To 5 March – Nuclear and Climate News Australia
The most significant article of the week comes from 3 very distinguished writers, in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in explaining how the USA’s military upgrade means a vast expansion of the killing power of the most numerous warhead in the US nuclear arsenal, with the ability to launch a”first strike”. Consequently, the Russians are gravely concerned, and are developing new sea-based weapons.
President Trump’s rather sweet and antiseptic speech to Congress, avoided his previous bellicose promises, but did mention a big increase in defense spending, though not how he would pay for that.
AUSTRALIA
Historic discussions in South Australia towards a Treaty with Aboriginal Nations. Call to Block Native Title Amendment (Indigenous Land Use Agreements) Bill 2017.
CLIMATE an ENERGY . Issues surrounding coal mining dominated the news:
- A Federal Court case about Adani’s plan for Carmichael megamine has just reserved its decision.
- Ian Dunlop, formerly an international oil, gas and coal industry executive and Australian Coal Association chair, calls for an emergency taskforce for clean, renewable energy, and says “the game is up” for coal”.
- Coal power now “univestable”, but Australian government is keen to subsidise it. Turnbull govt appoints coal and uranium boss, Vanessa Guthrie, to the ABC board. Also appoints Sid Marris, a former analyst with the Minerals Council of Australia.
- Industry request for Clean Energy Finance Corporation funds for new coal-mining!
- Conflict of interest: Queensland govt appoints Adani director to oversee coal port!
- Medical profession warns on Adani coal mine as a public health catastrophe.
More Bleaching on Great Barrier Reef. New South Wales is set to experience many more hot summers, with extreme heat days.
Economist Prof John Quiggan puts convincing case for public-owned Australian power grid.
Murdoch media wages war on renewable energy.
Solar farms to benefit farmers in Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo areas. Victorian government more than doubles solar-feed-in tariff. Clean Energy Finance Corporation to repeat its solar success in battery storage. National Australia Bank now investing in renewable energy in Europe, US and UK. Plan for solar panels accessible to flat dwellers.
NUCLEAR. A renewed push for South Australia to import nuclear waste, with a letter to politicians from 43 citizens, turns out to emanate from Australia’s most talented nuclear propagandist, Ben Heard. With his nuclear front “group”, Bright New World, Heard is pretty much a one man nuclear band, on the international, as well as the national, pro nuclear scene, and is seeking charity status. Next week he is off to help the South African nuclear lobby, in their very troubled cause.
Radioactive cows buried in Werribee, Victoria.
Media spin about “new nuclear” and importing nuclear waste
While it’s true that Australia’s mainstream media pretty much ignores nuclear issues at present, the exception is the Adelaide Advertiser, which seems to have a hotline to the nuclear lobby. I should mention also the Whyalla News.
It’s a different story with social media. Australia’s nuclear lobby is active on Facebook and Twitter, and fortunately, Australia’s nuclear critics are, too.
Currently, that very talented pro nuke publicist Ben Heard is leading the pack.
- Heard has put in a submission to the Chief Scientist Alan Finkel’s Energy Review, in which he advocates new nuclear reactors , especially small ones:
energy-announces-appointment-of-internationally-recognized-authority-on-sustainability-to-international-advisory-board/members are in that organisation:
Decision reserved by Federal Court on Adani coal mine issue
Federal Court reserves Adani decision http://www.theage.com.
au/business/mining-and-resources/federal-court-reserves-adani-decision-20170303-guq2gd.html
The Australian Conservation Foundation must wait to learn if its latest challenge against the controversial Adani coalmine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin has been successful.
The ACF appeared before the Federal Court in Brisbane on Friday to appeal a decision last year that gave the huge Carmichael project the green light.
But the full bench reserved its judgment after it heard submissions from the environmental group, federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg and Adani.
ACF barrister Saul Holt QC argued the original judge had erred when he found in favour of Mr Frydenberg and the Indian mining giant in August.
Mr Holt claimed the environment minister had not applied or misconstrued the law when he claimed if the mine didn’t go ahead, the same amount of coal could still be produced somewhere else in the world.
Mr Holt said the argument failed to address the impact the Adani mine would have on global warming and in particular, warmer water temperatures on the Great Barrier Reef.
“What someone else might do if this action doesn’t go ahead is irrelevant,” he said.
“The harm is still done by the emission of the carbon by Adani’s coal.”
However Richard Lancaster SC, representing Mr Frydenberg, said the original judge was correct when he agreed his client could only be “speculative” when it came to the impact Adani’s possible emissions would have on global warming.
Mr Lancaster said the projection that 4.64 billion tonnes of coal, or one-183rd of total worldwide emissions, could be produced by the Queensland mine was the “worst case scenario”.
Mr Lancaster said neither the original judge nor the environment minister had erred in their interpretation of the relevant acts.
The full bench of the Federal Court will hand down its decision at a later date.
Fossil fuels have had their day: now we need intelligent action on clean, renewable energy
We need a new narrative, built around our potential to prosper as a low-carbon society. We have the world’s best renewable resources, the science, technology and engineering expertise to seize what is the biggest investment and job-creation opportunity this country has ever seen.
