Nuclear weaponry controlled by psychopaths?
It is clear that the nuclear states have no intention of honouring the Non-Proliferation Treaty
Nuclear Crisis: Can the Sane prevail in Time?, OPEd News 3 June 14 By Jim McCluskey (about the author) “………Through much of recorded history it has been accepted as normal that, periodically, large groups of men should meet and hack each other to pieces. This was the method of choice for resolving disputes. In the last few hundred years, with the aid of science, our capacity for killing other members of our species has been accelerating way beyond reason. It has now reached an apogee. We are at the end of the process. We can now, in a few hours, incinerate every human being in existence. What an accomplishment! What an epitaph! We have two thousand nuclear weapons held on hair-trigger alert, already mounted on board their missiles and ready to be launched at a moment’s notice. This could happen at any time; perhaps when one of the nine nuclear states elects the ultimate psychopathic and/or narcissistic individual as their leader — one who believes that a first strike will enable him to win a nuclear war and rule gloriously thereafter.
Ian Hughes is a physicist and psychologist. He has just written a book entitled ‘Imperfect Design: How Our Psychology Threatens Our World’2. In the book he describes how psychologists and psychiatrists have recently identified three psychological disorders from which a small proportion of humans suffer. This psychologically diseased minority has tended to dominate the normal majority. The disorders can make the bearers a danger to the rest of us. And when such individuals get into power, with the destructive forces already referred to at their disposal, this danger could not be more acute and urgent. The disorders are Psychopathy, Paranoid Personality Disorder, and Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Psychopaths lack the ability to empathize with others. They relate to people in a similar way to relating to things. Many psychopaths have demonstrated their ability to kill without conscience.
Narcissists suffer from the belief that only they are important and thus are unable to appreciate the concept of equality. They have a sense of entitlement. They are entitled to more wealth, more power, more of everything than everyone else.
Paranoid Personality Disorder sufferers live in fear. They are hyper-sensitive and see everything and everyone as a threat……..Tragically, in our corporate culture the psychopaths have a home in organizations that embrace their own values……..And the government itself in many instances exhibits psychologically dysfunctional behaviour.
The most dire example of all this keeps us all in a state of conscious or unconscious dread. The existence and deployment of nuclear weapons keep the survival of the human race on a knife edge. This is not rational behavior. ………most of us do not wish to prepare for the incineration of millions of fellow human beings to make us feel ‘secure’. This sounds as extreme as paranoia can get……….
At the same time as suffering from extreme paranoia the US leaders have an attitude of ‘exceptionalism’. They have a ‘manifest destiny’. They invade and attack other parts of the world at will (provided these are parts of the world that are unable to effectively fight back). The believe that they can do this ‘by right’. Narcissism. The narcissism of the leaders of the nuclear states takes many forms. Switzerland has no nuclear weapons but its government has built nuclear shelters for all its citizens. The US government decided not to build nuclear shelters for its citizens and then went on to spend more on building them exclusively for the government than it spent on all variety of needs and services for the rest of us.6………..
Leaders of Nuclear States Show Contempt for Us All
The nuclear states who are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (UK, US, Russia, China, and France) undertake to get rid of their nuclear weapons. The treaty came into force in 1970. Every five years there is a Review Conference to see how this is going. Before the Review Conference there are a number of Pre-Review Conferences (referred to as PrepComs) to decide what will be discussed at the Review Conference. The third (!) Pre-Review Conference for the 2015 Review Conference has just concluded — without adopting any agreed recommendations! All the nuclear states are renewing their nuclear arsenals. The British government has declared that it is building an arsenal for the next fifty years. The nuclear-armed states illustrated their commitment to making progress with disarmament by pleading that they had made a glossary of nuclear definitions! This ludicrous pantomime is treating the public with contempt. It is clear that the nuclear states have no intention of honouring the Non-Proliferation Treaty…….http://www.opednews.com/articles/Nuclear-Crisis-Can-the-Sa-by-Jim-McCluskey-Nuclear-Deterrence_Nuclear-Disarmament_Nuclear-Powers_Nuclear-Technology-Theft-140603-43.html
Federal Court hears of invalid plan to dump nuclear waste on Aboriginal land
Nuclear waste dump on Aboriginal land invalid, court told The West Australian, 3 June 14. Sydney (AFP) – The earmarking of a remote Australian outback area as a nuclear waste dump was invalid because officials failed to contact all traditional Aboriginal landowners affected, a court heard Monday.Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory was nominated in early 2007 as a site to store low and intermediate radioactive waste under a deal negotiated with the Aboriginal Ngapa clan.
