The week’s nuke news in Australia
The New South Wales government hypocritically allows “exploration” for uranium , but not mining. At the same time, its regulations on renewable energy are designed to prevent small scale wind energy from being able to develop.
Rare earths Australian rare earths company Lynas facing court in Malaysia over its inadequate radioactive waste plan, and strong public opposition.
Hifar nuclear reactor Greens Senator Ludlam continues to raise those inconvenient questions in Parliament – like where will they put Sydney’s dead Hifar nuclear reactor?
South Australia The Uranium State of South Australia shutting down all funding avenues for promoting renewable energy.
Cash for comment It’s revealed that Australian Climate change denialist Professor Bob Carter receives a “monthly payment” of $US1667 ($1550) from the USA Heartland Institute to “ publicly counter the alarmist [anthropogenic global warming] message”.
Uranium diseconomics Australian uranium company Paladin makes a huge loss, and a huge share price fall.
Where to trash Australia’s dead but radioactive Hifar nuclear reactor?
Australia’s media rarely covers anything to do with the nuclear industry, and never covers the issue of trashing the dead nuclear reactor, sorry, I mean “decommissioning’ it. That’s a much nicer word. You can visualise the general pulling the epaulettes off the shoulder of the disgraced captain – decommissioning him – a nice formal protocol.
But what is ANSTO going to do with its dead Hifar nuclear reactor in Sydney? After all, there was a helluva fuss about the uranium left in posh Hunter’s Hill. No doubt ANSTO and the New South Wales government will find some working class suburb in which to dump ANSTO”s old trashed reactor – seeing that ANSTO has a nice new one which is not trash (yet).
But, no – I forgot, the Australian Government will step in and promise some Aborigines the normal facilities that the rest of us have anyway, – if they’ll just be obliging and “volunteer” to have the dead but radioactive nuclear reactor. – Christina Macpherson
Australian Senate, ANSTO transcripts, 19 Feb, 2012,
……Senator LUDLAM: If this is complex, perhaps you can table it, but can you provide me with a current timetable and order of works for the decommissioning of the former HIFAR reactor in the site?
Dr Paterson: There is no formal decommissioning plan which has been adopted at the moment. As we indicated, I believe, at a previous estimates, there is a window of time in which we would like to begin that decommissioning process. A will take on notice the current status of how we are thinking about that window and when the works can begin.
Senator LUDLAM: Can I see it if I look in the right spot in the four-year forward estimates, or is it not there?
Dr Paterson: It is not in the four-year.
Senator LUDLAM: Did you want to add something, Mr McIntosh?
Mr McIntosh: No, certainly not in the four-year. Clearly, there will be a number of issues to be taken into account. One of them is obviously funding, but there is also: there is not much point demolishing a reactor if you have got nowhere to put the waste.
Senator LUDLAM: That is what I am going to come to now. Is it too early for me to ask you what the cost is going to be of pulling that facility apart?
Dr Paterson: I think the engineering estimates for the moment can be tabled.
Senator LUDLAM: Can be?
[ I couldn’t make much sense of the lengthy answer here. C.M.]…. and the second thing that can happen is that the cost estimates which are based on normative numbers that you can extract from quantity surveyors and others in the marketplace may have changed because the marketplace itself has changed. So there are two bases for having reasonable contingencies in these projects: one is scope changes and the other is cost changes because of market forces….
….. Senator LUDLAM: Is it still ANSTO’s intention to store that material which is contracted to return from Europe temporarily in Sydney while the issue of the remote waste dump is resolved one way or another?
Dr Paterson: That is our current planning.
South Australia, the Uranium State, moves further away from clean energy
Labor pulls plug on energy role, by:Belinda Willis , The Advertiser , February 21, 2012 THE State Government has ended Renewable Energy Commissioner Tim O’Loughlin’s position more than a year before his contract was due to expire. Mr O’Loughlin was appointed in mid-2009 with some fanfare by then Premier Mike Rann. His contract was meant to run until 2013.
A spokesman for Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis said he would not be replaced. Yesterday’s Budget and Finance select committee heard Mr O’Loughlin’s job ends about 18 months short of his contract by “mutual agreement”, and that there had been a payout……
The move follows a budget decision late last year to scrap the $11.7 million remaining in the $20 million Renewable Energy Fund. This fund was overseen by RenewablesSA, and industry said there were now no state funding support avenues available for renewable energy.
The South Australian branch of the Australian Solar Energy Society and the Australian Geothermal Energy Association have raised concerns that the State Government had lost interest in renewable energy.
