‘civilization’, is identical to that of the evil Black ones in Africa and the Russian & Chinese too, so, of what use or good are your over-priced institutions of ‘Education’ to Society in this world and earth at all, I ask?

    Your confidentiality agreements and reports are also immoral, illegal and people such as Julian Assange and his Good partner who is now being prosecuted immorally and illegally according to Claudine’s Laws, by the satanically Government biased, money and time-wasting, brain-washed ‘courts’ who do NOT prosecute themselves.
    VIVA WIKILEAKS, VIVA!!!

    Also, to the Families of Dr. David Kelly, the Russian whom Berezofsky etc.,Gareth Willaims, Jan Charles de Menzes, etc etc and of whom we do NOT even know of, you to all, have our sympathies and everybody knows that the British Establishment Authorities of TRUTH Haters, are responsible, had conspired and are complicit in these deaths, lies and abuses too.

    I thank the Lord that there are at least some decent French, British, German, etc. people on this earth who are not of your evil ilk and who also protest against your mafiozi atrocities and crimes against humanity whom you even abuse your evil mental ‘health’ Acts & Practices against the ones who expose you too., when you are indeed and in fact the evil psychotic and grossly satanically deranged and inhumane ones, who make this world the satanic place it is in, to-day.

    Descibing you lot as Apes & Chimpanzes is an insult to the animal species, this is why I refer to you all as satan instead, as it is more befitting and appropriate. This applies to the whole evil lot from the very Highest positions especially, down to the bottom such as you street gangsters, poachers etc crimes.

    We also do NOT have any Trust or Faith in Your evil British Controlled, copied and ‘educated”/ brain-washed, evil judiciaries and ‘legal’ systems such as in Mafiozi Britain, South Africa, Australia, America etc. With all of the man-made powers you have invented, created and use against us, you could easily have solved the real crimes in the World, but you do NOT do so because you all, begining with the Great British Apartheid Establishment and it’s fellow Illuminati partners in crimes of British Governors, Prime Ministers of South & Southern Africa, Australia & New Zealand, the Southern hemispheres invaded and stolen islands too with abusive atrocities of and against their peoples too, and also without corrective and proper Restitution and Reparations indefinitly as I Recommend and Demand, Rothschilds & associates, De Beers, AAC/ Plc etc and its associates, Mining Bosses of since 1800’s, Oppenheimers, Directors, managers, British ‘aristocracy’, ‘scientists’ as per above, ‘doctors’, ‘social workers’, most ‘politicians’ certain ‘missionaries’ ie Robert Moffat & David Livingston, who were in fact British agents as per my discoveries of British Military Intelligence proofs thereof in 2004 & 8, to this day.

    It is true what decent British people such as the Human Rights activist – persecuted too, MR. Norman Scarth, I and millions of other people too. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Brits, are the evil ones and the great Power abusers that is why I prefer to be called the SOUTH AFRICAN International Woman, despite the fact that the previous Boer SAP used to call me the, “English Woman”. Now that I know the TRUTH about British Culture, philosophy, history and politics, I am ASHAMED, to be of British descent!
    The likes of Clem Sunter only, apparently ” ‘chose’ their parents” as they said, but i and we cannot and did not.

    Why have your ‘Legal Systems’ never brought you lot to account and been prosecuted – becuse you own and cotrol that too, immorally and illegally so!
    You lot are the World’s biggest scammers, deceivers, criminals, abusers and bastards, as you refer to us as even in your official and secret too reports, meetings, ‘courts’ etc.!

    STOP YOUR ATROCIOUS BLOODY CRIMES OF ATROCITIES, SCAMS, DECEPTIONS, & SCIENTIFIC TESTS AGAINST DECENT, INNOCENT & VULNERABLE PEOPLES & THE ENVIRONMENT WHICH GOD HAS GIVEN TO US TO LOOK AFTER AND NOT DESTROY AS YOU EVILLY DO!

