South Australian govt has already ruled out nuclear power
from “Adelaide Arclight”, 25 Nov 15 , There is barely a mention of nuclear power in the 53 page Panel’s final report from the South Australia Low Carbon Economy Experts Panel. You have to hunt to find:
on page 22:
“In the high-level analysis for South Australia undertaken for the Panel, the CCS and nuclear scenarios were not considered, and all data was derived from the 100% renewable scenario.”
“Given South Australia’s abundance of wind and high solar rating (DNI), South Australia has the capacity to move to 100% renewable energy more quickly than other States and has already made significant progress in decarbonising its electricity supply utilising these advantages.”
On page 24 it states:
“The modelling for the Panel did not include consideration of whether the nuclear and carbon capture and storage scenarios modelled at the national level are a cost-effective means to move to low carbon electricity for South Australia. The Deep Decarbonisation Pathways modelling found that nuclear power stations generally need to be of a certain size to be cost effective and thus precluded their consideration for use in smaller States such as South Australia.”
Can we take it from this that the nuclear scenario is already off the table entirely? The Premier’s and Minister Hunter’s joint press release is vague talking about “zero net emissions” and “low carbon economy”, but in context their endorsement of the report would seem to undercut any push for nuclear energy, leaving the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission with just an expansion of uranium mining and nuclear waste dumps to consider.
Given that the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission is in progress and that one of the report’s authors gave evidence at a public hearing, it can hardly be an oversight that nuclear was not considered.
Renewable energy is the star – throughout the report:
“…….South Australia can greatly expand its renewable energy generation, to the
point where on balance over the year all of the State’s electricity comes from renewables and a significant amount is exported interstate. According to the Panel’s preliminary analysis, this could occur relatively quickly. South Australia can therefore set an indicative goal of 100% renewable electricity with the timeframe to be decided. The timeframe will depend on expansion of interconnectors, costs of renewables and extent of support for renewable energy federally. The share of renewables in South Australia is expected to be double that in the National Electricity Market at any point in time up to 100%. Action….”
SOUTH AUSTRALIA’S LOW CARBON ECONOMY EXPERTS PANEL Findings and recommendations
2015 http://www.environment.sa.gov.au/Science/Science_research/climate-change/climate-change-initiatives-in-south-australia/sa-low-carbon-economy-experts-panel November 2015 With an economy in transition, changes in the national and international policy environment, and key strengths in renewable energy, South Australia has the opportunity to transition to a low carbon economy.
To maximise this opportunity, the South Australian Government appointed a panel of experts to provide independent advice about climate change targets and objectives for the State to 2050. The Panel was also asked to recommend key strategies to meet these objectives and ensure that the SA economy is best placed to adjust to a carbon constrained future. The Panel members were Dr John Hewson, Anna Skarbek and Frank Jotzo.
The Panel’s final report was released on 25 November 2015. The Panel found that it is feasible for South Australia to achieve a target of net zero emissions by 2050 and that a commitment to this target will position South Australia well in a low carbon world.
Australian Youth Climate Coalition Welcomes SA Government Commitment to Carbon Pollution Free SA by 2050, Calls for 100% Renewable Power
The Australian Youth Climate Coalition has welcomed the South Australian Government’s commitment to a zero emissions South Australia by 2050 made today following the release of the recommendations of the South Australian Low Carbon Economy Expert Panel. The AYCC is urging the SA Government to adopt the panel’s recommendation of powering SA with 100% renewable.
“It’s great to see Premier Weatherill stepping up and committing South Australia to being carbon pollution free by 2050” Dan Spencer, South Australian campaigner with the AYCC said.
“South Australia has led the way with renewable energy and we now have the opportunity to plan a just transition to 100% renewable energy and build a cleaner, fairer, job rich South Australia” Mr Spencer said.
“The government’s expert panel has recommended South Australia transition to 100% renewable energy, we now want to see Jay Weatherill take this opportunity and commit to powering SA with renewables” Mr Spencer said.
The AYCC says the SA Government’s announcement should put the pressure on Prime Minister Turnbull to do more.
“We can’t forget how important acting on global warming is and the Prime Minister needs to stop letting us down” Mr Spencer said.
“South Australia is incredibly vulnerable to the impacts of increasing heatwaves and bushfires which is why the State Government stepping up is critical, now Prime Minister Turnbull needs to act” Mr Spencer said.
“This announcement comes just days before world leaders meet in Paris to discuss action on climate change and the community will be out in force this weekend calling for stronger action. We welcome the Premier’s announcement, it’s time for the Prime Minister to up his game” Mr Spencer said.
