Fukushima 311 Watchdogs
Hisako Sakiyama, a medical doctor and representative of the 3.11 Fund for Children With Thyroid Cancer, speaks to reporters in Tokyo, Friday, March 31, 2017. Sakiyama, who has sat on government panels to investigate the Fukushima disaster, says a child who was 4 at the time of the disaster , has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and that case is missing from the official government records.
TOKYO (AP) — A child diagnosed with thyroid cancer after the Fukushima nuclear accident is missing from government checkup records, an aid group said Friday, raising questions about the thoroughness and transparency of the screenings.
Japanese authorities have said that among the 184 confirmed and suspected cases of thyroid cancer in Fukushima, no one was under age 5 at the time of the 2011 meltdowns. They’ve said that suggests the cases are not related to nuclear-plant radiation, as many were after the 1986 Chernobyl…
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March 31, 2017
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Fukushima 311 Watchdogs
(MENAFN – Asia Times) Six years after Japan’s Fukushima nuclear accident three global nuclear corporations are fighting for their very survival.
The bankruptcy filing by Westinghouse Electric Co. and its parent company Toshiba Corp. preparing to post losses of 1 trillion (US9 billion), is a defining moment in the global decline of the nuclear power industry.
However, whereas the final financial meltdown of Westinghouse and Toshiba will likely be measured in a few tens of billions of dollars, those losses are but a fraction of what Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) is looking at as a result of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
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If the latest estimates for the cost of cleaning up the Fukushima plant prove accurate, Tepco faces the equivalent of a Toshiba meltdown every year until 2087.
In November 2016, the Japanese Government announced a revised estimate…
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March 31, 2017
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Fukushima 311 Watchdogs
The projected spread of radioactive cesium-137 from a disaster at the No. 3 reactor’s spent fuel pool of the Kori nuclear plant in Busan, South Korea (Provided by Kang Jung-min)
A serious nuclear accident in South Korea could force the evacuation of more than 28 million people in Japan, compared with around 24 million in the home country of the disaster.
Japan would also be hit harder by radioactive fallout than South Korea in such a disaster, particularly if it occurred in winter, when strong westerly winds would blow radioactive substances across the Sea of Japan, according to a simulation by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Washington-based think tank.
The simulation, based on a scenario of an unfolding crisis at the Kori nuclear power plant in Busan, South Korea, was led by Kang Jung-min, a South Korean senior researcher of nuclear physics, and his colleagues.
At events in Japan…
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March 31, 2017
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Fukushima 311 Watchdogs
Why won’t Japan speak out as an A-bombed country?
The Japanese government has announced it will abstain from talks underway at the U.N. headquarters on establishing a convention to outlaw nuclear weapons. By abstaining from the talks, Japan is effectively abandoning its opportunity as the world’s only atomic-bombed country to serve as a bridge between nuclear and non-nuclear states.
On the reason for Japan’s abstention, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida pointed out that the five nuclear powers of the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China are not taking part, and said that the talks “may have the opposite effect of deepening the divide between nuclear and non-nuclear states.”
In October last year, the Japanese government voted against a U.N. resolution on launching the talks. But at the time, Kishida expressed the view that Japan would actively take part in negotiations that were to begin in March.
The state of opposition…
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Fukushima 311 Watchdogs
Families of 40 choir members cancel Tokyo trip after travel advisory from Chinese embassy
Parents of a children’s choir in southern China are seeking refunds for a trip to a singing competition in Japan that they cancelled over concerns of radiation leaks.
Their requests to refund the training, travel and accommodation fees, which add up to 19,800 yuan (US$2.900)for each child, have been denied by the singing training centre of the Guangzhou Opera House, with which the choir is affiliated, Television Southern of Guangdong reported.
The concerned parents said each family paid fees to the training centre in January for training, visas, insurance and accommodation for the trip to Japan for an international choir competition in August.
Forty students signed up for the trip, the report said.