    WE BELIEVE IN FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION FOR DECENT HONEST & VULNERABLE PEOPLE, WORLDWIDE!

    THE EVIL REGIMES & CORPORATIONS FORM OF EXPRESSIONS IS ONLY VIA THEIR CRIMINAL ACTS OF TERRORISM, WARS, ABUSIVE WEBSITES, MEDIA SUCH AS THEIR PORNOGRAPHY, LIES, SMEERS, …….. FOR WHICH THEIR LAWS, COURTS AND JUDICIARIES ARE SET UP TO PROTECT THEM.

    Thank you Christina, for your Great Website, which the evil ones hate.

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    Judge Inspector Prof. Claudine Fourie/ Claudine F.M. Fourie/ Fourie-Grosvenor/ [Bond], etc.'s avatar Comment by Judge Inspector Prof. Claudine Fourie/ Claudine F.M. Fourie/ Fourie-Grosvenor/ [Bond], etc. | June 9, 2012 | Reply

  2. 14 September 2013

    BRITISH ATOMIC TESTING IN AUSTRALIA

    On September 27, 1956 the first explosion in a British series of atomic explosions took place at Maralinga, South Australia. This series of explosions was christened “Buffalo”. Bruce A Bolt was on the Nullabor Plain as one of a group of seismologists making use of the British atomic test to study the earths crust. Seismographs were installed westward from the Maralinga test site along the railway line to Perth. Bolt had placed a seismograph at Cook, 140 kms from the shot point. See map.

    The Buffalo atomic tests were the fourth in a series conducted in Australia. In 1952 and 1956, the British had fired atomic bombs on the deserted Monte Bello Islands off the coast of Western Australia.The western region of South Australia had also been used in October 1953, for the testing, by the British Atomic Testing Energy Authority, of two small atomic devices above the ground, at Emu Field. The Buffalo tests of late 1956 were larger bombs with different triggers and simpler mechanisms were fired at the new site of Maralinga. The name by coincidence means “Fields Of Thunder”.

    Bruce A Bolt describes the location;
    “The Nullabor Plain of Australia conveys an endless theme of sparse vegetation, far horizons, and brooding emptiness. This outback landscape appears, at first meeting, desiccated and monotonous. The Plain is almost devoid of real trees; the struggle for life is intense. Even the ubiquitous Australian eucalyptus, evolved in endless variations to survive snow or aridness, is rare. However, intimacy with the Nullabor reveals a different reality. The yellow and browns of the soil, the sculpture mounds of sand and pebbles, create a landscape of endless variety. In the gullies and clefts, among the grey spinifex and mallee scrub one encounters bursts of desert flowers: the purple of the desert rose; the scarlet brilliance of the Sturt’s pea, like drops of blood among its feathery foilage; the greenness of a phyllodinous acacia, a few feet high, with its flattened leafstalks evovled to reduce loss of water.”

    Sir William Penney arrived in Australia early September 1956 to supervise the tests. Penney was associated with British nuclear research since its early days; he had flown in an observation plane for the Nagasaki atomic bomb drop, he was also in Australia during 1952 for the Monte Bello test. Sir William stated at a news conference in Sydney that the tests would not involve big explosions, but that was not to state that small weapons would not have a tactical role to play during the times of war. The Maralinga tests would be for measurement research, others would determine the behaviour of military equipment and buildings when subjected to explosive forces.

    With close cooperation with the British on defence matters the Australian government at the time was led by Prime Minister Robert Menzies. The opposition Labor party opposed Menzies Liberal party Country party policies on allowing the atomic tests in Australia. Deep divisions in the Labor party prevented much affective resistance, the Labor party caucas voted to only send a small group of observers to Maralinga.

    Environmental hazards from the nuclear explosions appeared to be taken seriously by the Australian government and scientific circles. An Australian Weapons Safety Committee was established to examine the dangers from radioactive fallout and give the all clear on weather conditions for each test. The committee published open reports in the Australian Journal of Science. The articles explained the actions taken ensuring the safety of the public; these were similar to those already in place in the United States for air, tower and surface bursts in Nevada.