South Australia to aim for zero emissions by 2050
Premier Jay Weatherill Minister Ian Hunter Minister for Climate Change , 24 November, 2015
South Australia will adopt a target of zero net emissions by 2050, as recommended in a report by the Low Carbon Economy Expert Panel released today. The Panel consisting of John Hewson, Anna Skarbek of ClimateWorks and Frank Jotzo of the Australian National University recommends that South Australia:
SIGNALS the transition to a zero net emissions economy by 2050
SUPPORTS the community and industry to transition to a zero net emissions economy
IMPLEMENTS the transition by taking action now
PremierJay Weatherill said being the first to signal this intention to Australian and overseas investors will give South Australia a competitive advantage. “As we head towards the Paris Climate Change Conference, South Australia has an opportunity to place itself at the forefront as a leader in transitioning to a low carbon economy,” Mr Weatherill said. “The Expert Panel’s report is a roadmap for our State to reduce emissions in a way that supports job growth in new and emerging green technologies. “
One example is the potential for South Australia to be a low carbon electricity powerhouse and a net exporter of renewable energy. “The state’s abundant renewable electricity combined with its rich resource base and existing manufacturing expertise mean that the state could be a natural base for energy intensive mining and manufacturing industries in a low carbon world.”
Minister for Climate Change Ian Hunter said the Expert Panel also identified the state’s strengths in education and the potential for these to be applied to developing the skills and workforce for a carbon constrained future. “This means providing assistance for workers moving from industries in decline into new opportunities is critical as is support for communities affected by rapid change,” Mr Hunter said.
“There are also significant innovative market opportunities for energy storage solutions from the state’s high penetration of solar PV, with the potential to attract and develop technology suppliers and expertise in the state.” Minister Hunter said the Government would not seek to implement a State based emissions trading scheme – favouring a national scheme
“Consensus for global action on climate change should be a trigger for the Federal Government to revisit the important issue of a nationwide ETS,” Mr Hunter said. “We believe this is the most practical approach to this question and will not seek to implement an ETS at the State level.” Further details of South Australia’s efforts to tackle climate change, including responses to the other recommendations, will be detailed in the soon to be released new Climate Change Strategy for the State. The South Australian Low Carbon Experts Panel report is available at www.environment.sa.gov.au
Double jeopardy: Australian uranium deals are deficient and dangerous
Dave Sweeney, 25 Nov 15 The federal government has failed to serve Australia’s national interest or observe responsible nuclear policy by finalising controversial uranium supply deals with both India and the United Arab Emirates, the Australian Conservation Foundation said today.
News of the signed agreements flies in the face of a recent government-controlled parliamentary committee report on the proposed Indian deal which recommended Australia not supply uranium to India at this time or on these terms.
The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCOT) said a series of practical steps were urgently needed to address safety, security and legal uncertainty as a pre-condition to uranium sales to India.
“Serious and unresolved concerns have been ignored,” said ACF campaigner Dave Sweeney.
“By putting the promise of profit for uranium companies ahead of the safety of the wider community the government has prioritised nuclear interests over the national interest.
“The Foreign Minister has called the India deal ‘an important milestone’ when it is in fact a millstone and a retreat from responsibility.
“Australian uranium directly fuelled Fukushima. To fail to learn from this or apply increased scrutiny and rigour to uranium and nuclear deals is indefensible and derelict.
“These two deals are bad deals. This risky and radioactive trade lacks social license and will continue to be actively contested.”
Senator Scott Ludlam in Parliament, on the sale of uranium to India
“……One of the most striking differences between the uranium market and those other commodity markets which Australians might be more familiar with and the one which the industry is most determined to deny is the link with weapons of mass destruction. In September this year this parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Treaties handed down a unanimous report on the proposed nuclear cooperation agreement with India…..
The unanimous recommendations, in essence, say that there should not be uranium sales to India by Australia at this time under the terms of the current agreement. They made those recommendations on the advice of, among others, very senior former Australian officials from within the nonproliferation world who cautioned that the nuclear cooperation agreement:
… has a number of loopholes which mean that under the terms of the NCA India could use our uranium in the production of material that could end up in bombs……..
India is engaged in an active nuclear weapons arms race with its neighbour Pakistan, and just under one and half billion people live in these two countries.
