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Call to Premier Gladys Berejiklian to stand up for a nuclear-free New South Wales

Premier must stand up to Barilaro on nuclear power,  https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/premier-must-stand-up-to-barilaro-on-nuclear-power-20200310-p548k3.html  10 Mar, 20,    Deputy Premier John Barilaro has issued another ultimatum to the NSW government, this time over his obsession with starting a nuclear industry, but it is high time Premier Gladys Berejiklian called his bluff. Mr Barilaro is demanding that cabinet endorse a report by an upper house parliamentary committee backed by One Nation which recommends lifting the ban on uranium mining and nuclear power generation that has been in place since 1986. If cabinet refuses, he is threatening that he and perhaps the whole National Party will go their own way and vote in favour of a bill to that effect.

The Herald reported on Monday that some cabinet ministers who oppose nuclear power are threatening to respond by quitting if Ms Berejiklian caves in. The question of whether NSW can or should develop a nuclear industry is complicated. In theory, mining uranium could earn money and nuclear power generation could help reduce emissions. In fact, both face huge practical problems.
Of course, the Northern Territory and South Australia already mine uranium. But there is little reason for NSW to follow them now because, quite apart from concerns over waste storage, safety and proliferation, the business case is very weak. As the upper house report says, the state does not have any proven commercial deposits of uranium and, since the Fukushima disaster in Japan, the global market for uranium has been depressed. The conservative government in Western Australia ended its ban on uranium mining in 2010 but no new mines have opened.

Similarly, the prospects are also poor for nuclear power generation here any time soon. Nuclear reactors are very expensive and would take decades to build. By most reckonings, they cannot compete on cost with renewables – backed up by battery storage – or pumped hydro. Private companies will not build them without subsidies from taxpayers.

Given those practical issues, it is hard to understand why Mr Barilaro has joined One Nation’s crusade for nuclear power. Cynics would argue that his main goal is shielding the coal industry by delaying other more immediate and practical forms of action to reduce carbon emissions. And for Mr Barilaro, it might be a political winner. He might steal One Nation’s thunder and win the support of older regional voters and radio shock jocks who have a vendetta against those they see as renewables-loving green hippies.
But Mr Barilaro’s nuclear adventure risks doing damage to the government including a repeat of what happened to the Howard government in 2007 when it campaigned on nuclear power. The ALP pointed out that because plants require enormous amounts of water, they would have to be located on the coast. That went down like a lead balloon with voters and that was before Fukushima.
With a two-seat majority, Ms Berejiklian is more than usually dependent on her Coalition partner. Over the past year, Mr Barilaro has been able to extract some questionable concessions from her on water policy and regional jobs in the energy sector.

But she must not allow policy on such an important issue to be driven by a minority of Nationals MPs and the whims of One Nation backbenchers. As Premier, it should be Ms Berejiklian who sets the priorities of the state’s energy policy.

This is a good chance for Ms Berejiklian to stamp her authority on the government. Mr Barilaro has backed down in the past. He knows how much he and his party need to be in government. His bark is often worse than his bite.

March 12, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | New South Wales, politics | Leave a comment

Australian government manipulates the National Radioactive Waste Management Act so as to prevent an Appeal

Govt accused of legal appeal block, Whyalla News , Louis Mayfield , 11 Mar 20,  

A South Australian Senator has accused the government of stonewalling any attempts to launch a legal appeal against their legislation for a National Radioactive Waste Management Facility (NRWMF) at Napandee.

According to a letter from Resources Minister Keith Pitt to Centre Alliance Senator Rex Patrick, the government has not formalised the decision to make Napandee the location for the facility under the National Radioactive Waste Management Act 2012.

Senator Patrick said this was a deliberate move by the government to avoid the legislation being challenged legally.

“The whole motive behind getting the Parliament to make an Act that selects the site is that what Parliament does is not reviewable by the courts unless someone thinks it’s unconstitutional,” he said.

“The pathway they’re taking this down denies anyone the ability to seek judicial review into whether or not they have achieved broad community support.