While Australia does not use nuclear power, it needs a site to store waste, including processed fuel rods from the country’s only nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights, on the outskirts of Sydney,…..Opponents have fought against the dump for years, with a trial starting in the Federal Court in Melbourne Monday alleging Muckaty’s nomination was invalid due to a failure of the government and the land council to obtain the consent of all Aboriginal owners.
“What we’re here to say is ‘no more’ and that this process was so legally flawed that it is invalid,” Ron Merkel, who is representing traditional owners, told the court.
“The opposition is in no small part based on a spiritual affiliation to the land and that radioactive waste will poison the land,” he said in comments cited by Australian Associated Press.
The court was told the consent of all groups with a claim to the land was required for the facility to go ahead, but some Aboriginals whose country was affected have never had a chance to voice their concerns until now……..Speaking to reporters, Kylie Sambo, of the Warlmanpa people, said the idea of a waste facility on the land, which is in the centre of the country, was “poison”.
“We don’t want it to spoil our country because we love our land and we’ve been there for centuries,” she said. “My uncle once told me, ‘You may think you own the land, but in fact the land owns us’.”
The Australian Conservation Foundation said the case raised questions about the country’s management of long-lived radioactive waste.
“Australia has never has an independent assessment of how best to manage radioactive waste; now we urgently need one,” campaigner Dave Sweeney said.
The case is set to run for five weeks. https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/world/a/24084083/nuclear-waste-dump-on-aboriginal-land-invalid-court-told/
Abbott unable to censor Climate Change from G20 and from talks with Obama?
Barack Obama’s climate change moves put heat on Tony Abbott The Age, June 3,Mark Kenny Chief political correspondent A dramatic acceleration of America’s response to climate change, including strong caps on coal-fired pollution threatens to expose Australia’s humble 5 per cent emissions reduction target by 2020 as too low and out of step with the rest of the world.
The US move may overshadow the first bilateral talks between Prime Minister Tony Abbott and President Barack Obama to take place in Washington next week. Those talks will cover trade, economic and strategic issues but with climate change again dominating the US political cycle, the environmental challenge is likely to arise.
And that may see Mr Abbott under direct presidential pressure to re-include climate change as a key economic issue on the agenda of the G20 when Australia hosts the premier international economic forum later this year.…….http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/barack-obamas-climate-change-moves-put-heat-on-tony-abbott-20140602-39f0s.html#ixzz33djzH13e
Unlike Prime Minister Abbott, President Obama wants a clean energy future for our children
Is that a lump of coal or are you feeling happy? The Age, June 3, 2014 –Tom Arup Environment editor, The Age “……Foreshadowing an executive order that emissions from US coal power plants be cut to 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, President Obama told his weekly radio address: “As President, and as a parent, I refuse to condemn our children to a planet that’s beyond fixing.
“The shift to a cleaner energy economy won’t happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way. But a low-carbon, clean energy economy can be an engine of growth for decades to come.
“America will build that engine. America will build the future. A future that’s cleaner, more prosperous, and full of good jobs. A future where we can look our kids in the eye and tell them we did our part to leave them a safer, more stable world.”
President Obama has moved slowly on climate change. He failed to pass a national emissions trading scheme through a hostile Congress. But he has set limits on emissions from vehicles and poured billions into renewable energy. And he is increasingly trumpeting international action to stop climate change as the world aims to negotiate a global climate treaty by the end of next year.