Australia seems determined to circumvent and undermine the only disarmament and nonproliferation framework that the world has, just in order to open up another market for the desperate uranium sector…… Far away, on the other side of the world, in United Nations meetings in Geneva and New York, which our government assumes will never filter back to Australia, we are quietly sabotaging the first hopeful signs in a long while of global resolve in this area. The UN General Assembly’s First Committee recently voted overwhelmingly in favour of an Austrian sponsored resolution to fill the legal gap for the staged prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons. This resolution was based on the careful study of the unthinkable humanitarian consequences of the use of these weapons. As a result, early in 2016, serious negotiations will get underway in Geneva to scope the elements of a global treaty banning these weapons. Why did Australia vote against this initiative? How many people in this country are even aware that that is what Australia’s diplomats were instructed to do by the Turnbull government?……
The third issue that the miners would probably prefer that we did not point out is that their industry, even at the primary end, at the mining end, is in very deep trouble not just because of the catastrophe that overwhelmed Japan’s Pacific coast on 3/11 but because peak nuclear was in the year 2002. Europe is on its way out. Japan is out. France is trying to work out how to drawn down and not have to replace the nuclear reactors it built in such a rush in the 1970s and 1980s. Germany is getting out. Italy has already got out. These are the things the uranium miners would probably prefer we did not talk about. The Beverley uranium mine is over. The Honeymoon mine in South Australia is over as well. The Roxby Downs expansion is cancelled. The Ranger 3 Deeps proposed expansion in Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory, which I had the good fortune to visit about this time last week, is cancelled. The Jabiluka deposit will never be mined. The Koongarra deposit has been reincorporated into Kakadu National Park. Colleagues, are you seeing a pattern here because I am? This is an industry that is on its last legs and it is just as well.
Hosting nuclear waste – a liability in the long run, and a dangerous one
Wasting Australia’s future, Green Left , November 20, 2015 By Jim Green“………Profits from nuclear waste?
It is no secret that the driving force behind the South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission is the idea that the state could make billions from storing or disposing of high-level nuclear waste from power reactors around the world.
Accepting nuclear waste might be profitable. Or it might not. Most likely, it would be profitable in the short-term and a liability in the long-term.
Proponents are talking up the billions that might be made by making Australia the world’s nuclear waste dump, but they have said little about costs. Since the volume of waste would presumably be large, the cost of a deep underground repository for high-level nuclear waste would likely be in the tens of billions of dollars. Plans for a high-level waste repository in Japan may be comparable: the estimated cost is ¥3500 billion (A$40.8 billion).
The US wasted $10 billion on the plan for a deep geological repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada before abandoning the project. In 2008 the US Department of Energy estimated that the cost of construction and operation of Yucca Mountain over a 150 year period would be US$96 billion (A$135 billion).
The waste would need to be monitored and problems addressed for millennia: it takes about 300,000 years for the radioactivity of spent nuclear fuel to fall to that of the original uranium ore. The annual cost of monitoring waste might be modest; the costs over millennia would be anything but.
Explosion in deep underground repository
The idea that nuclear waste can be safely disposed of in a deep underground repository has been shot to pieces by an explosion in the world’s only deep underground repository for nuclear waste: the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in the US state of New Mexico. Continue reading
Petition: No Nuclear Waste On The Darling Downs
No Nuclear Waste On The Darling DownsJosh Leuenberger
Hon Bruce Scott MP
Brent Finlay – President of the National Farmers Federation
and 2 others
Graeme Scheu – Mayor of Goondiwindi Regional Council
Dr Steven Miles – Minister for Environment and Heritage Protection
No Nuclear Waste On The Darling Downs
Queensland community meetings of indigenous and non indigenous people discuss nuclear dump plan
AUDIO: Community meetings are being held in response to proposals of a nuclear waste dump http://www.nirs.org.au/NEWS/Community-meetings-are-being-held-in-response-to-proposals-of-a-nuclear-waste-dump on November 23, 2015 Cassandra Tim Journalist
Queensland – The first of four to six planned community meetings has been held in response to Oman Ama being named as one of six potential sites to become a nuclear waste dump.
The federal government is under fire from several camps about its plans to bury low levels of radioactive waste and to store higher level waste above ground in sheds in a number of proposed sites across the country.
The forum in Inglewood attracted up to 200 local residents, a lobby group consisting of several councils and alongside them was Co-Chair of the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance, Adam Sharah.
Mr Sharah says he welcomes the consultation process to engage the interests of local First Nations people and Land Councils.
He says local non-Indigenous residents used the event to voice their concern over the region potentially housing nuclear waste.
There are three nominated locations to be Australia’s first nuclear waste dump in South Australia and one each in New South Wales, the Northern Territory and Queensland.
Civil Contractors Federation SA want to save town Leigh Creek by hosting nuclear dump
Call to store nuclear waste at Leigh Creek http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/11/24/10/29/call-to-store-nuclear-waste-at-leigh-creek A nuclear waste dump should be built at Leigh Creek in the South Australian outback before it becomes a ghost town, the state’s peak civil construction body says.The federal government has short-listed six sites – two on the Eyre Peninsula and another in SA’s mid-north – for Australia’s first permanent nuclear waste dump for low-level and intermediate domestic waste.
The Civil Contractors Federation SA says putting a nuclear waste dump near Leigh Creek would be a “no brainer” and guarantee its survival after Alinta Energy last week shut down the town’s coal mine, shedding about 200 workers.
Chief executive Phil Sutherland says the facility could also be used to store and convert other industrial waste into energy and fuel.