“We know the Barngarla people are clearly opposed, we also know there are some neighbours who are opposed as well.

“It’s important that people need to be made aware that no decision has been made, only an assessment.”

Legislation for the NRWMF is now before a Senate Inquiry, with Resoures Minister Keith Pitt saying the government had self-referred the bill….

Both Senator Patrick and Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young are calling for a public hearing to be held in Whyalla regarding the legislation.

The Senate Economics Committee are now taking submissions from the public. https://www.whyallanewsonline.com.au/story/6673978/govt-accused-of-legal-appeal-block/?fbclid=IwAR3GEn2HgTDReXDl2Qhp9pkDFk6H7NMonpjmIxg2IC6_pTDObtu5SZIAxxA

March 12, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics, secrets and lies | Leave a comment

Fact-checking the false nuclear claims of NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro

NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro’s nuclear falsehoods https://nuclear.foe.org.au/barilaro/Correcting the nuclear falsehoods of NSW Deputy Premier and Nationals leader John Barilaro. Mr. Barilaro has been repeatedly provided with factual information so there is no excuse for his ignorance., March 2020, Jim Green, FoE Australia national nuclear campaigner, jim.green@foe.org.au

Mr. Barilaro: Nuclear power is “probably the cheapest cost to the average Australian household”.

Facts:

* Nationals Senator Matt Canavan acknowledges that nuclear power is “very expensive”.

* Industry insiders and lobbyists freely acknowledge that nuclear power is suffering from an economic crisis that could prove to be terminal.

* Nuclear power is in decline worldwide and a growing number of countries are phasing out nuclear power including Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, Taiwan and South Korea.

* Laws banning nuclear power has saved Australia from the huge costs associated with failed and failing reactor projects in Europe and North America, such as the twin-reactor project in South Carolina that was abandoned in 2017 after the expenditure of at least A$13.4 billion, bankrupting Westinghouse. That expensive fiasco could so easily have been replicated in NSW if not for the prudent legal ban.

* There are many other examples of shocking nuclear costs and cost overruns, including:

‒ The cost of the two reactors under construction in the US state of Georgia has doubled and now stands at A$20.4‒22.6 billion per reactor.

‒ The cost of the only reactor under construction in France has nearly quadrupled and now stands at A$20.0 billion. It is 10 years behind schedule.

‒ The cost of the only reactor under construction in Finland has nearly quadrupled and now stands at A$17.7 billion. It is 10 years behind schedule.

‒ The cost of the four reactors under construction in the United Arab Emirates has increased from A$7.5 billion per reactor to A$10‒12 billion per reactor.

‒ The cost of the only two reactors under construction in the UK has increased to A$25.9 billion per reactor. A decade ago, the estimated cost was just A$4 billion. The UK National Audit Office estimates that taxpayer subsidies for the project will amount to A$58 billion.

Mr. Barilaro: “As I write this piece, a further 50 nuclear reactors are being built globally (450 reactors currently operate in 31 counties) including in Finland, France, the UK, China and Canada.”

Facts:

* The number of power reactors under construction has fallen steadily from 68 in 2013 to 49 as of Feb. 2020.

* As noted above, reactors under construction in Finland, France and the UK have been subject to catastrophic cost overruns.

* There has only been one reactor construction start in China in the past three years. The number of reactors under construction in China has fallen from 20 in 2017 to 10 now. Renewables generate twice as much electricity in China as nuclear power.

* No reactors are being built in Canada.

Mr. Barilaro on small modular reactors (SMRs): “Given their size and efficiency, their waste is minimal (new advancements in technology continues to address the waste issue)”.

Facts:

* SMRs would produce more nuclear waste per unit of energy produced compared to large reactors.

* A 2016 European Commission document states: “Due to the loss of economies of scale, the decommissioning and waste management unit costs of SMR will probably be higher than those of a large reactor (some analyses state that between two and three times higher).”

* Mr. Barilaro’s “new advancements” (‘Generation IV’ concepts) have failed spectacularly and have clearly worsened nuclear waste management problems (see p.42-43 of our joint submission to the NSW inquiry).

