What a week in nuclear news Australia!
It has been a landmark week for Australia’s clean energy movement. The big news – BHP scrapping Marius Kloppers big dream for the world’s biggest uranium mine, and biggest man-made hole, at Olympic Dam in South Australia. Former Premier Mike Rann, who entered Australian politics as Labor’s big anti uranium campaigner, but then became the uranium lobby’s best friend – is now looking at his legacy shredded. He will be remembered as Labor’s turncoat of the century.
While Tony Abbott tries to blame the failure of the Olympic Dam dream on the Labor government, the truth is that the Gillard government bent over backward to help the dream, with BHP man Don Argus practically dictating policy – as copper and uranium were exempted from the carbon tax. Yesterday TV viewers had the unedifying sight of Tony Abbott scrambling to cover up his ignorance of the facts, under the piercing questioning of the ABC’s Leigh Sales.
The news from India is probably not immediately related to BHP’s decision – and yet? India’s nuclear company NTPC and Nuclear Power Corporation of India have announced the halting of India’s nuclear power project. So – all that effort on Australia’s part – to go for selling uranium to India – that’s looking like a dead end market right now, for BHP’s or anybody else’s uranium sales.
In New South Wales, the Uranium Free Charter gathers strength. So in Northern Territory, does the movement against the Muckaty nuclear waste dump plan, and uranium mining near Alice Springs, – both becoming issues for the NT elections. Meanwhile, despite poor political/corporate support overall, Australians are turning to solar power in a big way – leading the world in home photovoltaic solar installation.
The Australian government is letting Julian Assange down badly, while he gets the support of the “Latin” nations of South America, and a strong freedom of speech movement in UK. Assange’s case may now go to the International Court of Justice. In Melbourne, shock jock radio gives Assange’s mother a Nazi taunt.
On the world scene, Fukushima dominates the nuclear news. Record radiation levels in fish off the Fukushima coast. Fukushima nuclear plant still releasing radiation. Growing dissatisfaction of many Japanese as their government fails to really take action to close down the nuclear industry, and elections approach. Decontamination efforts meet intractable problems, for example, in Japan’s irradiated forest areas. Media and government silence on children’s thyroid abnormalities, and on birth statistics.
USA. As in UK, the nuclear lobby is pitching the dangerous MOX nuclear reprocessing as the solution to nuclear waste. The San Onofre nuclear plant is likely to remain closed permanently. In Louisiana sinkhole, now 400 feet wide and over 400 feet deep in spots, risks explosion and possible release of radiation. Many USA nuclear reactors are the same type and age as Belgium’s – which are now estimated to have probably thousands of cracks. In Louisiana, a sinkhole, now 400 feet wide and over 400 feet deep in spots, risks explosion and possible release of radiation.UK government revealed as having colluded with big nuclear companies to downplay and obscure the seriousness of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
India. Meanwhile the work of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), a global NGO, is bringing decentralised solar electricity to millions of villagers in rural India.
Open cut mine at Olympic Dam dead in the water? perhaps just copper extraction now?
Writing on the wall now gospel The Age, August 23, 2012 Malcolm Maiden “…..The decision to defer the Olympic Dam open-cut project was forced by a tightening cost-benefit equation as capital costs rose and commodity prices eased.
BHP said at its announcement that it would investigate ”an alternative, less capital-intensive” open-pit design, and is expected to focus on copper extraction technologies, among other things.
The biggest cost in the project is digging the open-cut quarry. There is no way to significantly downsize project costs without reducing the size of the hole, and the amount of overburden that needs to be removed before the ore body is exposed.
The final outcome is in the hands of the markets and the copper price, but the full-blown open-cut idea may be dead.
http://www.theage.com.au/business/writing-on-the-wall-now-gospel-20120822-24mqf.html#ixzz24PobKbbu
The Olympic Dam uranium project – uneconomic, unnecessary for South Australia
At its peak, the mine was expected to consume more electricity than the city of Adelaide, and 100 Olympic swimming pools worth of fresh water every day.
Olympic Dam was too expensive.