The proposal bypasses the commonwealth in favour of the state government, which is holding a Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission.
“All the SA government needs to do is simply show some mettle and bite the bullet to give Leigh Creek a purpose before the township transitions into a ghost town,” Mr Sutherland said.
The “Nuclear Village” is back in charge in Japan, as if it had never left
In Japan the propaganda warfare took a more sinister turn blaming the victims for their predicament. Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun that is closely connected to Japan’s ruling elite has run a series of articles on “radiophobia”, attributing health complaints of the affected to psychological and emotional stress.
The long standing and corrupt practice of “amakudari” -“descent from heaven” which led to the capture of regulators by the regulated in form of career revolving doors has made any meaningful reform a pipe dream.
The Fukushima disease: Creation of virtual world based on radioactive reality, Rt.com 24 Nov 15 Derek Monroe “…………”We are in a difficult position that we made ourselves reliable on nuclear energy first and then were hurt by it,” said a local Minamisoma city employee who asked to remain anonymous as he was not authorized to talk to the media. “Many people here had good jobs and good lives and when the nuclear accident happened this came to a complete halt,” he said. The city’s website now is very optimistic in its proclamation of moving forward without nuclear power, despite the central government’s move to the contrary. The government in Tokyo has decided what is best for the citizens of Minamisoma and all of Japan.
Furthermore, nuclear power is back in charge as if it never left. Nationalist Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s administration is another one anointed by “kempatsu mura” – “the nuclear village”, power and money complex that has been a steady fixture in the history of modern Japan. Continue reading
Nuclear radioactive pollution threatens groundwater deep underground
Why the President Must Ban Grand Canyon Uranium Mining , Mark Udall 
Huffington Post, 24 Nov 15, [Good maps] “…….The mining industry’s statement counts on readers to be ignorant of the fact that federal and state agencies do not require wells to measure water pollution more than a thousand feet underground, where uranium mining threatens aquifers that feed springs deep within the Grand Canyon. No monitoring means contamination is undetected: out of sight, out of mind.Vested interests stop universities from divesting in fossil fuels
This places them behind faith organisations, not for profits, local councils, banks, superannuation funds and a host of others moving capital away from fossil fuels.
Why is this?
Strong links to the mining sector have put universities in a difficult position.
They are conflicted between climate concerns and the income they derive from vested interests with big mining companies.
While many Australian universities engage in the climate change debate, their commitment to divestment has, at best, been minimal. Continue reading
Adani misled tribunal – says traditional land owners
Traditional land owner tells court Adani misled tribunal over mine’s benefits
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/23/traditional-land-owner-tells-court-adani-misled-tribunal-over-mines-benefits
” … Burragubba’s barrister, David Yarrow, told a court hearing in Brisbane on Monday that the tribunal’s decision was invalid because it had been misled by Adani as to the economic benefits of the mine in Queensland’s Galilee basin. Yarrow said testimony by the company’s own expert in a separate land court case challenging the mine, including its likely creation of 1,200 jobs, differed significantly from the case Adani put to the tribunal, which referred to 7,000 jobs.
He said Adani was obliged to produce information to the tribunal that was not misleading, but that the company “by choosing one expert over another, where there is a material difference between those expert reports, was relevantly misleading”. … ”
Traditional owners appeal against native title process for Adani’s Carmichael mine http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-23/wangan-jagalingou-native-title-carmichael-mine-adani/6962964 ” … Spokesperson Adrian Burragubba said Adani dishonestly and knowingly relied on inaccurate information on the economic and employment benefits of their project. “Adani justified its
mine in the Native Title Tribunal with false claims that it will create 7,000 jobs and generate huge economic benefits,”
Mr Burragubba said. “We say today that these claims mislead the Tribunal and amount to fraud.” … David Yarrow, a lawyer for Mr Burragubba, told the court that Adani had failed to provide the Native Title Tribunal with certain material concerning the economic impact of the coal mine. … “
Indigenous Australians Western Australian group at Paris UN climate talks
Rising sea levels and global temperatures could impact on Kimberley Aboriginal groups, who potentially face hotter and more frequent bushfires, affecting traditionally significant animal and plant life.
WA group represents Indigenous Australia at UN climate change conference http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-24/wa-groups-heads-to-climate-change-conference/6971072 By Natalie Jones A group of leaders from Northern WA is heading to the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP21) in Paris to be the voice of Indigenous Australia.
The Kimberley Land Council (KLC) group of five will be led by KLC chairman Anthony Watson, who is also the Australian delegate to the Indigenous People’s Forum on Climate Change.
“I’ll be with the Pacific Islanders. They have a lot of concerns about their islands going underwater and they’ll be raising their concerns and I’ll be supporting them in whatever way I can,” Mr Watson said. Continue reading
Antinuclear 