Antinuclear

The week that was in nuclear news Australia

Legal case; Traditional owners; led by Dianne Stokes, in Melbourne for their  federal case opposing the Muckaty nuclear waste dump. Next  hearing in August.

Climate Institute did a survey.  Surprise surprise – they found that older men favour nuclear power, and women (of all ages) favour solar power.

The good news –  New South Wales students taking their zero emissions house to China’s Solar Decathlon.     Mildura’s concentrated solar power plant officially launched. Victorian and New South Wales wind farms kick-started by Clean Energy Finance Corporation.  New South Wales to get advanced wind power turbines with energy storage. Central Victorian Greenhouse Alliance keen to keep energy efficiency and renewable energy investment

Politics. Kevin Rudd’s Emissions Trading Scheme  is far from satisfactory.  Still, it looks good compared to Abbott’s  love affair with climate denialists.  Greens launch an energy efficiency/renewable energy program directed towards helping farmers.

Nuclear issues in Australia would seem to be forgotten, with all the election – Rudd- Abbott – stuff,

And yet – and yet –  Pro nuclear propaganda is rife. Australia’s new Energy Minister, Gary Gray, showed us again how he is as big an enthusiast for nuclear power, as Martin Ferguson was before him. A pity, in this new age of renewable energy, that the Labor government saw fit to appoint a mining man to the role.  Gary Gray spoke in Perth at a uranium conference.  He gave a rose-tinted view of the current disastrous state of the uranium industry, brushed off that minor “incident” at Fukushima, and displayed his ignorance of the world nuclear industry’s decline, and of climate change action.

Meanwhile, in South Australia, Family First Senate candidate Bob Day urges that Australia manufacture nuclear submarines – a good job provider, he reckons. Also from South Australia, nuclear lobby front groupers – Barry Brook, Ben Heard etc, gear up for a conference to be held in Sydney July 25-26 –   to promote nuclear power for Australia.

The Age published a sloppily written article promoting nuclear power  Want to kill fewer people? Go nuclear. I am hoping that The Age will publish a response to this article.  (I’m adding my own comment below)

Australia’s uranium industry – in the doldrums, as even The Australian admits. Retiring soon, Paladin Energy boss John Borshoff admits that the  industry is “in crisis” and faces years of uncertainty

COMMENT 

John Watson’s article “Want to kill fewer people/ Go nuclear” (The Age) 11/07/13 is full of incorrect generalisations. I would like to challenge just one part of this. Watson refers to “findings by a United Nations panel and the World Health Organisation”. He means the unofficial press release (31/05/13) by United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) , and the World Health Organisation’s comprehensive report ((February 2013 http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2013/fukushima_report_20130228/en/ ).

The former is a not an extensive official report ― but an unofficial brief preliminary report on Fukushima radiation and health ― the full report will be presented at the United Nations in October this year.

The World Health Organisation’s comprehensive report concluded that an increased rate of breast cancer is to be expected in future years amongst women who were children when exposed to low-level Fukushima radiation. It also predicted increased leukaemia amongst Fukushima cleanup workers.
Both UNSCEAR and WHO are quite conservative, and are tied by legal clauses to the pro nuclear International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – meaning that they are required to not report in ways that would damage the nuclear industry.

Even so, the World Health organisation was quite clear on the predicted increase in cancer as a result of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. We will have to wait until October for the UNSCEAR report. However, even their press release did not contradict WHO’s findings.
Similarly, the most recent BEIR Report – Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation – from the USA National Academy of Sciences (http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=030909156X) continues to uphold predictions of cancer resulting from exposure to low levels of nuclear radiation.

July 18, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina reviews