Mr. Barilaro: “The compact nature of SMRs means they need close to only 5 per cent of the nuclear fuel required for large conventional reactors.”

Fact: As the South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission report noted: “SMRs have lower thermal efficiency than large reactors, which generally translates to higher fuel consumption and spent fuel volumes over the life of a reactor.”

Mr. Barilaro: SMRs are “becoming very affordable”.

Facts:

* Every independent economic assessment finds that electricity from SMRs will be more expensive than that from large reactors.

* SMRs will inevitably suffer from diseconomies of scale: a 250 MW SMR will generate 25% as much power as a 1,000 MW reactor  but it will require more than 25% of the material inputs and staffing, and a number of other costs including waste management and decommissioning will be proportionally higher.

* A December 2019 report by CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator concluded that wind and solar power, including two to six hours of storage, is two to three times cheaper than power from small reactors per unit of energy produced. Nuclear lobbyists dispute the construction costs that underpin this estimate but, in fact, they are a neat fit with real-world construction costs (as opposed to self-serving industry speculation). Indeed the CSIRO/AEMO estimate is lower than the average cost of small-reactor projects in China, Russia and Argentina.

* SMRs in China, Russia and Argentina are, respectively, 2, 4 and 23 times over-budget. None could be described as “very affordable”.

Mr. Barilaro: SMRs “are now on the horizon”.

Facts:

* A handful of SMRs are under construction (half of them to power fossil fuel mining operations in the Arctic, the South China Sea and elsewhere).

* Private sector investment has been pitiful and the main game is to find governments reckless enough to bet billions of taxpayer dollars on high-risk projects. SMRs under construction are all being built by government agencies.

* The prevailing scepticism is evident in a 2017 Lloyd’s Register report based on the insights of almost 600 professionals and experts from utilities, distributors, operators and equipment manufacturers. They predict that SMRs have a “low likelihood of eventual take-up, and will have a minimal impact when they do arrive”.

* Likewise, a 2014 report produced by Nuclear Energy Insider, drawing on interviews with more than 50 “leading specialists and decision makers”, noted a “pervasive sense of pessimism” regarding SMRs.

Mr. Barilaro: SMRs are “not as water hungry as traditional nuclear power plants, because they use air or sand to cool the core.”

Facts:

* SMRs will likely use as much water per unit of energy produced compared to large reactors ‒ possibly more due to lower thermal efficiencies. Nuclear power, large or small, is incredibly thirsty: a typical large reactor consumes 35‒65 million litres of water per day. Gas cooling creates its own set of problems and inefficiencies, leading to higher costs ‒ that is why a very large majority of reactors are water-cooled.

* Sand to cool a reactor core? Perhaps he means sodium ‒ which has caused a number of fires in fast neutron reactors. Sand has only been used as a desperate measure in the event of major accidents, e.g. Chernobyl. Continue reading →

March 12, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | New South Wales, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Olympic Games – the pièce de résistance of Japan’s Fukushima coverup

Japan’s Nuclear Cover-up Continues, Nine Years after the Fukushima Disaster, Fairewinds Energy Education, March 10, 2020  by Arnie Gundersen “……. 2020 Olympics

If the 2020 Olympics open in Japan this summer as scheduled, something that may not happened due to the spread of the coronavirus, the pièce de résistance of Japan’s Fukushima coverup will be unfolding in Tokyo.  In 2011, even while the three Fukushima nuclear carcasses were emitting extensive radiation, Japan’s new Prime Minister Noda (he was between the ousted Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who was PM when the Fukushima Meltdowns occurred and today’s Prime Minister Abe), claimed that the three melted down Fukushima reactors were in ‘cold shutdown’, which they were not, in order to lay the groundwork for Japan’s Olympic bid. In order to bid as a host for the 2020 Olympics, Noda claimed “… we can consider the accident contained”.  Fairewinds compared Noda’s ‘cold shutdown’ hypocrisy to former President George Bush crowing about ‘Mission Accomplished’ in Iraq, so that he could gain the support of the American people by calling the war already finished, when it had just begun.

