Victoria’s major bushfires still out of control
Victoria bushfires: Major blazes still out of control as residents may be allowed to return home
By 9News Staff, 6:03am Mar 5, 2019 Five of the 29 bushfires burning in Victoria this morning are still out of control this morning stretching across 59,000 hectares of land.
A cooler weather change that is moving over the state has seen yesterday’s ‘Emergency’ warning zones downgraded to a ‘Watch and Act’ level, however authorities have warned that four major fires are still out of control.
Those incidents include the largest blaze still raging in Victoria at the Bunyip State Park which is still sparking spot fires in multiple areas…….https://www.9news.com.au/2019/03/04/18/10/news-melbourne-bushfires-bangholme-dandenong-south-fire
South Australia Labor politicians to visit Port Augusta on 14 March
South Australia’s Labor politicians Peter Malinauskas, (Leader of the Opposition) and Justin Hanson are coming to Port 
Augusta to (in their words) “listen and hear your thoughts on what is important to you and your community”. Only a half hour visit – but plenty of time to make our voices be heard!
Thursday 14th March 1pm – 1.30pm…..Gladstone Square
Russia officially halts Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF)
Russia officially suspends INF Treaty with US, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/russia-officially-suspends-inf-treaty-190304143410145.html
Vladimir Putin signs decree suspending Russia’s obligations under key nuclear arms pact with US. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree suspending Moscow’s participation in a key Cold War-era nuclear arms control treaty, following a similar move by the United States.
In a statement on Monday, the Kremlin said the suspension would last until the US “ends its violations of the treaty or until it terminates”.
In February, Washington gave notice of its intention to withdraw from the landmark 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which was established as a major safeguard against nuclear war.
The move by US President Donald Trump set the stage for the bilateral pact’s termination in six months.
Washington accuses Moscow of developing and deploying a cruise missile that violates provisions of the treaty that ban the production, testing and deployment of land-based cruise and ballistic missiles that have a range between 500km and 5,500km.
US officials have also expressed concerns that China, which is not party to the pact, was gaining a significant military advantage in Asia by deploying large numbers of missiles with ranges beyond the treaty’s limit.
Russia has denied any breaches, instead, charging that it was the US that had flouted the pact by deploying missile defence facilities in Eastern Europe that could fire cruise missiles instead of interceptors.
Washington rejects the claim.
The collapse of the treaty has stoked fears of a replay of a Cold War-era European missile crisis during the 1980s, when the US and the Soviet Union both deployed intermediate-range missiles on the continent.
Putin has previously said Russia would seek to develop medium-range missiles, but would not deploy them in the European part of the country or elsewhere unless the US does so.
NATO has supported the US’s decision to withdraw from the pact, but many European leaders have voiced fears over the consequences of its demise.
China has also urged Russia and the US to preserve the treaty.
Long delayed realisation of Australia’s brutal history of massacres of Aboriginal people
As the toll of Australia’s frontier brutality keeps climbing, truth telling is long overdue, The myth of benign, peaceful settlement persists today – even as historians reveal a far more sinister picture
• The Killing Times: the massacres of Aboriginal people Australia must confront
• A massacre map of the frontier wars – interactive
Guardian by Paul Daley, 4 Mar 19
“………… The Australian Museum estimates that pre-European invasion in 1788, about 750,000 Indigenous people (representing some 700 language groups) inhabited the continent that would become Australia. This figure may well be an underestimate.
Little over a century later, by federation in 1901, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island population had diminished to some 117,000. Black-white warfare and organised massacres, no matter how you define them, with police, British soldiers, native police, militia and raiding parties as the perpetrators, accounted for many tens of thousands of deaths. Individual acts of violence – including shootings, poisonings, torture and illegal incarceration – killed many more. Battle wounds, starvation (owing to the depletion of traditional hunting grounds) and disease – all of which can also be directly linked to invasion and frontier conflict – killed countless others.
Yet the historiographic confect of benign, peaceful settlement and the unexplained “passing” or “extinction” of the “natives” pervaded well into the 1960s, replete with the deception that very few Aboriginal people died violently during pastoral and urban expansion and dispossession. Things began to change with the emergence of a new, more inquisitive, less empire-centric cohort of historians and writers who, not content with the Anglophile colonial trope of terra nullius and benevolence to the Indigenes, began to commit truth to the page………..
In the 1970s and 1980s a number of historians – among them Henry Reynolds, Marilyn Lake and Richard Broome – began focusing on frontier violence, using the colonial records, newspaper archives and family histories (including generational oral accounts of killings).