In Australia, the Abbott government has taken steps to scrap the carbon price and replace it with a plan most economists consider ineffectual. It wants to axe the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation, strip $1.3 billion in grants from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and has cut money from carbon capture and storage. It is reviewing the 20 per cent renewable energy target for 2020, with an eye to watering it down.
Mr Abbott has refused to put climate change on the agenda for the G20 meeting Australia is hosting later this year, a move that has generated disquiet with leaders in the US and Europe. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/is-that-a-lump-of-coal-or-are-you-feeling-happy-20140602-39f13.html#ixzz33dlXuWFp
Aboriginal elders were misled by Northern Land Council over Muckaty nuclear waste dump plan
Northern Land Council ‘misled’ elders over Muckaty Station nuclear dump site http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/northern-land-council-misled-elders-over-muckaty-station-nuclear-dump-site/story-fn9hm1pm-1226940619084# PIA AKERMAN THE AUSTRALIAN JUNE 03, 2014 ONE of the country’s most powerful Aboriginal bodies has been accused of misleading Top End residents about the safety of using Muckaty Station as a nuclear waste dump site.
In the opening day of the legal challenge to the proposed nuclear waste facility at Muckaty, 110km north of Tennant Creek, opponents of the plan said they would never accept nuclear waste there.
Ron Merkel QC, representing Mark Lane Jangala and three other elders who oppose the waste dump, told the Federal Court that the Northern Land Council had acted outside its powers and misrepresented the facts during “consultations’’ with traditional landowners.
“This is a matter which has literally torn the Muckaty community apart,” he said.
Mr Merkel’s submissions claim the NLC failed to ensure traditional owners understood the effect of nominating Muckaty as a nuclear waste site, telling them it was safe to bury it and downplaying any risks. The NLC is also accused of incorrectly identifying people with an interest in the land and not consulting in a culturally appropriate manner with Aboriginal interpreters.
Muckaty Station was chosen by the Howard government in 2007 after being volunteered by the NLC in a deal worth more than $12 million to the NLC and $10m initially to the Northern Territory government, which would receive another $2m a year from other governments once the facility was operational.
Mr Merkel said “not one” Aboriginal person at Muckaty had any right to any money if the dump went ahead according to a deed that nominated the site.
The hearing continues in Melbourne this week before moving to the NT.
Uranium company gives up – switching to property development
United Uranium Limited moving from resources exploration to property development United Uranium Limited moving from resources exploration to property development http://www.proactiveinvestors.com.au/companies/news/55373/united-uranium-limited-moving-from-resources-exploration-to-property-development-55373.html June 02, 2014 United Uranium Limited moving from resources exploration to property development
United Uranium Limited (ASX:UUL) is exploring opportunities that will most likely result in a shift away from resources exploration to property development in a bid to increase shareholder value.
This follows completion of a strategic review that identified the unwillingness of the investment community to invest in junior resources companies, particularly those focused on uranium.
It added the early stage status of its projects required significant funding to explore, with no guarantee of commercial success.
These add to the continued depressed uranium prices, and commodities prices in general.
In contrast, it noted that investors were willing to invest in property developments with the sector currently experiencing strong housing demand.
Permanent gloom for the uranium industry – the crisis is terminal?
We are heading for a uranium crisis , Investor Intel, June 2, 2014 by Robin Bromby“……Welcome to the “perma-gloom” with spot uranium now at $28.25/lb. But it really does portend a very troubling situation. We could be on the brink of a real uranium crisis, one that could have serious ramifications down the road. This is because, on top of all the doubts about nuclear post-Fukushima and the slowness of Japan to get reactors back on line, uranium is caught up in the general malaise affecting the mining industry ……….the uranium price has fallen by 30% over the past year. If it keeps falling, and it well might, more and more companies will either go into hibernation mode or quit the sector all together ……..
