USA’s Mission Innovation” unwise to fund Bill Gates’ nuclear dream
We cannot trust billionaire philanthropists to lead the way on climate action, Online Opinion, By Noel Wauchope , 16 December 2015 “…….At the opening of the Paris Climate Summit (COP21), with the blessing of the White House, Bill Gates announced the Breakthrough Energy Coalition (BEA), with an ambitious goal to deal with climate change. 24 billionaire philanthropists have joined in the BEA. They include Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos.
Simultaneously 19 governments, including the United States, China and India, announce “Mission Innovation”, a project that will involve tax-payer money to explore and invent new ways to develop low carbon energy.
Not surprisingly, the two organisations will work in tandem. The billionaire philanthropists plan a public-private partnership between governments, research institutions, and investors that will focus on new energy methods especially for developing countries……
For a start, this twin project is directed at researching new forms of low carbon energy. A lot of money therefore is to go into trying out new plans, that exist at best, only in blueprint form. Yet already there are in operation large scale and small scale renewable energy projects that could be deployed. In particular, small scale solar energy is very well suited to being deployed in rural India, Africa, and other developing nations, as well as in Australia and other developed nations. It is happening now. Projects such as Barefoot Power have operated for years now, bringing affordable solar power to millions of rural poor in Africa, Asia Pacific, India and the Americas.
The energy need now for poor countries is deployment of existing technologies, not years of research and testing of so far non-existent ones………
- The one and only University that has joined BEA is the University of California, which runs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, well known for its nuclear research.
- Bill Gates is co-founder and current Chairman of the innovative nuclear energy company TerraPower Gates has a long term history of enthusiasm for small nuclear power reactors. Since the Fukushima nuclear disaster, USA’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission has tightened the rules for new reactors. Fortunately for Mr Gates, China is less fussy about this, so Gates has been able to do a deal with the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). TerraPower and CNNC will build the first small 600 MW unit in China, and later deploy these nuclear reactors globally.
I don’t doubt that Bill Gates is sincere in his goal of reducing greenhouse gases. It’s just that I have reservations about Small Nuclear Reactors having any impact on global warming.
If Small Nuclear Reactors did in fact reduce greenhouse gases, the world would need thousands of them to be up and running quickly, but they’re still at the planning stage. They’re supposed to be much safer than conventional nuclear reactors, but still produce radioactive wastes, and are targets for terrorism. Each and every one of them would need 24 hour guarding. It gets expensive………
The term selected “Breakthrough Energy Initiative” gives the game away. For many years now, America’s Breakthrough Institute has lobbied and publicised “new nuclear” as the solution for climate change. The Breakthrough Institute has many well-meaning and enthusiastic environmentalists as members. Its philosophy, expressed in “The Ecomodernist Manifesto” is full of beautiful motherhood statements about climate and environment, and only a few paragraphs about new nuclear technology.
This Manifesto, by the way, appears as a Submission to the South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission.
The effect of the Breakthrough Institute, over the years, has been to slow down action on reducing the use of fossil fuels. It has also aimed to discredit renewable energy……..http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=17899
Lithgow concerned about transport of radioactive trash
Calls for clarity over nuclear waste transportation plans http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-15/lithgow-councillor-concerned-about-nuclear-dump-proposal/7027780
The Federal Government is being urged to provide more details about the planned route for a proposed nuclear waste dump in the central west. The government is considering housing the waste at Sallys Flat near Bathurst and federal MP John Cobb has said regional roads would be upgraded to support heavy vehicle movements.
But Lithgow City Councillor Wayne McAndrew says it is highly likely the material will be transported through Lithgow to get to the site.
He said residents had raised concerns about the potential health impacts if a truck was involved in an accident.
“It’s not just a matter of the roads, it’s the icy conditions during winter coming down the Mount Victoria pass,” Councillor McAndrew said.
“That’s still a long way off from being resolved, the Victoria pass in relation to new roadworks, so it’s not just an issue of the roads it’s an issue of our long winter months and some of the dangers that poses for us.”
Sallys Flat near Hill End is one of the six sites shortlisted by the Federal Government.
Councillor McAndrew says there is little information about the planned route for transporting the waste.
Store nuclear waste at Lucas Heights -no need to rush to outback site
Alice Springs public meeting told Feds must stop rushing decision on new nuke dump sites http://www.ntnews.com.au/news/centralian-advocate/alice-springs-public-meeting-told-feds-must-stop-rushing-decision-on-new-nuke-dump-sites/news-story/53e8aefa3cd67d076e36c749c2913f7a December 10, 2015 SCIENTISTS, traditional owners, politicians and campaigners spoke to a crowd of almost 100 people at a meeting about a proposed nuclear waste dump to be housed at Hale, 80km from Alice Springs, on Monday night.