    Arrangements were made for measurements of radio -iodine concentrations in the thyroid glands of sheep and cattle, where iodine in digested fodder is quickly concentrated. Radioactive levels were tested in rain, mud and water reservoirs. Sampling of radioactive dust was carried out by the simple method of exposing the sticky surface of gum films to the open atmosphere. By the time of the Buffalo tests of 1956, the Australian fallout network had been expanded to eighty-six stations.

    The First Maralinga Explosion

    The weather was at first unfavourable at Maralinga for the initial test in Spring 1956. Some 1500 scientists and soldiers were waiting for this first test.

    On a clear spring day, the first explosion was ignited. Only near the detonation point was ground motion felt, but people living hundreds of kilometers away heard the sound waves through the air. At Cook two or three distinct blasts were heard about 12 to 13 minutes after the detonation flash. At Kingoonya, 400kms from Maralinga, there was an explosion like a clap of thunder, shutters rattled and houses shook. On the coast, 300kms away at Ceduna, two large bangs rang out- like sticks of dynamite going off.

    The first atomic bomb in the Maralinga series was about equal in power to that which destroyed Hiroshima. The device had been suspended from a 110 metre tower. The most distant seismograph known to have recorded it was at Southern Cross, 1000kms away.

    The fission detonation produced the usual fireball, flash and cloud. The cloud then became distorted by winds in the upper atmosphere, and it gradually drifted away to the northeast, over the empty desert. An hour after the explosion, news reporters flying over the site reported a shallow, ash grey crater, about 500 metres across. The tower had been vapourised, and smoking equipment dumps and burning scrub streched for over two kms.

    Seismological Results Of The First Atomic Tests

    The 1956 Maralinga seismological experiments proved as successful as the nuclear explosions themselves. A total of ten seismograms of importance were obtained from the four atomic detonations; the readings were used to determine for the first time the thickness of the Earth’s crust in the Australian continent. The results of these seismological experiments concluded that the Western Australian crust had a thickness of around 35km in depth. The depth of crust and seismic properties were similar to other continental shield areas such as Canada, South Africa and Siberia.

    After Maralinga

    Things went off as the Australian government has assured the public they would. However, there were some sidelights which illustrate how irrational as well as rational fears are born following novel events. Some newspapers pointed to a correlation between the bomb detonation and weather changes. On September 28, the day after the first blast, freakish heavy rain fell in Sydney, Adelaide, and other places in Australia. In Australia’s capital, Canberra, parliamentarians were given pause when, after more than three weeks of warm, sunny weather, there was a downpour during the night after the explosion.

    Nuclear devices that are detonated above ground, as in the Maralinga tests, form a cloud that rises to between 7500 metres and 20,000 metres, depending on the size of the bomb and the weather. Heat in the fireball vaporises the unfissioned nuclear “fuel”, metal casing and mechanism, and some nearby rock. The vapor rises like an aerosol spray, with the exceedingly fine particles remaining in the cauliflower like head of the cloud.

    Heavier particles carried upward by strong turbulent updraughts just after the ignition are deposited within a few hundred kilometres of the blast, in the direction of the mean wind. Heavy radioactive contamination of the environment near ground zero occurs in this way. The lighter radioactive particles sometimes drift several times around the world, slowly falling to lower levels. When they reach rain clouds they are quickly transferred to the earth. In large atmopsheric detonations, radioactivity may be injected into the stratosphere, and may take several years to reach the ground.

    For all atomic tests in Australia, the Safety Committee concluded in 1959 that the hazard to humans from the consequent radioactive fallout was of no consequence. They compared the increased dose of gamma radiation to the human body over fifty years with that normally experienced: The dose levels incuured are very small; without making allowances for the normal living and occupational habits of man, which can introduce as a correction factor a reduction of an order of magnitude, the dose levels involved are trivial compared with the natural background due to cosmic rays and natural activity”. The highest value of the dose to humans from the radioactive contamination, assuming no shielding, was less than one percent of the annual natural background.

