Is there REALLY profit in nuclear waste importing industry?
Conservation Council South Australia 18 Mar 16 A high-level nuclear waste dump for SA
Should we do it for the money?
The Nuclear Royal Commission claims some eye-popping revenue figures to take the world’s high-level nuclear waste.
Labor, Liberal unite to support high-level nuclear waste dump in South Australia
Labor, Liberal unite to support high-level nuclear waste dump in South Australia February 16, 2016 Paul Starick and Daniel Wills The Advertiser UNPRECEDENTED political support is being thrown behind South Australia becoming the global storage facility for high-level nuclear waste in return for a $445 billion bonanza.
Forging a historic united front on a decades-old issue of bitter division, Labor Premier Jay Weatherill and Liberal federal Resources and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg are encouraging debate on a Royal Commission proposal, unveiled on Tuesday, for SA to store and dispose of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of spent nuclear fuel and waste…….http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/labor-liberal-unite-to-support-highlevel-nuclear-waste-dump-in-south-australia/news-story/683296ab45e53c73432c66bbe0358e34
Senate tables over 6,000 signatures against Hill End nuclear waste dump
18 Mar 16 NSW Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon today tabled 6,282 signatures calling on the government to drop plans for a nuclear waste dump at Hill End. “Over 6,000 people have signed three petitions saying no to a nuclear waste dump at Hill End,” Senator Rhiannon said.
“The Hill End community has voted at three separate community meetings to unanimously oppose a nuclear waste dump and are strongly supported by their neighbouring towns, local councils and business groups.
“The Minister and the Department keep repeating that the nuclear waste dump won’t be imposed on communities that don’t want it.
“Yet the government has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of public money sending glossy packages promoting the dump to residents in Bathurst and Mudgee, after promising the Hill End community meetings that they had heard the message it wasn’t wanted.
“They’re now following up their promotional package blitz with survey phone calls and face to face visits to Hill End , Bathurst and Mudgee residents fishing for support. “It’s time the Government acknowledges that no one wants nuclear waste at Hill End,” Senator Rhiannon said.
South Australia Nuclear Waste Dump Plan – Future Safety Is Unknown!
A high-level nuclear waste dump for SA Can it be done safely?
New South Wales Parliament passes anti-protest laws
Anti-protest laws giving police greater powers pass NSW parliament http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/mar/16/anti-protest-laws-giving-police-greater-powers-pass-nsw-parliament
Anti-coal seam gas protesters could be jailed for seven years under laws described as a ‘crackdown on democratic rights’ Trespassing anti-coal seam gas advocates face heavier fines and greater jail sentences with tough new anti-protest laws passing through NSW parliament.
With the support of the Shooters and Fishers party and Christian Democrat Fred Nile, the controversial legislation was passed 20-16 in the upper house on Wednesday after minor amendments to the original proposal.
The bill gives police greater powers to search without a warrant, seize items and move protesters on, while fines for illegal entry to mining and CSG sites have increased tenfold from $550 to $5500.
Anti-CSG protesters who interfere with gas sites – including those who chain themselves to machinery – will also be exposed to a maximum jail sentence of seven years.
The Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham, who along with Labor voted against the legislation, condemned the changes as a “jackboot police crackdown on democratic rights”.
The Labor MP Adam Searle also spoke out against the bill’s “sinister” provisions.
“This legislation strikes at the heart of a fundamental aspect of our society – the right to peacefully protest,” he told parliament during hours of fierce debate.
But the premier, Mike Baird, defended the legislation, saying he didn’t believe it was too harsh.
“It’s quite simple, peaceful protests are fine,” Baird said. “Anyone that wants to disrupt a business or ultimately act illegally and puts the lives of themselves and others at risk, well we’ve put these measures in and I think it’s appropriate.”
About 500 protesters shut down a part of Sydney’s CBD to rally against the proposed changes on Tuesday.
A Reachtel poll commissioned by the NSW Nature Conservation Council this week also showed 61.4% of people opposed increasing police powers and fines for protest action.
The NSW Law Society said lawyers were concerned the legislation could seriously interfere with people’s human rights liberties.
Meanwhile, the NSW Unions movement says it’s considering launching a high court challenge against the laws.
The decision to import high level nuclear waste is a forever decision.
