Hawker ballot says no to nuke waste dump
https://www.9news.com.au/national/hawker-ballot-to-close-on-nuke-waste-dump/18ef3ba3-8409-4783-a114-2652368da458#close By AAPstra6:12pm Dec 12, 2019 A community poll among residents in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges has narrowly voted against the construction of nuclear waste dump in the area.
Scott Morrison and the Coalition are fiddling as Australia burns
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Scott Morrison and the Coalition are fiddling as Australia burns On climate action, the Coalition is the party of wreck, defer and obfuscate, the party with a shameful and indefensible record, Guardian Katharine Murphy Political editor, @murpharoo, Tue 10 Dec 2019 “………… Swathes of the country are burning, and we’ve only just entered summer. While Christian Porter was working through his various concessions on religious discrimination on Tuesday, trying to contain blowback from the churches and from colleagues, dot point by dot point, thick smoke was choking Sydney. In Canberra, the heat is also blistering, and the smoke from Braidwood rolls in and out, triggering memories of that traumatic January in 2003 that many of us lived through, our treasured possessions tucked in boxes, babies on hips, sheltering friends displaced from the western suburbs of the city; a city ready to flee, watching a red sky, raining ash and burning cinders, houses on fire, trees on fire. I flew to Brisbane on Sunday. The ground below me was dust for a thousand kilometres and the sky was a milky fog of smoke and heat haze. Dear prime minister. The country is not parched but desiccated, and it is burning like a tinderbox, and people are frightened. They are frightened about today and the terrible business of defending property and saving lives, and they are frightened about whether this is what spring and summer in Australia now looks like as droughts lengthen and deepen, and the fire season extends and intensifies because of climate change – which is what scientists have been trying to tell us all these years, so many times, in so many different ways, experts maligned and mangled in a culture war, pleading to be understood. Fear has accompanied the dry, and the heat and the flames, and that is a difficult and frankly politically unwelcome development for a prime minister who won an election just a few months ago at least in part by telling people to calm down about climate change, because the Coalition had things under control. It wasn’t true of course. That pitch has no basis in fact because the Coalition has done more than any other political party in Australia to frustrate climate action. If anyone is inclined to think wrecking is behaviour of the past, a vestige of Abbottism rather than behaviour of the present, because Morrison is so much more sensible, just remember this very week, in Madrid, Australian officials are making the case we need to use an accounting loophole to meet our Paris target. Far from meeting our 2030 target in a canter, Australia will not meet the target at all unless we invoke carryover credits to carry about half the abatement load. By taking this stance, we not only defer corrective action in our own country that should be happening now, in orderly fashion over this decade, we also validate the inclination of other countries, with higher emissions than us, to hunt for workarounds too. To cut a long story short, we make it less likely that the world will deliver the ambition we need to avert the worst of warming. So let’s be very clear. On climate action, the Coalition is the party of wreck, defer and obfuscate, the party with a shameful and indefensible record, the party that only last year bundled Malcolm Turnbull out of office in part because of a policy idea that might have settled a decade of partisan warfare that the Coalition believes is helpful to its re-election prospects. Morrison pursued an electoral strategy in May of telling voters in the cities the Coalition had climate under control, there was no need for hysterics, while in the regions, out of sight of the metro campaigns, the government weaponised climate change against Labor. So the Coalition in 2019 is the party of placate where necessary and punch on where politically profitable – which feels like the grimmest story of all. It might be grim, but it will remain the model as long at there’s enough voters in enough regional seats either not buying the science, or more worried about their immediate material circumstances than the science, to swing an election in the Coalition’s favour. As long as the status quo delivers a pathway to victory, the climate war in Australia will go on being an artefact of partisan politics rather than a practical problem to be solved. It’s hard, that truth, so hard I flinch. But truth is hard, and it’s past time truth won this argument rather than being obscured in the emoting, and the bobble head ranting, and the posturing, and the dissembling, and the clever strategising. Now by carrying on resolutely while the country burns, and being seen to carry on while things are being managed, Morrison is not avoiding the issue so much as trying to set the tone. The prime minister doesn’t want to validate the rising fear in the community by looking perturbed about the disaster currently in progress, because that obviously makes a lie of the Coalition’s “everything is fine” messaging. He wants to be getting on with ordinary business in full public view, not flapping about with special summits with the premiers just because Turnbull said he should do it on Q&A. …… The obfuscation, the false comfort, the changing of the subject, the head-patting, will keep happening as long as we let it. It will keep happening as long as soft and hard denialism is enabled in mainstream media outlets, as long as journalists prioritise other lines of inquiry over rigorously pursuing accountability on this issue, and as long as Australian voters abdicate responsibility by telling themselves all political parties are as bad as each other so it doesn’t matter who you vote for. The only way things will change is if we choose, as a country, to do something else. To take responsibility. To demand something better. Because, ultimately, this, the future, is on us. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/10/australia-is-burning-like-a-tinderbox-and-the-coalition-wont-acknowledge-voters-rising-fears |