    Worries about radiation produced by these relatively small fission devices fired above the ground in Australia in late 1956 were soon to be engulfed in a more serious concern. Widespread global increases in radioactivity had already been produced by atmospheric testing of gigantic hydrogen bombs by the Soviet Union, United States, and Great Britain. On September 18, 1956, the Radiological Institute of Freiburg University announced that the radioactivity level in grain fields and pastures in south west Germany had increased in the previous two months. This report and others began to speak of danger to human beings if such levels were increased.

    Unknown to the participants in the Nullabor, on the day of the first 1956 Maralinga test, the National Weather Bureau in Tokyo released a startling report stating that radioactivity over Japan had increased considerably over the past months. There was a suggestion that increases in strontium 90 concentration in atmospheric dust over Japan constituted a hazard to health. The report referred to recent U.S. and Soviet tests of thermonuclear fusion weapons above ground.

    In this climate, a number of us in Australian university circles began to study the questions of environmental risks arising from above-ground nuclear explosions. It was difficult to be cooly academic with the titanic race in nuclear armaments going on between the great powers.

    Particpation in Maralinga also set me thinking about new seismological questions. We had proved that unnatural earthquakes could provide seismic waves from which it was possible to make strong inferences about the structure of the Earth. What more could be done? How similar to were nuclear earthquakes to natural ones? Soon the realisation that the testing of nuclear weapons would force seismology to expand from a small, rather obscure discipline to one that would play a key social role. By the late 1950’s, many seismologists had become aware that their energies and talents would be called upon to help solve one of the key scientific dilemmas of the second half of the 20th century.

    The problem was as follows: if atomic weapons tests were banned under international treaty, could a nation that wished to violate the treaty do so without being detected? Seismologists had developed methods of recording waves from natural earthquakes from all around the world. They also had experience with recording waves at short distances from chemical explosions, such as quarry blasts. Could seismology alone be relied on to provide the means of detecting the differences between natural earthquakes and unnatural ones fired off secretly within the Earth’s crust?

    Finally

    The British tested only three more atomic devices at Maralinga. In operation Antler two weapons were fired on towers and one suspended from balloons. The 1957 tests were also used for furthur geophysical measurements of the South Australian crust.

    Prediction that Maralinga would become a permanent British nuclear testing ground were wrong. The changing climate of opinion in Australia and Britain, together with international pressures, was effective in preventing further testing on Australian territory. The Maralinga facility was returned to the emptiness of the outback.

    With the passage of years, Australia took a more jaundiced view of above ground nuclear explosions. The government became troubled particuly about explosions in other parts of the Southern Hemisphere. After 1968, Australian objections to French nuclear weapons tests east of Tahiti grew in intensity. By 1973, opposition had grown to the point that the newly elected Labor governments of Australia and New Zealand brought a case before the International Court of Justice challenging France’s right to carry out atmospheric tests in the South Pacific

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  3. MORE EXAMPLES ON LITTLE GREAT BRITISH APARTHEID POLICIES AND PRACTICES FOR/ OF EVIL GREED AND GROSS CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY ON INNOCENT, DECENT AND VULNERABLE INDIGENOUS, FIRST WORLD, ABORIGINAL AND COLOURED [ WITH MIXED NATIONALITY ] PEOPLES IN SOUTHERN AFRICA, THE SOUTH SEA’s ISLANDS, AUSTRALASIA AND THE AMERICAN’s INCLUDING CANADA AND ALASKA –

    29 March 2012

    Sign: No nuke dump for the NT (ABC)

    Dumping on Traditional Owners: the ugly face of Australian racism

    215 Comments

    Jim Green
    Jim Green

    The nuclear industry has been responsible for some of the crudest racism in Australia’s history.

    This racism dates from the British nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s but it can still be seen today.

