Locked away in a storage room on a Mosul college campus were two caches of cobalt-60, a metallic substance with lethally high levels of radiation. When contained within the heavy shielding of a radiotherapy machine, cobalt-60 is used to kill cancer cells. In terrorists’ hands, it is the core ingredient of a “dirty bomb,” a weapon that could be used to spread radiation and panic. Continue reading
Death of famed and much-loved Aboriginal activist Yami Lester
Yankunytjatjara elder and Maralinga nuclear test survivor Yami Lester OAM passes away, aged 75 http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/yankunytjatjara-elder-and-maralinga-nuclear-test-survivor-yami-lester-oam-passes-away-aged-75/news-story/ccfc3f82c75a643c3e49f22c8a215dbf, MATT GARRICK, Sunday Mail (SA), July 22, 2017 YANKUNYTJATJARA elder Yami Lester OAM, an Outback hero who opened the nation’s eyes to the human cost of nuclear tests committed on Australian soil, has died aged 75 in Alice Springs.
Planning for the town of Jabiru to be rejuvenated as uranium mining ends
Jabiru: the Kakadu mining town facing closure seeks a fresh start The town of 1,000 people is supposed to disappear as the Ranger uranium mine closes, but locals want to give it a new future as a tourism hub, Guardian, Helen Davidson, 24 July 17
Jabiru is a small town on a countdown.
Deep inside Kakadu national park, the tiny network of bush-lined streets and a tired shopping precinct was originally built in 1982 to service the community of workers from the Ranger uranium mine. It remains home to just over 1,000 people, a quarter of whom are Indigenous, and serves as a hub for more than 300 people living on nearby outstations.
It has also grown to become a base for the 210,000 odd tourists who visit Kakadu each year, many of them staying at the smattering of caravan parks and crocodile-shaped hotels on their way through.
But Energy Resources Australia is required to wrap up its operations and rehabilitate the site when its lease expires in 2021, after losing the support of its parent company, Rio Tinto, to open another mine.
That means returning the land – including Jabiru – to a pre-mine state, taking the electricity and airport with it.
Almost no one wants the town to be fully rehabilitated, but in the absence of an alternative plan, ERA is continuing with its obligations to shut it down within four years……..
The uncertainty is already having an impact, with a number of businesses having closed their doors in recent years, unable to secure loans or find buyers without a guaranteed future.
The West Arnhem Regional Council has provided assurances that it will remain in the region, servicing the Indigenous communities.
“Jabiru is the town in this region. There’s nothing else between Coolalinga [near Darwin] and Gunbalanya [in Arnhem Land],” says Justin O’Brien, chief executive of the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation.
Gundjeihmi, which represents the Mirarr traditional owners of the park, is working with the federal and territory governments, and ERA, on an alternative plan for the town.
O’Brien is optimistic, and says ERA’s study was based on “full demolition” scenarios.
“They are a narrow focus on what would occur if nothing else happened.”
Last year the Mirarr were legally recognised by the federal court as the native title holders of the land Jabiru sits on, and are negotiating a township lease……
The airstrip, connected to the Ranger mine, has a future three years longer than the town under the current closure plans – it would be demolished in 2025. If it disappeared it would be devastating for the tourism industry, O’Brien says.
“Jabiru and Kakadu might not be kicking the goals in tourism we think it could and should be, but it’s all that’s on offer at the moment. In the peak season it can be difficult getting a bed.”
Bob McDonald, director of Kakadu Air, which has operated from the Jabiru airstrip running scenic flights over Kakadu for 36 years, declines to talk about the report, but tells Guardian Australia he is “extremely optimistic” and the current planning is “a great opportunity for the normalisation of Jabiru”. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/24/jabiru-kakadu-mining-town-facing-closure-seeks-fresh-start
John Grimes – on South Australia’s energy storage revolution
SA’s energy revolution – what it means for Australia http://www.examiner.com.au/story/4803957/sas-energy-revolution-what-it-means-for-australia/?cs=97 23 Jul 2017 The energy storage revolution has arrived with a bang. The recent announcement by the South Australian government that it will partner with Elon Musk’s Tesla to build the world’s biggest lithium-ion battery was a lightning bolt moment with profound implications for regional communities. The 100MW battery will provide stability for a wind farm, and emergency backup power. It will also provide badly needed jobs for regional towns in construction, operation and maintenance, as well as tourism from those flocking to see this technological wonder.
This project marks just the beginning. Both Victoria and Queensland are planning similar large-scale battery projects, and storage is also being rolled out in homes, businesses and regional communities across the country.