A high-level nuclear waste dump for SA: The big questions
Conservation Council South Australia 18 Mar 16
Court ruling puts Japan’s nuclear energy policy into disarray
Japan’s nuclear energy policy remains in disarray after court ruling http://asia.nikkei.com/magazine/20160317-THE-LAST-MILE/Politics-Economy/Japan-s-nuclear-energy-policy-remains-in-disarray-after-court-ruling
NAOKI ASANUMA, Nikkei staff writer, Tokyo 17 Mar 16, Five years after the devastating earthquake and tsunami that caused reactors to melt down at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant, Japan’s nuclear energy policy remains in disarray. On March 9, the Otsu District Court in Shiga Prefecture ordered Kansai Electric Power to halt the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at its Takahama nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture, after taking issue with the power company’s safety protocols regarding earthquakes and tsunamis. The order is the first of its kind suspending the operation of a reactor in service in Japan and has raised questions about who among the many stakeholders — utilities, the central government, local authorities, regulators, residents and courts — has the power to start or stop them.
Turnbull govt missing the chance for Australia to lead on climate change action
Malcolm Turnbull risks Australia’s economy with inaction on climate change, Guardian
Jonathon Porritt, 15 Mar 16
He may not want to confront climate-change deniers in his party, but it’s time for the prime minister to seize the low-carbon agenda for the opportunity it is
Even for a sympathetic observer from the UK, the politics of climate change in Australia is, to say the least, vexatious. But it’s now entering a more critical phase than ever before. The mismatch between the conclusions of the Paris agreement in December last year and the failure of Australia’s political establishment to understand what’s going on “out there in the rest of the world” is putting Australia’s entire economy at risk.
When the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, wrested the prime ministership from Tony Abbott in September last year, the international climate community breathed a deep sigh of relief. With the former Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, Abbott was seen as the most egregiously pig-headed climate-change denier in western world had ever thrown up. By contrast, Turnbull had done OK on climate change as a previous leader of the Liberal party, so it was assumed he would do a lot better second time round.
Nothing could be further from the truth. As I discovered on my latest visit, Turnbull has been utterly pusillanimous in pursuing any kind of progressive climate agenda. As part of his “oil on troubled waters” strategy, he apparently decided not to take on Abbott’s climate-denying guerilla fighters, and has offered zero leadership to Australia’s confused and polarised citizenry either before or after Paris.
For instance, he stood idly by as Australia’s world-renowned science agency, the CSIRO, announced it would cut 80% of its climate scientists, effectively ending Australia’s climate research program.
No surprise then that the New South Wales Liberals recently passed a motion, with the support of more than 70% of delegates, calling on the federal government to hold public debates between scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and independent climate scientists. Basically, they are still refusing to accept that the science of climate change is settled, and are fighting an obstinate rearguard action to keep mining and burning as much coal and gas as possible.
You can see why Turnbull might be a bit nervous about confronting such a monumentally ignorant faction in his party. And he may even be reassured that such deniers still hang on elsewhere in the world. ……..
What he needs to know is that it’s all so much worse (and moving so much faster) than anyone imagined even five years ago. Instead of having decades to do what needs to be done to set the global economy on a genuinely low-carbon trajectory (as in net zero emissions by 2050, which is what Turnbull’s government signed up to in Paris), we now have little more than a decade.
Australia is uniquely vulnerable in this respect. The damage that will be done to the Australian economy as the world decarbonises at speed, leaving billions of dollars stranded in fossil-fuel assets that can no longer be developed, is almost impossible to imagine. And to rub salt into that already inflamed wound, there are few countries that will suffer more from rising average temperatures (as in forest fires, increasingly inhospitable cities, and drought-devastated rural economies) and rising sea levels……..
as it happens, not only is Australia uniquely vulnerable to the consequences of runaway climate change, it’s also extraordinarily well-placed to navigate its way through to the kind of ultra-low-carbon prosperity on which the destiny of all nations now depends.
In January a blockbuster report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) identified Australia as one of the most significant beneficiaries of this kind of accelerated shift to renewables by 2030, providing significant gains in GDP (up 1.7%) and employment, as well as socioeconomic and other environmental benefits. http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/mar/15/malcolm-turnbull-risks-australias-economy-with-inaction-on-climate-change
UK Hinkley nuclear power project a ‘dead duck’
Resignation of EDF finance chief shows new UK nuclear plant ‘a dead duck’ By Molly Scott Cato | EurActiv.com, 16 Mar 16, Five years on from the Fukushima, the human and environmental impacts of the disaster continue to grow in scale, writes UK Green MEP Molly Scott-Cato. Molly Scott-Cato is an MEP for South-West England and Gibraltar, whose constiutency covers the Hinkley Point nuclear reactor.
