Petition against storing nuclear waste on pastoral land
To keep any kind of nuclear waste away from pastoral areas, where it could contaminate agricultural land.
With nuclear power stations across the globe, deciding where to store nuclear waste safely is a priority that seems to have slipped under the media radar for awhile now. However, now that MP Ian Macfarlane has re-introduced plans for a nuclear waste dump in NT after changing the original location for the dump on Aboriginal land at Muckaty station, it seems more than likely that the government will settle on using a pastoral station.
A pastoral station with stored nuclear waste? What if the storage leaks? How are we to know if there is the possibility for this?
Firstly, information as to the details of how the waste will be stored and where it will be stored on one of these stations is not readily available to the public; problem number one. Secondly, keeping this dump on a property full of livestock that will eventually be available as meat for consumers to purchase in supermarkets is undeniably a problem. Farmers have agreed that the benefits financially from creating this dump will outweigh the ‘low-risk’, but is that good enough? Although cattle would not be raised directly on the location where the dump was, who is to say how far away a location would need to be to be safe from contamination if there were any issues?
by Stephanie Hosler Petition Organiser
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Also, if you would like to try and bring MP Ian Macfarlane’s attention to the issue, this is his email address, which can be found on the Parliament of Australia website.
Ian.Macfarlane.MP@aph.gov.au
High level nuclear waste (not medical) soon to be returned to Australia
Mr Karamoskos says the public has been sold a furphy about what nuclear waste will be stored in any waste site.
He says most of the waste will not be medical waste.
‘Accumulated waste over the last 60 years from Lucas Heights, industrial and defence waste.
Time is running out to find a nuclear waste site in Australia http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bushtelegraph/nuclear-waste/5798278 Cameron Wilson, 10 Oct 14 The Federal Government is running out of time to find a safe nuclear waste site.
Within a year, nuclear fuel rods the French have been reprocessing for us will be returned to Australia. By 2020 more nuclear waste, which was being reprocessed in the UK, will be sent back too; and 60 years of accumulated industrial and defence nuclear waste, along with future medical waste, will also need a new home.
The government had hoped to bury the waste on Indigenous land in South Australia and then the NT but both attempts failed.Now, the government is considering allowing pastoralists with free-hold land to nominate their properties as nuclear waste storage sites.
Resources Minister Ian McFarlane says as of November 10, 2014, the tender process will be opened up to interested parties. John Armstrong is a cattleman in the Northern Territory. He’s expressed interest in nominating his land for hosting the nuclear waste. He believes it could bring infrastructure and investment to more isolated parts of the country. Continue reading
ASIO involved in secret collection of bones of dead children
Australia’s new secret police, Eureka Street Brian Toohey | 09 October 2014 When Greg James QC recently launched Frank Walker’s book Maralinga on British nuclear tests in Australia, the former NSW Supreme Court judge said the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation was involved in an associated program to collect the bones of dead children without the parents’ permission.
Jones later explained that he obtained this previously unpublished information, although not precise details, while representing military veterans exposed to radiation from the tests in 50s and 60s. However, the book provides a powerful reminder of the harm that can be done by using national security to conceal indefensible 
behaviour.
Walker sets out how 22,000 bones, mostly of babies and young children, were removed from corpses as part of a secret program to examine the effects of the radiation, which the tests spread across large parts of Australia. The program, that began in 1957 and lasted 21 years, was kept secret until 2001.
Walker says the grieving parents, in the overwhelming majority of cases, were not asked if the bodies of their children could be used for scientific studies relating to the development of nuclear weapons. The book also gives harrowing accounts of the experiences of servicemen and technicians who were exposed — in some cases deliberately— to dangerous levels of radiation without their permission. All were warned they would be severely punished if they said anything about what happened.
This is only one of many examples of the disturbing consequences of excessive secrecy in the name of national security. President Kennedy is a rare example of a politician who acknowledged that suppressing information can actually damage national security, as occurred in 1961………..http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=42125#.VDg3TGddUnk
South Korean city votes NO to nuclear power plant
South Korean town votes no to nuclear plant WP, By Associated Press October SEOUL, South Korea — Voters in a South Korean city have rejected plans to build a nuclear power plant in a referendum the government says has no legal effect.
Thursday’s vote in Samcheok, on South Korea’s east coast, went as expected following this year’s election of a mayor who wants the government to scrap nuclear plant……..“I will persuade the national government based on this result,” the Samcheok mayor, Kim Yang-ho, told Yonhap News Agency. “I hope the government’s policy will reflect Samcheok citizens’ real opinion.”……..