Many parents became worried a month later when the Chinese embassy in Tokyo issued a reminder of record-high radiation from the Fukushima nuclear…
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March 31, 2017
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The United Nations has just held the first of two global summits to negotiate “a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination”. This was sponsored by 57 nations, and with 125 nations represented, but the nuclear weapons-dependent nations did not participate.
Does this mean that the conference is meaningless? Perhaps. Yet, increasingly, public opinion supports nuclear disarmament, and those governments are being challenged, to explain their support for nuclear weapons.
As for the “peaceful” nuclear industry – it is having a financial meltdown. Westinghouse’s bankruptcy, and Toshiba’s record loss, shed doubt on new nuclear build in America and Britain.
Globally, the Paris climate agreement will continue, while Trump Trashes U.S. Climate Policy.
AUSTRALIA
NUCLEAR. Australia – America’s Deputy Sheriff again, as USA opposes nuclear-weapons-ban talks. Radioactive soil dumped at Mary Kathleen mine.
CLIMATE.
RENEWABLE ENERGY Australian Energy Market Operator new boss Audrey Zibelman will reform Australia’s energy vision. Success of Australia’s Clean Energy Program.
As costs tumble, Australia poised for large-scale solar boom. Canberra’s shining example of renewable energy development. $1billion battery and solar farm for South Australia’s Riverland. Giles Parkinson explains need for battery storage to be configured properly
Indigenous. Success of Indigenous rangers program: calls for it to be expanded
Environment. Western Australia: Uranium mining OR the rare and beautiful Night Parrot?
Canberra’s Beyond Uranium Campaign Launched.
March 31, 2017
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Australia, she says, is actually going to lead the world on this, both on the breadth and the scale of what she, chief scientist Alan Finkel and many others describes as the inevitable and unstoppable energy transition.
She is talking storage, and demand response. And she is not just talking about grid scale, but about households and businesses, and tapping into their own resources of rooftop solar and battery storate, something that SA Power Networks says will be everywhere, thanks to its plunging costs.
Zibelman does not have the regulatory powers that she had in New York, and more’s the pity because AEMO, according to its submission to the Finkel Review, is clearly frustrated by the glacial pace of change in the country’s rule maker, the Australian Energy Market Commission.
How AEMO’s new boss will reform Australia’s energy vision http://reneweconomy.com.au/how-aemos-new-boss-will-reform-australias-energy-vision-37484/ By Giles Parkinson on 29 March 2017 Audrey Zibelman, the new chief executive of the Australian Energy Market Operator, has been in the job for little over a week, but is already making her mark, signalling the biggest shift in energy management philosophy in a generation.
If Australia’s fossil fuel industry had hoped that last September’s state-wide blackout would lead to a u-turn on the shift to cleaner and decentralised energy system, then the release of the Australian Energy Market Operator’s final report in the event would leave them bitterly disappointed.
And if they had any thoughts that the new CEO of AEMO, Audrey Zibelman, was going to afford them the indulgences that they had gotten used to over the last few decades, then they are going to be disappointed on that too. Several hundred energy market participants converged on Adelaide’s Hilton Hotel on Wednesday to hear the findings from the final report into the now notorious system black and, more crucially, to hear the first public insights from the new AEMO boss.
“Thank god you’re here,” said the Grattan Institute’s Tony Wood, referring to a former TV program, but echoing the mood of most.
And while many in mainstream media chose to focus on the role of wind farms in South Australia’s “system black,” and wonder why the shuttered Northern coal fired station is not being fired up again, both AEMO and its new boss were looking to the future, and with a sense of urgency.
Zibelman is the former head of New York’s Public Service Commission, charged with implementing that state’s ambitious Reforming the Energy Vision program, and its target of 50 per cent renewable energy by 2030, which is going to focus a lot on decentralised generation. Continue reading →
March 31, 2017
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It’s now looking increasingly probable that the [British] Moorside project, given the state of the Nugen consortium and the massive failure of the AP1000 design, may never progress to construction.The French government is selling assets so it can prop up its heavily indebted 
nuclear utilities Areva and EDF. The French nuclear industry is in its “worst situation ever” according to former EDF director Gérard Magnin.
