University College London (Australia) pushing its nuclear agenda with a survey
Mr Parnell said nuclear power did not have to be pushed into a survey about alternative energy” Lumping nuclear energy in with low-carbon technologies is just wrong,”
Anger after nuclear option placed on alternative energy survey news.com.au DECEMBER 22, 2013 NUCLEAR power has been put on the table in a survey that asks country South Australians about their preferred alternative energy options.
The survey, commissioned by Regional Development Australia, asks residents in the Yorke Peninsula and the Mid North to respond to a “community preferences survey” regarding their views on solar panels, solar farms, nuclear, household, wind turbines, wind farms, hydro, geothermal facilities, waste-to-energy/plant and biomass plants.
RDA, funded by federal and state governments as well as the region’s local councils, states on its website that the survey is part of a “project to determine how best to prepare the region for renewable energy and other low-carbon technologies as part of the state’s climate change adaptation strategy”.
But Greens MLC Mark Parnell slammed the survey and said the proponents, the region’s councils, had been pushing an anti-wind generation agenda. Continue reading
Adelaide’s University College London (UCL) -pro nuclear research funded by nuclear interests
Professors slam UCL Australia’s nuclear and shale gas research http://london-student.net/news/11/18/professors-slam-ucl-australias-nuclear-shale-gas-research/ by James Burley on November 18, 2013
- Two biggest donors are uranium and shale gas producers
• Academics say this makes idea research was independent “laughable”
Senior professors have spoken out against University College London (UCL) Australia’s pro-nuclear, pro-shale gas research, claiming that strong industry ties make the idea it is independent “laughable”.
UCL’s Adelaide-based campus released one green paper calling for Australia to acquire nuclear submarines and another advocating the use of shale gas in the country. Of its two biggest sponsors, one mines uranium – needed to fuel nuclear submarines – and the other produces shale gas.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, UCL professors told London Student: “The idea that research favouring nuclear submarines and shale gas extraction could possibly be independent (taking into account relevant alternatives) is laughable – UCL Australia has not produced a single piece of research on sustainable, greener, or alternative energies.”
“A university should not only be academically independent and impartial but also be seen to be so. In these matters UCL’s academic integrity is in jeopardy.” Continue reading
Jim Green’s requiem for the nuclear industry
The nuclear renaissance is dead … stone cold dead. And the prospects for nuclear power in Australia are dead. If nuclear power is economically prohibitive (or nearly so) in nuclear nations such as the UK and the US, it is far more so in Australia given that we have little relevant infrastructure or expertise. The major parties seem to be well aware that nuclear power is a non-starter, so the nuclear debate in Australia is reduced to the slow, repetitive drum-beat of a small but vocal nuclear lobby.
The nuclear renaissance is stone cold dead http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=15860&page=1 23 Dec 13 This year has been the nuclear power industry’s annus horribilis and the nuclear renaissance can now be pronounced stone cold dead.
Nuclear power suffered its biggest ever one-year fall in 2012 − nuclear generation fell 7% from the 2011 figure. Nuclear generation fell in no less than 17 countries, including all of the top five nuclear-generating countries. Nuclear power accounted for 17% of global electricity generation in 1993 and it has steadily declined to 10% now.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has downwardly revised its nuclear power projections, and now anticipates growth of 23% to 100% percent by 2030. Historically, the IAEA’s upper projections have been fanciful, and its lower projections are usually much closer to the mark. So annual growth of a little over 1% is about as much as the industry can realistically hope for.
And the IAEA will further reduce its projections when it factors in this year’s annus horribilis.Perhaps the most shocking developments have been in the United States, Continue reading
Toro Energy bribing Aborigines into agreements on uranium mining?
“These people that Toro are talking to are driving around Toyotas that they did not have before. About 11 Toyotas just appeared”
Allegation of Toyotas for uranium mining http://thestringer.com.au/allegation-of-toyotas-for-uranium-mining/#.Uriap9JDt9X by The Stringer December 17th, 2013 A Toro Energy meeting took place today in Perth with the Wiluna Native Title signatories in light of Toro’s focus to culminate plans to proceed with Western Australia’s first uranium mine. Concerned Wiluna Elder Glen Cooke has long opposed the project and said he was excluded from discussions with Toro. Mr Cooke said he is concerned of potential risk exposures to his people and to his people’s Country.
“Our Country, our rivers, our creeks will be poisoned. It is guaranteed there will be incidents, accidents, leaks, spills. Look at what has occurred at Ranger (uranium mine in the Northern Territory), with more than 200 incidents, and at Olympic Dam (in South Australia) drying up Country (with its demand on water). When we hurt nature, we are actually hurting ourselves, if we fight with nature we are fighting with ourselves,” said Mr Cooke.
Mr Cooke previously entered the Toro AGM shareholders meeting by proxy on the 28th of November to express his concerns that the company had failed to communicate a number of vital issues with Wiluna residents.
“They make it sound good, they don’t say the dangers and say uranium is good stuff and will cause no harm to anything”, said Mr Cooke Continue reading
Dispelling the comfortable myth about “background radiation”
What people call “background” radiation is really the amount of radiation deposited into the environment within the last 100 years from nuclear tests and nuclear accidents (and naturally-occurring substances, such as radon).
