Sydney Morning Herald on radioactive waste dump – ignores Lucas’ Heights’ high level nuclear reactor waste
Controversial nuclear waste plans back under the spotlight, SMH, Steven Trask , 14 Mar 17 Issues at two of Australia’s largest radioactive waste storage facilities have put a controversial government plan back under the spotlight.
For years the federal government has tried in vain to build a national dump for the country’s nuclear waste. Staunch opposition from prospective locations has repeatedly stalled the project, which opponents believe is an environmental disaster waiting to happen.
Each year Australia produces about a shipping container full of low and intermediate-level waste through industrial, medical and research applications. Much of the country’s waste is stored at a CSIRO facility in Woomera, South Australia, and a government warehouse in Lucas Heights, Sydney.
Lucas Heights is approaching full capacity and Fairfax Media has revealed significant concerns about conditions at the CSIRO facility…….
The search for a publicly acceptable site to store nuclear waste has plagued successive governments since the doomed National Repository Project in 1992.
Started by the Labour government in 1992, the project was wound-up without success in 2004 by Liberal Prime Minister John Howard. ……
Last week the government announced two sites in Kimba, South Australia, had been formally nominated by landowners to host the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility…….http://www.smh.com.au/national/controversial-nuclear-waste-plans-back-under-the-spotlight-20170308-gutd72.html
The Consultation and Response Agency (CARA) about nuclear policy closing. Will its report be made public?
Dear Mr Weatherill,
‘The Consultation and Response Agency (CARA), which delivered the state’s largest engagement program on record last year, and the CARA Advisory Board, have now provided their final advice to Government and will be closed.’
South Australian govt releases new plan for reliable, affordable and clean power.
South Australia’s new energy plan released http://www.transcontinental.com.au/story/4529329/south-australias-new-energy-plan-released/?cs=4180 A $550 million energy plan unveiled by the South Australian government will aim to improve the reliability of statewide power.Premier Jay Weatherill released details of the plan on Tuesday, March 14, saying the goal was delivering “reliable, affordable and clean” power.
The state government expects the plan to create 630 new jobs in South Australia. South Australian Power for South Australians will ensure more of the State’s power is sourced, generated and controlled in South Australia.
The plan will include:
- Building Australia’s largest battery to store energy from the wind and sun, part of a new Renewable Technology Fund that supports clean, dispatchable and affordable power
- Building a government-owned 250MW gas-fired power plant to provide emergency back-up power and system stability services for South Australians, in the meantime procuring temporary back-up generation if necessary
- Introducing new Ministerial powers to direct the market to operate in the interests of South Australians
- Incentivising increased gas production to ensure more of our State’s gas is sourced and used in South Australia
- Introducing an Energy Security Target to ensure our power system uses more clean, secure energy generated in South Australia
- Using the Government’s purchasing power through its own electricity contract to attract a new power generator, increasing competition in the marketThe new gas-fired power plant is budgeted to cost $360 million, $150 million will be committed to the SA Renewable Technology Fund and new PACE grants are worth $24 million.
Commenting on the plan, Mr Weatherill said coal-fired power stations closing across Australia, no “coherent” national energy policy and “ideological attacks on renewable energy” had led to under-investment in new energy sources.
“The privatisation of our state’s energy assets has placed an enormous amount of power in the hands of a few energy companies,” he said. “These factors, together, have led to too little competition in our national energy market. It is a market that benefits the owners of the privatised assets, rather than the people and businesses who depend on this essential service.” He said the plan’s goal is to make the state more self-reliant. “Our plan will make our power supply more reliable, put downward pressure on prices and create jobs,”
“In the longer term, South Australia will become more self-reliant for its power supply. “As a state that has built its reputation on its clean green environment, this plan recognises that clean energy is our future.”
The South Australian Liberal party has not responded to the plan yet.
A cutting edge, dual-fuel power station ould be operating in the Upper Spencer Gulf region within months.