Dr Hilary Tyler, from Alice Springs Hospital, used the platform to urge decision-makers to “stop the rush” towards cementing plans for a waste facility, which is currently being chosen from six short-listed sites across the country.
She claimed there was 10-20 years of storage space remaining at the Lucas Heights facility near Sydney, Australia’s only nuclear reactor, rendering the need for a rural site as unnecessary.
She showed the crowd photographs of large barrels being transported by road, carrying a cargo of nuclear waste reportedly brought to Australia by ship at the weekend.
“Transportation should be minimised,” she said.
The site at Hale, the Aridgold date farm, was an unsuitable location for such a dump, she claimed, due to the distance the waste would need to travel, the lack of access for experts in case of any problems, and proximity to underground water aquifers. CSIRO scientist Dr Fiona Walsh said she believed the decisions were being made by people in distant locations with no understanding of the geology of Central Australia.
“We live in one of the most unpredictable environments in the world,” Dr Walsh said.
Labor candidate for Namatjira and councillor Chansey Paech also spoke at the event, and said the decision should be “based on science rather than political expediency”.
A consultation process into the viability of the waste dump is currently underway, with meetings between officials and Aboriginal traditional owners in Santa Teresa to take place next week.
Due to sorry business in Titjikala, the other nearest community to the proposed site, a meeting with traditional owners from this area will take place early next year.
A decision on where the dump will be housed is expected to be made following the federal election in the second half of 2016.
Poor prices, environmental risks make Cameco’s proposed Yeelirrie mine an unwise project
WA conservationists oppose uranium mine, 9 News, 14 Dec 15 The environmental impact of what could be one of Western Australia’s first uranium mines outweighs its “scant” economic benefit, conservationists say.
As the Environment Protection Authority assesses Cameco’s proposed Yeelirrie mine in the state’s northern Goldfields, the Conservation Council of WA has warned the project could wipe out subterranean species, adding the Canadian company may then “warehouse” the product while prices are low.
Cameco conceded in its submission to the EPA that troglofauna habitat would be lost with the excavation of the mine pit, while habitat quality would be reduced in a small area around the pit due to drying…..
Australian Conservation Foundation campaigner Dave Sweeney said there was “scant economic incentive” for the mine while prices were depressed. …………. http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/12/14/15/20/wa-conservationists-oppose-uranium-mine#Mttrt2rFBj7I0tKs.99
Murphy’s Law: Fukushima’s current state as an example
“It is unconscionable to increase the allowable dose for children to 20 millisieverts (mSv). Twenty mSv exposes an adult to a 1 in 500 risk of getting cancer; this dose for children exposes them to a 1 in 200 risk of getting cancer. And if they are exposed to this dose for two years, the risk is 1 in 100. There is no way that this level of exposure can be considered ‘safe’ for children.”
Fukushima Amplifies Murphy’s Law COUNTERPUNCH DECEMBER 14, 2015 by ROBERT HUNZIKER Murphy’s Law has found a permanent home in Fukushima: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”
For instance, only recently, radioactive cesium in tunnels at Fukushima suddenly spiked by more than 4,000 times similar measurements from one year ago. This spooky/huge spike in radiation levels hit 482,000 Becquerels per liter. TEPCO intends to investigate the reason behind the enormous anomalous increase, Radiation Spikes in Fukushima Underground Ducts, NHK World, Dec. 9, 2015. Over the course of a year, 4,000 times anything probably is not good.
Not only that but the barrier constructed at the Fukushima nuclear power plant to hopefully prevent contaminated water from leaking into the ocean is tilting and has developed a crack about 0.3 miles in length along its base. The wall is 0.5 miles long and 98 feet below ground.
An ocean barrier, indeed: “Higher levels of radiation from Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident are showing up in the ocean off the west coast of North America, scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution reported,” Higher Levels of Fukushima Radiation Detected Off West Coast, Statesman Journal, Dec. 3, 2015. Fortunately, so far, the detected levels still remain below U.S. government-established safety limits.
In the meantime, TEPCO battles one of the most perplexing disasters of all-time with an average number of daily workers more than 7,000. The difficulty of procuring workers at the site is beyond imagination. Homeless people are hired off the streets to do the dangerous decontamination work.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics Continue reading
Turnbull’s optimism – a new for of climate denialism
Turnbull advises “great optimism and faith in humanity’s genius” to control global warming in the future, rather than prevent it now.