In order for Japan to win its Olympic bid in 2013, two years later, Japan’s next Prime Minister Abe stated that the Fukushima disaster was ‘under control’.  This statement was also a blatant lie that succeeded in winning the bid to hold the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo at the expense of the taxpayers and residents of Japan.  Don’t take Fairewinds word for it!  Read what Japan’s former Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi said to Reuters in September 2016. Entitled Abe’s Fukushima ‘under control’ pledge to secure Olympics was a lie: former PM, Reuters wrote,

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s promise that the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant was “under control” in his successful pitch three years ago for Tokyo to host the 2020 Olympic Games “was a lie”, former premier Junichiro Koizumi said on Wednesday.

Frequent readers of the Fairewinds newsletter will remember last year’s posts entitled Atomic Balm 1 and Atomic Balm 2 in which Fairewinds Energy Education described in detail the path of deception that Japan has used to take the world’s attention off of the lives of its own people, who are still being compromised by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear tragedy.  The 2020 Olympics puts the media focus onto something else – so that the world continues to believe that nuclear power reactors are still a safe form of generating electricity.

This nine year legacy of lies by the government of Japan, nuclear incentivized governments worldwide, and the atomic industry are a harbinger for the seemingly inevitable approach of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Hopefully mainstream media covering the summer games will finally see through this glamorous marketing scam and identify the fact that Fukushima Prefecture remains severely radiologically contaminated. Real people, who are citizens of Japan, are seeing their health and that of their families being compromised for generations as they are forced to return to radiologically contaminated areas. Entire families and their communities are facing significant health risks simply to enable corporate profiteering of those investors, energy producers, banks, and government officials associated with the ongoing operation of nuclear power plants in Japan and around the world. https://www.fairewinds.org/demystify/japans-nuclear-cover-up-continues-nine-years-after-the-fukushima-disaster

March 12, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News | Leave a comment

The planet’s largest ecosystems could collapse faster than we thought

The planet’s largest ecosystems could collapse faster than we thought  https://www.ehn.org/ecosystems-collapse-2645447028.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1  

Massive, vital ecosystems that have existed for thousands of years could breakdown in just a few decades, according to a new study

Brian Bienkowski

If put under the kind of environmental stress increasingly seen on our planet, large ecosystems —such as the Amazon rainforest or the Caribbean coral reefs—could collapse in just a few decades, according to a study released today in Nature Communications.

In the case of Amazon forests, stressors could cause collapse in just 49 years. In Caribbean coral reefs, it could take as little as 15 years.

“The messages here are stark,” said lead researcher John Dearing, a professor in physical geography at the University of Southampton, in a statement.

Those estimates come from Dearing and colleagues who examined data on how 42 natural environments—small and large, and on both land and water—have transformed. They found that larger ecosystems may take longer than small ones to collapse, but the rate of their decline is much more rapid.

Ecosystem stress can come in many forms such as climate change, deforestation, overfishing, pollution and ocean acidification.

Humanity now needs to prepare for changes in ecosystems that are faster than we previously envisaged through our traditional linear view of the world, including across Earth ‘s largest and most iconic ecosystems, and the social–ecological systems that they support,” the authors wrote.

Larger ecosystems are made up of smaller “sub-systems” of species and habitats, which provide some resilience against rapid change. However, once these smaller systems start to collapse, the new study finds the large ecosystems as a whole fall apart much faster than previously expected.

Researchers pointed to the destructive Australian and Amazon rainforest wildfires as recent examples of this dangerous fast rate of collapse.

“These findings are yet another call for halting the current damage being imposed on our natural environments that pushes ecosystems to their limits,” Dearing added.

See the full study in Nature Communications.

