South Australia’s Pro Nuclear Royal Commission to visit Fukushima and elsewhere
Nuclear Royal Commission to visit Fukushima disaster area, Adelaide Now PAUL STARICK CHIEF REPORTER THE ADVERTISER MAY 17, 2015 FORMER governor Kevin Scarce will inspect the Fukushima region, which was ravaged by a nuclear power plant accident, as part of the Royal Commission he is leading.
His three-person delegation next week will study the failed processes which resulted in a significant amount of radioactive waste being released into the atmosphere at the Daiichi Nuclear Plant in March, 2011.
They expect to go inside the 30km nuclear disaster exclusion zone, from which more than 150,000 people were ordered to evacuate as a result of the accident, caused by coolant loss following a tsunami.
“We’ll be looking at technologies in Japan and we’ll also be looking to talk to people who are against the nuclear fuel cycle,” Rear Admiral Scarce said.
The fact-finding mission is part of a global study tour of more than a fortnight, which also includes Taiwan, Finland, Austria, France and the United Kingdom……..
The delegation also will visit the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations agency which promotes the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear technologies……..
he said SA needed to examine future economic opportunities as car and component manufacturing closes or declines……
Rear Admiral Scarce has completed community meetings across the state in venues including Mount Gambier, Port Augusta, Berri, Coober Pedy, Maralinga, Oak Valley and Umuwa on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands.
The Royal Commission’s community meetings this week will be held at UniSA’s Mawson Lakes campus tomorrow, Flinders University’s Tonsley Park campus on Wednesday and Adelaide University’s Bonython Hall on Friday. See www.nuclearrc.sa.gov.au for details. http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/nuclear-royal-commission-to-visit-fukushima-disaster-area/story-fnpp66pk-1227358258362
New South Wales govt looking tor national nuclear waste dump for its Hunters Hill radioactive trash
A National Radioactive Waste Management Facility planned by the Federal Government? – ConspiracyOz http://conspiracyoz.com/2015/05/17/a-national-radioactive-waste-management-facility-planned-by-the-federal-government-conspiracyoz/
Environment agency orders Hunters Hill clean up Kirsty Needham www.smh.com.au May 17, 2015 The Baird government has been ordered by the Environment Protection Authority to clean up homes in Hunters Hill contaminated by a uranium smelter 100 years ago, after years of stalling. Plans to transfer contaminated waste from Nelson Parade in Hunters Hill to a Kemps Creek landfill have plagued successive state governments. Western Sydney residents rejected becoming a “dumping ground” for the radioactive waste, while Hunters Hill residents complained the contaminated soil had to be removed from the residential street.
Former Treasurer Andrew Constance put the clean-up on hold last February. But the Environment Protection Authority has issued a management order to Government Property NSW, which owns three of the contaminated houses, and has been tasked with carrying out the remediation of six properties in Nelson Parade. The EPA said the land was significantly contaminated with arsenic, lead and coal tar pitch which exceeded safety levels for residential land. Government Property NSW hadn’t met the remediation plans approved by the EPA in 2007 and 2013, the EPA said. It has been ordered to lodge a revised clean-up plan, confirm it has engaged a remediation contractor, and give monthly progress reports to the EPA.
A spokesperson for Government Property NSW said the agency had complied with the EPA management order and provided the details. “The details of the Project Plan will soon be published by the Department of Planning & Environment,” he said. “No restricted solid waste will be transferred from Hunters Hill to Kemps Creek while other alternatives are pursued. A national radioactive waste management facility planned by the federal government still remains the preferred option, the location of which is still to be determined.” A decision on where to send the waste has been delegated to the Planning Assessment Commission, which is expected to hold a public meeting.
Why Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne want Bjørn Lomborg’s Consensus Centre
Why the Abbott government wants Bjørn Lomborg’s Consensus Centre, The Saturday Paper , 16 May 15 MIKE SECCOMBECovert negotiations, whispered announcements and an awkward about-face reveal a political agenda behind reaching consensus. Mazzarol, Winthrop professor in the business school of the University of Western Australia, is reciting the long list of hoops a proponent must jump through to gain approval for a research centre at the university.
“Normally they have to demonstrate they will contribute to research output of the university and the reputation of the university,” he says. “They must have at least six full-time equivalent academic staff engaged in research at the university, a viable plan for the growth of the centre, the capacity to be self-sustaining. They must have an academic and a business plan, a clear indication of the resources, facilities, funding, negotiated targets for research, training, publication volume, output quality and how that will all be measured.”
He continues, citing the criteria listed on the UWA website: “It must also have the approval of the academic council, normally has to have an interdisciplinary role, and to have demonstrated consultation with other parts of the faculty that might be involved.”
The list of requirements and processes is detailed, but Mazzarol’s point is simple. “This one didn’t go through any of those steps.”