Optimism Is The New Denialism In A Warming Malcolm Turnbull World, New Matilda By Dr Lissa Johnson on December 15, 2015 The COP21 talks in Paris delivered a compact to lead the world to global catastrophe. Malcolm Turnbull responded with optimism. Dr Lissa Johnson responds with facts.
What do you do as the leader of a nation left behind by a global pro-environmental shift?
At one of the most pivotal climate summits in history, how do you explain the fact that your country has been ranked worst performer among OECD nations in addressing climate change, and third worst overall, with only Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia beneath you?
This during the second half of the critical decade in which to act, “a decisive point in time,” according to French President Francois Hollande.
As your global peers endorse phasing out fossil fuels in favour of renewables, in order to prevent destruction of the earth’s biosphere, your government persists with the mantra, in slightly different words, that coal is good for humanity. Meanwhile you preside over a renewable energy industry that has been decimated by your government’s policies.
While your geographical neighbours, through no emissions of their own, find themselves steadily submerged by rising seas, you reserve your right to continue to emit, and to subsidise fossil fuels.
You refuse to stop your “Pacific brothers and sisters from drowning”, despite having said yourself that climate change poses a “profound moral challenge”.
How do you spin it?
With optimism. Continue reading
Radiation caused deaths in India’s toxic and secretive uranium industry
According to the uranium corporation’s own records, 17 UCIL laborers died in 1994, 14 more in 1995, 19 in 1996 and 21 in 1997; no cause of death was revealed in the records seen by the Center, but critics claim most if not all were radiation-related.
The corporation will not discuss the causes of these deaths. But a spokesman for the Jarkhandi Organization Against Radiation (JOAR), a local group formed in 1998 out of a student lobby for indigenous rights, said it has investigated these cases and that “from what we can see all of them contracted illnesses associated with radiation or exposure to heavy metals.”
India’s nuclear industry pours its wastes into a river of death and disease Scientists say nuclear workers, village residents, and children living near mines and factories are falling ill after persistent exposure to unsafe radiation Center For Public Integrity , By Adrian Levy
December 14, 2015 Jadugoda, Jharkhand, INDIA “………Charting the trail of disease and ill health back to its source, Ghosh’s team learned that the alpha radiation they had recorded came from the mines, mills and fabrication plants of East Singhbhum, a district whose name means the land of the lions, where the state-owned Uranium Corporation of India Ltd is sitting on a mountain of 174,000 tons of raw uranium. The company, based in Jadugoda, a country town 160 miles west of Kolkata, is the sole source of India’s domestically-mined nuclear reactor fuel, a monopoly that has allowed it to be both combative and secretive.
After starting work in 1967 with a single mine, the corporation now controls six underground pits and one opencast operation that stretch across 1,313 hilly acres, extracting an estimated 5,000 tons of uranium ore a day, generating an annual turnover of $123 million. It supplies nine of the reactors that help India produce plutonium for its arsenal of nuclear weapons, and is thus considered vital to India’s security. Continue reading
Nuclear power – fool’s gold as a climate solution
Given the lead-time of about ten to fifteen years for nuclear power plant design, approval and construction, a massive program of new construction would need to begin within the next few years to start to replace the soon-to-be-retiring units.
The latest poster child for nuclear climate change salvation is a fleet of advanced reactors, which — on paper — do provide enticing improvements to the current generation of reactors. At best, however, this technology is several decades from becoming commercially viable, too far into the future to be relevant.
The reality with nuclear power is that it has proven time and again to take longer and cost more to develop than predicted. There is nothing in the new designs nor the performance of the industry today that suggests this trend will end.
Nuclear Power and Climate Change http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gregory-jaczko/nuclear-power-and-climate_b_8806792.html?ir=Australia 15/12/2015 Gregory Jaczko Fmr. US Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman and Commissioner As world leaders convene in Paris in an attempt to prevent a rise in global temperatures, the nuclear industry has — not surprisingly — seized this moment to once again promise the perfect solution to the climate challenge. Having witnessed this industry up close for the last decade and a half, I am concerned that the uniquely perfect promise of safe, clean, predictable, and affordable nuclear power will divert our focus from solutions that will actually work to control greenhouse gas emissions.
As the country operating the most reactors and the place where commercial nuclear technology was first envisaged and developed, the United States is a strong bellwether for the future of the current generation of nuclear power plants. And the future appears limited. In the next fifteen years, an avalanche of nuclear power plant closures will see nuclear power go from about one hundred plants in operation today to just a handful. Nuclear will become a blip in the electricity supply without a meaningful ability to alter the course of the nation’s greenhouse gas emission profile. Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 