King Uranium is losing not only its Big Mine, but also its Adelaide Castle!
BHP dumps Adelaide tower plans BY: SARAH DANCKERT The Australian August 25, 2012 BHP Billiton has scrapped plans to take a long-term lease on a purpose-built $250 million office tower in central Adelaide following its decision to shelve the expansion of its Olympic Dam mine.
The miner is also understood to be considering reducing the amount of existing office space it leases, said to be about 10,000sqm, in what will be a blow for the Adelaide office market…. Adelaide property professionals are maintaining a stiff upper lip despite the miner’s devastating decision to put on ice the $US30 billion ($28.6bn) expansion of the uranium and copper mine, 560km north of the city.
Earlier this year the miner began sounding out developers for a purpose-built office tower in the city’s central business district to house the new employees. BHP Billiton established its uranium headquarters in Adelaide in 2009 when the company created the Uranium Customer Sector Group.
Up until recently BHP Billiton was seeking a long-term lease on a state-of-the-art office that would be built for the resources group in the heart of the city. The lease was to include naming rights over the building. Continue reading
BHP’s CEO came several Kloppers, especially over Olympic Dam uranium mine
Is Olympic Dam strike 3 for BHP’s CEO? 9 News, by Mike King, The Motley Fool, August 24, 2012 BHP Billiton Limited (ASX: BHP) has today announced that it would not be ready to proceed with the much-hyped US$20 billion expansion of Olympic Dam in South Australia by the previously agreed deadline of 15 December 2012.
Higher capital costs and subdued commodity prices led to the decision to not proceed as originally planned.
The company instead will investigate an alternative, less capital-intensive design of the open-pit expansion to substantially
improve the economics of the project. BHP sets an internal rate of return hurdle of 15% on its projects and it appears the Olympic Dam expansion has failed to make the grade.
Olympic Dam is the world’s largest uranium ore body… The Foolish bottom line
While the cancellation of the Olympic Dam expansion is likely good news for BHP and its cash flow, it may not be good news for the company’s CEO Marius Kloppers, as it could be seen as another failure…. http://finance.ninemsn.com.au/newsbusiness/motley/8521529/is-olympic-dam-strike-three-for-bhps-ceo
South Australia better off without the Great Big New Uranium Mine?
The union movement sees an upside to the delay at Olympic Dam, urging the state government to use it to fight for a better deal for SA.
SA Unions state secretary Janet Giles said benefits from the mining industry should flow to the whole community, and the state government would be wise to show caution when dealing with BHP Billiton in the future.
Olympic delay no mining death knell Sky News, August 24, 2012 South Australia’s peak mining group says BHP Billiton’s decision to delay the expansion at Olympic Dam is not all doom and gloom.
Chief executive Jason Kuchel said SA’s mining industry had diversified dramatically over the past decade and the state currently had 20 major mines in production with many more projects in the pipeline…..
‘South Australia has a lot on the go with several new mining regions, exciting oil and gas developments, and a multitude of small and mid-tier miners who collectively could bring just as much, if not more, benefit to the state than the expansion of Olympic Dam.’ Continue reading
South Australia just escaped a very poor deal of Olympic Dam as “China’s quarry”
SA government now wary of BHP: premier, Yahoo Finance, AAP – Wed, Aug 22, 2012 “…He [Premier Jay Weatherill ] said South Australia was now entitled to be wary when dealing with the company in future and warned the government would take a tougher approach to negotiations if asked to approve expansion a third time.
“We’ve been given to understand that BHP were proceeding with an expansion once. We’ve been given to believe that BHP will proceed with an expansion twice,” Mr Weatherill said. “If they come to us and seek permissions and approvals on a third
occasion, we will be taking a different approach to the negotiations….
the Greens said the delay was a “get-out-of-jail card” giving the government the chance to negotiate a much better deal.