He is referring to an entity proposed by Danish climate change contrarian Bjørn Lomborg, ironically named the Australia Consensus Centre (ACC), whose establishment was secretively negotiated over six months, quietly revealed six weeks ago, and then abandoned after an ugly collision between academe and politics. Continue reading
USA’s anti nuclear nun to be freed from prison
Anti-nuclear activist nun Megan Rice to be freed from prisonConvictions for the 85-year-old Catholic nun and two fellow activists who vandalized a uranium facility were overturned, Aljazeera May 16, 2015 A federal appeals court has ordered the immediate release of an 85-year-old nun and two fellow Catholic anti-nuclear proliferation activists who vandalized a uranium storage bunker, their attorney said Friday.
The order came a week after the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati overturned the 2013 sabotage convictions of Sister Megan Rice, 66-year-old Michael Walli, and 59-year-old Greg Boertje-Obed, and ordered resentencing on their remaining conviction for injuring government property. The activists have spent two years in prison, and the court said they likely already have served more time than they will receive for the lesser charge.
On Thursday, their attorneys petitioned the court for an emergency release, saying that resentencing would take weeks if normal court procedures were followed. Prosecutors on Friday afternoon responded that they would not oppose the release, if certain conditions were met………..http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/5/16/megan-rice-anti-nuclear-nun-activist-to-be-freed.html
Senator Bob Day wants nuclear submarines built in South Australia
9 February 2015 Family First Senator Bob Day today welcomed the South Australian Government’s move for a Royal Commission into the nuclear industry, saying the decision has enhanced prospects for submarines to be built in South Australia….
“On nuclear-powered subs, since 1 July in Federal Parliament I’ve been urging the Senate to follow the example of the late Norm Foster, the former Labor MP who had the courage to cross the floor to support uranium mining at Olympic Dam. Now the Government is going a step further to investigate how the nuclear industry would benefit South Australia.”
“This opens the door to nuclear submarines. I’ve been an advocate for nuclear submarines for many years, and the former Defence Minister welcomed my ‘opening the nuclear submarines debate’ during Question Time late last year [video]. One of the major obstacles to Australia considering nuclear submarines has been the absence of a domestic nuclear industry.”……
Canada’s Paris climate pledge – unlikely to really reduce emissions much
Australia is yet to reveal its post-2020 emissions plans with the Abbott government expect to reveal its goals next month.
Paris 2015: Canada aims to cut emissions by 30 per cent by 2030, SMH May 16, 2015 Josh Wingrove Canada pledged to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by about a third by 2030 in a move quickly dismissed by environmentalists and energy analysts as lacking detail and unrealistic without major policy changes. Continue reading
Bjorn Lomborg’s Climate Change Agenda
Why the Abbott government wants Bjørn Lomborg’s Consensus Centre, The Saturday Paper , 16 May 15 “…….Lomborg’s agenda
Bjørn Lomborg is not a climate change denier. He accepts the overwhelming scientific consensus that it is happening and that human activity is responsible. His argument is that there are other more pressing issues facing humanity. And this is what makes him useful to the political right.
Simple denialism is not politically tenable anymore. But Lomborg provides cover for those reluctant to take strong action to limit the emission of greenhouse gases, by suggesting we should work on other things first, and that stronger action on climate change might actually impede those other endeavours.
His method is to apply economic cost-benefit analysis to these various problems, to try to determine priorities. His results tend to give comfort to conservatives in general and climate change do-nothing-ists in particular.
By his formulation, for example, freer global trade returns a benefit of $2011 for every dollar spent, making it 45 times more worthwhile than reducing child malnutrition. Cutting people’s salt intake is deemed roughly 10 times as financially beneficial as spending more on health for the world’s 2.5 billion poorest people. It’s a sort of grand cost-benefit theory of everything.
So when Tony Abbott says coal is good for humanity, it is defensible on Lomborg numbers, which hold that bringing electricity to everyone in the world returns $5 for every dollar spent, while limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees returns a benefit of less than $1.
To say his methods are unorthodox and controversial is to be very understated indeed. Lomborg himself is neither a climate scientist nor an economist. His qualifications are in political science. Rather than rely on primary research, his theories are based on meta-analysis – that is, the harvesting of data produced by others, which is then weighted and modelled to determine relative values.
This has led to numerous complaints from other academics that their work has been either misinterpreted or misrepresented. The detail is too extensive and arcane to go into – suffice to say, books have been written and formal complaints made in his native Denmark and elsewhere.
His original Copenhagen Consensus Centre was funded by a conservative government, then defunded by a successor progressive government. After he set up in the United States, his critics complained that he took funds from right-wing climate change denialist organisations……https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2015/05/16/why-the-abbott-government-wants-bjorn-lomborgs-consenus-centre
1 This month
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