    The British government conducted 12 nuclear bomb tests in Australia in the 1950s, most of them at Maralinga in South Australia. Permission was not sought from affected Aboriginal groups such as the Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, Tjarutja and Kokatha. Thousands of people were adversely affected and the impact on Aboriginal people was particularly profound.

    Many Aboriginal people suffered from radiological poisoning. There are tragic accounts of families sleeping in the bomb craters. So-called ‘Native Patrol Officers’ patrolled thousands of square kilometres to try to ensure that Aboriginal people were removed before nuclear tests took place. Signs were erected in some places – written in English, which few in the affected Indigenous communities could understand. The 1985 Royal Commission found that regard for Aboriginal safety was characterised by “ignorance, incompetence and cynicism”. Many Aboriginal people were forcibly removed from their homelands and taken to places such as the Yalata mission in South Australia, which was effectively a prison camp.

    In the late-1990s, the Australian government carried out a clean-up of the Maralinga nuclear test site. It was done on the cheap and many tonnes of debris contaminated with kilograms of plutonium remain buried in shallow, unlined pits in totally unsuitable geology. As nuclear engineer and whistleblower Alan Parkinson said of the ‘clean-up’ on ABC radio in August 2002:

    “What was done at Maralinga was a cheap and nasty solution that wouldn’t be adopted on white-fellas land.”

    Despite the residual contamination, the Federal Government has off-loaded responsibility for the land onto the Maralinga Tjarutja Traditional Owners. The Government portrays this land transfer as an act of reconciliation, but the real agenda was spelt out in a 1996 government document which states that the clean-up was “aimed at reducing Commonwealth liability arising from residual contamination.”
    A win for the Kungkas

    In 1998, the federal government announced its intention to build a national radioactive waste dump near Woomera in South Australia. Leading the battle against the dump were the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, a council of senior Aboriginal women from northern South Australia. Many of the Kungkas personally suffered the impacts of the British nuclear bomb tests at Maralinga in the 1950s.

    The Kungkas were sceptical about the government’s claim that radioactive waste destined for the Woomera dump was ‘safe’ – after all, the waste would be kept at the Lucas Heights reactor site south of Sydney if it was perfectly safe, or simply dumped in landfill.

    The proposed dump generated such controversy in South Australia that the federal government secured the services of a public relations company. Correspondence between the company and the government was released under Freedom of Information laws. In one exchange, a government official asks the PR company to remove sand-dunes from a photo selected to adorn a brochure. The explanation provided by the government official was that: “Dunes are a sensitive area with respect to Aboriginal Heritage”. The sand-dunes were removed from the photo, only for the government official to ask if the horizon could be straightened up as well.

    In July 2003, the federal government used the Lands Acquisition Act 1989 to seize land for the dump. Native Title rights and interests were extinguished at the stroke of a pen. This took place with no forewarning and no consultation with Aboriginal people.

    The Kungkas continued to implore the federal government to ‘get their ears out of their pockets’, and after six long years the government did just that. In the lead-up to the 2004 federal election, with the dump issue biting politically, the government decided to cut its losses and abandon its plans for a dump in SA.

    The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta wrote in an open letter:

    “People said that you can’t win against the Government. Just a few women. We just kept talking and telling them to get their ears out of their pockets and listen. We never said we were going to give up. Government has big money to buy their way out but we never gave up.”

    Toxic trade-off: dumping on Northern Territorians

    The ears went straight back in the pockets the following year with the announcement that the government planned to establish a radioactive waste dump in the Northern Territory.

    A toxic trade-off of basic services for a radioactive waste dump has been part of this story from the start. Governments have systematically stripped back resources for remote Aboriginal communities, placing increased pressure on them to accept projects like the radioactive waste dump.

    The nomination of the Muckaty site in the Northern Territory was originally made with the promise of $12 million compensation for a small group identified as the exclusive Traditional Owners. While a small group of Traditional Owners support the dump in return for financial compensation, a larger group have been ignored and they have initiated legal action in the Federal Court challenging the nomination of the Muckaty site.