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NUCLEAR WASTE DUMP DECEPTION
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Kim Mavromatis No Nuclear Waste Dump Anywhere in South Australia, 11 Dec 19, The whole of SA should wake up to what ANSTO and the Fed govnt is proposing. ANSTO and the Fed govnt are not being honest about what they are going to dump at the proposed sites near Kimba or in the Flinders Ranges near Hawker. ANSTO state that spent nuclear fuel from the Lucas Heights reactor is Intermediate Level Nuclear Waste – but it’s really High Level Nuclear Waste. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Definition of High Level Nuclear Waste : “High-Level Radioactive Waste (HLW) is produced from the burning of uranium fuel in nuclear power reactors. It is of two kinds: spent fuel, declared as waste and ready for disposal, or waste resulting from the reprocessing of spent fuel. Due to its high radioactivity and very long half-life, HLW has to be well contained and isolated from the human environment.” Even after 30 years, spent nuclear fuel from nuclear reactors is still 10,000 times more radioactive than uranium ore. And the waste that is shipped back to Australia from France from the reprocessed spent nuclear fuel still contains 95% of the radioactivity. As well as low-level waste, ANSTO are proposing to temporarily dump High Level Nuclear Waste in SA (deceptively classifed as Intermediate) for up to 100 years until a permanent solution can be found. If a nuclear waste accident occurs, it’s likely to be catastrophic for the region and South Australia. The Spencer Gulf is connected to aquifers from the Flinders Ranges and floodwaters from significant flooding events at the proposed site end up in the Spencer Gulf via Lake Torrens. Why on earth would ScoMo’s Federal Liberal govnt want to dump nuclear waste in the Flinders Ranges, on a floodplain, in a seismically active region, bordered by natural springs, in an iconic tourism destination, or on Eyre Peninsula farmland, near Kimba and next to Lake Gilles Conservation Park????? The govnt have stated that there’s never been a nuclear material transport accident in Aust – but there has been, and the people affected were treated badly and many died of cancers – watch our film : “NUCLEAR WASTE CRASH COVERUP – POISONED POLICE SPEAK OUT” https://vimeo.com/372781616 |
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Australia at the bottom of the list in global assessment of climate action
 ‘Cause for great concern’: Australia ranked last in global assessment on climate action, Australia’s record on climate change has been panned in the latest Climate Change Performance Index tracking nation’s efforts to combat global warming, SBS NEWS, BY TOM STAYNER, 1 Dec 19, Australia’s climate change record has been ranked among the bottom five nations in the world in a global assessment of countries’ emissions trajectories.
The Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) measures the emissions, renewable energy share and climate policies of 57 countries and the European Union. It has been released at COP25, the UN climate summit being held in Madrid, as nations attempt to thrash out the way forward on the global Paris framework responding to the crisis. According to the report, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and the United States give “cause for great concern” over their performance on emissions, renewable energy development and climate policy. Australia’s climate policy rating was ranked the lowest in the world with analysts noting that “the newly elected government continued to worsen performance at both national and international levels.” Its policies were given a 0.0 rating, in comparison the United Stated ranked one position higher held a 2.8 rating and the top-performing nation Portugal received a 98.7. National experts observe a lack of progress in these areas with the [Australia] government failing to clarify how it will meet the country’s insufficient 2030 emissions reduction target and inaction in developing a long-term mitigation strategy,” the report reads. “While the government is not proposing any further targets for renewable energy beyond 2020, it continues to promote the expansion of fossil fuels and in April 2019 approved the opening of the highly controversial Adani coalmine.” Across the assessment, Australia ranked 44th on emissions, 50th on renewable energy, 52nd on energy use and 61st on climate policy. National experts observe a lack of progress in these areas with the [Australia] government failing to clarify how it will meet the country’s insufficient 2030 emissions reduction target and inaction in developing a long-term mitigation strategy,” the report reads. “While the government is not proposing any further targets for renewable energy beyond 2020, it continues to promote the expansion of fossil fuels and in April 2019 approved the opening of the highly controversial Adani coalmine.” Across the assessment, Australia ranked 44th on emissions, 50th on renewable energy, 52nd on energy use and 61st on climate policy……. HTTPS://WWW.SBS.COM.AU/NEWS/CAUSE-FOR-GREAT-CONCERN-AUSTRALIA-RANKED-LAST-IN-GLOBAL-ASSESSMENT-ON-CLIMATE-ACTION |
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Strong opposition to nuclear waste dump plan for Flinders Ranges
South Australia’s nuclear dump deadline looms large, Newcastle Herald, Amy Green, 11 Dec 19
South Australia’s Flinders Ranges nuclear waste ballot closes tomorrow.