ZEN Energy and Santos push new solar, gas power station in Upper Spencer Gulf Daniel Wills, State Political Editor, The Advertiser March 13, 2017 CLEAN solar power would be backed up by reliable gas energy in a cutting edge, dual-fuel power station for SA that could be operating in the Upper Spencer Gulf region within months.
Clinton Pryor’s Walk for Justice from Perth – through Port Augusta
Clinton Pryor’s Walk for Justice comes through Port Augusta http://www.transcontinental.com.au/story/4516323/big-crowd-for-justice-walk/ 8 Mar 2017 The Joy Baluch Bridge and parts of Port Augusta were shaking under the loud voice of Clinton Pryor’s Walk for Justice on Wednesday March 8. Starting outside the Standpipe Motel at 10am, the walk went up the Augusta Highway and across the Joy Baluch Bridge. The group then travelled down Mackay and Young Street, before finalising with speeches and a community barbecue on the Port Augusta foreshore.
The crowd included kids under 10 to retirees, all of whom were supportive of achieving justice for Aboriginal people. Chants heard during the walk included, ‘When your rights are under attack, stand up, fight back!’ and ‘Always was, and always will be Aboriginal land!’.
It left Clinton speechless, and thankful for all the help and support he’s received from Port AugustIt was amazing to see the community backing me up in this walk I did over the bridge
“It was unbelievable and I’m really proud of Port Augusta and seeing everyone together in one group is really good,” he said.
In September 2016, Clinton left from Matargarup, near Perth, to Uluru, Coober Pedy, on his way to Canberra.Along the way he’s spent time in Aboriginal communities; meeting with elders, hearing their stories, talking with school kids and community groups.
The walk centres around holding governments to account over their treatment of Aboriginal communities around Australia and bringing justice for non-Aboriginal Australians too. Port Augusta Barngarla man Stephen Atkinson was part of the walk across the bridge and said he, and many others in Port Augusta, are proud of Clinton’s efforts. “Hopefully we’re all equally proud of walking across the bridge with Clinton as you should be, we should be really proud of ourselves,” he said. “Port Augusta, we all know is the crossroads of the country, we got that many different mobs here, and 30 odd different languages spoken in this town.
“We’re all different tribes, we’re all different language groups, we’re from all different parts of the country, but when something like this is on we all come together and we’re one people.”
For more information and photos taken during Clinton’s Walk for Justice, make sure to visit his website, www.clintonswalkforjustice.org.
In South Africa, Australia’s top nuclear industry propagandist is rubbishing renewable energy
Heard told Fin24 that the suggestion that renewables could be the bulk source of energy supply is “preposterous”
The nuclear energy sector should be treated as a normal competitive industry, like any other, he said.
“If you do that you can get excellent time and cost outcomes.”
Heard said that problems come in when the nuclear sector becomes over-regulated
Room for renewables and nuclear in energy mix – researcher, 12/03/2017 Johannesburg – Renewable energy falls short of being a base load power source in South Africa, suggests a researcher.
Ben Heard, director of Bright New World organisation and PhD Candidate at the University of Adelaide, has conducted research to dispute the claims by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) that renewables have the capacity for a 70% share of South Africa’s energy sector.
The research, conducted by CSIR analysts Jarrad Wright, Dr Tobias Bischof-Niemz, Joanne Calitz and Crescent Mushwana, showed that renewables would be the least cost option for South Africa. Continue reading
Unexpectedly, worlds’s oceans are absorbing massive amounts of heat
The world’s oceans are storing up staggering amounts of heat — and it’s even more than we thought, by Chelsea Harvey, Energy & Enviornment, Washington Post, Mar 10, 2017 The world is getting warmer every year, thanks to climate change — but where exactly most of that heat is going may be a surprise.
As a stunning early spring blooms across the United States, just weeks after scientists declared 2016 the hottest year on record , it’s easy to forget that all the extra warmth in the air accounts for only a fraction of the heat produced by greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, more than 90 percent of it gets stored in the ocean. And now, scientists think they’ve calculated just how much the ocean has warmed in the past few decades.