March 12, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News | Leave a comment

Climate change fuelled Australia’s devastating Black Summer – Climate Council Report

Summer of crisis https://apo.org.au/node/277911, 11 MAR 2020, Lesley Hughes, Will Steffen, Greg Mullins, Annika Dean, Ella Weisbrot, Martin Rice

Climate Council of Australia   Australia’s Black Summer of 2019-20 was characterised by catastrophic bushfires. The bushfire season started in winter and was the worst on record for New South Wales in terms of its intensity, the area burned, and the number of properties lost. It was also the worst season on record for properties lost in Queensland.

This report focuses on New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, because the effects of the bushfires were most severe in these areas, but we acknowledge that the bushfires affected Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania.

Key findings:

Climate change fuelled Australia’s devastating Black Summer

  • Extremely hot, dry conditions, underpinned by years of reduced rainfall and a severe drought, set the scene for this summer’s unprecedented fires.
  • Cool season rainfall has declined in southeast Australia over the last two to three decades, while temperature records have been broken over and over. 2019 was Australia’s hottest, driest year on record. 2018-2019 was southeast Australia’s driest two-year period on record.
  • The Australian fire season has lengthened in NSW, decreasing the ability of land managers to conduct hazard reduction burns and increasing the number of fire danger days.

Australia’s Black Summer was unprecedented in scale and harm. The bushfire season was the worst on record for New South Wales in terms of the scale of the bushfires, the number of properties lost and the amount of area burned.

The bushfires are estimated to have spewed between 650 million and 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That is equivalent to the annual emissions from commercial aircraft worldwide and is far higher than Australia’s annual emissions of around 531 million tonnes.

  • Climate change events are becoming increasingly economically devastating.
  • The tourism sector alone is set to lose at least $4.5 billion because of the bushfires. It is estimated that there was a 10-20 percent drop in international visitors booking holidays to Australia.
  • The bushfire smoke that blanketed Sydney is estimated to have cost the city $12-50 million per day.
  • More than 23,000 bushfire related insurance claims were lodged across New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria between November and February, totalling an estimated value of $1.9 billion.

The summer of 2019-20 saw unprecedented climate impacts fuelled by the burning of coal, oil and gas.

  • The hot, dry conditions that fuelled these fires will continue to worsen without substantial, concerted action to rapidly phase out coal, oil and gas.
  • Australia urgently needs a plan to cut our domestic greenhouse gas emissions to net zero and to phase out fossil fuel exports because we are one of the world’s largest polluters.
  • Taking action now will provide a chance to stabilise, then eventually reduce disaster risks for future generations.
  • Clearly, what Australia does matters and the longer we delay, the harder the problem will be to solve. We simply cannot leave this mess for our children to try to fix.

March 12, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | ACT, New South Wales | Leave a comment

The climate denialist spin machine – the “Anti-Greta” in Australia

In denial: The spin machine upending the climate consensus, DW, 11 Mar, 20   Climate law rollbacks in the US and Australia have origins in libertarian think tanks that trade in climate denial. Investigative journalists have exposed how one is now trying to strip climate protections in Germany…….

….young and upcoming German YouTuber and “influencer,” Naomi Seibt.   Anti-Greta’

The 19-year-old was also in Madrid during the climate denial side event dubbed the Climate Reality Forum, where she spoke on behalf of Heartland. “These days, what scientists say about climate change isn’t really science,” she said.

Since her February 28 appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the US, global media has dubbed the self-described “climate realist” as the “anti-Greta,” a rising counter to climate activist icon Greta Thunberg. Seibt has embraced the moniker, and during a FOX News interview on the eve of CPAC said that “CO2 emissions are not actually harmful to the planet” while also railing against “climate change propaganda.”………

Outsized influence.   In Australia, climate disinformation campaigns with Heartland links have also helped to depress support for climate action and roll back protections.

Nearly a decade ago, Australia instituted a carbon price and a tax on mining industry profits that made it a climate leader. But both those policies were repealed in 2014 following a misinformation campaign headed by Australia’s incoming conservative prime minister at the time, Tony Abbott — a poster boy for the Heartland Institute and a speaker at climate skeptic conferences who fearmongered about a “carbon tax.” Six years later, Australia is ranked last in climate policy among developed nations.