Australia has the highest rate of household solar use in the world, so it makes sense that families would look to batteries to store excess electricity (created during the day) to be used when they need it most (when returning home from work or school).
Around 20,000 families have solar batteries now, but as prices keep plummeting it’s not unreasonable to expect 500,000 Australians will have them by 2020.
Many companies offer mouth-watering financial packages that combine solar and storage. German battery storage company Sonnen is offering Aussies free electricity – paying customers’ power bills in return for accessing the battery storage capacity to provide grid balancing services for network operators.
Storage has arrived and it will give you control of your energy use, and slash your power bills. With power prices set to rise by up to 20 per cent, now is the time to shop around and see how solar and storage can work for you.
John Grimes is the Chief Executive of the Australian Solar Council and Australian Energy Storage Council.
Russia’s secretive nuclear tsar, Sergei Kiriyenko, moving up to political powwer
This article is relevant to Australia because for years Russia’s Sergei Hiriyenko has been secretly negotiating with Australia’s nuclear lobby, and at times with the Australian government. His quiettly organised visit to Australia a few years back was suddenly cancelled.
Russian media tell us that Kirienko and his PR team are off to the Kremlin to prepare Putin’s next election campaign. Looking at Kirienko’s 11 years as head of Russia’s nuclear power industry, we can say that in terms of spending and achievements on paper, Rosatom’s former head has few equals. Kirienko’s team are experts at working with the media, putting pressure on dissenters and forging loyalty
Sergey Kirienko, from nuclear to political power, Open Democracy After ten years as head of Rosatom, Sergey Kirienko is now deputy head of Russia’s Presidential Administration. What will he bring to the job? “…….
The scandal of nuclear wastes in North St. Louis County, USA
The reports don’t acknowledge these stories, these illnesses, those who are dying or dead. Most residents of St. Louis—including and especially the residents of predominantly African-American neighborhoods—don’t even know the contamination is there. …….
the half-life of Thorium 232: fourteen billion years, a half-life so long that by the time this element is safe for human exposure
a contradiction I can’t resolve: that the massive crime here began with a belief in a kind of care, a belief that protection comes only in the form of wars and bombs, and that its ultimate expression is a technology that can destroy in a single instant any threat to our safety with perfect precision and efficiency. But hundreds of thousands lost their lives to those bombs in Japan, and the fallout from building them has claimed at least as many lives right here at home.
The Fallout, In St. Louis, America’s nuclear history creeps into the present, leaching into streams and bodies. Guernica, By Lacy M. Johnson, 10 July 2017 “………Months ago, when a high-school friend reached out to me asking that I give my attention to this story, she told me that a company tasked decades ago with disposing of nuclear waste for the federal government had instead dumped thousands of barrels of the waste somewhere in North St. Louis County. The barrels were left exposed to the elements for decades, and the waste had leaked into the ground and into the water of a nearby creek……
When the federal government filed suit to acquire the property under eminent domain, officials refused to disclose the exact nature of the waste “for security reasons.” They assured the local government that the waste they’d be storing there wasn’t dangerous. They shook hands and signed papers. They looked people squarely in the eye.
During the next twenty years, truckload by truckload, the green patchwork of farm fields by the airfield turned into a foreign world. Mountains of raffinate rose up across from row after row of rusty black drums, stacked two or three high. ……..
The reports tell only so much, only certain parts of certain versions of the story. The rest I have to piece together using articles in the local newspaper, phone calls with these residents, oral histories collected by others, newsletters from various companies celebrating one anniversary or another…..
In my pile of reports there is a series of letters from Cotter to the Atomic Energy Commission, in which Cotter tries to convince the government to take these wastes back. Commercial disposal would cost upwards of two million dollars (about twelve million dollars today). They couldn’t afford it. They knew that the AEC was using a quarry at the recently decommissioned second Mallinckrodt facility at Weldon Spring, roughly twenty miles southwest of the airport, as a dump for nuclear waste. They asked the AEC if they could use it, asked for guidance, and for help.
That help never came…… Continue reading
Radioactive materials stolen in Ukraine: lack of security in nuclear facilities
Specter of Chernobyl: Ukraine ‘Losing Control’ of Its Nuclear Facilities https://sputniknews.com/europe/201707191055679086-ukraine-radioactivity-theft/ 19.07.2017 Hundreds of containers with radioactive materials inside have been reportedly stolen from a nuclear storage facility in central Ukraine. An expert told Sputnik about the consequences this and other such cases could have for people in and outside the country.