“The 2011 deal was economically irresponsible, environmentally reckless and would have left South Australia as little more than China’s quarry,” Greens MP Mark Parnell said. “Despite giving the company nearly everything it wanted, it still
didn’t stack up economically.”… Continue reading
Decision to stop new Olympic Dam uranium mine was unavoidable
New era for BHP shareholders Financial Review 24 AUG 2012 TONY BOYD Marius Kloppers secured his job by delaying $30 billion in capital projects in Australia but he needs to do much more to get the BHP Billiton machine humming at optimum speed….
There was an inevitability to the project delays….. Olympic Dam might have been justified several years ago when its cost was estimated at $15 billion. But at a cost double that amount and with Australia’s high construction and infrastructure cost base, it was untenable.
Kloppers said the project never actually jumped the hurdle called “economic concept”, which meant BHP was never able to talk seriously with a potential Chinese partner to develop the world’s largest uranium deposit and fourth largest copper and gold deposit….
His outlook statement issued with the full-year results was seen by several analysts as bullish. But coverage will be dominated by the Olympic Dam decision because of its widespread implications.
Analysts think it is unlikely that a large-scale development project will proceed at the site in South Australia…. Given the company’s desire to operate within a credit rating envelope that delivers it low-costing debt, the Olympic Dam decision was unavoidable. Continue reading
Scrappimg of Olympic Dam new uranium mine does not help the present plight of the uranium industry
... the effects of the project delay are longer term and do little to address near-term challenges facing the uranium industry…
Implications Of The Olympic Dam Expansion Delay For The Uranium Industry Seeking Alpha, August 24, 2012 Earlier this week, BHP Billiton (BHP) announced that it will investigate an alternative, less capital-intensive design of the Olympic Dam open-pit expansion, effectively shelving this massive, over $20 billion project. Though not unexpected, the decision is undoubtedly an important development for the world’s largest mining company.
But it has even larger long-term implications for the small and highly concentrated uranium mining industry. Continue reading
High radiation levels in Fukushima residents beyond the evacuation zone
Fukushima Residents With Exposures As High As Chernobyl Areas http://www.simplyinfo.org/?p=7187August 24th, 2012 Two couples from outside the evacuation zones have shown with some of the highest internal radiation exposure to date in Japan. One couple lives in Nihonmatsu, the other in Kawamata-machi.
Kawamata-machi
man 19,507 becquerels
his wife 7,724 becquerels
Nihonmatsu City
man 11,191 becquerels
his wife 6,771 becquerels
Dr. Tsubokura, one of the doctors conducting the exposure scans on residents said these levels are similar to internal exposure seen in Belarus.
The couples have been eating home grown mushrooms, bamboo shoots and local persimmons. The mushrooms were grown on logs from Namie, a highly contaminated area in the evacuation zone. It was not clear if they logs were gathered before the nuclear disaster or not. EX-SKF mentions they may not have understood the risks in doing this. Most of the elderly rely on TV and print newspapers for information, both sources have downplayed the risks in the region.
There may be more instances of high radiation in elderly residents. Many have been reluctant to leave or felt their age would spare them from the long term effects of radiation exposure. It is giving researchers a contrasting group of exposures that hint what could have happened to more residents had food restrictions not been implemented.
Tony Abbott’s inconvenient untruths revealed
he [Tony Abbott] appeared in mournful procession with his South Australian MPs to declare that the carbon and mining taxes were, in fact, responsible for BHP Billiton’s decision to shelve expansion plans for its Olympic Dam uranium and copper mine.
No matter that the mining tax applies to neither uranium nor copper and that the company had said the decision was entirely due to ”current market conditions including subdued commodity prices and higher capital costs” and that the ”tax environment for this particular project has not changed at all since we started working on it six or seven years ago”.
Lack of carnage Abbott’s inconvenient fiscal truth, WA Today, August 25, 2012, Lenore Taylor National Affairs Correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald Perhaps Tony Abbott needs to send out a search party or post a reward because, bafflingly, his carbon tax wrecking ball appears to have gone missing. It’s now almost two months since the tax that he predicted would work like a ”wrecking ball”, with ”unimaginable” and devastating consequences for the economy, came into effect. To date there has been, from the Coalition’s point of view, a very inconvenient absence of devastation.