“It makes a complete mockery of the fact that in the last week of Rann being premier, he released a new renewable statement for South Australia,” said Mr Marshall. “It’s clear the new Premier has no interest in this sector whatsoever.” http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/business/labor-pulls-plug-on-energy-role/story-e6frede3-1226276364284
Medical isotope can be obtained without need of a nuclear reactor
Nuclear Reactors Not Needed to Make the Most Common Medical Isotope, Science Now by Robert F. Service on 20 February 2012, In recent years, hospitals worldwide have been grappling with short supplies of technetium-99 (Tc-99), the most commonly used radioisotope in medical imaging scans. But help may be at hand: A team of Canadian researchers reported today that they’ve made critical progress in developing a stable new supply of the isotope.
Tc-99 is currently produced in nuclear reactors fueled with highly enriched uranium, which has raised concerns that the nuclear fuel could be intercepted by terrorists to make a nuclear weapon. The new setup produces Tc-99 with a medical cyclotron, thereby eliminating proliferation concerns. But economic and technical considerations may make it more practical for shoring up Tc-99 supplies in Canada than in the United States. Continue reading
Aboriginal Peter Watts warns on the radiation danger of uranium
From Aboriginal land to Japan’s nuclear reactors, Antinuke activists draw attention to the link between Australian uranium and Fukushima , Japan Times, By ERIKO ARITA Feb. 19, 2012 Peter Watts, co-chair of the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance, was recently in Japan as one of some 100 speakers at the Global Conference for a Nuclear Power Free World held in Yokohama on Jan. 14 and 15. During an interview with The Japan Times, Watts — who is a member of the Arabunna people, one of several Aboriginal groups living in South Australia — said that among the many things his ancient ancestors knew, such as how to hunt animals in a sustainable way, was the potential danger of radiation released from the uranium beneath their land.
“Our ancestors knew of the uranium,” he said, “They called the places (of uranium deposit) ‘Poison Country.’ It meant: ‘Don’t go there to hunt. Don’t go there to collect food. Don’t go there.’ ” Continue reading
Nuclear industry expert dismisses Thorium reactors as uneconomic
Nuclear power entrepreneurs push thorium as a fuel, Washington Post, 20 Feb 12, “….. a small group of scientists, entrepreneurs and advocates see the post-Fukushima era as the perfect opportunity to get the United States to consider a proposal they have made with no success for years. What about trying a new fuel, they say, and maybe a new kind of reactor?….. They’re pushing the idea of adapting plants to use thorium as a fuel or replacing them with a completely new kind of reactor called a liquid-fluoride thorium reactor, or LFTR (pronounced “lifter”). The LFTR would use a mixture of molten chemical salts to cool the reactor and to transfer energy from the fission reaction to a turbine..
….‘Small boatloads of fanatics’ Although the idea of thorium power has been around for decades — and some countries are planning to build thorium-powered plants — it has not caught on with the companies that design and build nuclear plants in the United States or with the national research labs charged with investigating future energy sources.
“There are small boatloads of fanatics on thorium that don’t see the downsides,” said Dan Ingersoll, senior project manager for nuclear technology at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. For one thing, he said, it would be too expensive to replace or convert the nuclear power plants already running in this country: “A thorium-based fuel cycle has some advantages, but it’s not compelling for infrastructure and investments.”
He also pointed out that thorium would still have some radioactive byproducts — just not as much as uranium and not as long-lived — and that there is no ready stockpile of thorium in the United States. It would have to be mined.
Overall, he says the benefits don’t outweigh the huge costs of switching technologies. “I’m looking for something compelling enough to trash billions of dollars of infrastructure that we have already and I don’t see that.”…… most U.S. nuclear energy industry executives are wary of both approaches to thorium, saying that neither utilities nor investors are eager to gamble on an unfamiliar technology….
Hans Joseph Fell warns on Australia’s economic need to foster renewable energy
The end of baseload? It may come sooner than you think, RENeweconomy, By Giles Parkinson 20 February 2012 Hans Joseph Fell interviewe d by RENeweconomy
“…….Q: What is your assessment of policies in Australia?
A: You have wonderful research for renewables in Australia, at ANU, Sydney University and elsewhere. Research is very important but without market introduction it is not so useful, and you do not have enough deployment. You need a good feed-in-tariff. But you do have a carbon price, which balances a bit the high external cost of fossil fuel production, so it balances a little the uncompetitiveness of renewables.