Some 85 percent of the 28,867 residents who cast ballots said no, according to a volunteer committee set up to administer the referendum after election authorities refused. Out of 42,488 who registered to take part, turnout was 68 percent……http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/south-korean-town-votes-no-to-nuclear-plant/2014/10/09/1d3d23ce-5023-11e4-877c-335b53ffe736_story.html
Radioactive waste ship drifts off course, after fire breaks out –
Also in 2011, bosses at Dounreay started discussion on the return of several hundred tonnes of waste to customers in Australia and Germany.
Oil rig evacuated after ship carrying radioactive waste drifts BBC News Highlands and Islands 8 Oct 14 An oil platform has been evacuated after a ship carrying radioactive material caught fire and began drifting in the Moray Firth. Continue reading
How the nuclear industry bought Britain’s politicians – new book
the nuclear industry has poured millions of pounds year after year into a massive political lobbying campaign.
Nuclear power trumps democracy The Ecologist, Donnachadh McCarthy 9th October 2014 The UK’s political mainstream has performed a complete U-Turn in policy on nuclear power, culminating yesterday in the European Commission’s approval of a £15-20 billion subsidy package for the Hinckley C project. Donnachadh McCarthy delves into the nuclear industry’s deep and far-reaching political links.
Why is our democracy failing to tackle the horrific urgency of the climate crisis and the decimation of our eco-systems?
And why are all the main political parties betting the farm on nuclear power in spite of its madhouse economics – and against all their promises to either oppose nuclear power altogether, or to refuse subsidies for it?
In my new book, The Prostitute State – How Britain’s Democracy Has Been Bought, I set out my view that there is a single problem at the root of our nation’s difficulties.
A corporate elite have hijacked the pillars of Britain’s democracy. The production of thought, the dissemination of thought, the implementation of thought and the wealth arising from those thoughts, are now controlled by a tiny, staggeringly rich elite.
As a result the UK is no longer a functioning democracy but has become a ‘Prostitute State’ built on four pillars: a corrupted political system, a prostituted media, a perverted academia and a thieving tax-haven system.
This has disastrously resulted in a flood of wealth from the poor and middle classes to the top 1%. This stolen wealth is built on the destruction of the planet’s ecosystems, which are essential for humanity’s survival.
Nuclear power defeats democracy
The reversal of government policy on nuclear power is a classic example of how the Prostitute State trumps democracy. Betrayed environmental activists must understand that – notwithstanding the noble form of democratic structures – what they are really up against is a corrupt corporate state.
The concept of lobbying is reasonably well known, but few of us understand how far lobbying has penetrated and hijacked the political parties themselves.
For example, most people are perplexed at how the nuclear industry managed to persuade the UK’s previous Labour government to build a fleet of hugely expensive experimental nuclear power stations on land prone to flooding from rising sea levels.
They also struggle to comprehend and why Labour’s shadow energy and climate change minister, Caroline Flint MP, having stated that she would only support nuclear power if built without public subsidies, now supports the £15-20 billion subsidy package for Hinkley C nuclear power station
Labour managed managed this policy U-Turn despite the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear catastrophes; the failure to find safe waste-disposal sites capable of protecting radioactive waste for over 100,000 years; and insurance companies’ point blank refusal to provide nuclear accident insurance.
It’s the money, stupid
My simple answer is that the nuclear industry has poured millions of pounds year after year into a massive political lobbying campaign.
They bought a whole swathe of senior ex-politicians to work as nuclear lobbyists, spent a fortune on trying to manipulate public opinion through media and advertising, and even funded school trips to their nuclear plants.
As they managed to persuade a Labour government to abandon their 1997 election manifesto commitment to oppose new nuclear power stations, it is crucial to understand how deeply the nuclear lobby is embedded in the Labour party.
My personal belief is that a complex web of financial interests ensured that the Labour government served the nuclear industry – no matter what Labour party members or the British public wanted.
Just consider for example the following list of Labour Party politicians:…….. http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2587477/nuclear_power_trumps_democracy.html
Senator Nick Xenophon will not commit to full support of the Renewable Energy Target (RET)
AUDIO: Listen to Natalie Whiting’s report (PM) Renewable Energy Target campaigners fail to win Nick Xenophon’s commitment, ABC Radio PM By Natalie Whiting 9 Oct 14 Climate change campaigners in South Australia have kept up pressure on the independent Senator Nick Xenophon to commit himself to protecting the Renewable Energy Target (RET). Hundreds of people attended a forum this week to demand the Senator commit to blocking any potential changes to the RET. They said renewable energy employment could make up for some of South Australia’s job losses in other fields.
