In water-scarce Australia, cooling water for nuclear power would become an impossible burden
In summary, in a hot dry continent like Australia, providing cooling water for a nuclear power plant would prove a huge cost and distortion to the water industry.
 Nuclear cost and water consumption – The elephants in the control room, Open Forum, Peter Farley | December 20, 2019 “…..Cooling Water
A key issue with nuclear plants is cooling. Because of the cost of shutdowns and the degradation of materials by irradiation, the plants are designed to run at lower peak temperatures (260-320 C) than coal (500-670 C), gas turbines (1,300-1430C) or internal combustion plants (2,000 C). The thermal efficiency of a plant is directly related to the difference between the peak temperature and the cooling medium – what is termed Carnot efficiency. Lower temperature means lower efficiency, as less of the heat energy is converted into work and more is removed by the cooling system. So for a given amount of electrical energy delivered, more cooling is required in a nuclear plant. Furthermore the warmer the cooling water or air the more coolant is required. Thus the Barrakah plants require 100 tonnes of Gulf seawater per second for each generator. In higher latitudes with seawater temperatures in the range of 2-12C, water requirements can still be 40-60 tonnes per second per GW. Just to put that in perspective Melbourne Water supplies 15-20 tonnes per second to the entire Metropolitan area of almost 5 million people. Even so, the water temperature is raised by 7-10C which is enough to kill any fish larvae unfortunate enough to be sucked into the cooling intakes. It is enough to change the local environment for all sea life, so finding a suitabable site is very difficult. There are currently no nuclear plants operating using warm seawater for cooling although Barrakah is soon to be commissioned. The problem there is not just the temperature but the accelerated rates of corrosion and biofouling which will mean the heat exchangers need to be larger, pumping losses will be higher and maintenance bills higher still. Perhaps the area near Portland in Victoria might work, but then the 500kV line would have to be triplicated to carry away the power, further adding to the cost. Plants at the edges of the grid have a whole lot of other issues so a South Australian plant would be extremely difficult to integrate. On land in very cold climates, a small number of air cooled plants have been built but the offset is that about 5% of the output of the power plant is used to run the fans. However in warm climates it is virtually impossible to run an air cooled nuclear power plant. It would require in the order of 450-500 tonnes of air per second to be moved over the heat exchangers per GW of electrical output. At typical air velocities for cooling fans that would have a fan area of 75,000 square meters or if each fan was the cross section of a shipping container, 17,000 fans. It is enough to change the local environment for all sea life, so finding a suitable site is very difficult. There are currently no nuclear plants operating using warm seawater for cooling although Barrakah is soon to be commissioned. The problem there is not just the temperature but the accelerated rates of corrosion and biofouling which will mean the heat exchangers need to be larger, pumping losses will be higher and maintenance bills higher still. Perhaps the area near Portland in Victoria might work, but then the 500kV line would have to be triplicated to carry away the power, further adding to the cost. Plants at the edges of the grid have a whole lot of other issues so a South Australian plant would be extremely difficult to integrate. On land in very cold climates, a small number of air cooled plants have been built but the offset is that about 5% of the output of the power plant is used to run the fans. However in warm climates it is virtually impossible to run an air cooled nuclear power plant. It would require in the order of 450-500 tonnes of air per second to be moved over the heat exchangers per GW of electrical output. At typical air velocities for cooling fans that would have a fan area of 75,000 square meters or if each fan was the cross section of a shipping container, 17,000 fans. In other cases straight through cooling is used from large rivers or lakes. The Murray at the South Australian border is often down to 9 GL/day or even less. 9 Gl/day is about 105 tonnes/second, and so a single unit nuclear power plant located on the Murray would often need the entire flow to cool it, while heating the water by 8-12 C. This is obviously an environmentally impossible situation. That is why cooling towers are the most common cooling method because they are the most efficient. Evaporating water carries away much more heat than liquid flows. In typical Australian conditions the nuclear plant would evaporate between 20 and 24 GL per year per GW so a two unit 2.2 GW plant like Plant Vogtle currently under construction in the US would need 44-50 GL/ year. That is more than the 4.7 GW of coal in the Latrobe Valley and almost 30% more than the entire demand served by Barwon Water which includes 320,000 people and all their business homes, parks and gardens. At current spot prices for irrigation water that would be an additional cost of $50m per year. In summary, in a hot dry continent like Australia, providing cooling water for a nuclear power plant would prove a huge cost and distortion to the water industry. There are many other issue with nuclear power, including a lack of flexibility, large and long duration backup requirements for refueling and outages and large spinning reserve requirements, but these can be explored at another time…….https://www.openforum.com.au/nuclear-cost-and-water-consumption-the-elephants-in-the-control-room/?fbclid=IwAR2M3NxMjfrDJNWTG9tatKSARHGUKWVcG_CE-bSW5wtnAbwhGnYxd1ElugU |
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New Year heat wave threatens Australia with more bushfires
Sat 28 Dec 2019
However, none were above advice level after more than 1,500 firefighters in the field took advantage of milder conditions over the Christmas week to strengthen containment lines and prepare for a forthcoming heatwave and high fire danger.
