Antinuclear

Nuclear and climate news for the past week – Australia

Uranium –  still being hyped up by the industry, and a few politicians – and yet –  even the Australian Uranium Association is now admitting that the prospects for the industry in Queensland, in particular, are not good. By their own reckoning  Queensland’s uranium would fetch less than $4 billion at the current rate for Australian uranium sales.    The $4 billion figure is of little relevance since the uranium price is too low for any mines to be viable in Queensland.

Maralinga The scandal of Australian 80,000 troops used as radiation guinea pigs for British nuclear tests in the 1950’s and 60’s  just won’t go away, as we await the  hearing of their case, by the Human Rights Commission

Climate change and Australia’s 2013 election.   As  usual, the  media focusses on personalities. However, there are ructions around issues of renewable energy and climate change.  The fossil fuel lobby, and by consequence, the Liberal Coalition are getting very annoyed  about Australians’ new bad habit of using less electricity.  Worse, Australians’ new bad habit of switching to home solar power.  As well, there are those annoyingly cheap wind power sources.

So – the battle is on – to get rid of Australia’s Renewable Energy Target, and the Clean Energy Act, the carbon price and so on. Greg Hunt, Opposition spokesman on Climate Change, is pushing the Coalition’s “Direct Action” policy. Christine Milne has effectively exposed this policy – a sham that could never succeed. Which, no doubt, is the aim of it, in line with the wishes of the Coalition’s fossil fuel industry backers.

I am happy to be going to  the New York Symposium on The Medical and Ecological Impacts of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident To Be Held at the New York Academy of Medicine  nuclearfreeplanet.org .  Still hoping that some other Australians will join me – to hear this most impressive array of international scientists and doctors .

March 1, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina reviews