Minerals Council wants to overturn Australia’s environmental laws- in the cause of the nuclear chain
I recently reported on the plan outlined by pro nuclear propagandist Oscar Archer to bring the entire
nuclear fuel chain to Australia.
In Archer’s glossy spiel on how great it would be – he just barely touched on the fact that Australian federal and state environmental laws will have to be overturned.
Now the Minerals Council comes out spruiking for this overturning of laws as the first step in the toxic chain of events to bring the toxic nuclear chain to Australia
Review emissions target, nuclear ban: Minerals Council The Minerals Council of Australia has called for a review of the ban on nuclear power and warned that Australia’s post-2020 emission-reduction target cannot be properly formulated without extensive economic modelling… (registered readers only)
Most nations supported UN motion to ban nuclear weapons. What about Australia?
Deadly quiet in Australia about this important international Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). We were all too busy celebrating ANZAC Day?
Austria, backed by 159 nations, calls for ban on nuclear weapons UNITED NATIONS | BY LOUIS CHARBONNEAU (Reuters) 28 Apr 15 – Austria on Tuesday called for banning nuclear weapons because of their catastrophic humanitarian effects, an initiative it said now has the backing of 159 countries.
Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz was speaking at the five-year review conference of the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“The only way to guarantee that nuclear weapons will never be used again is through their total elimination,” Kurz told the 191 parties to the treaty, the world’s benchmark arms control accord. “All states share the responsibility to prevent the use of nuclear weapons.”
Diplomats from the 159 countries supporting the ban, presented ahead of the 70th anniversary of the U.S. atom bombs dropped on Japan, said the initiative was modelled on successful campaigns to ban land mines and other weapons and could take years to move forward.
The initiative has virtually no support among NPT nuclear weapons states and veto-wielding Security Council members – the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China – or the countries of NATO, an alliance that provides a kind of “nuclear umbrella” security guarantee for its members.
But most of the 193 U.N. members back it.
The five permanent Security Council members signed the NPT as nuclear weapons states, although the pact calls on them to negotiate the reduction and eventual elimination of their arms caches. Non-nuclear states complain that there have been too few steps toward nuclear disarmament.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Monday demanded countries possessing nuclear weapons scrap any plans to modernize their arsenals.
Four other states presumed to have nuclear weapons – Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea – are not listed as supporters of the initiative…….http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/04/28/uk-nuclear-un-austria-idUKKBN0NJ2IE20150428
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Threatened by Wildfires
Forest fires heading for Chernobyl nuclear plant – Ukraine Interior Ministry, Rt.com April 29, 2015 The Ukrainian National Guard has been put on high alert due to worsening forest fires around the crippled Chernobyl nuclear power plant, according to Ukraine Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.
“The forest fire situation around the Chernobyl power plant has worsened,” a statement on Avakov’s Facebook page says.
“The forest fire is heading in the direction of Chernobyl’s installations. Treetop flames and strong gusts of wind have created a real danger of the fire spreading to an area within 20 kilometers of the power plant. There are about 400 hectares [988 acres] of forests in the endangered area.”
Police and National Guard units are on high alert. Ukraine’s Prime Minister personally went to the affected area to oversee the firefighting. He says the situation is under control, “but this is the biggest fire since 1992.”
However, in comments to Russia’s Moscow Speaks radio, a representative of Greenpeace Russia said that the situation is much worse: “A very large, catastrophic forest fire is taking place in a 30-km zone around the Chernobyl power plant. We estimate the real area of the fire to be 10,000 hectares; this is based on satellite images. This hasn’t been officially acknowledged yet.”
The potential danger in this fire comes from the radioactive contaminants the burning plants have absorbed, ecologist Christopher Busby told RT. “Some of the materials that were contaminating that area would ahve been incorporated into the woods. In other words, they land on the ground in 1986 and they get absorbed into the trees and all the biosphere. And when it burns, they just become re-suspended. It’s like Chernobyl all over again. All of that material that fell on the ground will now be burned up into the air and will become available for people to breathe.”Christopher Busby is the scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risks………http://rt.com/news/253897-chernobyl-fires-rage-ukraine/
France’s Nuclear Regulator gives generation IV reactors a poor report
The IRSN report reviewed six of the most promising generation IV reactor designs: sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFR); very high-temperature reactors (VHTR); gas-cooled fast reactors (GFR); lead-cooled fast reactors (LFR); molten salt reactors (MSR); and SuperCritical water reactors (SCWR).
The report amounts to a big rebuke for generation IV reactors, the first significant criticism of a nuclear dream that has been hailed as the key to solving energy and climate change challenges.
Future Of Nuclear Industry Takes Yet Another Hit http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Future-Of-Nuclear-Industry-Takes-Yet-Another-Hit.html By Charles Kennedy, 28 April 2015
Despite the rough patch that the nuclear industry has experienced in recent years, its future remains bright, the industry insists. That is because the next generation of nuclear reactors will provide significant safety and economic benefits over current reactors.
But what if the new designs are actually not all that much better than the current fleet?
That is the provocative conclusion that France’s nuclear watchdog came to in a new report. Continue reading
USA’s largest electricity quietly getting out of nuclear power
Nuclear renaissance ebbs at largest public utility by Blake Farmer, Market Place, Monday, April 27, 2015 The nation’s largest public utility is quietly scaling back expansion plans for nuclear power. Just eight years ago, the Tennessee Valley Authority was leading a nuclear renaissance, with plans to restart work on a handful of mothballed reactors. But splitting atoms to make electricity has become less attractive in the last few years.
The energy sector’s appetite for nuclear power has always ebbed and flowed. The plants are attractive because they create so much power in one place, but they’re also highly regulated by the federal government. They take many years to build and almost always cost more than anyone predicts.
And now there’s less demand for power.
“At least in the cases that we looked at, the need for a large base-load plant really doesn’t show up over time,” TVA vice president Joe Hoagland says of the utility’s new Integrated Resource Plan.
The new power predictions mean TVA will only finish Watts Bar Unit II, slated for completion later this year, after delays that span decades and cost overruns in the billions of dollars. Hoagland says demand just hasn’t picked up since the recession, and not just because big industrial customers went out of business—though they did. Consumers are more energy conscious, he says.
“The most obvious example of that would be the shift from incandescent lights to compact fluorescents,” Hoagland says.
Compounding the economic shift is the abundance of natural gas…….http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/nuclear-renaissance-ebbs-largest-public-utility
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 