Vienna conference this week highlights Humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons
Humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons in focus, Times of Oman, BY SEBASTIAN KURZ | DECEMBER 07, 2014
In 1983, three years before I was born, a chilling television docudrama about the consequences of a nuclear war was broadcast around the world. The Day After, now cited as the highest-rated film in TV history, left then-US President Ronald Reagan “greatly depressed” and caused him to rethink his nuclear strategy. At their summit in Reykjavik in October 1986, he and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev came tantalizingly close to eliminating all nuclear weapons.
My generation has conveniently consigned such fears to history. Indeed, with the Cold War tensions of 1983 far in the past and the international order dramatically changed, many people nowadays ask why these memories should concern us at all.
But the premise of that question is both wrong and dangerous.
This week, Austria is providing the world an opportunity to rethink its complacency. Representatives from the governments of more than 150 countries, international organisations, and civil-society groups will meet in Vienna this week, to consider the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons.
These weapons, which terrified people 30 years ago, still remain in countries’ arsenals and continue to pose a grave risk to human security and safety. Austria’s concern is that as long as nuclear weapons exist, the risk of their use exists, either by accident or design. An overwhelming majority of states share this view.
Consider how many nuclear weapons there are: an estimated 16,300 around the world, with 1,800 on high alert and ready for use on short notice.
Nearly 25 years after the Cold War’s end, we remain stuck with its strategic legacy: Nuclear weapons continue to underpin the international security policy of the world’s most powerful states.
There are too many risks — human error, technical flaws, negligence, cyber-attacks, and more — to believe that these weapons will never be used. Nor is there good reason to believe that adequate fail-safe mechanisms are in place.
The history of nuclear weapons since 1945 is studded with near misses — both before and after the Cuban missile crisis……….
the goal of Vienna conference is to provide the public with new and updated evidence of the impact of using nuclear weapons and the threat they pose.
The picture is even grimmer and the consequences more dire than we believed in 1983.
As long as nuclear weapons exist, it is irresponsible not to confront the implications of their use — implications for which there is no antidote or insurance policy.
They are not some deadly virus or long-term environmental threat.
They are the poisonous fruit of a technology that we created — and that we can and must control.
— Project Syndicate http://www.timesofoman.com/Columns/2502/Humanitarian-impact-of-nuclear-weapons-in-focus
World first – Australian breakthrough in solar energy efficiency
Solar energy world first in Australia http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/climate-change/solar-energy-world-first-in-australia-20141207-121w8n.html December 8, 2014 Peter Hannam
Australian solar power researchers have achieved world-beating levels of efficiency, potentially making large solar plants more competitive with other energy sources such as coal.
A team from the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics (PV) at the University of NSW has achieved 40.4 per cent “conversion efficiency” by using commercially available solar cells combined with a mirror and filters that reduce wasted energy.
Martin Green, the centre’s director, said the independently verified breakthrough eclipsed previous records without resorting to special laboratory PV cells that “you’ve got no chance of buying commercially”. Other top-performing solar panels convert about 36 per cent of the sunlight that falls on them into electricity.
The advance involved two steps. Three solar panels were stacked to capture energy from different wave lengths of sunlight, and then excess light from the stacked panels was directed by a mirror and filters to a fourth PV cell, making use of energy previously discarded.
“This is our first re-emergence into the focused-sunlight area,” said Professor Green, who pioneered 20 per cent-efficiency levels in similar technology in 1989.
The institute was prompted to revisit the technology in part because of Australian companies’ efforts to develop large-scale solar towers using arrays of mirrors to focus sunlight on PV cells.
One of those firms, Melbourne-based RayGen, collaborated with UNSW on the project. It is building a plant in China with an solar conversion rate of about 28 per cent. “We’d take them to the mid-30s” for future projects with the technology jump, Professor Green said.
Professor Green was critical of the federal government’s efforts to scrap the Australian Renewable Energy Agency – which chipped in $550,000 to the $1.3 million Power Cube project – and for its ongoing attempts to reduce the Renewable Energy Target set for 2020.
“A positive attitude to renewables would boost all these initiatives, a negative attitude will suppress them,” he said. “Clamping down on deployment of renewables will make it more difficult for developments like this to see the light of day.”
The next goal is to raise efficiency levels to 42 per cent next year, about half way to the theoretical maximum level of 86 per cent.
“It’s horse and buggy days as far as solar is concerned at the moment. There’s just this enormous potential for improvement in efficiency,” Professor Green said.