But Senator Xenophon refused to promise anything, saying only that he was open to RET negotiations……..
Mr Green was worried the potential changes to the target could produce more job losses.
“There are 13,000 people employed in the solar industry at the moment and conservative estimates suggest that between a third and a half of those jobs would be lost if these [federal] recommendations were adopted,” he said.
“There are also 21,000 people employed in the renewable energy sector as a whole, so including wind, and many of those wind workers would be out of a job by Christmas as well.”
Mr Green was among a number of pro-RET speakers at the Adelaide forum……..
Forum attendees demanded Senator Xenophon commit to blocking any potential changes to the RET, but he refused……… Continue reading
Abbott govt is turning ASIO into a secret police agency
Australia’s new secret police, Eureka Street Brian Toohey | 09 October 2014 “……..Numerous official inquiries and media reports have shown that highly secretive bodies will abuse their powers in the absence of strong checks and balances. Undeterred, the Coalition and Labor parties have backed a new law that imposes 5-10 year jail sentences on anyone who reveals anything about what ASIO designates a Special Intelligence Operation. This prohibition covers exposing murder, endemic incompetence or dangerous bungling. The loosely worded law covers ASIO officials, agents and ‘affiliates’. The latter could include other Australian and overseas intelligence agencies, police forces and special military squads.
The law removes the long-standing defence that publication in the public interest can be legally justified. The US does not have an equivalent law. These days the mere utterance of the words ‘national security’ seems to mesmerise mainstream Australian politicians, such as the Attorney General George Brandis, who normally see themselves as resolute opponents of the unconstrained expansion of state power.
In this case, journalists and others who report on stuff-ups and abuses of power can’t even know whether they are committing a crime — ASIO will not say whether a Special Intelligence Operation exists. Bank robbers at least know they are breaking the law. Australian media reporting has never resulted in the death of any intelligence operatives or undercover police. In contrast, far more people have been killed as a result of intelligence operations being kept secret. This is not a fanciful concern when the Australia’s overseas intelligence partners assassinate people. If the CIA wants to kill someone in Spain, for example, it could ask ASIO to use its coercive questioning powers to force an innocent relative in Australia to reveal the target’s location.
Intelligence information is often wrong. Identities can be confused, intercepts misconstrued and informants give false information about rivals. This is one reason police are not allowed to assassinate people suspected of committing a crime.
If it were a crime at the time to report on ASIS operations, the media could not have informed the public about the 1983 folly in which masked ASIS trainees ran around the Melbourne Sheraton, armed with silenced machines guns, sledge hammers and hypodermic syringes, recklessly indifferent to public safety. Likewise, the new law could be used to suppress future media reports about a similar injustice to one where a NSW Supreme Court Judge Michael Adams said in 2007 that two ASIO officers ‘committed the criminal offences of false imprisonment and kidnapping at common law’. No one in ASIO was subsequently charged.
Originally, ASIO was purely an information gathering body with no power to detain people or compel answers to questions. It now has these powers, without the safeguards that apply to police investigations of serious crimes where they must identify themselves can’t compel answers. As others note, Israel’s security service does not have these ASIO powers. In this context, one former ASIO officer privately told this writer that he feared the changes ‘would turn ASIO into a secret police agency’. http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=42125#.VDg3TGddUnk
After 86 years, traditional owners get back land where 100 Aboriginals were massacred
Coniston massacre: Nigel Scullion returns site to traditional owners 86 years after killings 7 News, ANTHONY STEWART October 9, 2014, The site of Australia’s last recorded massacre of Aboriginal people has been returned to its traditional owners.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion travelled to Yurrkuru 274 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs to present native title deeds to traditional owners.
Here, in 1928, up to 100 Aboriginal people were killed near the Coniston cattle station in reprisal for the death of a white man. The murders later became known as the Coniston massacre.
Warlpiri and Anmatyerr people welcomed Senator Nigel Scullion on to their land with traditional song and dance.
Senior Anmatyerr man Teddy Long said generations of his family had been fighting to have the massacre acknowledged and the land returned. “My old man, my father been explaining to me what happened to me, the shooting days,” he said.
“In the massacre days many people were killed here and that’s why [I’ve] been fighting real hard for this land”
Land returned decades after Land Rights claim Traditional owners initially lodged a claim under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act for the land in 1985………
In 1928 The prime minister at the time, Stanley Bruce, launched an a board of inquiry into the actions of police and pastoralists.
It ruled the police had “acted in self-defence”……https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/25219778/coniston-massacre-nigel-scullion-returns-site-to-traditional-owners-86-years-after-killings/
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 