According to 1+1 TV channel, the containers with Cesium-137-contaminated soil and metals, which had spent the past 30 years buried at an unguarded storage site near the city of Krapivnitsky in Kirovograd region, were supposed to stay there for at least 300 years more.After the unknown thieves dug up the containers, the radiation level in the area jumped 10 times above normal.
In an interview with Radio Sputnik, Valery Menshikov, a member of the Environmental Policy Center in Moscow, shared his fears about the dangerous situation in Ukraine.
“What is now happening is Ukraine is bedlam, period. The stringent Soviet-era controls are gone and not only there. All nuclear storage facilities in Ukraine pose a very serious radiation threat. It’s a very alarming situation we have there now,” Menshikov warned.
He underscored the need to place such nuclear storage sites under strict control.
“Such places must be fenced off, have adequate alarm systems, etc. However, it looks like [the Krapivnitsky facility] had none of these things. In addition to vials with Cesium, there was also metal there and this metal could now be used in construction or smelted, which means that radiation will keep spreading,” Valery Menshikov added.
He blamed the sorry state of Ukraine’s nuclear energy sector on the erratic policy of the Kiev government.
“There are regulations, both domestic and international, drawn up by the IAEA, but the problem is that the current political situation in Ukraine has made it possible to get rid of experienced managers and specialists in the nuclear energy and other economic sectors and replace them (with incompetent ones),” Valery Menshikov emphasized.
“The loss of radiation safety is also evident at Ukrainian nuclear power plants, hence the strange things that keep happening there,” Menshikov concluded.
Ukraine’s nuclear industry has been in dire straits since Kiev ended nuclear energy cooperation with Russia in 2015 and specialists fear that the recurrent cases of thefts of radioactive materials and lax security at the country’s nuclear facilities are dangerously fraught with a repetition of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
Australian Red Cross to hold Hiroshima Day Vigil in Adelaide
Hiroshima Day Vigil https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hiroshima-day-vigil-tickets-36091150603?utm-medium=discovery&utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&aff=esfb by Australian Red Cross in SASun, August 6, 2017
2:00 PM – 4:00 PM ACST
LOCATION
Elder Park
King William Road
Adelaide, SA 5000
DESCRIPTION
ISIS came close to being able to make a “dirty bomb” in Mosul
More certain is the fact that the danger has not entirely passed. With dozens of Islamic State stragglers still loose in the city, U.S. officials requested that details about the cobalt’s current whereabouts not be revealed.
They also acknowledged that their worries extend far beyond Mosul. Similar equipment exists in hundreds of cities around the world, some of them in conflict zones.
“Nearly every country in the world either has them, or is a transit country” through which high-level radiological equipment passes
How ISIS nearly stumbled on the ingredients for a ‘dirty bomb’, WP, On the day the Islamic State overran the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2014, it laid claim to one of the greatest weapons bonanzas ever to fall to a terrorist group: a large metropolis dotted with military bases and garrisons stocked with guns, bombs, rockets and even battle tanks.
1945 records of a witness to the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima
FULL VERSION OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI FILM THEY DIDN’T WANT US TO SEE 34962
(this is not the same as the film discussed below)
Memos found from man who shot Hiroshima ‘phantom film’, Asahi Shimbun , By GEN OKAMOTO/ Staff Writer, July 23, 2017 SAGAMIHARA, Kanagawa Prefecture--Memos written by a photographer who documented the damage inflicted on Hiroshima after the atomic bombing and his personal feelings have been discovered by his grandson and will be displayed in Tokyo next month.
Kiyoji Suzuki took the notes with sketches when a documentary team, in which he was a member, roamed the flattened city between September and October 1945.
The documentary, “Effects of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” was undertaken by a Japanese film company to scientifically record the extent of the damage done to both cities, including footage of destroyed cityscapes, injured people and the existence of vegetation.
The shooting of Nagasaki ran into difficulties as the U.S. military meddled in the project. But the crew managed to continue with their work after being commissioned by the U.S. military.
Although the documentary was completed in 1946, the U.S. military confiscated the film and didn’t return it to Japan until 1967. The footage became known as the “phantom film” on the atomic bombings.
Hiroshi Nose, also a photographer who lives in Sagamihara, found his grandfather’s memos at his home in 2013.
Suzuki’s entries began on Sept. 18, 1945, when he was living in Tokyo and assigned to the film project in Hiroshima.
His memos show sketches of a “shadow” of a person or object etched on a nearby building by the bomb’s thermal flash and of a deformed leaf of a plant.
Suzuki also mentioned which lenses he used for filming and the weather that day.
Although many of the memos concern objective data, others appeared to reveal his personal feelings in the midst of the devastation…….