South Australia will be fine. Mining accounts for a relatively small share of South Australia’s overall economy, and only 1 per cent of its employment.
the carbon emissions from Olympic Dam would have dwarfed all the gains in emissions reductions that South Australia has made in renewable energy in recent years
The Olympic Dam Delay Has A Silver Lining New Matilda, By Ben Eltham 23 Aug 12, Why did BHP Billiton halt the Olympic Dam mine? The project was just too expensive. The decision is good news for the South Australian environment, writes Ben Eltham
Picture a hole in the ground four kilometres long and one kilometre deep. Picture a manmade mountain of dirt next to it nearly as high — a mountain of dirt dug from the ground and heaped next to that hole, a new landmark on the South Australian horizon.
Picture a mega-project so large and so thirsty that it would have required a new baseload electricity generator to meet its power needs, and a new desalination plant hundreds of kilometres away on the coast to make the water it required.
Picture a mine so vast, it would have increased the world supply of Uranium by a third.
This was the vast edifice that was to be Olympic Dam — when finished, the largest mine in the world. Continue reading
India’s nuclear power projects put on hold
NTPC puts nuclear power projects on hold, Hindu Business Line, RAHUL 
WADKEMUMBAI,Mumbai, AUG. 22: NTPC has put its plans to set up nuclear power projects, jointly 
with Nuclear Power Corporation of India, on the backburner. The company has also begun to relocate employees assigned for the projects due to uncertainty in the nuclear power arena.
Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) is facing severe delays in setting up plants and NTPC is actually considering exiting the joint venture, said a senior NTPC official, requesting anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the issue.
Another NTPC official, who also did not wish to be named, said around 40 engineers from NPCIL’s Mumbai office, who were being trained to build nuclear plants, have been pulled out and relocated to NTPC’s other thermal power plants. In all, 74 engineers were stationed across the country.
The official said the rest would be withdrawn in phases. Engineers, who were relocated out of Mumbai, were being trained in plant designing, while those stationed at other plant sites were involved in the commissioning of the under-construction plants. Nuclear projects country-wide have been facing massive opposition. While considerations revolve around the safety of the people living near the plant, NPCIL has also been facing a delay in acquisition of land, all of which have
adversely impacted the project.
In the last two years, the engineers had voiced their concerns about their career and lack of professional growth in the joint venture with the senior-most personnel of NTPC. Prolonged disruption of work at the Kudankulam nuclear plant in Tamil Nadu, following protests from anti-nuclear campaigners, had also affected the morale of the engineers. Taking all these factors into consideration they are being withdrawn, the official added….. http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/article3808172.ece?homepage=true&ref=wl_home
Tony Abbott’s untruthful performance on ABC TV’s 7.30 Report
Tony Goes The Full Abbott By Newmatilda.com, Ben Eltham, 23 Aug 12, The Opposition Leader let it all hang out on the 7.30 Report last night. Just how loose with the truth did he get? NM looked at the transcript and dug up some answers to the questions raised by the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s complicated relationship with the truth has been on the public record for a long time.
Just over two years ago he admitted in an interview with Kerry O’Brien that “sometimes, in the heat of discussion, you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark, which is one of the reasons why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth is those carefully prepared scripted remarks”.
His various gaffes, withdrawals and evasions are now so numerous they warrant compilation in a handy reference guide.
But in last night’s 7:30 interview with Leigh Sales, the Opposition Leader went “full Abbott”. Nobody should have been surprised, but as he bulldozed one question after another, the extent of the Liberal party’s preference for “truth creation” became clear. This is what an Abbott Prime Ministership will look like — not a cobra strike on the truth, but a python squeeze.
Ben Eltham discusses the closure of BHP’s Olympic Dam project elsewhere at New Matilda today, but here’s an examination of how “loose with the truth” the Opposition leader got at a few key points of last night’s interview….
It’s easy to tune out when Abbott starts to recite his talking points. Julia Gillard is a liar, we can stop the boats, the carbon tax is destroying the economy, people seeking asylum are illegals.
And no, there wasn’t much that was new or unpredictable in Abbott’s performance last night, but the departures from the truth were so numerous and so egregious that they warrant comment.