This is a key reason why I am fighting so hard to prevent the new reactors at Hinkley point in Somerset from being built.
Nuclear-power is not commercial; it cannot survive without government subsidy and never has been able to during the 60 years of its existence. That in itself should be enough to close the question of whether we wish to build new nuclear power stations in Europe. But somehow the commercially unviable deal to build at Hinkley has slipped between the scrutiny of commercial and political interests, and between the political authorities at Westminster and in Brussels. It is extraordinary that such a shaky deal could have got so far and endured for so long as it was never going to survive in a commercial market.
For me one of the most shocking aspects of the deal was how little concern was raised by UK politicians. We are talking about a deal that involves two Chinese nuclear companies that are ultimately under the control of the Chinese Communist Party gaining access to our civilian nuclear industry. I am astonished that Conservative MPs are prepared to countenance such a risk to our national security. And this is to say nothing of the risk of suicide terrorism which we are left open to when nuclear stations are operational anywhere in the country.
Commercially the Hinkley deal has been a dead duck for some time. ………
The issue of most concern in this whole sorry saga is the total absence of genuine political scrutiny. Most UK MPs only seem to have woken up and taken any interest about a week before the deal was signed off last autumn. Cameron and Osborne have been operating as though in a legal vacuum. The British media has paid no attention to the rules of the single market and my continual efforts to interest them in the issue of state aid have failed……..https://www.euractiv.com/section/climate-environment/opinion/resignation-of-edf-finance-chief-shows-uk-new-nuclear-plant-a-dead-duck/
The global nuclear industry kept alive by tax-payer money, but not for long?
Pro-nuclear governments try to shield the nuclear operator from these risks, if possible. They protect the nuclear operator from lawsuits (reducing insurance costs). They guarantee debt (reducing interest 
costs). In the U.S. they tend to pass on unexpected (but prudently incurred) costs to the consumer.
That leads to our second point: these measures do not reduce risk, they just shift it. The risk never goes away. The government and consumer now bear part of it. But consumers do not take out nuclear risk policies with semi-annual payments. They do not see the cost so it doesn’t exist for them until the electricity bill goes up. In the same way, government can deny the costs of acting as an insurer of last resort because no line item appears in the budget to cover the costs until an accident happens (that’s the way a Congressional staffer explained it once at a meeting on the future of nuclear power).
5 years after Fukushima: Nuclear power prospects dim http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2016/03/15/5-years-after-fukushima-nuclear-power-prospects-dim/81553524/ Leonard Hyman and William Tilles, Oilprice.com March 15, 2016 Five years after a devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident at Fukushima that killed thousands and displaced many more, the Japanese are still cleaning up, people still cannot return to their homes and, possibly the least important statistic, Tokyo Electric Power’s shares sell at one quarter of the pre-accident price.
Roughly five years ago, the British government and French utility EDF began a process to build another nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point, an investment still awaiting the approval of EDF’s board. As odd as it seems, the tragic disaster and botched business deal have a common thread (other than the fact that EDF shares sell at one-third of their 2011 price): the role of government in nuclear power. Continue reading
One Month Above 1.5 C — NASA Data Shows February Crossed Critical Threshold
We had a number of preliminary indicators that February of 2016 was going to be ridiculously hot. And, according to new reports from NASA, those indicators appear to have born out.
In short, we’ve just experienced a month that was more than 1.5 C hotter than 1880s averages. It’s not a yearly average in this dangerous range — but likely the peak reading from a very intense El Nino combining with the growing base forcing of human climate change. That said, it’s a foretaste of what could very easily happen on a 5-15 year timescale in the annual measure if fossil fuel burning and related carbon emissions do not radically ramp downward.
February of 2015 was About 1.57 C Hotter Than 1880s Averages
According to NASA GISS, February of 2016 was the hottest February ever recorded by a long shot with global temperature departures hitting a never-before-seen above…
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ENuFF RESPONSE To The Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission
ENuFF RESPONSE To The Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission February 2016 TENTATIVE FINDINGS Everybody for a Nuclear Free Future, March 2016
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzGxGaq45dRNd2RqT3d0VTVEWjA/view (on original the authors of this response provide source references for their statement)
Antinuclear 