Reynolds is acknowledged as the first Australian historian to make a calculated continental estimate of the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who died violently in Australian frontier conflict. In his 1981 book, The Other Side of the Frontier, and after at least a decade’s research Reynolds estimated the figure at about 20,000……….
Reynolds speaks of the significance of Evans and Ørsted-Jensen’s research on the numbers of killings in colonial Queensland.
Based on an extrapolation of native police documentation, they estimated (conservatively) that as many as 60,000 Aboriginal people died in frontier violence in Queensland alone.
The national implications of the figure are profound; the wars that raged across this continent from 1788 did, it seem, claim more Indigenous lives than 62,000 Australian service personnel who died in the first world war………… https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/04/as-the-toll-of-australias-frontier-brutality-keeps-climbing-truth-telling-is-long-overdue
The unimaginable toxicity of Fukushima reactor’s molten nuclear debris – robots the only hope for cleanup
For Fukushima’s nuclear disaster, robots may be the only hopeThe 2011 meltdown in Japan is still too hot for humans to handle. Send in the machines. CNet BY ROGER CHENG, MARCH 4, 2019 ………. I’m inside the cavernous top of the Unit 3 reactor in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Yes, that Fukushima Daiichi, site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
Unit 3 was one of three reactors crippled on March 11, 2011, after a 9.0 earthquake struck 80 miles off the coast of Japan. (Units 4, 5 and 6 at Daiichi weren’t operating at the time.) The temblor shook so violently it shifted the Earth’s axis by nearly 4 inches and moved the coast of Japan by 8 feet. Eleven reactors at four nuclear power plants throughout the region were operating at the time. All shut down automatically. All reported no significant damage.
An hour later, the tsunami reached shore.
Two 50-foot-high waves barreled straight at Fukushima Daiichi, washing over coastal seawalls and disabling the diesel generators powering the plant’s seawater cooling systems. Temperatures inside the reactors skyrocketed to as high as 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Fuel rods became molten puddles of uranium that chewed through the floors below, leaving a radioactive cocktail of fuel rods, concrete, steel and melted debris. Molten fuel ultimately sank into the three reactors’ primary containment vessels, designed to catch and secure contaminated material.
Next Monday marks the eighth anniversary of the earthquake. Since then, Japanese energy giant Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, has cleared enough of the rubble on the top floor of the Unit 3 building to allow for my 10-minute visit.
I gaze up at the massive barrel vault ceiling, trying to get a handle on the sheer scale of everything. Radiation levels are too high for me to linger. My quickening pace and breath are betrayed by rapid flapping noises coming from the purple filters on both sides of my respirator mask.
At the far end of the room, there’s an enormous orange platform known as a fuel-handling machine. It has four giant metal legs that taper down, giving the structure a sort of animalistic look. Thin steel cables suspend a chrome robot in the center of the frame. The robot, largely obscured by a pink plastic wrapper, is equipped with so-called manipulators that can cut rubble and grab fuel rods. The robot will eventually pull radioactive wreckage out of a 39-foot-deep pool in the center of the room.
It’s just one of the many robots Tepco is using to clean up the power plant. It’s why I came to Japan this past November — to see how robots are working in one of the most extreme situations imaginable.
The Japanese government estimates it will cost $75.7 billion and take 40 years to fully decommission and tear down the facility. The Japan Atomic Energy Agency even built a research center nearby to mock up conditions inside the power plant, allowing experts from around the country to try out new robot designs for clearing away the wreckage.
The hope is that the research facility — along with a drone-testing field an hour away — can clean up Daiichi and revitalize Fukushima Prefecture, once known for everything from seafood to sake. The effort will take so long that Tepco and government organizations are grooming the next generation of robotics experts to finish the job. …….
Two years ago, Tepco erected a dome over the Unit 3 reactor and fuel pool so that engineers could bring in heavy equipment and now, us.
Roughly 60 feet below me, radiation is being emitted at 1 sievert per hour. A single dose at that level is enough to cause radiation sickness such as nausea, vomiting and hemorrhaging. One dose of 5 sieverts an hour would kill about half of those exposed to it within a month, while exposure to 10 sieverts in an hour would be fatal within weeks.
Unit 3 is the least contaminated of the three destroyed reactors.
Radiation in Unit 1 has been measured at 4.1 to 9.7 sieverts per hour. And two years ago, a reading taken at the deepest level of Unit 2 was an “unimaginable” 530 sieverts, according to The Guardian. Readings elsewhere in Unit 2 are typically closer to 70 sieverts an hour, still making it the hottest of Daiichi’s hotspots.