The crisis-ridden US, French and Japanese nuclear industries account for half of worldwide nuclear power generation. Other countries with crisis-ridden nuclear programs or nuclear phase-out policies account for more than half of worldwide nuclear power generation.
Meranwhile renewable energy generation doubled over the past decade and strong growth, driven by sharp cost decreases, will continue for the foreseeable future.
The rapidly-evolving nuclear power crisis escalated dramatically yesterday when US nuclear giant Westinghouse, a subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate Toshiba, filed for bankruptcy.
The Chapter 11 filing took place in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York in New York City.
Westinghouse and its parent Toshiba are in crisis because of massive cost overruns building four ‘AP1000’ nuclear power reactors in the southern US states of Georgia and South Carolina.
The combined cost overruns for the four reactors now amount to about $1.2 billion and counting. And it has now emerged that they may never be finished at all. Whether the four reactors will be completed is now subject to an “assessment period”, according to Westinghouse.
The corporate mishap may also signal the end of new nuclear power in the US. No other reactors are under construction in the country and there is no likelihood of any new reactors in the foreseeable future. The US reactor fleet is one of the oldest in the world, with 44 out of its 99 reactors having been operated for four decades or more.
A $10 billion financial hole – and it’s getting deeper! Continue reading →
March 31, 2017
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The minuscule one off payment or bribe of $10 million to promote a radioactive environment for a South Australian community may give five to fifteen people jobs. It is these jobs that are the “ONLY” spoils of this war, if we fail to keep deadly radioactive waste out of SA. yet how many jobs will be sacrificed at the only true purposely built high grade nuclear waste dump in Australia with the technical and security support to handle it, the place we call ANSTO or will they relocate some of their work force to SA to be the 5 to 15 workers?
People of the region that espouse to this evil may be naive to believe that $10 million will go as far as to build a forever new hospital, freeway into their town or a shopping mall and school, with a influx of hundreds to utilize these structures and utilities. One local to Hawker may think that his job has a fancy title and may build his esteem to be in such position, but a job mopping or sweeping the floor in a operating theatre does not make you a surgeon.
March 31, 2017
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Still here: Night Parrot rediscovery in WA raises questions for mining, The Conversation, Robert Davis, Edith Cowan University, March 29, 2017 The Night Parrot is unquestionably one of Australia’s most enigmatic, elusive and enthralling species. The final frontier of Australian ornithology, this cryptic parrot eluded dedicated expeditions to find it for nearly half a century.
Last week, a momentous chapter in the Night Parrot story was written, with the first photograph of a live Night Parrot in Western Australia. The photos come in the wake of several other recent sightings, including the parrot’s rediscovery in Queensland in 2013.
Despite media reports, the parrot has never been officially listed as extinct, with sporadic evidence of its existence throughout the 20th century. But now we know for sure that the parrots are alive and found across the continent, we can move on to making sure they remain so in the future.
Mystery bird We know that Night Parrots favour spinifex or tussock grasslands, often close to inland wetland systems. But the areas of potential habitat are vast throughout inland Australia.
The Night Parrot has been listed as endangered in the Action Plan for Australian Birds since 1992. It is listed as endangered under federal legislation…….
The significance of the latest find is immense…….The latest record cements the fact that Night Parrots are present at several locations in WA and potentially throughout arid Australia, including in regions rich in mineral resources.
In contrast to the Queensland populations, which have so far been found in national parks and pastoral leases, the WA situation sets up a quandary for how to manage development, Night Parrots and mining…….
Recent developments by other WA resource companies have seldom considered Night Parrots. My personal experience is that surveys usually look for endangered mammals such as Northern Quolls and Bilbies, but rarely search properly for Night Parrots. This is likely due to two main reasons.
The first is the incredibly cryptic nature of the Night Parrot. Clearly the species has evaded detection for so long because it is difficult to find.
The second is what I term “the Thylacine factor”. The only equivalent species in Australia that has the same degree of scepticism and mythology is the Thylacine.