The Currowan fire on the south coast and the Green Wattle Creek fire in the southern highlands are among those still out of control, according to the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS), but the Gospers Mountain “megafire” and the nearby Grose Valley fire, to the north-west and west of Sydney, are listed as being controlled……
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, faced widespread criticism after going on a family holiday to Hawaii in the midst of the bushfire crisis without publicly announcing it, and with his office reportedly telling journalists he was not in Hawaii.
Morrison returned early last week, apologising for going away. He continued to face criticism for his government’s failure to develop a credible climate change policy.
At least nine people, including two firefighters, have been killed in fires this season – eight of them in NSW.
Almost 1,000 homes are estimated to have been destroyed in the NSW bushfire crisis, according to the most recent impact assessment from the RFS, published on Christmas Eve.
Another 68 facilities and 2,048 “outbuildings” were also confirmed destroyed.
More than 7,800 homes have been saved by firefighters……
At least three fires remain burning in South Australia at advice level, including two on Kangaroo Island, at Bunbury, and at Cudlee Creek where there have been flare-ups in recent days. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/28/australian-bushfires-out-of-control-as-heatwave-expected-to-peak-on-new-years-eve
All Aboard! Peace Boat workshop in Port Adelaide
Start: Monday, January 13, 2020 • 5:30 PM
End: Monday, January 13, 2020 • 8:00 PM
Peace Boat• Oliver Rogers Rd, Outer Harbour, Port Adelaide, Australia 5018
Host Contact Info: gem@icanw.org
The Peace Boat is dropping anchor in five Australian cities this January. Come aboard for a tour of this floating university and participate in an action-based workshop on nuclear issues. Listen, learn, discuss and activate! Whether it’s advocating to your local council, parliamentary representatives or super fund, now is the time to push for meaningful action.
The Port Adelaide edition will explore South Australian campaigns against nuclear waste and uranium mining as well as the movement for the nuclear weapon ban treaty. Your hosts are experienced nuclear-free activists and people directly impacted by the industry.
As Peace Boat is an international vessel, registration in advance with valid ID is required to come aboard, per Port Authority and Customs and Immigration requirements. Registration closes strictly on 9th January and late registrations cannot be accepted.
Guests must present the Photo ID used to register on the day, and name and number registered must match the ID. Your details will be kept strictly confidential and used only for the purposes of boarding.
The ship is wheelchair accessible. If you have any particular access needs, please include them on the form.
Bring a phone, tablet or laptop with you – as we’ll be getting to work!
We look forward to welcoming you aboard.
Sponsored by ICAN
America could lead the way in reallocating its arms budget towards fixing the planet’s problems
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HELEN CALDICOTT: Our nuclear arms obsession is a countdown to extinction https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/helen-caldicott-our-nuclear-arms-obsession-is-a-countdown-to-extinction,13408, By Helen Caldicott | 14 December 2019 America could lead the way in reallocating its arms budget towards fixing the planet’s problems, writes Dr Helen Caldicott.