A new study, out Friday in the journal Science Advances, suggests that since 1960, a staggering 337 zetajoules of energy — that’s 337 followed by 21 zeros — has been added to the ocean in the form of heat. And most of it has occurred since 1980.
“The ocean is the memory of all of the past climate change,” said study co-author Kevin Trenberth , a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
The world’s oceans are storing up staggering amounts of heat — and it’s even more than we thought https://www.skepticalscience.com/2017-SkS-Weekly-Digest_10.html
Turns out that Molten Salt Reactors can’t use spent nuclear fuel to provide power
The new analysis also concluded that the technology could not use spent fuel to power its reactor technology, undercutting a major claimed advantage for the technology.
Molten Salt Reactor Claims Melt Down Under Scrutiny http://www.powermag.com/blog/molten-salt-reactor-claims-melt-down-under-scrutiny/ 03/08/2017 | Kennedy Maize It was an astonishing event when two MIT nuclear engineering graduate students at the end of 2015 announced they had come up with a revolutionary design for a molten salt nuclear reactor that could solve many of the technological problems of 
conventional light-water reactors. Cofounders of the firm Transatomic – Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie – hyped their technology as able to run on conventional spent fuel, and “generate up to 75 times more electricity per ton of mined uranium than a light-water reactor.”
Their claims surfaced in MIT’s highly regarded magazine, Technology Review, under the headline, “What if we could build a nuclear reactor that costs half as much, consumes nuclear waste, and will never melt down?”
Dewan and Massie raised millions of dollars in venture capital, including a chunk of Peter Theil’s Founders Fund. Transatomic said it would have a demonstration reactor in operation by 2020. The entrepreneurs touted their technology, which had its roots in work of the legendary Alvin Weinberg at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1950s, as passively safe and more efficient than conventional nuclear generating technology.
Then it came under scrutiny from the MIT nuclear graybeards. The grad students got it wrong. Very wrong. Continue reading
Japanese bishops call for worldwide abolition of nuclear power
Japanese bishops want nuclear power abolished worldwide http://www.ucanews.com/news/japanese-bishops-want-nuclear-power-abolished-worldwide/77758 They released a statement urging people to learn from the experience of the Fukushima disaster ucanews.com reporter, Tokyo Japan December 1, 2016
The bishops’ conference of Japan has issued a statement calling for the worldwide abolition of nuclear power, five and a half years after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan (CBCJ) issued their statement, On the Abolition of Nuclear Power Generation: A Call by the Catholic Church in Japan, on Nov. 11.
That same day, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and signed an agreement that would allow Japan to export nuclear power technology to India.
“We, the CBCJ, appeal to all people who share a common home called Earth that we join hands, rise together and act in solidarity to end nuclear power generation,” the statement said. Continue reading
New research provides a solid evidence for global warming
A new study provides a solid evidence for global warming https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-03/ioap-ans031317.php INSTITUTE OF ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICS, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES Global warming is driven by the Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI): our planet traps more and more heat due to continuous increasing greenhouse gases. From the energy perspective, the global warming is actually ocean warming, since ocean stores more than 90% of the trapped heat. Therefore, ocean heat content (OHC) change is a fundamental indicator of global warming, thus direct measurement of OHC will provide a direct evidence for climate change. Continue reading
Malcolm Turnbull should encourage Australia’s battery energy storage industry
Battery-makers on Turnbull’s Tesla chat: ‘Give Australian companies a fair go’
Industry wants more support from federal government now prime minister has ‘taken interest in the tweets of an American billionaire’, Guardian, Melissa Davey, 13 Mar 17, Malcolm Turnbull should encourage Australia’s battery energy storage industry now he has “taken interest in the tweets of an American billionaire”, Zen Energy chairman Ross Garnaut says.
Garnaut was referring to Elon Musk, the billionaire co-founder of electric car giant Tesla, who tweeted that Tesla could solve the power shortage issue causing price spikes and blackouts in South Australia within 100 days by installing 100-300 megawatt hours of battery storage.
Turnbull subsequently tweeted that he had phoned Musk and enjoyed a “great, in-depth” conversation.