Thylacines have (so far) not been rediscovered. But developers, consultants and regulators take the same attitude to Night Parrot sightings. The parrots are often seen as a mythical animal that doesn’t exist. The idea of looking for them is met with mirth……..
Let’s hope government bodies will strongly enforce the requirement to search for Night Parrots in all areas of potential habitat within their known current and historic range. This should ensure that we don’t lose any parrots before they are even found. https://theconversation.com/still-here-night-parrot-rediscovery-in-wa-raises-questions-for-mining-75384
March 31, 2017
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Australia on cusp of large-scale solar boom as setup costs tumble, experts say, ABC News, PM By Angela Lavoipierre , 30 Mar 17 Large-scale solar looks to be on the cusp of an Australian boom.
The country has quietly had a record-breaking year in the construction of major solar projects, and the trend is predicted to continue.
Seven large-scale solar projects were completed in 2016 and even more will be built over the next 12 months, as rapid advances in technology propel large-scale solar towards price parity with wind power.
Clean Energy Council CEO Kane Thornton said it was “a record year” for large-scale solar, which could soon overtake wind as the cheapest form of renewable energy, thanks to rapid advances in technology.
“Already this year in 2017, we’ve had over a dozen projects committed and now moving onto construction,” he said.
“The costs of large scale solar has halved in just the last few years here in Australia. “We expect over the next couple of years [it] will really reduce the cost to a point that it is the lowest cost form of renewable generation in this country.”
Ivor Frischknecht, who heads the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) — the agency that delivers Federal Government funding for renewable projects — said the boom was approaching sooner than anyone expected.
“A couple of years ago we analysed the market and thought that by the early 2020s we might be able to get there, to be cost competitive with wind,” he said.
“But in fact we’re there already — we’re seeing large scale solar projects happen without any support.”
ARENA said the formation of a domestic solar industry had also brought down costs.
Moree solar farm ‘ground-breaking’
Moree is the site of one of Australia’s newest large-scale solar farms and the fourth largest in the country.
The town of less than 10,000 people in northern New South Wales has perfect conditions for generating solar power, enduring a record 54 consecutive days over 35 degrees Celsius this summer.
The Moree solar farm is an example of the kinds of challenges once faced by large-scale solar in Australia……http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-29/australia-on-cusp-of-large-scale-solar-boom-experts-say/8377226
March 31, 2017
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Pope backs nuclear weapons ban treaty, rrrstar.com Mar 29, 2017 By Josephine McKenna Religion News Service VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis says nuclear weapons offer a “false sense of security” and are an ineffective deterrent to 21st-century threats like terrorism, conflict and cybersecurity.
The pontiff spoke as talks on a proposed global nuclear arms ban at the United Nations seem doomed to fail with the U.S., France, Britain and South Korea among nearly 40 countries boycotting the talks.
In a message addressed to the conference in New York, the pope called for “total elimination” of nuclear weapons. He said there were many doubts about the effectiveness of deterrence and warned of “catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences” if nuclear weapons were ever used again.
“How sustainable is a stability based on fear, when it actually increases fear and undermines relationships of trust?” Francis asked. “International peace and stability cannot be based on a false sense of security, on the threat of mutual destruction or total annihilation, or on simply maintaining a balance of power.”
The pope said the elimination of nuclear weapons was a “moral and humanitarian imperative” and stressed it was possible to achieve.
“Although this is a significantly complex and long-term goal, it is not beyond our reach,” he said.
Francis said money currently spent on nuclear weapons could be used for “the promotion of peace and integral human development, as well as the fight against poverty.”
“An ethics and a law based on the threat of mutual destruction — and possibly the destruction of all mankind — are contradictory to the very spirit of the United Nations,” he said.
“We must therefore commit ourselves to a world without nuclear weapons, by fully implementing the Non-Proliferation Treaty, both in letter and spirit.”……http://www.rrstar.com/news/20170329/pope-backs-nuclear-weapons-ban-treaty
March 31, 2017
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I think that sooner or later the white working-class constituency will recognize, and in fact, much of the rural population will come to recognize, that the promises are built on sand. There is nothing there.