Unless the government or nuclear scientists measure and share their data, we are in the dark as to what’s really going on.
Fukushima: Wave of Radiation Will Be Ten Times Bigger than All of the Radiation from Nuclear Tests Combined http://www.globalresearch.ca/fukushima-wave-of-radiation-will-be-ten-times-bigger-than-all-of-the-radiation-from-nuclear-tests-combined/5362422
Putting Fukushima In Perspective
There was no background radioactive cesium before above-ground nuclear testing and nuclear accidents started.
Wikipedia provides some details on the distribution of cesium-137 due to human activities: Continue reading
US navy’s secret dumping of atomic wastes at sea
Sailors on old warship dumped thousands of tons of radioactive waste for years Tampa Bay Times, William R. Levesque, Times Staff Writer 22 Dec 13 They asked the dying Pasco County man about his Navy service a half-century before. He kept talking about the steel barrels. They haunted him, sea monsters plaguing an old sailor.
“We turned off all the lights,” George Albernaz testified at a 2005 Department of Veterans Affairs hearing, “and … pretend that we were broken down and … we would take these barrels and having only steel-toed shoes … no protection gear, and proceed to roll these barrels into the ocean, 300 barrels at a trip.”
The Atomic Sailors Talk of Dumping Radioactive Waste at Sea
Not all of them sank. A few pushed back against the frothing ocean, bobbing in the waves like a drowning man. Then shots would ring out from a sailor with a rifle at the fantail. And the sea would claim the bullet-riddled drum.
Back inside the ship, Albernaz marked in his diary what the sailors dumped into the Atlantic Ocean. He knew he wasn’t supposed to keep such a record, but it was important to Albernaz that people know he had spoken the truth, even when the truth sounded crazy.
For up to 15 years after World War II, the crew of Albernaz’s ship, the USS Calhoun County, dumped thousands of tons of radioactive waste into the Atlantic Ocean, often without heeding the simplest health precautions, according to Navy documents and Tampa Bay Times interviews with more than 50 former crewmen. Continue reading
Aboriginal Resistance growing, to the mining exploitation of Country
Mandela is gone, but apartheid is alive and well in Australia Alexandra Valiente 20 Dec 13 By John Pilger “………When the Labor government in the 1980s promised “full restitution” and land rights, the powerful mining lobby went on the attack, spending millions campaigning on the theme that “the blacks” would “take over your beaches and barbies”. The government capitulated, even though the lie was farcical; Aboriginal people comprise barely three per cent of the Australian population………
The majority of Australians are rarely confronted with their nation’s dirtiest secret. In 2009, the respected United Nations Special Rapporteur, Professor James Anaya, witnessed similar conditions and described government “intervention” policies as racist. The then Minister for Indigenous Health, Tony Abbott, told him to “get a life” and stop listening to “the victim brigade”. Abbott is now the prime minister of Australia.
In Western Australia, minerals are being dug up from Aboriginal land and shipped to China for a profit of a billion dollars a week. In this, the richest, “booming” state, the prisons bulge with stricken Aboriginal people, including juveniles whose mothers stand at the prison gates, pleading for their release. The incarceration of black Australians here is eight times that of black South Africans during the last decade of apartheid.
When Nelson Mandela was buried this week, his struggle against apartheid was duly celebrated in Australia, though the irony was missing. Apartheid was defeated largely by a global campaign from which the South African regime never recovered. Similar opprobrium has seldom found its mark in Australia, principally because the Aboriginal population is so small and Australian governments have been successful in dividing and co-opting a disparate leadership with gestures and vacuous promises. That may well be changing. A resistance is growing, yet again, in the Aboriginal heartland, especially among the young. Unlike the US, Canada and New Zealand, which have made treaties with their first people, Australia has offered gestures often wrapped in the law. However, in the 21st century the outside world is starting to pay attention. The specter of Mandela’s South Africa is a warning………http://libya360.wordpress.com/2013/12/19/mandela-is-gone-but-apartheid-is-alive-and-well-in-australia/
Call to reform APY Lands executive board
Former judge urges a clean-up of APY Lands board , REBECCA PUDDY. THE AUSTRALIAN, DECEMBER 23, 2013 SOUTH Australia’s remote Aboriginal lands could be set on the path towards economic development by reforming the state’s Aboriginal land rights act.
Retired Supreme Court judge Robyn Layton has provided interim recommendations into the reform of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Land Rights Act to the state government, calling for gender equality and a clean-up of the APY Lands executive board.
Ms Layton told The Australian yesterday she believed reform of the lands’ governing council would pave the way towards economic development.– ……
Ms Layton’s recommendations to government also would pave the way for equal gender representation on the APY executive.
Men and women living on the lands were united in their desire for equal gender representation on the board.
The Land Rights Act was anchored in a system that focused primarily on the leadership of male elders and traditional owners, Ms Layton said.
Modernising the act to include a minimum representation of women in leadership positions would take account of the greater role women were playing within Aboriginal communities.
“Women have taken a far more important role within communities because they have been the power where men have fallen away, ……http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/former-judge-urges-a-clean-up-of-apy-lands-board/story-fn9hm1pm-1226788507581#
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 