According to Australian scientist, author and climate analyst Ketan Joshi, a watershed moment in this reversal came in 2011 when Britain’s arch climate denier, Lord Christopher Monckton, told mining industry leaders that Australia needed a news outlet akin to Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News in the US to fight “bogus” climate science. Monckton also spoke at the Madrid climate skeptic conference in December.

Murdoch’s Sky News soon became that voice, says Joshi, the news channel hiring vocal climate skeptics as regular political pundits who call out “global warming rubbish.” Their voices also echo across Murdoch publications that make up around 70% of the print media market in Australia.

Naomi Seibt inevitably took her bow on Sky last week, telling viewers that Fridays for Future rallies in Germany had been infiltrated by radical anti-fascist protesters. Billed as the “anti-Greta sensation,” she also claimed that “Greta Thunberg never talks about the science,” and that climate alarmism will lead to “energy poverty.” This despite Thunberg’s now famous entreaty to “listen to the scientists.”

‘Instilling doubt’  “It’s not about the science,” says Joshi. “It’s about instilling doubt, it’s about making people distrust information that they receive — even if it’s from a trustworthy source.”

Back in Madrid, Taylor also offered the PRs the services of another young YouTuber, his daughter Tiffany. Her latest video argues that climate change has increased rainfall in Australia, and that the recent megafires were primarily caused by arsonists.

The discredited theory that arson was to blame for the intensity of Australia’s unprecedented bushfire season was pushed globally by climate deniers fighting back against the consensus that global heating is the culprit. Donald Trump, Jr, for example, helped the arsonist meme go viral by tweeting about an “exclusive” in Rubert Murdoch’s The Australian newspaper that promoted the debunked theory.  …….https://www.dw.com/en/trump-climate-change-denial-emissions-environment-germany-fake-heartland-seibt/a-52688933

March 12, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, spinbuster | Leave a comment

NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean contradicts the Coalition party line – wants climate action and NO nuclear

It’s time to win climate wars, Kean says  https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6674567/its-time-to-win-climate-wars-kean-says/?cs=14231, Jodie Stephens, 11 Mar 20,   

Outspoken NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean says it’s time to “win the climate wars” and for the political right to show better leadership on the issue.

In the wake of a devastating bushfire season, Mr Kean wants an end to “futile arguments” about whether climate change exists.

He told an Affinity Intercultural Foundation event on Wednesday people had weaponised climate change for too long and to the country’s detriment.

He stressed reducing emissions didn’t need to come at the expense of the economy.  “That’s something that has been absent from the debate for a long time. The economics have changed dramatically,” Mr Kean said at the Sydney event.

“Right now, it presents an enormous economic opportunity for our nation that’d be too good to miss.”

Mr Kean said renewables backed up by pumped hydro offered the cheapest way to deliver electricity, adding, “It’s not nuclear, it’s not coal, it’s not gas.”

He said the global push to reduce emissions would require trillions of dollars of investment in low-emissions technology and he wanted a big slice of that money coming into NSW.

“There’s no country on the planet better placed to take advantage of a low-carbon world than Australia,” he said.

“We’ve got masses of land, we’ve got some of the best wind and solar sources anywhere on the planet.”

Criticised earlier this year for linking bushfires to climate change, Mr Kean said at the time federal cabinet ministers wanted stronger action.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison responded by claiming most of his colleagues didn’t know who Mr Kean was and that he “doesn’t know what he’s talking about”.

Mr Kean on Wednesday said he was glad he raised the issue because it demonstrated “that the sensible people in this discussion need to stand up”.

“The centre of Australian politics has vacated the field when it comes to climate change for too long,” he said.

He said the right of Australian politics hadn’t been showing the leadership they should have for a long time.

“It’s time for that to change.

“As someone on the right of Australian politics, the reason I’m there is because I believe in the power of markets. I’m a capitalist.”

Mr Kean told the event he intended to win the nuclear debate, after Deputy Premier John Barilaro said the Nationals would support a bill to repeal state bans on uranium mining and nuclear facilities.