Maybe scapegoating, saying, “Well, I’m sorry, I can’t bring your jobs back because these bad people are preventing it.” And the typical scapegoating goes to vulnerable people: immigrants, terrorists, Muslims and elitists, whoever it may be. And that can turn out to be very ugly.
I think that we shouldn’t put aside the possibility that there would be some kind of staged or alleged terrorist act, which can change the country instantly
Chomsky: If Trump Falters With Supporters, a ‘Staged or Alleged’ Terrorist Attack Could Follow, truth dig, Mar 29, 2017 By Jan Frel / AlterNet It’s March 2017 , and the political process and the media in the U.S. are a depressing mess, on top of an ever-growing pile of issues that are not remotely being addressed, much less resolved by society: inequality, climate change, a global refugee crisis, you name it.
Donald Trump presents a new problem on top of the old familiar ones; a toxic multifront political disaster whose presence in the White House is doing damage to the national psyche on a daily basis. Continue reading →
March 31, 2017
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What the million-dollar—trillion-dollar modernization means is that when it came down to making deals with Republicans in the Congress, the Obama administration was willing to do a deal on the future of humanity and said, “Look, if you—if we need you to pass legislation through the Senate, and you want more nuclear weapons and more spending on nuclear weapons, we’ll give you that to get what we want.” And the Obama administration made a tragic deal with the Republicans in the Senate.
But the fact of the matter is, they could have refused to make that deal. But they decided that it was more important to pursue that legislative priority than to think about what the next 30, 40, 50, 60 years will look like. And that is something that we’re now going to have to wrestle with year by year,
And so, this letter from scientists is part of a long-standing effort by scientists from all over the world to make democracy work when it comes to nuclear weapons. And this is what the ban treaty process is also all about, that in the international community, it should not be the most powerful military state in the world that decides what happens in the world, but it should be the majority of the world’s community deciding what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.
U.S. Boycotts U.N. Talks on Nuclear Ban While Spending Trillions to Modernize Nuclear Arsenal, Democracy Now, 30 Mar 17 Full interview with Princeton’s Zia Mian about the proposed U.N. nuclear ban treaty, the U.S. boycott and the U.S. trillion-dollar plan to “modernize” its nuclear arsenal. Zia Mian is a physicist, nuclear expert and disarmament activist. He is co-director of the Program on Science and Global Security at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University……… Continue reading →
March 31, 2017
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Ukrainian corruption casts a nuclear pall over all of Europe http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/30/ukrainian-corruption-casts-nuclear-pall-over-all-e/ Lack of oversight, regulatory control make for clear danger, By L. Todd Wood – – Thursday, March 30, 2017
In 2016, the No. 1 tourist destination of Ukraine was the lifeless town of Pripyat, evacuated after the deadly reactor meltdown at Chernobyl in 1986. Today, Ukraine relies on nuclear power for 53 percent of its power generation, but is risking another nuclear accident on a scale greater than Europe — and the world — could imagine.
The problems facing Ukraine’s nuclear power industry are multi-faceted, but the main issue is the same one plaguing the whole of the former Soviet republic — corruption, which is breeding a lack of accountability and mismanagement of the sector’s critical infrastructure.
Ukraine’s nuclear power plants are supposed to be regulated by the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine (SNRIU), which by law is an independent regulatory body. In recent years, however, it has become standard practice for the leaders of SNRIU to be appointed by the state nuclear power plant operator, Energoatom, instead of through a rigorous, independent selection process.
This, perversely, subjugates the regulator to the whims of the operator. If Energoatom cannot meet certain safety standards or deadlines, its bosses simply inform the regulator of such, and the deadlines are extended or eliminated, public safety be damned.
In addition, many positions at the regulatory body remain empty. For example, the position of the chief state inspector of nuclear and radiation safety has been vacant for three years. Other key posts of the Ukrainian nuclear regulator remain vacant.
March 31, 2017
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Antinuclear 