Leigh Sales’ efforts to hold Abbott to account were admirable, but they didn’t work. To hear the alternative Prime Minister hold out on the very simple question of whether or not it’s legal to seek asylum was a grim portent of what’s to come. It displayed a disdain for the truth, for Sales, and for voters. http://newmatilda.com/2012/08/23/tony-goes-full-abbott
Australia’s radiation protection agency is far too cosy with ANSTO and the nuclear industry
A Homegrown Fukushima, New Matilda, By Jim Green, 23 Aug 2012 “…..In Australia as in Japan, there are patterns of inadequate safety practices stretching back for decades. In Australia as in Japan, whistleblowers have provided a great deal of information about nuclear accidents and safety problems.
If nuclear regulation has been found to be substandard in Japan, it is clearly substandard in Australia. The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) has been compromised from the start. The CEO of ANSTO was allowed to sit on the panel which interviewed applicants for the ARPANSA CEO job when the organisation was created in the late 1990s. ANSTO’s communications manager/spin doctor John Mulcair could only say, “There are two views about that. There’s my view and 
then there’s the official ANSTO view.”
There is a revolving door between ANSTO and ARPANSA, further undermining regulatory independence. At times ARPANSA has employed as many as six ex-ANSTO employees, perhaps more. Recent controversies have been complicated by a relationship between an ANSTO employee and an ARPANSA employee.
ARPANSA’s handling of the “clean up” of the Maralinga nuclear test site was its first test and it was a failure. ARPANSA’s handling of ANSTO’s applications to build and operate a new research reactor was problematic in many respect Continue reading
Senator Scott Ludlam addressing Senate on radioactive waste dump plan for Northern Territory
So the federal government is in enormous trouble and I suspect what is in the offing is probably a humiliating backdown. No matter what the outcome of the Federal Court, this is no way to treat the people of the Northern Territory
were pleased to be able to secure an amendment after negotiations with the government, which was also
supported by the coalition, to ensure that no international waste is stored in Australia.
Senator Scott Ludlam addressing the Senate 22 Aug 12, “…The issue I want to address directly is 
the idea that the best way to support economic development and Aboriginal advancement in the Northern Territory—and there seems to be a bizarre and nasty cross-party consensus about this between Labor and the CLP—is to dump radioactive waste on them…..
Directly after the 2007 election, responsibility passed to Martin Ferguson and the Howard agenda continued. It was shameful. The Howard government radioactive waste legislation was described by ALP MPs, in the run-up to the 2007 election, as ‘sordid’—and sordid it is. The idea that the best way to promote economic advancement in the Northern Territory is to post six of the loneliest security guards in the country to guard against people tampering with radioactive waste for the next three centuries absolutely beggars belief. They waved around a $12 million cheque in the community, north of Tennant Creek, which wanted a decent road and some community education support for their kids. That $12 million cheque was dangled in their faces in exchange for hosting what they thought was going to be a rubbish dump. Those were the words that were used—’rubbish dump’. Continue reading
Former South Australian Premier Mike Rann – a uranium legacy in tatters
In the end, they weren’t able to deliver the new jobs, the billions in taxes and the mining boom.
The Olympic Dam expansion is now a genuine “mirage in the desert”…..
How Olympic Dam became a mirage in the desert, Crikey, by Kevin Naughton of InDaily, 23 Aug 12, It’s seven years since an excited Premier Mike Rann and his then-deputy Kevin Foley started briefing media executives about an imminent mining boom. Central to the spruik was BHP’s new estimation of Olympic Dam, the copper, gold and uranium mine in South Australia that it had just bought from Western Mining Corporation……
Ousted by the party’s powerful right wing in July, Rann brokered a deal to hang on until late October, so he could see the amended Olympic Dam Indenture Agreement deal through Parliament, adding to his legacy. That legacy now has a hole in it; on a political scale, larger than the one BHP talked of digging.
In a curious political twist dating back 30 years when the ALP was split over whether the original mine should go ahead, Rann labelled it a “mirage in the desert”. Rann had come to SA in 1977 as an anti-uranium campaigner from New Zealand and scored a job with then-premier Don Dunstan. Dunstan resigned in 1979 and incoming Liberal premier David Tonkin became an advocate for mining in the state’s north, but the numbers in Parliament were tight. Continue reading
Australian government’s negative responses to Julian Assange’s requests for help
DFAT ‘ignored’ Assange requests: lawyer Brisbane Times August 23, 2012 Rory Callinan and Marissa Calligeros Australian authorities appear to have ignored requests by Julian Assange for diplomatic assistance, including a letter sent as recently as 15 days ago, his lawyer said this morning.