A surer sign that all is not well can be evidenced from an ominous trend — exploration companies quitting the sector. Others are making cuts: Cameco closed its Cheyenne office, while BHP Billiton has deferred its expansion at the world’s biggest uranium deposit, Olympic Dam in South Australia. Australia’s Paladin Energy (ASX:PDN) has put one of its mines, Kayelekera in Malawi, on care and maintenance.
Back in 2007-8, after spot uranium hit $137/lb, this was the place to be. Suddenly every mining explorer was keen to be in the uranium hunt. At one stage, more than 260 companies listed on the Australian Securities claimed to have uranium projects (many of them in what the Canadian miners call “moose pasture”).
Now, it seems, those small number remaining can’t wait to get out. FYI Resources (ASX:FYI), which got into uranium after quitting the eye care business (it’s previous name was Freedom Eye) in 2009, is now concentrating on potash in Thailand. Uranex (ASX:UNX) is staying in Tanzania, but has put its uranium on the back-burner in order to pursue graphite.
But possibly the most startling change was reported today. Junior United Uranium (ASX:UUL) which has six projects in Western Australia [and A$3.41 million in the bank as at March 31] is getting out of uranium and into — wait for it — property development.You can’t exactly blame the directors. The shares are trading at a discount to the company assets (the market capitalisation being just A$2 million), all its projects are early-stage ones that will require considerable sums to explore and may not turn out to be viable, no one is investing in the sector, the uranium price is depressed as is the resource sector generally.
Just two weeks ago another uranium explorer working in Western Australia, Prime Minerals (ASX:PIM), signalled it was changing direction. It is merging with Cocoon Data Holdings which has data security software. The news lifted Prime’s stock from A0.9c to A2.2c.
Back in 2007, announcing you were getting into uranium could see your stock price double. Now announcing you’re switching focus away from uranium does the trick. This is not a good trend. http://investorintel.com/rare-earth-intel/may-heading-uranium-crisis/#sthash.l5sn96vF.dpuf–
Despite hot air from the nuclear industry, nuclear power stinks in USA
the nuclear business stinks in the United States. It’s gotten so bad that French nuclear giant EDF inked a deal last year to gradually dump its U.S. nuclear operations thanks to dwindling profits and dimming prospects that it will get to build new reactors.
There are far better, more sustainable alternatives that will keep the lights on. Among the best is wind power. Believe it or not, wind is quickly gaining market share in Texas. According to government projections, plummeting costs for solar panels could make sun-powered utilities more competitive than natural gas within a single decade,
Sorry Carol Browner, and your new friends in the nuclear industry. In terms of safety and money, building new reactors amounts to a lose-lose proposition.
A gust of nuclear-powered hot air from the industr
y http://bristolpress.com/articles/2014/05/31/opinion/doc538a72d3949cd339945913.txt May 31, 2014 By EMILY SCHWARTZ GRECO and WILLIAM A. COLLINS Have you heard how nuclear power is a low-carbon solution that could ratchet down climate change? Even former Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner is touting the industry for its supposed reliability, low-cost and diminutive carbon footprint.
For years, including when she served as President Barack Obama’s climate czar, Browner shared the widespread green view best summed up by this slogan: No nukes is good nukes.
Now, she’s shilling for Nuclear Matters. This atomic lobbying outfit, funded by industry giants like Exelon, is trumpeting nuclear reactors as a climate panacea in full-page New York Times ads and any media outlet willing to listen to members of its “leadership council,” which includes a gaggle of senators-turned-lobbyists like Judd Gregg, Evan Bayh, and Blanche Lincoln. As the saying goes, everything has its price. But what’s driving this nuclear-powered media shopping spree? After decades without any new construction, a total of five new reactors are slated to open by 2018 in Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia.
Those projects were supposed to usher in a nuclear construction boom that’s not materializing for several reasons. One is safety. Another is the rise of fracking. A gusher of natural gas offers another dangerous alternative to coal-fired power plants that’s exposing the myth of nuclear energy’s so-called affordability as a flat-out lie.