Nose completed a 28-minute documentary film last fall, titled “Hiroshima Bomb, Illusive Photography Memos,” after visiting places in Hiroshima that were associated with Suzuki’s memos.
The documentary compared footage of Hiroshima today and that of the city 72 years ago shot by his grandfather.
The memos will be displayed for the first time to the public at Art Gallery 884 in Tokyo’s Bunkyo Ward on Aug. 5-9. http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201707230019.html
Japan’s taxpayers will end up paying the $192.5 Billion Dollars estimated cost of the nuclear clean-up
The Total Fukushima Cost is now estimated at $21.5 trillion Yen ($192.5 Billion Dollars) by the Japanese Government, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/total-fukushima-cost-now-estimated-215-trillion-yen-1925-maxwell July 22, 2017, Keith Jason Maxwell
The Japanese government said in December that it expects total costs including compensation, decommissioning and decontamination to reach 21.5 trillion yen ($192.5 billion) in a process likely to take at least four decades as highradiation levels slow operations.
The new CEO of TEPCO has recently stated that unless TEPCO can increase its cash flow and profit margin (e.g. rate increases) the company will not be able to continue, or ultimately finish the recovery. In this scenario, the Japanese government will then be responsible for the cost of the recovery. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/total-fukushima-cost-now-
Protest against the rail transport of radioactive trash in Britain
Radiation Free Lakeland 22nd July 2017, Braving the rain in 
Carlisle today campaigners went to bear witness to the Nuclear Industry’s whitewashing of its seemingly never ending transports of mountains of spent fuel and nuclear materials.
The day is a great draw for thousands of railway enthusiasts who are in love with the diesel
engines. Many are unaware of the dangerous cargo of nuclear fuel, even those who live in Carlisle.
Created in 1994 by British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (now the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority) to take over British Rail’s handling of nuclear material. DRS has since diversified into other freight operations including food. This diversification serves to take the focus away from the main purpose which is the transport of nuclear materials (the only publicly owned railway we are allowed to have is that bearing nuclear freight!) https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2017/07/22/beware-nuclear-trains-bearing-gifts/
Tributes flow, on the death of highly respected Aboriginal elder Yami Lester
Yami Lester: tributes follow death of Aboriginal elder and Maralinga activist https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/23/yami-lester-tributes-follow-death-of-aboriginal-elder-and-maralinga-activist
Lester, who was blinded by British atomic tests in South Australia in the 1950s, campaigned to get recognition for the 1,800 Indigenous Australians affected, Guardian, 23 July 17 Tributes have poured in for Aboriginal elder and activist Yami Lester, who died at the age of 75.
Lester, who died in Alice Springs on Friday night, lived a life of “great hardship and challenge” after being blinded as a young adolescent by the Maralinga atomic tests in the 1950s, which he called the “black mist”.
He worked as a stockman before losing his sight.
He may be farewelled at a state funeral if his family accepts the offer from the Northern Territory government.“Mr Lester was a key Aboriginal leader who embraced the challenge of bridging two worlds,” NT chief minister Michael Gunner said on Saturday.
“He never let his blindness hold him back, he was sharp as a tack in negotiating at the highest levels of business and government.
“His life was a life of great hardship and challenge, met with great courage and foresight, and he achieved great change.”
He joined the Aboriginal Advancement League in Adelaide, fighting to gain recognition for the British atomic tests in South Australia, and an acknowledgement for the 1,800 Aboriginal people affected.
His work lead to the McClelland royal commission in 1984-85 which resulted in group compensation for the Maralinga Tjarutja people and long-term clean-up operations to restore the land.
Lester, who had an Order of Australia, was also central to the work of the Pitjantjatjara Council that led to the grant of freehold title to traditional owners in South Australia.
South Australia’s Aboriginal affairs minister, Kyam Maher, said Lester had inspired many and left behind a strong legacy.
Lester was also the inspiration for the 1987 Paul Kelly song Maralinga.“My thoughts are with his family, who carry on his work of activism, standing up for the rights and views of Anangu and preserving culture and language,” he said in a statement.
The South Australian government is consulting with his family on a memorial to recognise his contribution to the state.
A writer ponders on the radioactive waste at St Louis, Missouri
Even if we box it up and send it in train cars to remote places, it will be there, ready and waiting to kill any of us long after we’ve forgotten where we put it, or what “it” even is.