I WRITE THIS PIECE as a physician expertly trained to make accurate diagnoses to either cure the patient or to alleviate their symptoms. I, therefore, approach the viability of life on Earth from a similar and honest perspective. Hence, for some, this may be an extremely provocative article but as the planet is in the intensive care unit, we have no time to waste and the startling truth must be accepted. As TS Elliott wrote so long ago, ‘This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper’. Will we gradually burn and shrivel the wondrous creation of evolution by emitting the ancient carbon stored over billions of years to drive our cars and to power our industries, or will we end it suddenly with our monstrous weapons within which have captured the energy powering the sun? Here’s the stark diagnosis from a U.S. perspective. The Department of Defence has nothing to do with defence, because it is, in effect, the Department of War. Over one trillion dollars of U.S. taxpayers’ money is stolen annually to create and build the most hideous weapons of death and destruction, even to launch killing machines from space. And since 9/11, six trillion dollars have been allotted to the slaughter of over half a million people, almost all of whom were civilians — men, women and children. Brilliant people, mostly men, are employed by the massive military-industrial corporations – Lockheed Martin, Boeing, BAE, United Technologies, to name a few – deploying their brainpower to devise better and more hideous ways of killing. From an unbiased perspective, the only true terrorists today are Russia and the United States of America, both of which have several thousand hydrogen bombs larger by orders of magnitude than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs on hair-trigger alert, ready to be launched with a press of a button in the U.S. by the President. This so-called nuclear “exchange” would take little over one hour to complete. As in Japan, people would be seared to bundles of smoking char as their internal organs boiled away and, over time, the global environment would be plunged into another ice age called “nuclear winter”, annihilating almost all living organisms over time, including ourselves. But the stark truth is that the United States of America has no enemies. Russia, once a sworn communist power is now a major capitalist country and the so-called “war on terror” is just an excuse to keep this massive killing enterprise alive and well. Donald Trump is right when he says we need to make friends with the Russians because it’s the Russian bombs that could and might annihilate America. Indeed, we need to foster friendship with all nations throughout the planet and reinvest the billions and trillions of dollars spent on war, killing and death to saving the ecosphere by powering the world with renewable energy including solar, wind and geothermal and planting trillions of trees. Such a move would also free up billions of dollars to be reallocated to life such as free medical care for all U.S. citizens, free education for all, to house the homeless, to hospitalise the mentally sick, to register all citizens to vote and to invest in the abolition of nuclear weapons. The United States of America urgently needs to rise to its full moral and spiritual height and lead the world to sanity and survival. I know this is possible because, in the 1980s, millions of wonderful people rose up nationally and internationally to end the nuclear arms race and to end the Cold War. This, then, is the sound template upon which we must act. You can follow Dr Caldicott on Twitter @DrHCaldicott. Click here for Dr Caldicott’s complete curriculum vitae. |
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Nuclear Groundhog Day in Australia
it is right-wing ideologues who continually resurrect nuclear power
historically-informed judgments matter, as energy policy specialists like Benjamin Sovacool realize, writing that SMRs are almost entirely rhetorical fantasies built upon utopian expectations.
Do you ever get the feeling that the continual resuscitation of the nuclear power option is just one more continual delay in meaningful reform of our energy portfolio? One more continual delay in meaningful reduction of CO2 emissions and the shifting of the electricity grid toward significant incorporation of renewables?
 Australia’s nuclear fantasies: the technological creationism of nuclear power, Nuclear Monitor, December 2019, Dr. Darrin Durant ‒ Lecturer in Science and Technology Studies at the University of MelbourneIt is just a little past Nuclear Groundhog Day in Australia. A 2019 parliamentary inquiry 1 into the conditions under which future Governments might consider nuclear power in Australia recently concluded that emerging nuclear technologies were a clean energy pathway for Australia.2 This recommendation was immediately opposed by Labor and the Greens, and even opened up divisions within the Coalition, while also failing to resolve how partially lifting Australia’s nuclear ban (for one type of nuclear generating technology) could practically work. Much ink and even more pixels have been and will continue to be splayed everywhere on this polarized issue, but the untold story of the nuclear option is that it is in fact a technological form of Creationism. Let me explain. Nuclear power is like a wild goose chase where the goose is a zombie that cannot be killed. The nuclear option in Australia has been buried at least three times previously, only to be brought back from the dead. Nuclear power was originally prohibited by legislation. Section 10 of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998 prohibits fuel fabrication, enrichment or processing, and nuclear reactors.3 Section 140A of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 prohibits the federal Minister from approving an action leading to such installations.4 Yet a federal Government review of 2006 (the Switkowski Report) considered the potential to establish such