The reactors’ hostile environments brought most of the early robots to their figurative knees: High gamma radiation levels scrambled the electrons within the semiconductors serving as the robots’ brains — ruling out machines that are too sophisticated. Autonomous robots would either shut down or get snared by misshapen obstacles in unexpected places.
The robots also had to be nimble enough to avoid disturbing the volatile melted fuel rods, essentially playing the world’s deadliest game of “Operation.” At least initially, they weren’t. “Fukushima was a humbling moment,” says Rian Whitton, an analyst at ABI Research. “It showed the limits of robot technologies.”………….. https://www.cnet.com/news/for-fukushimas-nuclear-disaster-robots-may-be-the-only-hope/
How to face what is happening – environmental collapse
Rethink Activism in the Face of Catastrophic Biological Collapse, Dahr Jamail and Barbara Cecil, Truthout,
PART OF THE TRUTHOUT SERIES How Then Shall We Live? 4 Mar 19,
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
― Wendell Berry
Anyone who thinks there is still time to wholly remedy the situation must answer the question: How do we remove all the heat that’s already been absorbed by the oceans? Invigorated activism, as heartening and important as it is, is not going to completely stem these tides.
Thus, the third level of activism, adaptation, comes into focus.
Trump administration still keenly pursuing sale of nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia
Team Trump Keeps Pushing Deal to Send Nuclear Tech to Saudis
Congress raised ‘grave concerns’ about the Trump administration’s past attempts to send nuclear technology to the Saudis. But Team Trump isn’t done trying. The Daily Beast, Erin Banco, Betsy Woodruff 03.04.19 The Trump administration is still actively working to make a deal to send U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia, according to two U.S. officials and two professional staffers at federal agencies with direct knowledge of those conversations. American energy businesses are still hoping to cash in on Riyadh’s push for energy diversification,
Alinta, Snowy, Engie, EnergyAustralia fail to meet renewable energy target — RenewEconomy
Regulator confirms leading energy retailers did not bother to meet renewable energy target in 2018, and will make huge profits playing the market over the next three years. The post Alinta, Snowy, Engie, EnergyAustralia fail to meet renewable energy target appeared first on RenewEconomy.
via Alinta, Snowy, Engie, EnergyAustralia fail to meet renewable energy target — RenewEconomy
What will a Tesla Model 3 EV cost in Australia? Find out here — RenewEconomy
Wondering how much the Model 3 will cost for Australian buyers? This handy calculator might help. The post What will a Tesla Model 3 EV cost in Australia? Find out here appeared first on RenewEconomy.
via What will a Tesla Model 3 EV cost in Australia? Find out here — RenewEconomy
March 4 Energy News — geoharvey
Opinion: ¶ “We Must Keep In Mind The Costs Of The Green New Deal To Vulnerable Communities” • While the Green New Deal achieves net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, it will cost many workers in the fossil fuel industry their jobs. Specific solutions to this upheaval were given in a recent article in the Harvard Business […]
Over 2000 firefighters working to contain bushfires around Victoria
Fires rip through Victoria: ‘worse than Black Saturday’, A fire, which has destroyed properties and more than 10,000 hectares of land is burning in the same area as the deadly Black Saturday bushfires. Bushfires have ripped through Victoria’s east, with a wind change challenging firefighters working all night to contain the blaze. SBS News 4 Mar 19
Despite cooler conditions expected on Monday, firefighters may have to contend with dry lightning, which could start more fires.
The Bunyip State Park fire, burning 65km east of Melbourne, was sparked by lightning strikes on Friday and has destroyed more than 10,000 hectares.
The blaze is still racing towards the Princes Freeway and emergency warnings remain in place for the surrounding area.
“The risk of lightning redevelops in the late morning with the chance of some showers and thunderstorms,” Bureau of Meteorology’s senior forecaster Christie Johnson said.
While there was a chance of showers, it was hard to pinpoint where they would hit, and there would only be a few millimetres of rainfall, she said…..
More than 2000 firefighters are working to contain blazes around the state …..https://www.sbs.com.au/news/fires-rip-through-victoria-worse-than-black-saturday
USA has no idea what to do with spent nuclear fuel
U.S. still has no place for spent nuclear fuel, so Maine Yankee’s owner gets millions
The award will help pay for the roughly $10 million per year to maintain the repository at the closed nuclear plant in Wiscasset. PressHerald, BY TUX TURKEL STAFF WRITER 3 Mar 19, For the fourth time since 1998, a federal judge 
has awarded the owners of three closed nuclear power plants, including Maine Yankee, millions of dollars for the federal government’s failure to remove spent nuclear fuel.