The main thing is that Australia is the biggest exporter of uranium and coal – most investors believe that when uranium and coal prices rise, it is good for their business, because they have a bigger income. But I believe that this is not stable in future. It happens already in Germany, the higher the coal price is rising, the more coal fired power stations they close, because they are uncompetitive with renewables. The higher they go, the less coal other countries will buy from Australia. I see most new investment in coal is a stranded investment.
Q: That message is not getting across.
A: That’s because they believe it will go on., but it will not go on. The oil price will be the leading price for all energies. Peak oil is already here, the IEA says it is. In coming years we must fear declining oil production. This will lift price very high, and that will increase pressure on people, banks and nations. The only chance to come out of this economic crash is to go renewables…… http://reneweconomy.com.au/2012/the-end-of-baseload-it-may-come-sooner-than-you-think-29425
A new Australian government assault on the rights of Aborigines
The Australian Labor government is planning more assaults on the rights of Aborigines, Indymedia International, 21 Feb 12, It plans to extend for another ten years onerous conditions on income quarantining, education, alcohol and land rights.
And moves to dump nuclear waste on Aboriginal land have advanced with a deal between government and opposition.
Planned laws have been attacked as divisive and racially discriminatory by leading jurists, human rights activists, churches and a former prime minister. A former chief justice of the Family Court of Australia says transcripts of government consultations in indigenous communities could be used to wage a High Court legal battle.
A group called Concerned Australians has released transcripts recorded in the Northern Territory as part of consultations about what the government calls “Stronger Futures” legislation. They say the transcripts could prove the government breached the Racial Discrimination Act because consultations were not done properly.
They say the transcripts show the government ignored Indigenous people’s complaints and left them out of their reporting.
Another threat to the lives of Aborigines is a plan to dump nuclear waste on their land in the Northern Territory.
A former conservative prime minister, John Howard, more or less invited all nuclear countries to dump their waste in the area. A railway line, built by Haliburton, a company once headed by former US defence secretary, Dick Cheney, already exists from Darwin on the north coast to the area where the dump is to be.
Australian IndyMedia has covered both issues extensively.
For the new intervention law see http://indymedia.org.au/2012/02/18/macklin-exposed-nt-consultations-may-face-legal-challenge.
For the nuclear dumping story see http://indymedia.org.au/2012/02/17/labor-and-liberal-join-forces-scullion-does-the-deal-for-nuclear-waste-at-muckaty. For more on earlier developments on that issue google for “Muckaty”. http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/02/19/18707722.php
Smart grids, flexible energy sources, will take over from “baseload” power
the concept of baseload and peaking power – the current model for electricity grids worldwide – will be replaced by a system of flexible and inflexible energy sources…… a smart grid system.
The end of baseload? It may come sooner than you think, RENeweconomy, By Giles Parkinson 20 February 2012 One of the principal architects of Germany’s push into renewable energy technologies, Hans-Josef Fell, believes that the country could achieve 100 per cent renewables in its electricity sector by 2030 – and may do it quicker. The rest of the world could follow soon after. Continue reading
Michael Anderson backs Nyoongar Aboriginal Embassy in Perth
from Diet Simon, Goodooga, Northwest NSW, 19 February 2012 – – The last surviving co-founder of the Aboriginal Embassy in Canberra has expressed his support for the Nyoongar Embassy encampment set up on Heirisson Island in Perth a few days ago and now under threat of eviction.
Michael Anderson, leader of the Euahlayi tribe, endorses the call by Robert Eggington, spokesman of the Nyoongar Embassy, that it’s the Perth City Council that should “move on”.
State, Territory and federal governments should now be seeking legal advice on the true nature of the Aboriginal sovereignty claim as it will not be going away, Anderson writes in a media release.
“Our assertion of sovereignty over this continent is real and legally just. It is in English Law, and the English and the Australians have no choice but to deal with it in a mature and just manner,” he argues.
He says Aborigines now foresee Australian governments depending very heavily on police to terrorize the sovereignty movement, “rather than speak to us, as one would expect diplomacy would dictate”.
“We are in the process of alerting the Secretary-General of the United Nations to our sovereignty movement. If necessary, we will be calling upon the United Nations to send in peace keepers to prevent our people from being harassed and terrorized.”
“The Nyoongar Embassy spokesperson, Mr. Eggington, is correct when he says that the offer of $1billion for the city area of Perth and their Native Title claim area is a joke of monumental proportions. Some of the house blocks in the more affluent areas of Perth are collectively worth more. Then to say to the people that they cannot access any of the money for 10 years is an insult.”
Anderson warns of the danger of Aboriginal society in the Perth area imploding from fighting over whether to accept or reject the offer.
1 This month
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