installations, although it concluded nuclear power in Australia was uneconomic.5 A 2016 South Australian royal commission to investigate the potential for SA to participate in the nuclear fuel cycle similarly concluded nuclear power in Australia was not commercially viable.6 Nuclear power does not affect its own resurrection by virtue of its own divine power. Instead, like Lazarus was said to have been resurrected by Jesus four days after retirement, nuclear power has divine ideologues on its side. Obviously not the Labor Party, which thinks resurrecting the nuclear option signals the indulging of political fantasies7 , nor the Greens, who think resurrecting the nuclear option is the stuff of crackpot lunatic cowboys.8 Instead, as Friends of the Earth wrote, it is right-wing ideologues who continually resurrect nuclear power, in a culture war trying to wedge the political Left.9 Or as the economist John Quiggin wrote, support for nuclear power is de facto support for coal.10 Given the decades of lead time required for nuclear power to feed into the electricity grid and, assuming publics and politicians swallow the argument that renewables cannot satisfy base-load power requirements, coal is advertised as the only viable option until nuclear comes online. The technological creationism of nuclear power But the nuclear option has more than the business-as-usual commitments of right-wing ideologues on its side. The nuclear option has inherited an argumentative strategy from American Creationists, which the evolutionary biologist Eugenie Carol Scott coined the Gish Gallop.11 Named after the Creationist Duane Gish12, Scott wrote that the strategy involves making “a simple declarative sentence, and you have to deal with not an easily-grasped factual error, but a logical error and a methodological error, which will take you far longer to explain… [Creationists present] half-truth non-sequiturs that the audience misunderstands as relevant points. These can be very difficult to counter in a debate situation, unless you have a lot of time. And you never have enough time to deal with even a fraction of the halftruths or plain erroneous statements”.13 We can miss the Gish Gallop at the heart of pro-nuclear advocacy if we chase the controversy. We know nuclear power is politically polarizing and it is easy to report on clashing protagonists making seemingly alternate-reality claims. Thus the Australia Institute’s submission to the parliamentary inquiry dismissed nuclear power as uneconomic, climate unfriendly because of high water use in an already drought-prone Australia, and as lacking a social license.14 In black mirror fashion, the Minerals Council of Australia strongly supported nuclear power as affordable, climate friendly because of zero-emissions, and as enjoying rising public support.15 Like chasing Creationists down the rabbit holes of their homespun Gish Gallops, opponents of nuclear power can spend a fruitless amount of intellectual and emotional energy rebutting half-truths and methodological sleights of hand. The fruitlessness stems from earnestly interpreting the opponents’ claims ‘straight’ and tackling them head on. The Minerals Council of Australia For instance, the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) argues that nuclear power is affordable and that Small Modular Reactors (SMR) represent a cheap and feasible option for Australia.15 By contrast, the (independent) World Nuclear Industry Status Report found that nuclear power costs 5-10 times more per kWh than renewables, and that there is no sign of a technological or commercial breakthrough that would render SMRs viable.16 Similarly, the MCA argues that climate change is real, and that nuclear power is the only way Australia can meet our Paris Agreement goals without sacrificing jobs and prosperity. But are the MCA really climate defenders? The thinktank InfluenceMap – which tracks climate policy opponents – ranks the MCA -59 (or 8th worst Trade Group) in its carbon policy footprint scores (-100 is highly and negatively influencing climate policy; +100 highly and positively influencing climate policy).17 Unfortunately, straight rebuttals matter little to technological creationists. Anything can be cheap, depending upon how you trim the costs. Everything can be feasible, depending upon your tolerance for fantasy. Anyone can be green, depending upon your degree of gullibility Gish Gallop The difficulty presented by the Gish Gallop argumentative strategy is that only on the surface is the critic confronted by factual claims open to empirical challenge. Deeper down, we have pregnant misdirection, diversionary reframing, and strategic incompleteness. The strategy does not even have to be deliberate gaslighting18, where the aim is to disorient and destabilize the audience in a quest to leave the speaker the beneficiary of the disenchantment of truth. Instead, the Gish Gallop simply entices the audience to run off in multiple directions at once, earnestly looking for the grounding of a claim that is in fact a groundless fog. For instance, are nuclear reactors zero emissions, as the MCA claims? There is a grain of truth there, if the nuclear life cycle is restricted to reactor operation. But as the energy analyst and environmentalist Mark Diesendorf has shown, to calculate the emissions from nuclear power one must account for fossil fuel use in every other aspect of the nuclear life cycle (mining, milling, fuel fabrication, enrichment, reactor construction, decommissioning and waste management). Moreover, the lower the grade of uranium ore, the higher the resulting emissions, so that nuclear power will emit more CO2 over time as highergrade ores are used up.19 Some analysts try to be fair, concluding that emissions from nuclear power are neither zero nor high and made complex by multiple uncertainties20, or that unstated assumptions about the carbon footprints of energy supplied in the non-operational phases of the nuclear fuel cycle strongly determine the