For more than three years, the global media has tuned in with varying degrees of intensity to the steady drumbeat of fallout (literally) from Japan’s Fukushima catastrophe. After other ideas failed, the government over there is shifting into sci-fi overdrive with a plan to create a mile-long underground frozen wall to contain the destroyed power plant’s radiation.
Hey, if that doesn’t pan out, Japan can order its scientists to genetically engineer a Godzilla creature that guzzles radioactive seawater. The fact is that safety concerns have made Japan go nuclear-free, at least for now, by shuttering the reactors that used to generate 30 percent of the country’s electricity. Continue reading
Aboriginal owners fear that radioactive waste dump will poison their land
NT nuclear dump will ‘poison’ land: trial The indigenous owners of Muckaty Station, which is earmarked for a nuclear waste dump, fear it will poison their land. SBS News, 2 June 14, Source AAP “….…The indigenous owners of the Northern Territory’s Muckaty Station were asked to welcome a nuclear waste dump while waving away their rights to compensation, a court has heard.The remote site near Tennant Creek has been earmarked, since 2007, as the site of a major Commonwealth-run radioactive waste storage facility.
A seven-year bid to halt the project reached the Federal Court on Monday, where Justice Anthony North was told its indigenous owners were being short-changed………
Mr Merkel said the waste to be stored at the site would remain dangerously radioactive for 200 years, and indigenous people he represented had a connection to the land for 50,000 years. The indigenous owners did not want it to proceed, he said, because they believed it would affect their spiritual affiliation with – and “poison” – the land.
The court was also told proper process to determine Muckaty Station’s indigenous ownership, or to obtain consent from all affected families, was not followed.
“It is an unusual structure for what is a compulsory acquisition of land,” Justice North said………
Kylie Sambo, 20, of the Warlmanpa people, said it was a relief for her community to get its day in court after more than seven years of campaigning against the waste dump. “It’s a poison. We don’t want it to be there,” she told reporters. “We don’t want it to spoil our country because we love our land and we’ve been there for centuries. “My uncle once told me, ‘You may think you own the land, but in fact the land owns us’.”Muckaty Station has been selected as the preferred site to provide long-term storage for radioactive waste that is now being held at Lucas Heights and then sent to France for further processing. http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/06/02/nt-nuclear-dump-will-poison-land-trial
Canada’s nuclear lobby gears up for propaganda, including in schools
Canada’s uncertain nuclear future article is based on Canada’s Nuclear Energy Sector: Where to from here? published by Canada’s Public Policy Forum. 2 June 2014“……One approach to address the concerns of the anti-nuclear movement is to work with environmental NGO leaders, to foster trust and a less-polarised dialogue. Such dialogues will be difficult and will take time: workshop participants said this approach was successful in the forestry sector, but it required much time and effort over two decades. To gain social license and broader acceptance, groups outside the sector will need to initiate the discussions. The start of this dialogue can be seen in the US, with recent efforts by some prominent environmental NGO leaders, who had once been opposed to nuclear.
The often passionate public reaction against nuclear power is a significant challenge. Extensive media coverage of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan, bad memories of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, and common misunderstandings around radiation mean the public is often reluctant to embrace nuclear power plant construction or to view nuclear as a viable energy source.
A key to success in both the UK and France has been including information about nuclear energy in school curriculums.
By educating students about nuclear energy, both countries have been successful in helping to dispel myths around safety and security that persist elsewhere. These countries have shown that education could be a useful first step to engaging citizens in a more enlightened discussion on nuclear energy. .”