In addition, we need a taskforce which will pull together the resources and expertise required to initiate emergency action, led by statesmen and women from businesses with a concern to create a genuinely sustainable Australia. It is their future which is being thrown away by fossil fuel industry pressure forcing government to remain firmly entrenched in the 20th century.
‘Clean coal’, CCS and CSG will not save fossil fuels – their game is up https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/mar/03/clean-coal-ccs-and-csg-will-not-save-fossil-fuels-their-game-is-up As the Finkel review submission deadline arrives it’s time to accept the inevitable and fix the shambles that is our energy policy, Guardian, Ian Dunlop, Ian Dunlop was formerly an international oil, gas and coal industry executive and Australian Coal Association chair Friday 3 March 2017
Every few years the fossil fuel industry pressures politicians to force “clean coal”, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and more recently coal seam gas (CSG) on an increasingly sceptical community to justify its continued expansion.
This cycle started with the promotion of Adani’s massive Carmichael coalmine in Queensland, for coal export to India. The South Australian blackout followed last September when violent storms blew down transmission towers, prompting instant federal government accusations that excessive reliance on renewable energy was the cause, despite clear advice to the contrary. This also prompted a review of the energy system, led by Dr Alan Finkel, with final submissions due on Friday.
Then, when the long-overdue closure of the Hazelwood brown-coal power station was announced in November, energy security became a political battleground. In passing, Adani was to be offered a $1bn subsidy to construct the Carmichael rail line, and then a further subsidy for a new domestic coal-fired power plant at the mine was mooted to assist the development of northern Australia.
The prime minister’s National Press Club speech in January emphasised the need for “affordable, reliable and secure energy”, denounced the states for their “unrealistic” renewable targets, encouraged energy storage – and then took an evangelical swing back to coal, straight from the fossil fuel industry hymn book. Priority would be given to “clean coal, and carbon capture and storage (CCS and onshore gas (CSG)”, implying that renewables were neither affordable or reliable.
He continued: “The next incarnation of our energy policy should be technology-agnostic – it’s security and cost that matter, not how you deliver it. Policy should be ‘all of the above technologies’ working together to meet the trifecta of secure and affordable power while meeting our substantial emission reduction commitments.”
So what could possibly be wrong with such a sweeping vision? Well, pretty much everything. Continue reading
Pressure on UK govt to spend many billions of pounds sterling on “new nuclear”
Tens of billions of taxpayers money at risk as pressure mounts to spend billions more on new nuclear Dave Toke’s green energy blog http://realfeed-intariffs.blogspot.com.au/2017/02/tens-of-billions-of-taxpayers-money-at.html?spref=tw
Debate on geoengineering as a cure for climate change
The Crazy Climate Technofix #auspol John Pratt, 4 Mar 17 by Mark White, Illustrations by Bren Luke
“………….Earth’s climate has been edging towards a scene usually reserved for a post-apocalyptic movie.
Some posit geoengineering as a radical fix to climate change.
Others say the risks are too high and its proponents mad.
Welcome to the debate where science fiction meets climate science.
If you visit a block of land near the West Australian dairy town of Harvey in a few years’ time, you will see a few pipes sticking out of the ground, a solar panel and an aerial for communications devices.
There may be a hut and some room for parking.
These will be the only visible signs of the South West Hub project, designed to test the feasibility of pumping megatonnes of carbon dioxide into the vast Wonnerup sandstone layer, a kilometre-and-a-half deep beneath the Jarrah-Marri trees on the surface.
The gas will be liquefied in a nearby compressor building – an anonymous farm shed – and transported to the injection site via underground pipes.
Wonnerup is an example of carbon capture and storage, one of a suite of technologies known as geoengineering, or climate engineering.
Geoengineering is a mixed bag, but the idea involves large-scale interventions at the level of the whole planet, with the goal of fixing the climate.
It’s tricky, dangerous, and largely considered “fringe science”.
The proposals come in two main flavours.
One is carbon dioxide removal, which strips the gas from the atmosphere and slowly restores atmospheric balance.
A mix of techniques would be needed: hundreds of factories like Wonnerup, billions of new trees and plants, plus contentious technologies such as artificially encouraging the growth of plankton.
The second is solar radiation management, intended to cool the Earth by stopping the sun’s heat from reaching the planet’s surface.
That can be achieved by pumping minute particles into the atmosphere, but carries the risk of killing billions of people.
Right now, we don’t have the tools or the knowledge to deploy these fixes.
But some prominent climate scientists argue that as carbon emissions continue to rise, geoengineering will have to be employed to avoid catastrophic climate change………….
As we’re failing to keep the planet pleasant and habitable for future generations, could we instead fix the climate with technology?
With geoengineering?
Debate about geoengineering in Australia is “almost being avoided”, according to Professor David Karoly, a noted atmospheric scientist at the University of Melbourne.
He is a member of the Climate Change Authority, which advises the federal government, and was involved in preparing the 2007 IPCC report on global warming.