ultimate carbon footprint.21 But notice how it is the audience that must supply the context for assessing pro-nuclear technological creationist claims? The necessary context for assessing claims – zero emissions, etc. – is willfully deleted from the message itself. SMRs Similarly, the MCA writes that SMRs ‘are simply an evolution of a proven mature technology’.15 Specific claims about an unproven technology (SMR) are then treated as general warrants for a technology which possesses an actual track record (where the track record is not supplied). Again, straight responses are possible. The anti-nuclear activist Noel Wauchope lists seven reasons why SMRs are unwise 22, and Quiggin questions whether the plant that is supposedly going to manufacture the technology even exists.23 But it is the context deleted by the MCA that is of most relevance, so we must ask about the track record of this ‘mature’ technology and whether SMRs are just an unproblematic next step. The maturity claim typically means nuclear technology has benefited from economies of scale and social learning, so that construction times and costs would go down over time. But as the World Nuclear Industry Status Report (and previous versions) shows, nuclear power lacks an upward learning curve.16 Reactor cost blowouts in time and money have been the norm since the technology’s inception. SMRs have inherited that legacy, with a survey of eight countries showing SMRs are even less economically competitive than large nuclear plants. The Gish Gallop strategy here is simply to delete history from the evaluative criterion. But historically-informed judgments matter, as energy policy specialists like Benjamin Sovacool realize, writing that SMRs are almost entirely rhetorical fantasies built upon utopian expectations.24 Indeed, the broader case for nuclear power in Australia is similarly built upon a Gish Gallop strategy of strategic deletion perversely coupled with proliferating half-truths. For instance, the MCA claims that surveys indicate increasing public support for nuclear power. But closer analysis shows that support varies if nuclear power is framed as a solution to climate change, indicating the support may reflect desired action on climate change itself.25 Moreover, most have no desire to live near a reactor. Climate wedges But this entire argument about a technology-neutral approach being premised on the need to pursue all elements in an energy portfolio at once rests on willfully deleting the context for assessing energy choices. The climate wedge idea derives from a 2004 paper by Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow.27 A wedge represents an activity that reduces emissions to the atmosphere starting at zero today and increases linearly until it accounts for one billion metric tonnes of reduced carbon emissions in 50 years. But as Pacala and Socolow noted, “although no element is a credible candidate for doing the entire job (or even half the job) by itself, the portfolio as a whole is large enough that not every element has to be used”.27 Not every element! The technology-neutral, all-of-the-above approach is both bad energy economics and deceptive politics, because passive and complacent business-as-usual masquerades as active and concerned political choice. Was democratic debate really meant to be this way? When we say democratic debate is about letting each side have its say, is the kind of argumentative sleight of hand practiced by pro-nuclear technological creationists really what we were imagining? To anticipate a reply that might be offered as complementary but is a mistake: no, truth is not the answer. Truth can be despotic, as the political philosopher Hannah Arendt argued in 1967, peremptorily demanding to be recognized and precluding debate by relying on the coercive force of self-evidence.28 Or put differently, truth is great when you have it on your side, until everyone claims it is on their side, and politics reduces to who coerces last But nor is the abandonment of truth to opinion the answer either. In the phrase of another political philosopher, Nadia Urbinati, to be unpolitical is to remove an issue in need of deciding from the open arena of competing political visions, political groups, and partisan views.29 Urbinati advises we defend the merits of political deliberation, because it allows for contestation and revision, and be wary of forensic decisions by experts. But is a little more of the unpolitical – a little less political deliberation – sometimes a wise move? Do you ever get the feeling that the continual resuscitation of the nuclear power option is just one more continual delay in meaningful reform of our energy portfolio? One more continual delay in meaningful reduction of CO2 emissions and the shifting of the electricity grid toward significant incorporation of renewables? The nuclear power option has had its day but lives to tell another day because we tell ourselves that debating all the options is always good, even if we should really be saying some option needs to be retired. The context at work making this continual resuscitation possible is not just the persistence of business-as-usual elites, but the political ecology in which those elites reside. Political populism radically polarizes public forums and delegitimates the independent advice-giving institutions of democracy. Media and cultural partisans have turned political deliberation into a spectator sport. The business-as-usual ethos exploits that weakened ground of consensus-formation to suggest old options are better than new options. A crisis of truth, authority and legitimacy As the historian of science Steven Shapin has suggested, we are facing a crisis of truth not because facts are being routinely contested or even because facts are being routinely made up, but because our institutions are suffering a crisis of authority and legitimacy.30 We have lost track of who knows and does not know, which is a dearth of social knowledge about reputation and