In fact, almost every economic statistic continues to look pretty good. Continue reading
Japan’s anti nuclear movement broadening, now including conservatives, right-wingers
“Some in the very right wing of conservative thinkers have become anti-nuclear after 3/11,”.. “The Friday protests also have some right-wingers. It’s not just lefties,”
“Morality and economic growth are possible without nuclear power,” he concludes.
Nationalist Japan manga author joins anti-nuclear fight Asahi Shimbun, 25 Aug 12, Japan’s anti-nuclear movement has a new supporter: bestselling nationalist “manga” author Yoshinori Kobayashi, known for his controversial defense of Tokyo’s wartime aggression, has joined the growing ranks of those who want the country to end its reliance on atomic power in the wake of the Fukushima crisis. Continue reading
Fukushima teacher- this city should be evacuated
Teacher: “I’m lying to a room full of students” — Fukushima City should be evacuated http://enenews.com/teacher-im-lying-to-a-room-full-of-students-fukushima-city-should-be-evacuated August 24th, 2012 By ENENews Title: Visiting the end of the world
Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Author: Senator Scott Ludlam, Australian Greens Senator for Western Australia
Date: Aug 24, 2012
[…]
Flash forward to August 2012, with 150,000 people evacuated from places like Iitate. The mood in the region is dark. A young high school teacher downloads the unvarnished truth in a loungeroom in Fukushima City the night before our trip down to the coast.
“I’m lying to a room full of students,” he tells me, daring me to break eye contact. Like many thousands of others, his wife and children now live in temporary accommodation well outside the contaminated area, but Japan has no social security net to speak of and people can’t just walk away from jobs.
Now he is grappling with a hateful dilemma, addressing a room full of students in a city he believes is no longer safe for children. Fukushima City, population 290,000. Kōriyama City, population 336,000. Both of them hit by the plume that carried fission products from the broken reactors to the north-west before the wind swung briefly towards Tokyo. I hesitate, then ask, should this city be evacuated? He pauses a long time before answering, and finally drops his gaze. Yes.
[…]
With a slightly different fall of the dice, the Fukushima meltdowns would have cost the people of Japan their country. Another cruel accident of plate tectonics and it still could.
There is no place on this archipelago for nuclear power, and tens of millions of Japanese now understand this. Everything has changed.
Wind farms spinning money
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201208/s3575057.htm
By Cassandra Hough, 24/08/2012 Last night the wild weather reached wind speeds of up to 124
kilometres an hour in South East South Australia. Strong winds caused damage in Adelaide, but there were no reports of
damage in the South East. Lake Bonney turbine engineer Stuart Bonnington says the wind farm could have been powering 400,000 homes last night.
AUDIO: Indonesia under pressure from nuclear lobby
AUDIO Indonesia’s nuclear power plans http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/radio/program/connect-asia/indonesias-nuclear-power-plans/1005302 24 August 2012 Pressure is mounting on Indonesia to push ahead with planning for the country’s first nuclear power plant. Neighbouring Vietnam and Malaysia already have nuclear planning firmly in place, and nuclear power advocates within government are proving to be increasingly vociferous in Jakarta.
But for now at least a long standing scheme to build a nuclear power plant in Central Java is off President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s agenda, and has been ever since the Fukushima disaster in Japan last year.
So where does Indonesia go next ? Presenter: Richard Ewart
Speaker: Professor Richard Tanter, senior research associate, Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability
TANTER: Well there certainly are companies that want to be involved in it, there are certainly also foreign companies where nuclear power vendors, like Mitsubishi in Japan, Kepco in Korea, also Russian companies.