Judge Baltasar Garzón Real also revealed key information relating to the rape allegations facing Mr Assange had been kept secret and would be a “big surprise” when the defence team was able to reveal them. The Spanish lawyer, who was addressing an archivist conference in Brisbane today, spent four hours in a briefing with Mr Assange on Sunday discussing his legal strategy. The veteran international lawyer, who ran a case against Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, was critical of Australian authorities for failing to provide consular assistance to Mr Assange.
Mr Garzón said the Australian Government’s response to requests for assistance had been “entirely negative”. Continue reading
OLympic Dam uranium mine expansion a financial white elephant despite government help
BHP cans Olympic Dam expansion Financial Review 22 AUG 2012 JAMIE FREED, MATHEW DUNCKLEY AND GEMMA DALEY BHP Billiton has confirmed it is not proceeding with a planned $US20 billion expansion of its Olympic Dam copper-uranium mine in South Australia as it reported its first annual profit fall in three years. As foreshadowed by The Australian Financial Review, the world’s largest miner said sluggish market conditions including subdued commodity prices and higher capital costs had triggered the decision and it would hold talks with the South Australian government in the coming months over the project.
BHP will take a $US346 million writedown on the project in the 2012 financial year……
Before BHP’s announcment, Prime Minister Julia Gillard was asked during question time in Parliament to guarantee the outlook of the project.
“We have legislated carbon pricing so BHP when they are making those decisions can do it against a backdrop of certainty,” she said.
“But in fact, the uncertainty for BHP and Olympic Dam, the uncertainty for every business in this country comes from the destructive negativity of the Leader of the Opposition and his reckless attempt to roll back every economic reform that makes sense for this country and will build our prosperity.”
BHP has been working on plans to expand Olympic Dam as an open pit since the $9.2 billion acquisition of WMC Resources in 2005, which was championed internally by its now chief executive Marius Kloppers……BHP has environmental approvals in place for a much smaller expansion of the existing underground operation to 350,000 tonnes of copper production a year but Mr Mackenzie indicated it had done very little work on that option relative to the open pit.
Expanding the underground mine, at a potential cost of $US2 billion to $US3 billion, could make building an open pit more difficult in the future.
Mr Kloppers is likely to come under pressure from investors over the large amount of spending to date on the open pit concept.
BHP last year approved $US1.2 billion of pre-commitment capital for the project and likely spent hundreds of millions of dollars prior to that on studies of the expansion over the last seven years.
However, one analyst noted that spending on drilling and metallurgical studies along with some surface infrastructure could still be applied to an underground expansion…..Credit Suisse analyst Paul McTaggart has calculated the project has only a 10 per cent internal rate of return based on long-term prices, which is lower than the 15 per cent typically targeted by BHP. He does not expect it would be free cash-flow positive until 2021 if approved this year.
The project has suffered from rising capital costs amid a stronger Australian dollar and higher input and labour costs and a weaker outlook for the key byproduct, uranium….. http://afr.com/p/markets/market_wrap/bhp_confirms_olympic_dam_expansion_ePeUWL4Wd1ZVrTW75RWleO
Electric cars could get a boost from new fast Lithium Ion Battery
New Korean Lithium Ion Battery for EVs Charges in Under 1 Minute http://www.greenoptimistic.com/2012/08/21/korean-lithium-ion-carbonized-battery/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheGreenOptimistic+%28The+Green+Optimistic%29#.UDbvH8FlT4Y By Ovidiu Sandru August 21, 2012 A new lithium ion battery developed in Korea could make those long waiting times for an electric car to charge become history. A team of researchers at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) claim they can build a battery that can charge in less than a minute, 30 to 120 times faster than a classic Li-Ion battery. Continue reading
Anthony La Paglia condemns Australian government’s poor treatment of Julian Assange
LaPaglia blasts Australia over Assange, SMH, August 23, 2012 Actor Anthony LaPaglia has lashed out at the Australian government over its lack of support for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The star of Without A Trace also appears in the upcoming telemovie about Assange’s early life, Underground, which has been invited to screen at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. Directed by award-winning filmmaker Robert Connolly (Balibo), it will screen on Network Ten later this year…..