integrity. Keeping the spectre of nuclear power at bay will require rethinking our institutions and how they can assist in making the objects of our political deliberation worthy objects. We can neither give up on experts nor citizens, but we do need to revisit how we think about each. As myself and some fellow sociologists of science have argued, experts at the service of business-as-usual will never escape institutional delegitimisation effects, so we must look to expertise playing the role of a check and balance within our pluralist democracies.31 Similarly, citizens do need to engage with public claims to test their contextual merits and coherency. But as analysts of public participation like Matthew Kearnes and Jason Chilvers have warned, until organizations and institutions are more transparent and candid about their assumptions, values and interests, the burden of proof will fall unevenly on the less powerful.32 In each case, experts and citizens, what we need from them is interrogation of context. Not simply can they be our fact checkers, but can they be our redeemers of context, our arbiters of whether half-truths are masquerading as full claims, and our unmaskers of the pretenders at coherence? Dr. Darrin Durant’s research focuses on how experts and citizens interact in democratic debate, especially in debates about energy politics. Recent books include Experts and the Will of the People (2019) and previous work on the nuclear fuel cycle including Nuclear Waste Management in Canada (2009). Reprinted from New Matilda, 17 Dec 2019, ‘Nuclear fantasies down under: the political and economic problems with old money power’, https://newmatilda. com/2019/12/17/nuclear-fantasies-down-under-thepolitical-and-economic-problems-with-old-money-power/
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Kimba, South Australia faces a future like that of Naraha, Japan
A town of few people, a place where people don’t care to reside, a place where the population has gone down in recent years, it’s a place where jobs on offer fail to attract young locals in a industry dealing with the countries nuclear waste, it’s a town that was portrayed as having a future, a town where outsiders will be required to do the work, this is a town where the old, the tired and the ignorant have chose to live their remaining days while the young relocate to the big city.
Yeah it sounds like “Kimba,” but I’m talking about Naraha, Fukushima a town known as “A Village Without Children.”
Without the young, without children there is no future, only decay! https://www.facebook.com/groups/1314655315214929/
Call to Prime Minister Scott Morrison – Time to stop pretending that you have a climate policy
 Prime minister, you need a credible climate policy. It’s too dangerous to keep pretending you have one, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/22/prime-minister-its-too-dangerous-to-keep-pretending-you-need-a-credible-climate-policy Lenore Taylor Scott Morrison’s press conference on the Australian fires was just more talking points and spin. The country needs more than words
@lenoretaylor, Sun 22 Dec 2019
Scott Morrison says this is not a time for division, or partisanship, or point scoring. He says we should unite in response to the current crisis. That’s certainly true. We have been. But prime minister, this is also time to stop pretending. Talking about Australia’s woefully inadequate climate policy at this time is not partisan, it is essential. And, with respect, the same same old talking points you rolled out on your return from Hawaii just don’t cut it any more. As you acknowledged, we are facing Christmas with dread. The immediate losses – of loved people, homes, safety, breathable air, passable highways upon which to drive to holiday, blue summer sky – those are deeply unsettling and sad. But the realisation that this is how Christmas may often be for our children, not carefree like the long summers we remember, but orange-skyed, fearful, choking and desperate – that is dreadful in the truest sense of the word. As you said, we are all grateful for the firefighters’ selfless efforts, but you’re right, we need to ask whether we can really expect this from them year after year, and those questions become more urgent if we face up to the fact that this is now the way things are going to be more often. You ignored the desperate, and as it turns out prescient, warnings from the former fire and emergency chiefs in the lead-up to this season. Your acting prime minister, just this weekend, again dismissed those experts because they had been funded by the Climate Council. Surely it is now time to put those political talking points aside and start to listen. We know global heating is fuelling this unprecedented fire emergency; we’ve been warned this would happen for decades. We know it is also contributing to the drought. Not directly causing, but certainly exacerbating. Surely it is time for your government to face these facts, instead of reciting Dorothea Mackellar or diverting blame to self-combusting manure or falsely claiming “greens” are somehow to blame by preventing hazard reduction burning. They haven’t, just for the record, and those former fire chiefs you refused to meet actually had some advice about hazard reduction burns, had you chosen to listen. That requires something more than just agreeing there is a link between global heating and fires, as you now have done. This isn’t about an adjustment to your language, it requires an adjustment to your policy, it requires a credible policy, the kind of policy we know could benefit us economically, that business is begging you to enact so that they can invest. And we know that would mean we could fight for effective international action rather than continue to act as a hindrance. We know we can’t solve the heating that is exacerbating this crisis on our own, so please don’t insult our intelligence again with that “1.3% of global emissions” argument like you did at the start of this fire