    Even though the court case is unresolved, the Government has passed legislation targeting Muckaty as the only site under active consideration for a radioactive waste dump. The National Radioactive Waste Management Act 2012 is draconian, overriding the Aboriginal Heritage Act and bypassing the Aboriginal Land Rights Act. It allows for the imposition of a dump on Aboriginal land with no consultation with or consent from Traditional Owners. Nuclear racism in Australia is bipartisan – both the Labor Government and the Liberal/National Opposition voted in support of the legislation.

    Muckaty Traditional Owner Penny Phillips said:

    “The Government should wait for the court case before passing this law. Traditional Owners say no to the waste dump. We have been fighting against this for years and we will keep fighting. We don’t want it in Muckaty or anywhere in the Northern Territory.”

    The Central Land Council expressed “profound disappointment” at the passage of the National Radioactive Waste Management Act. David Ross, Director of the Land Council, said:

    “This legislation is shameful, it subverts processes under the [Aboriginal] Land Rights Act and is clearly designed to reach the outcome of a dump being located on Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory, whether that’s the best place for it or not. This legislation preserves the Muckaty nomination without acknowledging the dissent and conflict amongst the broader traditional owner group about the process and the so-called agreement. The passage of this legislation will further inflame the tensions and divisions amongst families in Tennant Creek, and cause great stress to many people in that region.”

    Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson has refused countless requests to meet with Traditional Owners opposed to the dump. Muckaty Traditional Owner Dianne Stokes says:

    “All along we have said we don’t want this dump on our land but we have been ignored. Martin Ferguson has avoided us and ignored our letters but he knows very well how we feel. He has been arrogant and secretive and he thinks he has gotten away with his plan but in fact he has a big fight on his hands.”

    Dianne Stokes is not alone. Many Traditional Owners are determined to stop the dump and they are supported by the Northern Territory Government, key trade unions including the Australia Council of Trade Unions, church groups, medical and health organisations, and environmental groups. If push comes to shove, there will be a blockade at the site to prevent construction of the dump.
    Uranium mining

    The patterns of nuclear racism are also evident in Australia’s uranium mining industry. Racism in the mining industry typically involves some or all of the following tactics: ignoring the concerns of Traditional Owners insofar as the legal and political circumstances permit; divide-and-rule tactics; bribery; ‘humbugging’ Traditional Owners (exerting persistent, unwanted pressure); providing Traditional Owners with false or misleading information; and threats, most commonly legal threats.

    To give one example, the 1982 South Australian Roxby Downs Indenture Act, which sets the legal framework for the operation of the Olympic Dam copper-uranium mine in South Australia, was amended in 2011 but it retains exemptions from the SA Aboriginal Heritage Act. Traditional Owners were not even consulted. The SA government’s spokesperson in Parliament said:

    “BHP were satisfied with the current arrangements and insisted on the continuation of these arrangements, and the government did not consult further than that.”

    That disgraceful performance illustrates a broader pattern. Aboriginal land rights and heritage protections are feeble at the best of times. But the legal rights and protections are repeatedly stripped away whenever they get in the way of nuclear or mining interests.

    Thus the Olympic Dam mine is largely exempt from the SA Aboriginal Heritage Act. Legislation was passed specifically to exempt the Ranger uranium mine in the Northern Territory from the Aboriginal Land Rights Act. Native Title rights were extinguished with the stroke of a pen to seize land for a radioactive waste dump in South Australia. And Aboriginal heritage laws and Aboriginal land rights are being trashed with the current push to dump in the Northern Territory.

    The situation is scarcely any better than it was in the 1950s when the British were exploding nuclear bombs on Aboriginal land.

    Dr Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth, Australia and a former national committee member of the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance. View his full profile here.

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  4. You ought to take part in a contest for one of the finest blogs online.
    I’m going to recommend this website!

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    decorate's avatar Comment by decorate | May 9, 2014 | Reply


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