“I am a little dismayed by the [Australian] government’s lack of effort here. “He’s an Australian citizen and you are innocent until proven guilty. “[The Australian government] have the American cattle prod in their back and are sort of dancing to that tune. What happens to the fact you’re an Australian citizen?”….
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/lapaglia-blasts-australia-over-assange-20120823-24o00.html#ixzz24Q2JPquX
Senator Christina Milne calls on Australia to catch up with international moves to renewable energy
Calls for push toward renewable energy Sky News August 21, 2012 Australian Greens leader Christine Milne says
a ‘big push’ is needed if Australia is to switch entirely to renewable energy and reduce its large carbon footprint.
Senator Milne was responding to a Climate Commission report, released on Tuesday, showing Australia remains the world’s highest per-capita emitter of greenhouse gases. It also found that Australia, as one of 20 ‘carbon heavyweights’, needs to clean up its act. ‘That is a shocking indictment of what Australia is doing not only to people now, but into the future,’ Senator Milne told reporters in Canberra.
In the report, chief climate commissioner Tim Flannery said Australians have been misled by ‘lies’ when it comes to global efforts to tackle climate change but are increasingly less fearful of Labor’s pollution price.
The report also suggested by next year 33 countries and 18 sub-national jurisdictions will have a carbon price in place.
Senator Milne says the carbon tax is a great start, but more is needed to keep up with advances in other countries where the shift has been made from fossil fuels to renewable energies. ‘What we now need is a big push toward 100 per cent renewable energy as quickly as possible,’ she said. Prof Flannery says the report shows Australia is at the beginning of an ‘irreversible shift’. ‘We are moving towards a clean energy future,’ he told ABC Radio.
‘We may not be moving fast enough, but this report confirms to me at least that very clearly the world is moving and it is an irreversible change.’ Almost one in seven people on the planet are living with carbon pricing now, he said…..
Australia’s inadequate nuclear safety culture
A Homegrown Fukushima, New Matilda, By Jim Green, 23 Aug 2012 Japan’s parliament said the Fukushima disaster was “made in Japan” but inadequate safety practices and regulation proliferate in Australia’s nuclear industry.
Jim Green on the nuclear danger closer to home…… The chair of the Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission , Kiyoshi Kurokawa, states in the foreword to the report that “…this was a disaster ‘Made in Japan.’” But the serious, protracted problems with the nuclear industry’s culture in Japan have parallels in Australia. The uranium industry provides plenty of examples; here the focus is on the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), which operates the Lucas Heights nuclear research reactor site south of Sydney. Continue reading
Electricity boost for Indian villages, as solar charging stations are set up
Solar energy offers a ray of hope http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Visakhapatnam/article3806664.ece RAVI P BENJAMIN TERI is engaged in setting up solar charging stations in rural and Agency areas
With a view to easing the power situation, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), a global NGO, is engaged in setting up Solar Charging Stations in the rural and Agency areas in collaboration with the Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.
As part of the MNRE mandate to popularise the tapping of solar power, TERI has been introducing solar appliances, including home lighting systems, individual lanterns, and task lights, etc, in the villages which are experiencing long hours of power-cut. TERI State coordinator V. Murthy told The Hindu that nearly 100 SCSs were being set up in rural areas in the State. Solar lights and other appliances were being supplied to every home so that villages can overcome total darkness at the time of power interruption.
The objective of SCSs is mainly to recharge batteries which can be used for four to six hours every day. TERI is engaged in supply of solar lights as well as in opening charging stations manned by a single person. The stations can charge up to 50 lights at a time. Every village will have a local entrepreneur who will supply and maintain the solar lamps.
Every nine villages will have a technical resource person who will ensure smooth functioning of the SCSs. As many as 11 stations are operating in the district and 46 more are in the process of being set up. Thirty stations are operating in Srikakulam district, four in East Godavari district, and 40 are being established. Nine stations are running in Guntur, 12 in Karimnagar, and two in Adilabad. The local people in every village take care of the entrepreneur’s salary by paying for battery recharge.
Also, the nine villages contribute Rs.300 each to take care of the technician’s salary. Local NGOs engaged in Maa Thota and coffee plantations are working with TERI. TERI, Nabard, Vikasa, Kovel Foundation, and a host of NGOs are engaged
in the solar mission of lighting a billion lives.
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 