season. Given the consequences we are suffering, we should be doing everything we can, and we know that we are not. You’ve just kept pretending. We’ve watched your Coalition immobilised by its climate denialist faction for more than a decade, destroying repeated political efforts to do something. We watched it dispense with Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister to avoid implementing a policy that was supported by industry and green groups alike. We watched you, prime minister, hold up a coal-industry supplied lump-of-coal prop in the parliament and urge us all not to fear it, but then go to the election with a policy that was little more than a sham, enough to appease the electorate’s concerns but with fine print that didn’t promise to do anything much to reduce domestic emissions, and that didn’t offer any explanation of how you would do the things you did promise, like reduce vehicle emissions. We’ve watched our domestic emissions continue to rise, or flatline because of the terrible impact of the drought, according to the latest accounts. We’ve watched Angus Taylor act against reaching an agreement at the most recent climate talks in Madrid, by insisting – against howls of international protest – that Australia be allowed to continue using an accounting trick to meet our emission reduction obligations. Days later, there he was again, interviewed against the orange backdrop of his own burning electorate, still mouthing the same discredited talking points about Australia “meeting and beating” its emission reduction target by the use of that loophole. You just used the same line yourself. It’s too close now, too terrifyingly dangerous and loud in the fire regions, too unendurably long in the regions parched by drought, to keep pretending like this. We need to know how you’re going to transition our economy. We understand that’s a complicated long-term process, so don’t treat us like idiots, as your deputy did on Saturday with the straw-man argument that those concerned about climate change are asking for all coalmining to cease tomorrow and risking the lights going out. Katharine Murphy spelled out your political choices in her final column for the year –you could once again try to damp down our fears and hope the backlash from this summer of fires will ease when the skies do eventually clear, or you could change policy course. On your return from holidays you seemed to choose the former, which is a tragedy, because there really is no more time to waste. We are past the point where the absence of credible policy can be papered over with talking points and spin. Your predecessor knows it, your former departmental head knows it, business, unions and farmers know it, scientists and environmentalists have known it for decades. You asked us all to be kind to one another, and we certainly should be. One kind thing you could do now is to finally stop pretending.
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International coverage of Australia’s climate and fires
There has been coverage, especially in USA, of Australia’s climate change conditions, and extreme events. For example, the Washington Post (subscribers only) reported yesterday on Tasmania’s risk from ocean warming and climate change.
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Australia Faces Catastrophic Fire Conditions, From VOA News:
“Australia Faces Catastrophic Fire Conditions New South Wales has seen the largest ever deployment of its emergency services. About 100 fires are burning across Australia’s most populous state. About half are out of control. Residents in the path of a mega-blaze near Sydney have been told it is too late to leave. They have been advised to seek shelter in a ‘solid structure’ to avoid the heat of the flames. A heatwave has exacerbated the fire threat, while a long drought has made the ground tinder dry. Rob Rodgers, the New South Wales Deputy Rural Fire Service Commissioner, says the dangers are extreme. “We cannot guarantee that every time someone wants a fire truck we are going to have someone there,” said Rodgers. “So do not be expecting a fire truck to be there. We will do our best but do not rely on that. Do not wait for a warning. Think about what you are going to do if you are in the path of these fires. Think about what you are going to do well ahead of time as in now.” There are emergency fire warnings in Victoria and South Australia, where already one person has been found dead and another left critically injured. A blaze about 330 kilometers east of Melbourne became so big it began “generating its own weather,” according to the authorities. For a second day, protestors have gathered outside the prime minister’s official residence in Sydney. Scott Morrison was criticized for going on holiday to Hawaii during the bushfire crisis. He’s apologized and is heading home. Many Australians have accused Morrison and his conservative government of inaction on climate change. Bushfires have always been part of the Australian story. But officials say this fire season has not only started earlier than usual, it is far more intense. Worse may yet be to come, with summer temperatures normally peaking in January and February. https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/australia-faces-catastrophic-fire-conditions |
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How Radiation Can Affect Brain Connections
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How Radiation Can Affect Brain Connections https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/how-radiation-can-affect-brain-connections-328547 Dec 17,| 2019 Original story from University of Rochester Medical Center, One of the potentially life-altering side effects that patients experience after cranial radiotherapy for brain cancer is cognitive impairment. Researchers now believe that they have pinpointed why this occurs and these findings could point the way for new therapies to protect the brain from the damage caused by radiation.