Thousands of people have signed an open letter to the federal government asking it not to proceed with the current plan. The Australian Conservation Foundation is behind the letter, which has garnered more than 5000 signatures, addressing Minister for Resources Senator Matt Canavan.
Nuclear Free Campaigner Dave Sweeney has labelled the process “deeply flawed and irresponsible”. “The current federal waste plan lacks key information of such important things as waste acceptance criteria, who would manage any facility and transport methods and routes,” Mr Sweeney said.
“It also fails to make any credible case for doubling handling the long lived intermediate level waste (ILW). “The vast majority of this ILW waste is currently securely stored above ground at the ANSTO Lucas Heights facility in southern Sydney, but the federal Department want to re-locate this above ground storage in regional SA – pending future disposal via a yet to fund or identified place or process.
“There is a real risk this waste will become stranded at any future SA site.”
The Department of Industry, Innovation and Science is encouraging interested people who haven’t done so already, to have their say on the proposed National Radioactive Waste Management Facility.
The department is consulting with two South Australian communities who live near three potential sites volunteered by landowners – two near Kimba and one near Hawker.
The results of these ballots and surveys, together with public submissions and feedback received elsewhere will be given to Minister Canavan to assist him in deciding whether the facility can be established at one of the potential sites…. https://www.newcastleherald.com.au/story/6538918/sa-nuclear-dump-deadline-looms-large/?cs=9397
Over 9 million bags of nuclear cleanup waste piled up across Fukushima Prefecture.
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Over 9 million bags of nuclear cleanup waste piled up across Fukushima Pref. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20151210/p2a/00m/0na/020000c?fbclid=IwAR0UFZrUByjuHKdFb8dE7o4p_WjADFuYZBGw-5NUrbUklXe_8buwbOifmaA The number of bags of waste from decontamination efforts around the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant reached a little under 9.16 million as of the end of September according to Fukushima Prefecture and the Environment Ministry. The 1-cubic-meter bags are found at some 114,700 interim storage or decontamination sites across the prefecture. In the town of Tomioka — covered by a nuclear disaster evacuation order — mounds of bags have grown so tall that they obscure the power shovels used to move and stack the waste, the black balls covering every sliver of landscape. The bags of waste are typically stacked four layer high, with a fifth layer of uncontaminated soil laid on top to block radiation. Waterproof sheets are also used to stop rainwater from getting into the bags and becoming contaminated. Negotiations with the towns of Okuma and Futaba — both under evacuation orders — to establish mid-term waste storage facilities there have been hard-going, and the start of construction is nowhere in sight.December 10, 2015 (Mainichi Japan) |
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A foreign corporation gets 89 BILLION litres of Australia’s water, as drought worsens
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Water restrictions for you, an endless supply for them: How a foreign corporate giant is snapping up 89 BILLION litres of Australia’s H20 as the country suffers its worst drought ever
By ALISHA ROUSE FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA DAILY MAIL UK 12 December 2019 |A multi-billion dollar Singaporean food company is selling 89,000 megalitres of Australian water to a Canadian pension fund. The mega sale of Australian permanent water rights comes as the country is crippled by one of the worst droughts in its history. On Tuesday, NSW brought in a complete ban on hoses as part of the toughest water restrictions implemented for more than a decade. But no such problem existed for food and agriculture giant Olam International, which sold the 89billion litres of permanent water rights for an astonishing $490 million. The company sold it to an entity associated with the Public Sector Pension Investment Board, one of Canada’s largest pension investment managers, according to Straits Times. It will use the water to irrigate almond trees, in a business venture likely to draw criticism over foreign ownership of farms and water. The water rights are in the lower Murray-Darling Basin. The chairman of the Victorian Farmers Federation’s water council, Richard Anderson, told the Sydney Morning Herald: ‘Really, all you’ve got is a change of ownership, it (the water) has gone from a Singapore-owned company to a Canadian pension fund……. Water restrictions in Sydney, the Blue Mountains and Illawarra were upgraded to level two as dam levels in the region sank to just 45 per cent capacity, the lowest levels since the Millennium Drought took hold in 2003….. The Bureau of Meteorology has predicted a hot-than-usual summer, with no forecast for significant rain. The sale is understood to be giving Olam a ‘one-time pre-tax capital gain of about $311 million’, the paper reported. The agreement is for 25 years, with the option to renew for another 25. In March, the government released its foreign ownership of water entitlement register, showing that investors from China and the US had the largest stake in Australia’s foreign-owned water entitlements. It showed that one in 10 water entitlements is foreign owned. A water entitlement is the right to an ongoing share of water, which can be sold by irrigators, companies or investors. Acting as a property right, it gives access to an exclusive share of water from a water resource. This is different to a water allocation, which is the right to access a volume of water for use or trade. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7780983/Foreign-company-sells-89-billion-litres-Australian-water-rights-490m-drought.html?fbclid=IwAR3wKbYP6OnXTEPhNoZiDeQ2Oj1o6uMzWUmkQSOgMxYjkZn6i0cJFj60Zo4&fbclid=IwAR3oHKAi9vQG4MctY4LMYNppX-pbY88hw0Zj4ACzypNTB_WI9nTtkc710bc |
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Civil liberties in America strangled by the Patriot Act
While Congress subjects the nation to its impeachment-flavored brand of bread-and-circus politics, our civil liberties continue to die a slow, painful death by a thousand cuts.