“To turn your back on those types of developments doesn’t seem to me to be a very sensible strategy.”
The university’s Mark Keevers led the engineering work on the so-called high efficiency spectrum splitting prototype, and its results were confirmed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at its outdoor test facility in the US.
Shutting down Australia’s Aboriginal areas -(opening lands up for what?)
Shutting down Australia’s Aboriginal areas, Aljazeera, New funding laws threaten the existence of remote indigenous communities already facing profound social issues. Royce Kurmelovs 07 Dec 2014 Perth, Australia – The West Australian state government may bulldoze 150 remote indigenous communities that it says are too expensive to keep open under a new funding arrangement between federal and state authorities.
Canberra has offered each state a one-time, lump-sum payment to take over the responsibility of financing remote Aboriginal communities indefinitely.
In an ultimatum, Western Australia was offered $90m, enough to fund remote communities through to 2017.
But as of June 30, 2015, past federal funding agreements will end, effectively giving Western Australia authorities about seven months before they must start working out how to fund remote communities in the future – and which ones will have to close.
Similar arrangements have been made with South Australian, Queensland, Victorian and Tasmanian state governments.
All have so far remained silent on the details with the exception of South Australia, which rejected a $10m payment on the basis that it was not enough for the obligation being created.
South Australia’s Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation Ian Hunter warned if his government was forced to accept the new arrangement, 60 remote communities – home to 4,000 people – would have to close.
Futures in question
So far, Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett has taken a cautionary tone, telling Al Jazeera it is “still very early”, while admitting that community closures are inevitable……………
The fear is that changes to federal policy and funding arrangements that have raised the possibility of community closures only threatens to derail any achievements made to date.
That such closures may occur around the country is also what has lead the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples (NCAFP) to label the issue one of the “most significant” facing Australia’s indigenous peoples to date.
“This is about our people’s right to stay on our land,” NCAFP co-chair Kirstie Parker told Al Jazeera. “People are very frightened that the days are numbered and their communities will be closed.”
In an effort to address the issue, Parker and her co-chair Les Malezer called on Prime Minister Tony Abbott to act in an open letter last week, but so far they have not received a response.
For others such as Tammy Solonec, Amnesty International Australia’s (AIA) indigenous peoples rights manager, there are serious questions about the Western Australia government’s ability to properly manage the transition………….
Lessons to be learned
The risk now is that the experience of Oombulgurri’s closure may be repeated across the country, and for Solonec this would be the worst case scenario.
“We can never let it happen again. If we’re going to talk about closing communities, we need to do it in a better way,” said Solonec.
What’s needed she said are “creative solutions” to actually solve the profound social issues within some remote communities, and prevent people being removed from their land.
Her view is echoed by Parker, who said self-determination is the key and closing down communities merely on the basis that they are “dysfunctional” will not solve problems, but only push them onto other communities.
“Our communities are left wondering about the future of our communities and of our children,” said Parker.
“This scenario doesn’t address the problems in our communities everyone knows are there, it doesn’t deal with the people. To do that you sit down and talk with them.” http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/12/shutting-down-australia-aboriginal-areas-2014124124749741868.html
Nuclear industry still pumps plutonium into ocean through miles of underwater pipes
TV: Plutonium being pumped into ocean through miles of underwater pipes — Nuclear waste left lying on beach — Kids playing on sand where machines scoop up plutonium each day — Alarming test results 1,000% legal limit (VIDEO & PHOTOS)http://enenews.com/tv-plutonium-being-pumped-ocean-miles-underwater-pipes-nuclear-waste-left-lying-beach-kids-playing-sand-machines-scoop-plutonium-day-video-photos?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ENENews+%28Energy+News%29SWR (German public television broadcaster), 2013 (emphasis added):
- 25:00 in — The dumping of nuclear waste in the sea was banned worldwide in 1993, yet the nuclear industry has come up with other ways. They no longer dump the barrels at sea; they build kilometers of underwater pipes through which the radioactive effluent now flows freely into the sea. One of these pipes is situated in Normandy [near] the French reprocessing plant in La Hague… The advantage for the nuclear industry? No more bad press… disposal via waste pipes remains hidden from the public eye, quite literally.
- 28:30 in — 400 km from La Hague [as well as] Holland [and] Germany… we find iodine… 5-fold higher tritium value than [reported] by the operator Areva. It’s now obvious why citizens take their own measurements.