The new study – which appears in the journal Scientific Reports – shows that radiation exposure triggers an immune response in the brain that severs connections between nerve cells. While the immune system’s role in remodeling the complex network of links between neurons is normal in the healthy brain, radiation appears to send the process into overdrive, resulting in damage that could be responsible for the cognitive and memory problems that patients often face after radiotherapy. Continue reading |
The degradation of the Bikini seafloor from nuclear explosions
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Bikini Seafloor Hides Evidence of Nuclear Explosions, Seafloor mapping has revealed a crater and several shipwrecks persisting 73 years after the world’s first underwater nuclear test. Eos, Amanda Heidt 28 Dec 19
Seventy-three years after serving as the site of the world’s first underwater nuclear test, the seafloor around the Bikini Atoll remains scarred by finely detailed craters and littered with derelict ships. Today, an interdisciplinary team of scientists is using sonar to assess the complex submarine environment. The results provide a sobering assessment of humanity’s capacity to alter nature….. Unleashing the Power of the AtomIn the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. Navy chose the Bikini Atoll for a series of controlled nuclear explosions. Between 1946 and 1958, 23 confirmed tests were conducted throughout the area. Trembanis and his team studied Able and Baker, a pair of tests conducted in July 1946 as part of Operation Crossroads. Both Able and Baker involved plutonium fission bombs with a yield of between 21 and 23 kilotons, but they were deployed differently………. Clustering around a laptop, Trembanis and his team witnessed the real-time rendering of an underwater crater more than 800 meters across—big enough to fit three Roman Colosseums. …. Littered throughout the atoll are the husks of strategically placed ships—decommissioned dreadnaughts, aircraft carriers, and submarines meant to bear the brunt of the Able and Baker explosions. ….. Even independent of their place in nuclear history, the Pilotfish and other Bikini shipwrecks attest to the long-lived effects of human activities on the environment. As old ships decompose, they become ecological burdens, and researchers found that several wrecks on the Bikini seafloor are leaching plumes of oil. Trembanis and his team looked at sketches from surveys the National Park Service conducted in the late 1980s and saw the degradation of the past 40 years……. https://eos.org/articles/bikini-seafloor-hides-evidence-of-nuclear-explosions
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Radioactive waste dome in the Pacific is a top worry for Hawaii
How A Nuclear Waste Site 2,800 Miles Away Became A Hawaii Priority https://www.civilbeat.org/2019/12/how-a-nuclear-waste-site-2800-miles-away-became-a-hawaii-priority/
The Runit Dome in the Marshall Islands is cracked and in danger of spilling its radioactive contents into the Pacific Ocean. By Nick Grube / December 26, 2019 WASHINGTON — A concrete dome built decades ago by the U.S. government on a Marshall Islands atoll 2,800 miles from Hawaii has the state’s federal lawmakers worried.
The Runit Dome is a relic of America’s atomic past. It’s home to 3 million cubic feet of radioactive waste that was buried there as part of the government’s effort to clean up the mess left from dozens of nuclear tests in the 1940s and ’50s that decimated the atoll.
A warming climate and rising sea levels now threaten the integrity of the saucer-shaped structure, which, if it fails, could spill its radioactive contents into the Pacific, a scenario that would threaten both people and the surrounding environment. Continue reading
Germany’s exit from nuclear power is proceeding in planned stages
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German nuclear exit continues as planned with next reactor to close Dec 31, https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/podcasts/crude/122319-capitol-crude-oil-market-top-geopolitical-risks-2020. Andreas Franke Editor. Dan Lalor — Germany’s planned phasing out of nuclear power will continue with the closure next Tuesday of the 1.5 GW Philippsburg 2, leaving six reactors with a combined 8 GW online for the next 2-3 years.
Federal environment minister, Svenja Schulze, said in a statement that the consensus in Germany behind the nuclear phase-out was “rock solid”. The last reactor will close by the end of 2022. “The nuclear exit makes our country safer [as it avoids radioactive waste]…It is important to emphasize in times when some propagate nuclear power as supposed climate savior that it solves no single problem, but creates new problems for a million years,” Schulze said. Germany decided in 2011 amid the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan to immediately close reactors built before 1980 and reverse a planned run-time extension for modern nuclear plants by setting final closure dates. Nuclear operators still had to pay a combined Eur23 billion ($25.6 billion) into a state-run fund for the financing of mid- and long-term nuclear storage in Germany. So far, two modern reactors were shut in 2015 and 2017, with Philippsburg 2 the third reactor to close. The final shutdowns are more concentrated with three reactors set to close in December 2021 and the final three by the end of 2022. |
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December 27 Energy News — geoharvey
Opinion: ¶ “Frugal Innovation Offers An Opportunity To Democratize Electricity” • One of the islands of Vanuatu is testing ‘Power Blox,’ grid-tied modular power cubes that deliver renewable energy. They can be expanded as needed by the community, without damaging the environment. The more blocks you add, the stronger the grid becomes. [UNDP] ¶ “Darren […]
Antinuclear 