“There’s very little discussion on it in terms of government circles, there’s very little research on it, there’s very little discussion of it in what might be called mainstream science,” Professor Karoly says.
Policymakers are including geoengineering in their plans, but many technologies are still unproven and potentially dangerous.
“You’ll generally find among climate scientists that almost all are opposed to geoengineering,” says Professor Jim Falk, of the University of Melbourne’s Sustainable Society Institute.
“They’re already pretty concerned about what we’ve done to the climate and don’t want to start stuffing around doing other things we only half-understand on a grand scale.”
When the US National Academy of Science launched a report last year analysing geoengineering options, committee head Marcia McNutt, a geophysicist, was asked if any should be deployed.
She replied “Gosh, I hope not”.
The report considered carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management so risky it used the term “climate intervention” instead of geoengineering, arguing the term “engineering” implied a level of control that doesn’t exist.
But the IPCC has considered scenarios where such engineering would be necessary: its 2014 assessment report mentions bio-energy carbon capture and storage (known as BECCS), where plant fuel is burned and the resulting carbon dioxide buried.
And the Paris Agreement noted there would be need for a “balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases” in 2050-2100.
“A few years ago, these exotic Dr Strangelove options were discussed only as last-ditch contingencies,” wrote Kevin Anderson, deputy director of the UK’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, of the Paris talks in Nature magazine.
“Now they are Plan A.”………
Australian geoengineering research lags far behind the world leaders in the US, UK and Germany. It’s limited to a handful of scientists in Sydney and Hobart, and our major achievement is helping to halt commercial oceanic geoengineering.
The federal government, via its Direct Action policy, focuses on carbon sequestration without the crazy technofix label. Instead it backs land-use practices such as planting new forests, and prioritises soil enhancement, mangrove protection and rainforest recovery………..https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/17124327/posts/1361359357
Economist Prof John Quiggan puts convincing case for public-owned Australian power grid
Public-owned Australian power grid could solve energy issues, paper argues https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/03/public-owned-australian-power-grid-could-solve-energy-issues-paper-argues
Economist says national electricity market has been crippled by design flaws and a failure to take climate change into account Australia’s electricity woes could be solved through a unified and publicly owned national power grid, a discussion paper has said.
The paper authored by University of Queensland economist Prof John Quigginsays the creation of the national electricity market in the 1990s has failed to lower power prices and improve system reliability or environmental sustainability.
It argues the electricity grid, including physical transmission networks in each state and interconnectors linking them, should instead be publicly owned.
And it says that “renationalised” grid should be responsible for maintaining a secure power supply and moving towards a zero emissions industry.
Quiggin said minor changes to the current national electricity market would not be able to resolve the “energy instability” that was holding Australia back.
He said some believed a publicly owned power grid was “unthinkable” but recent political upheavals were proof unthinkable ideas should not be dismissed.
“It is the only coherent response to the failure of neoliberal electricity reform, just as the establishment of a publicly owned national broadband network was the only feasible response to the failure of telecommunications reform,” he said.
The director of Flinders University’s Australian industrial transformation institute, which has released the paper, said it laid down a challenge to governments of all persuasions to create a policy in the nation’s interest.
“It is clear that the current system is unreliable and untenable,” Prof John Spoehr said. “This is a discussion we have to have, as a catalyst for genuine, nation building reform.”
U K: Brexatom – Bonkers or an Opportunity?
No2Nuclear Power nuClear news No.93, March 2017 A footnote in the Parliamentary Bill published on 26th January to authorise Brexit confirmed that the UK intends to leave EURATOM as well as the European Union. (1) Up until that point this was a grey area with disagreements over whether Brexit meant the UK would also have to leave EURATOM……..
The decision has wide-ranging implications for Britain’s nuclear industry, research, access to fissile materials and the status of approximately 20 nuclear co-operation agreements that it has with other countries around the world. The UK is going to have to strike new international agreements with all these countries to maintain access to nuclear power technology – crucially with the US because several of the UK’s existing and planned nuclear reactors use US technology or fuel. A new bilateral agreement will also be needed with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Nuclear co-operation agreements can take considerable time to agree and ratify. It may not be possible to complete them before Britain leaves the EU in 2019
New Reactors in Jeopardy? The concern now in the UK nuclear industry is that leaving EURATOM will complicate and delay the UK’s plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations. “The new wave of British nuclear power stations was in jeopardy” said the Times. Withdrawal could cause “major disruption” according to the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA) particularly for Horizon and Nugen, which are developing plans for reactors on Anglesey and in Cumbria because their plans involve co-operation with US nuclear companies. Former Labour MP Tom Greatrex, now chief executive of the NIA, said: “The UK nuclear industry has made it crystal clear to the government before and since the referendum that our preferred position is to maintain membership of EURATOM.” (3) Although Horizon, whose reactors would use US nuclear fuel, says it is reassured by the government’s commitment to put new regulatory arrangements in place quickly. (4)
The Hinkley Point C station in Somerset could also face renewed problems….. http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/nuclearnews/NuClearNewsNo93.pdf
1 This month
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