Case in point: while Americans have been fixated on the carefully orchestrated impeachment drama that continues to monopolize headlines, Congress passed and President Trump signed into law legislation extending three key provisions of the USA Patriot Act, which had been set to expire on December 15, 2019.
As Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) predicted:
Today, while everyone is distracted by the impeachment drama, Congress will vote to extend warrantless data collection provisions of the #PatriotAct, by hiding this language on page 25 of the Continuing Resolution (CR) that temporarily funds the government. To sneak this through, Congress will first vote to suspend the rule which otherwise gives us (and the people) 72 hours to consider a bill. The scam here is that Democrats are alleging abuse of Presidential power, while simultaneously reauthorizing warrantless power to spy on citizens that no President should have… in a bill that continues to fund EVERYTHING the President does… and waiving their own rules to do it. I predict Democrats will vote on a party line to suspend the 72 hour rule. But after the rule is suspended, I suspect many Republicans will join most Democrats to pass the CR with the Patriot Act extension embedded in it.
Greta Thunberg hits out at Australia and climate loopholes — RenewEconomy
Thunberg slams countries, like Australia, for using the COP25 climate talks to push for accounting loopholes instead of raising their climate ambition. The post Greta Thunberg hits out at Australia and climate loopholes appeared first on RenewEconomy.
via Greta Thunberg hits out at Australia and climate loopholes — RenewEconomy
No legal or moral basis for Australia’s Kyoto accounting fudge, new analysis shows — RenewEconomy
New analysis raises questions over legitimacy of Australia’s ‘Kyoto carryover’ plans, with ClimateAnalytics challenging its legal and moral justifications. The post No legal or moral basis for Australia’s Kyoto accounting fudge, new analysis shows appeared first on RenewEconomy.
via No legal or moral basis for Australia’s Kyoto accounting fudge, new analysis shows — RenewEconomy
December 11 Energy News — geoharvey
COP25: ¶ “Major emitters accused of blocking progress at UN talks” • Delegates from developing countries have reacted angrily to what they see as attempts to block progress at the COP25 meeting in Madrid. One negotiator told the BBC that the talks had failed to find agreement on a range of issues because of the […]
Coalition’s zero for climate policy is well earned. All it’s done is cook the books — RenewEconomy
Australia’s zero for climate policy is well earned, because even its own projections show little in the way of real emission reductions from the Coalition government. The post Coalition’s zero for climate policy is well earned. All it’s done is cook the books appeared first on RenewEconomy.
via Coalition’s zero for climate policy is well earned. All it’s done is cook the books — RenewEconomy
Taylor avoids mention of bushfires as Australia given a zero for climate policy — RenewEconomy
International think tank gives Australia a zero for national climate policy as Taylor avoids mentioning the bushfires in his address to COP25 in Madrid. The post Taylor avoids mention of bushfires as Australia given a zero for climate policy appeared first on RenewEconomy.
via Taylor avoids mention of bushfires as Australia given a zero for climate policy — RenewEconomy
Coalition’s zero for climate policy is well earned. All it’s done is cook the books — RenewEconomy
Australia’s zero for climate policy is well earned, because even its own projections show little in the way of real emission reductions from the Coalition government. The post Coalition’s zero for climate policy is well earned. All it’s done is cook the books appeared first on RenewEconomy.
via Coalition’s zero for climate policy is well earned. All it’s done is cook the books — RenewEconomy
ARENA targets solar panel recycling in new $15m funding round — RenewEconomy
ARENA’s 5th solar R&D funding round to focus on cutting costs and amount of waste to landfill from solar panels that have reached the end of their working lives. The post ARENA targets solar panel recycling in new $15m funding round appeared first on RenewEconomy.
via ARENA targets solar panel recycling in new $15m funding round — RenewEconomy
Antinuclear 