Unfortunately though, there’s a new factor, a wild card in the election campaign for president which is now beginning to get
underway in Indonesia. One of the leading contenders, Prabowo Subianto, who has a very famous or rather infamous record of human rights violations while a Kopassus military leader. He has come out and said Indonesia must get nuclear power, so that’s a big new change.
… don’t think he [the current President] will back nuclear power….. the pressures mainly are coming from as you would say before vested interests, Continue reading
Australian Carl-Magnus Larsson will head UNSCEAR report on the Fukushima nuclear disaster
Next December Carl-Magnus Larsson, head of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, takes over as UNSCEAR chairman.
UNSCEAR has been the go-to body for such complex, high-profile investigations since it was established by the UN General Assembly in 1955 under the chairmanship of Australian radiation expert Cecil Eddy…. the Fukushima report .. will be
presented to the [United Nations] General Assembly late next year.
Radiation risks high in Japan http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/radiation-risks-high-in-japan/story-e6frg8y6-1226456949429 BY: LEIGH DAYTON The Australian August 25, 2012 IT’S hard to believe, but earlier this month the power company that runs Japan’s devastated Fukushima nuclear power plant revealed that five people working on the clean-up had covered their radiation detectors with lead, rendering them useless.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company said the five were contracted by a subcontractor of a – yes – subcontractor and were not even authorised to work at the plant. Other workers were found not to have used dosimeters at all.
“That such egregious flouting of safety protocols would occur despite the media attention on the clean-up efforts is astonishing,” Continue reading
Atomic Awards – Films from the 2012 Uranium Film Festival
Special achievement awards Uranium Film Festival, by Robert del Tredici , 23 Aug 12, Special achievement awards of the 2nd International Uranium Film Festival go to “Chernobyl, the Invisible Thief”, by Christoph Boekel (Germany), “Buried in Earthskin”, by Helena Kingwill (South Africa), “Australian Atomic Confessions”, by Katherine Aigner (Australia),
“Radioactive Wolves”, by Klaus Feichtenberger (Austria), “The Secret and the Sacred: Two Worlds at Los Alamos” by Claus Biegert, (Germany) and “Rokkasho Rhapsody” by Hitomi Kamanaka (Japan) and to Peter Greenaway’s outstanding experimental documentary “Atomic Bombs on the Planet Earth”.
“Atomic Bombs on the Planet Earth”
Peter Greenaway and Irma de Vries (Video design), United Kingdom/The Netherlands
Special Achievement Award “Hors Concours” for reminding us of something we have tended to forget, or maybe even not to know: that 2,201 atomic bombs have been exploded on, within, or over our own home planet – which, from Earth’s point of view, are not atomic tests at all but preemptive nuclear strikes. Greenaway creates an infernal cinematic aesthetic to convey this truth.
Using 25 screens at once, Atomic Bombs on Planet Earth overwhelms the viewer’s field of vision with dazzling cascades of poison fire punctuated by percussive sounds and eerie sonics to convey the reckless enormity of the many Bombs
humans exploded not all that long ago. The grid of screens gives rise to multiples of every blast a dozen times or more and staggers clips to make them tumble downscreen, slantwise, in coruscating tides. By the time the razzle-dazzle’s over, Greenaway has delivered more fireballs than any viewer will be able to absorb — and more than any living planet may be able to sustain. The first Trinity blast appears several times as Robert Oppenheimer provides the film’s voice-over
with words repeated like a mantra: “Some laughed – Some cried – Most remained silent.”
These are hardly words of wisdom from the father of the Bomb… and half a century on, in the absence of anything like sage words on nuclear weapons, we get what’s coming to us: an experimental documentary impossible to forget that triggers in our collective brain an atomic migraine of criminally insane proportions whose energies go deeper and are destined to last longer than our own DNA. http://www.uraniofestival.org/index.php/en/home-en/73-en/frontpage-en/162-special-achievement-awards http://www.uraniofestival.org/index.php/en/home-en/73-en/frontpage-en/162-special-achievement-awards
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 