USA Nuclear Industry gears up with new propaganda front group
Indeed, market conditions have not been good for Exelon, which owns 23 reactors at 14 plant sites, making it the largest nuclear plant operator in the country. Although the company netted $1.16 billion on revenues of $23.5 billion from all of its energy holdings in 2013, none of the Chicago-based company’s six Illinois nuclear plants turned a profit in the last five years, according to a recent Chicago Tribuneinvestigation. At least three of those plants are reportedly on the chopping block……
To try to stanch the bleeding, Exelon recently launched a front group, Nuclear Matters, to sell the public on the need to keep the remaining U.S. fleet of some 100 reactors running. According to its website, the group rests its argument largely on the fact that nuclear plants run 24/7 and don’t emit carbon or traditional air pollutants, and insists that efforts to address global warming will be foiled if any reactors close. The website also lists some of the commonly cited reasons for the industry’s current plight, but, echoing Exelon, also blames federal and state policies that support wind and solar power, which it claims “distorts” electricity markets. Not only is that a dubious assertion, it’s especially ironic given the nuclear industry would not be economically viable without more than 50 years of federal subsidies, many of which continue to this day.
A New York public relations firm, Sloane & Company, is managing Nuclear Matters for Exelon. Since the group’s launch in March, the agency has placed full-page ads and op-eds in a range of publications and recruited an impressive array of former public officials to plead the company’s case. Former Sens. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) were on board at the beginning as co-chairs. They were soon joined by former Secretary of Commerce and White House Chief of Staff William Daley, former Energy Secretary and Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.), former Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), and former Clinton Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Carol Browner, who served as the Obama administration’s climate adviser and is board chair of the League of Conservation Voters.
Why start a front group? For the same reason the industry trade association Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) hired the Hill & Knowlton PR agency eight years ago to create the faux grassroots Clean and Safe Energy Coalition and tap former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman to be its primary spokesperson. Who is the public going to believe? A former EPA administrator or NEI CEO Marv Fertel? A former U.S. senator or Exelon CEO Christopher Crane? More than likely the former government officials, especially if they don’t disclose the fact that the nuclear industry is paying them to advance its agenda.
Front groups are certainly not unique to the nuclear industry. Over the last decade or so, for instance, ExxonMobil and Charles and David Koch, owners of the coal, oil and gas conglomerate Koch Industries, have given tens of millions of dollars to dozens of self-described “free market” think tanks to spread disinformation about climate change and attack renewable energy. Unlike those think tanks, however, neither Nuclear Matters or the CASEnergy Coalition are bona fide organizations with staffs and brick and mortar offices. They are nothing more than PR agency-managed websites with high-profile paid spokespeople in tow. The other big difference is those fossil fuel industry-funded think tanks don’t have a code of ethics. The public relations industry does, and both Sloane & Company and Hill & Knowlton are violating it.
The industry’s code of ethics, developed by the Public Relations Society of America, includes a section on transparency. To build public trust and ensure informed policymaking, PRSA’s code states it is imperative that PR professionals disclose all pertinent information. Among other things, they should “reveal the sponsors for causes and interests represented” and “disclose financial interest … in a client’s organization.” PRSA then provides some examples of improper conduct under this provision. The first one is front groups, when a PR firm, for example, “implements ‘grass roots’ campaigns….”
Thus far, Sloane & Company has been glossing over the fact that Nuclear Matters and its spokespeople are paid by Exelon. There’s no mention of Exelon on the group’s website or on any of the Nuclear Matters press releases the firm has issued.
Fortunately a number of reporters who have written about Nuclear Matters have at least mentioned that the group is a creature of the nuclear industry, and some have directly cited Exelon’s role, thanks in part to a press release disclosing the connection from the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. But reporters paid attention early on to the fact that NEI was behind the CASEnergy Coalition, and then, over the ensuing months and years, neglected to point out that Whitman was actually speaking on behalf of the nuclear industry, not some independent grassroots group that promotes “clean and safe energy.”