The Fallout, In St. Louis, America’s nuclear history creeps into the present, leaching into streams and bodies. Guernica, By Lacy M. Johnson, 10 July 2017 “……….Uranium, thorium, Agent Orange, dioxin, DDT. I am thinking of all the ways our government has poisoned its citizens as I board the plane that will take me back home. The sky grows darker; blue gives way to purple, to red and orange near the horizon. I read recently about a housing project in St. Louis, the infamous Pruitt-Igoe, where the government sprayed nerve gases off the roof to see what effect it would have on the people living there—testing it for its potential use as a weapon in war…….
A 2005 Gallup poll showed that a majority of Americans still approve of the dropping of bombs on Japan. Admittedly, this is down from near-total approval in August 1945, but it’s hardly a “moral revolution.” One factor in the decision to use the bomb was that their destructive power would end the war and save American lives—some estimated as many as a million American soldiers would have perished in a ground raid on Japan. Does saving one life require taking another? Must they both be soldiers, loyal to their countries and their neighbors? After Nagasaki was bombed, a woman walked through the burning streets asking for water for her headless baby. A four-year-old boy burned alive under the rubble of his crushed house was crying out, “Mommy, it’s hot. It’s so hot.” President Truman called this bombing an “achievement” in his solemn radio broadcast from the USS Augusta: “The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold.”
In the last few months of his term President Obama was reportedly considering the idea of adopting a no-first-use policy on nuclear weapons—an official promise that we would only use them in response to an attack by our enemies—but ultimately his advisors talked him out of it, arguing that it is our responsibility to our allies to maintain the illusion of ultimate power. Now that we have a new president with access to the nuclear codes we must face the consequences of projecting, and protecting, that illusion.
There are about sixteen thousand nuclear warheads in the world right now, enough to destroy the planet many times over. The United States and Russia own 90 percent of these, and though various treaties prevent them from making additional weapons, both are working to modernize the bomb-delivery systems they do have. The US government recently approved a plan to spend one trillion dollars over the next thirty years to make our arsenal more modern, accurate, and efficient.
One trillion dollars. This number is staggering, not least of all because one factor—a minor one but still a factor—deterring the EPA from fully excavating the radioactive waste created by the program that developed these nuclear weapons in the first place is how much it will cost. Maybe as much as $400 million. That’s a lot of money for an EPA project. Budgets are not so simple that one government program—like the Department of Defense—could direct money to another, but the fact that they are not does makes our priorities apparent.
Even if every gram of radioactive waste were removed from the landfill, where would it go? There are facilities in Idaho and Utah willing to accept it. But those facilities are located in communities, or near them, and those people don’t want this waste in their backyards or their gardens or their rivers or their drinking water either. Even if we box it up and send it in train cars to remote places, it will be there, ready and waiting to kill any of us long after we’ve forgotten where we put it, or what “it” even is. ……..https://www.guernicamag.com/the-fallout/
1.This month.
Zoom webinar – “Nuclear Winter: The Environmental Consequences of a Nuclear Exchange.”
April 7th at 11:30 am PST / 2:30 pm EST
Nuclear Winter: The Environmental Consequences of a Nuclear Exchange”
Join us for an informative webinar with renowned atmospheric scientist, Professor Brian Toon, as he discusses the environmental risks and global impacts of a nuclear war. Despite the potential damage caused by the blast from even small nuclear weapons, many countries continue to invest in and expand nuclear arsenals. Professor Toon will provide a scientific assessment of civilian fatalities, agricultural failures, climate concerns, and complications with food supply that would follow any international nuclear conflict. We need to plan how to prevent nuclear conflict and avoid catastrophe. Politicians and military planners must be made aware of global climate and agricultural complications that would ensue. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from, and engage in, this vital conversation
The Road to War brings a sharp focus to why it is not in Australia’s best interest to be dragged into a war with China which will almost inevitably go nuclear very quickly. The filmmaker has interviewed some of Australia’s senior foreign policy analysts who have vast experience behind them in analysing what really is going on here as the United States rattles its sabres with China. And sets us up to be its proxy, like the poor Ukranians have been fed into the Meatgrinder. So America can remain the Top Dog. The Road to War reveals how the United States through its spy base at Pine Gap and by stationing six nuclear capable B52 bombers in the Top End (without permission from the traditional owners) is making Australia a prime nuclear target if the current war of words suddenly melts down into full scale war.
The Road to War shows the implicit connection between Carbon emissions (the US military uses a whopping 70% of America’s annual petroleum to move its armies and vast War Machine around the globe to its 800+ military bases..but under a loophole wangled at Kyoto, the US military does not have to report its C02 annual emissions). The Road to War starts screening at selected cities and regional centres in March. See the trailer end for details.
Antinuclear 