But Australian companies had been working on large battery projects for years, Garnaut said, including one by Zen Energy in the upper gulf of South Australia which it had discussed with the market. Continue reading
Traditional Owners v Adani in Federal Court today, then to Canberra to discuss Native Title Amendments
http://wanganjagalingou.com.au/traditional-owners-v-adani-in-federal-court-today-then-to-canberra-to-discuss-native-title-amendments/
Wangan and Jagalingou (W&J) Traditional Owners Council 27 February 2017:
“Traditional owners fighting the Carmichael megamine are on the front foot this week,
challenging in court the native title process which allowed the Qld Government to issue a mining lease without their consent, and meeting with Federal MPs to present arguments why the Government’s amendments to the Native Title Act threaten the rights of Traditional Owners and fail to deal with the real issues arising from the recent McGlade decision.
“Senior spokesperson for the Wangan and Jagalingou (W&J) Traditional Owners Council, Mr Adrian Burragubba, says, “The W&J Family Council have voted three times since 2012 to reject Adani’s sham deal, while the National Native Title Tribunal gave the green light to the Qld Government to issue Adani with a mining lease, after the mining company applied to have our decision overridden. This is the crux of our appeal before the full bench of the Federal Court on Monday”.
“Spokespeople for W&J, Mr Burragubba and Ms Murrawah Johnson, will also visit Canberra this week to meet with key Federal MPs about the Government’s Native Title Act Amendment Bill and explin the failures of the native title process.
Labor and The Greens voted against rushing the Bill through the House of Representatives last week. The Bill is now being scrutinised by a Senate committee which is due to report on 17 March 2017. … “
Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Council submission on the Native Title amendment bill
W&J Traditional Owners Council submission on the Native Title amendment bill
http://wanganjagalingou.com.au/wj-traditional-owner-council-senate-submission/
“The integrity of our decision making, especially regarding our laws and customs, and our rights to self-determination and to withhold our consent to the destruction of our country and heritage, are central to our issues with the bill.
“The bill would alter the fundamentals of our traditional decision processes. The integrity of Traditional Owner decision making and rights to speak for country must be protected.
“Checks and balances are required, as is respect for property rights associated with customary tenure
and the right to speak for country. The inalienability of our rights in land must be respected. It is the ground on which we seek to protect our country and heritage from the mass destruction that would ensue from the Carmichael mine.”
To read the submission in full download this document
http://wanganjagalingou.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/WJ-TO-Council-_-Submission-to-the-Senate-Constitutional-and-Legal-Affairs-Committee-re-the-Native-Title-Amendment-Indigenous-Land-Use-Agreements-Bill-2017_complete.pdf
Corporate capture of academic research by the fossil fuel industry
Does this corporate capture of academia apply to nuclear research, also?
The fossil fuel industry’s invisible colonization of academia https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/mar/13/the-fossil-fuel-industrys-invisible-colonization-of-academia
Corporate capture of academic research by the fossil fuel industry is an elephant in the room and a threat to tackling climate change, Guardian, Benjamin Franta and Geoffrey Supran, 13 Mar 17, On February 16, the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center hosted a film screening of the “Rational Middle Energy Series.” The university promoted the event as “Finding Energy’s Rational Middle” and described the film’s motivation as “a need and desire for a balanced discussion about today’s energy issues.”
Who can argue with balance and rationality? And with Harvard’s stamp of approval, surely the information presented to students and the public would be credible and reliable. Right?
Wrong.
The event’s sponsor was Shell Oil Company. The producer of the film series was Shell. The film’s director is Vice President of a family-owned oil and gas company, and has taken approximately $300,000 from Shell. The host, Harvard Kennedy School, has received at least $3.75 million from Shell. And the event’s panel included a Shell Executive Vice President. Continue reading
Murdoch media moves even closer to Donald Trump
[Trump] asked Murdoch to submit names for FCC commissioner and tweeted praise for Fox News. 
He’s even taken policy ideas from the network.
The Big Winner in Donald Trump’s Decision to Fire Preet Bharara 
Might Be Rupert Murdoch, My Mag, Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 