In any case, reporters can’t completely make up for columnists and other commentators who fail to reference Exelon or misrepresent Nuclear Matters to enhance its credibility. In late March, Nuclear Matters Co-Chairmen Bayh and Gregg wrote an op-ed laying out the group’s argument for The Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress. The authors’ bios at the end of the piece didn’t mention that Exelon is underwriting their campaign. Meanwhile, in early May, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) wrote a Wall Street Journalcolumn attacking a key federal wind tax break that Exelon wants Congress to kill. A longtime nuclear power proponent, Alexander called Nuclear Matters an “environmental” group………. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elliott-negin/nuclear-giant-exelon-laun_b_5428994.html
Solar thermal energy a step closer with CSIRO breakthrough
CSIRO Newcastle solar breakthrough for supercritical steam ABC News 3 June 14 The CSIRO is describing research at its Newcastle energy centre as a game-changer for the renewable energy industry. The CSIRO is describing research at its Newcastle energy centre as a game-changer for the renewable energy industry.
Researchers have used solar energy to generate hot and pressurised ‘supercritical’ steam at the highest temperatures ever achieved outside of fossil sources.
Supercritical solar steam is water pressurised at enormous force and heated using solar radiation.
Around 90 per cent of Australia’s electricity is generated using fossil fuel, but only a small number of power stations are based on the more advanced supercritical steam.
The world record set at the CSIRO’s Energy Centre in Newcastle this month, was at a pressure of 23.5 megapascals and temperatures up to 570 degrees Celsius.
Project leader, Robbie McNaughton says it is the combination of pressure and temperature demonstrated at scale, that makes it such a breakthrough for solar power…… CSIRO’s Energy Director, Dr Alex Wonhas says the milestone is a game-changer for the industry.
“It’s like breaking the sound barrier,” he said.
“This step change proves solar has the potential to compete with the peak performance capabilities of fossil fuel sources.”
The $9.7 million research program is supported by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).
ARENA CEO Ivor Frischknecht says although more work is needed before the technology is ready for commercialisation, it is an important breakthrough and demonstrates the importance of research and development.
Mr Frischknecht says it brings solar thermal energy a step closer to cost competitiveness with fossil fuel generated power.http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-03/csiro-newcastle-solar-breakthrough-for-supercritical-steam/5495744?§ion=news
Aboriginal culture preserved and shared along New South Wales far South Coast
In the 1840s Ben Boyd, as he was developing a settlement on Eden’s Twofold Bay, wanted to see some of his vast land holdings on the Monaro.
He needed to find a way up from the coast to the high country and it was Aboriginal people who showed him how to get there along the Bundian Way.
The 265km track had for generations connected Bilgalera (which non-Aboriginal people now called Fisheries Beach) with Targangal (now called Mt Kosciuszko).
Ben Boyd, with a young artist, Oswald Brierly, were guided to the high country by a young Aboriginal man, Budginbro, on horseback from the coast, along river flats and over some of the wildest and most rugged and beautiful parts of Australia.
For a large part of the journey they travelled along the Bundian Way and deviated along connected pathways.
The pathway has been surveyed and is now being rehabilitated, section by section, to be opened again for walkers, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, as a shared history experience celebrating that first joint expedition.
It’s a shared history which encapsulates the heritage of the early settlers and the heritage of our people who were here for many generations before the settlers came,” said Aboriginal elder Ossie Cruse as we spoke at the community’s Keeping Place………
Aboriginal work teams are currently clearing the pathway around Twofold Bay, a stunning walk around the undeveloped shoreline, little changed from Boyd’s time.
Above a beautiful beach on Eden’s Twofold Bay and looking across to the tree lined southern and eastern shores the Bundian Way project manager Noel Whittem says that the walk will emerge as a major tourist attraction especially for the visitors arriving on the cruise ships that are increasingly visiting the picturesque harbour, and where a new wharf is to be built.
The full 265km track he says will also be an attraction for bushwalkers and for those walkers who travel the world to walk ancient cultural heritage roads and tracks.
The Bundian Way is one that would predate most and tells a poignant story of the two cultures.
“We have people who want to walk the Bundian Way already.”
See the related audio for a fascinating insight into the Bundian Way project as we journey from Twofold Bay to the Keeping Place with Noel Whittem, Franz Peters, and Ossie Cruse. http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2014/06/02/4017106.htm
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 