- 30:15 in — Molecular Biologist: “The radioactive toxins accumulate in the food chain. This little worm can contain 2,000-3,000 times more radioactivity than its environment. It is then eaten by the next biggest creature and so on, at the end of the food chain we discovered damage to the reproductive cells of crabs… These genetic defects are inherited from one generation to the next… Cells in humans and animals are the same.”
- 32:00 in — The 2nd disposal pipe for Europe’s nuclear waste is located in the north of England… Radioactive pollution comes in from the sea. Their houses are full of plutonium dust… The pipe from Sellafield is clearly visible only from the air… nuclear waste is still being dumped into the sea. Operators argue this is land-based disposal… It has been approved by the authorities.
- 35:45 in — Plutonium can be found here on a daily basis, the toxic waste returns from the sea… it leaches out, it dries, and is left lying on the beach. The people here have long since guessed that the danger is greater than those responsible care to admit… Every day a smallexcavator removes plutonium from the beach… In recent decadesthe operator at Sellafield has tossed more than 500 kg of plutonium into the sea.
- 42:00 in — We take a soil sample… The result turns out to be alarming. The amount of plutonium is up to 10 times higher than the permissible limit.
Yahoo News, Dec 5, 2014: All this radiation from the [Fukushima] disaster has definitely not been isolated to just Japan. Researchers monitoring the Pacific Ocean, in which much of the radiation spilled into, have detected radioactive isotopes this past November just 160 km [100 miles] off the coast of California. So this story will continue to unfold for many years to come.
UV radiation a hazard on cloudy days, too
Canberrans not as skin savvy as they should be December 7, 2014 Natasha Boddy Canberra Times reporter Only one in three Canberrans perform monthly skin checks and just 20 per cent are worried about unhealthy skin, a new report card on skin health has found.
New research reveals many Australians still believe the misconception that sunburn happens mostly on hot, sunny days and more than a third did not think sun protection was necessary on cloudy days.
The Skin Health Australia Report Card, released by not-for-profit organisation the Skin and Cancer Foundation, also found nearly one-third of adults did not check their skin for signs of skin disease.
In the ACT, nearly nine out of 10 respondents with skin issues regarded them as a cosmetic problem. The report card said one of the biggest misconceptions was that skin health was a cosmetic problem and one that did not require medical attention………..
Many people still did not understand the effects of UV and there was still a belief that the risk of sunburn or skin cancer was confined to hot, sunny days only, he said.
“You can get sunburnt on a sunny day if the temperature is cool.”
Sunburn is caused by UV radiation, not temperature, and the SunSmart program recommends avoiding the sun or using sun protection when UV levels are at three or higher, even if in the sun for only a short time. http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/canberrans-not-as-skin-savvy-as-they-should-be-20141207-1210jx.html
Need to be alert on solar panel safety, too
Solar panel safety warning http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/solar-panel-safety-warning-20141206-121n4t.html December 6, 2014 The state’s energy safety watchdog has issued a warning about solar panels installed during the past year.
The Director of Energy Safety, Ken Bowron, said some of the systems had used dangerous power switches.
“The switches are used to disconnect the current produced by solar panels so electricians can work safely on a home or business,” he said. The defective switches are NHP dc Solar Isolator Swtiches KDA-432 and KDM-432. The supplier of the switches has issued a product recall.
“The defective switches were sold between July 2013 and October 2014. It is important that anyone who had a solar system installed between these dates checks if any of the defective switches have been fitted to the installation,” Mr Bowron said.
1.This month.
The Road to War brings a sharp focus to why it is not in Australia’s best interest to be dragged into a war with China which will almost inevitably go nuclear very quickly. The filmmaker has interviewed some of Australia’s senior foreign policy analysts who have vast experience behind them in analysing what really is going on here as the United States rattles its sabres with China. And sets us up to be its proxy, like the poor Ukranians have been fed into the Meatgrinder. So America can remain the Top Dog. The Road to War reveals how the United States through its spy base at Pine Gap and by stationing six nuclear capable B52 bombers in the Top End (without permission from the traditional owners) is making Australia a prime nuclear target if the current war of words suddenly melts down into full scale war.
The Road to War shows the implicit connection between Carbon emissions (the US military uses a whopping 70% of America’s annual petroleum to move its armies and vast War Machine around the globe to its 800+ military bases..but under a loophole wangled at Kyoto, the US military does not have to report its C02 annual emissions). The Road to War starts screening at selected cities and regional centres in March. See the trailer end for details.
Antinuclear 