According to Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Co., Yankee Atomic Electric Co., and Maine Yankee Atomic Power Co., the owners won a partial summary judgment last week totaling $103.2 million. Maine Yankee’s share is $34.4 million.
The award will help offset the roughly $10 million per year cost of operating an interim spent fuel storage site on plant property in Wiscasset. It will indirectly benefit ratepayers, who otherwise foot the bill. The actual financial impact hasn’t been determined, but is expected to be minimal.
In 2016, for instance, Maine Yankee was awarded about $24.6 million. Roughly $3.6 million of the total award was returned to utilities, including Central Maine Power. The balance, $21 million, went to operate the spent fuel storage site…….
Wayne Norton, president of the three companies urged Congress to authorize funding for a pilot program to remove and consolidate spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste from closed reactor sites, and to complete a review for a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Maine Yankee operated from 1972 to 1996. Although activists fought for years to close the plant, it was the company’s board that ultimately voted to pull the plug rather than fix expensive, safety-related problems.
Yankee, in Rowe, Massachusetts, closed in 1992. Connecticut Yankee shut down in 1996.
By law, the federal government is charged with coming up with a long-term solution for disposing of radioactive waste from nuclear reactors. It was supposed to begin removing waste in 1998. Facing ongoing public and political opposition, that process hasn’t happened.
Plans to build a permanent waste repository in the Nevada desert were scrapped in 2009 by President Obama. The Trump administration has sent mixed signals about whether it supports reviving Yucca Mountain.
For the foreseeable future, highly radioactive fuel rods are being stored in 60 airtight steel canisters and housed in concrete casks in Wiscasset. Another four canisters hold radioactive steel from the decommissioning process. Maintaining them costs roughly $10 million a year, according to Maine Yankee.
The current award is for a period from 2013 to 2016, and the three companies are seeking an additional $1.2 million in costs. The federal government has 60 days to appeal the award.
Tux Turkel can be contacted at 791-6462 or at:
tturkel@pressherald.com https://www.pressherald.com/2019/02/25/judge-awards-34-million-to-offset-costs-of-storing-spent-fuel-rods-in-wiscasset/
Australia’s Energy Minister, Angus Taylor, lying about Australia’s greenhouse emissions
Angus Taylor again falsely claims Australia’s greenhouse emissions are falling, Guardian, Amy RemeikisIn an interview with the ABC program Insiders, Angus Taylor repeatedly stated emissions had decreased by 1% repeating the line first said by the prime minister, Scott Morrison, that Australia would meet its Paris commitments in “a canter”……. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/03/angus-taylor-again-falsely-claims-australias-greenhouse-emissions-are-falling
Rolls Royce selling vast bulk of its civil nuclear business
Times 3rd March 2019 Rolls-Royce is selling the vast bulk of its civil nuclear business, dealing a new blow to efforts to rebuild Britain’s atomic power industry. The FTSE 100 engineer has hired consultants from KPMG to find a buyer for the
nuclear division, which could fetch up to £200m.
The move marks the end of an era for the country’s premier engineering company, which has more than 50 years’ expertise in nuclear power but is being slimmed down by chief executive Warren East to focus on jet engines, power generators and defence. The nuclear business makes instruments and controls to monitor radiation and temperature and prevent reactors overheating. Its equipment is installed in more than 200 reactors around the world, and it has a big presence in France, where it works with the state-backed engineering firm Orano , [formerly Areva, which went bankrupt]
Rolls-Royce’s retreat from civil nuclear work reflects the industry’s broader problems. Plans for new power stations in Britain have been left in tatters after the Japanese industrial giants Toshiba and Hitachi withdrew, leaving just Hinkley Point in Somerset under way.
The Japanese exit has triggered an inquiry by the Commons business committee into future investment in energy infrastructure. The sale will not include Rolls-Royce’s work on Hinkley Point, which is ringfenced, the company’s
project to develop small reactors or its nuclear submarine reactor business.
Rolls-Royce has been in talks to install its equipment at a plant in Essex planned by China General Nuclear, to help assuage security concerns. This work is likely to be transferred to the new owner. Sources said the business, which has more than 1,000 staff, was likely to go to a trade buyer. A Chinese deal is unlikely.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/rolls-royce-to-offload-civil-nuclear-unit-zsq59zlmm
The colonial mindset that caused eternal pain — Beyond Nuclear International
Pacific peoples still suffer due to March 1, 1954 US ‘Bravo’ atomic blast
via The colonial mindset that caused eternal pain — Beyond Nuclear International
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 