“For the people arguing for nuclear, you’re actually arguing for more expensive electricity which is less safe and dirtier. I don’t think that’s a good argument,” he said.

March 12, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change - global warming, New South Wales, politics | Leave a comment

Australian defence officials and politicians, like Christopher Pyne, rotate quickly between government and weapons industry jobs

Brothers-in-Arms: the high-rotation revolving door between the Australian government and arms merchants. Michael West Media by Michelle Fahy | Mar 11, 2020 |   A disturbing number of Australia’s military personnel, senior defence and intelligence officials and politicians leave their public service jobs and walk through the ‘revolving door’ into roles with weapons-making and security-related corporations. Nowhere is government and industry more fused than in defence. Michelle Fahy reports.

The majority of transitions between politics and the Australian defence sector pass unremarked, with only an occasional high profile name making media headlines. It is a career pathway which has been normalised. This despite the sensitive nature of defence and the astronomical size of the nation’s defence spending.

A recent example is the 21 February 2020 appointment to the Thales Australia board of one of the nation’s most senior intelligence chiefs, former ASIO boss Duncan Lewis, which barely rated a mention. Nine newspapers were an exception in noting the appointment, but there were no hard questions asked and no analysis by Nine as to the implications of this swift move into the private sector by such a powerful well-connected person: a move into an industry over which Lewis until recently had had oversight.

Upon his appointment to the Thales board, Lewis had only been out of ASIO for five months, having spent five years as its Director-General. ASIO was his final public sector role in a long career that also spanned the military, the departments of the prime minister and cabinet and defence, as well as diplomatic roles.

Thales is the world’s 10th largest weapons-making corporation; a French multinational that also encompasses cybersecurity and space projects. It also owns 35 per cent of Naval Group, the lead contractor of the $80 billion Future Submarines project. Thales Australia is a multi-billion-dollar contractor to the Australian government.

When respected senior leaders such as Lewis leave public service for the weapons industry, they take with them extensive contacts, deep institutional knowledge, and rare and privileged access to the highest levels of government. Their presence in the private sector serves to affirm and entrench the influence of the weapons industry on government decision-making. The public interest risks becoming conflated with corporate interests.

In addition to these issues, the well-trodden path from public service into such industry appointments raises the troubling possibility that some senior decision-makers on defence and national security matters, with an eye on possible future board appointments or consulting roles (whether consciously or not), might favour a certain proposal over another, or become hesitant to make decisions that could displease corporate interests. How would the public they serve ever know?

A notable example in this context is Christopher Pyne, who was found to have engaged in discussions with EY while still in office as defence minister and a member of the cabinet, and subsequently accepted a consulting role with EY Defence just nine days after leaving politics. ……. https://www.michaelwest.com.au/brothers-in-arms-the-high-rotation-revolving-door-between-the-australian-government-and-arms-merchants/

March 12, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics, weapons and war | Leave a comment

A nuclear waste dump for Eyre Peninsula conflicts with the Strategic Plan for the Eyre Peninsula Natural Resources Management Region – 2017-2027

Susan Craig shared a No Nuclear Waste Dump Anywhere in South Australia

 March 10    A nuclear waste dump for Eyre Peninsula does not fit within the Natural Resources Management Act 2004 nor the Strategic Plan for the Eyre Peninsula Natural Resources Management Region – 2017-2027 The enforcers of this act, our Premier Steven Marshall and DAVID SPEIRS environment and water minister need to uphold this act. Peter Malinauskas Susan Close MP Eddie Hughes MP Love EP Just a reminder, as to what is at stake here for South Australia, both economically and ecologically. No Radioactive Waste Facility for Kimba District Senator Rex Patrick   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmbpum9JGGQ
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1314655315214929/

March 12, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Federal nuclear waste dump, South Australia | Leave a comment

Resources Minister Keith Pitt shows poor grasp of nuclear waste issues.

‎Kazzi Jai‎ to Fight To Stop A Nuclear Waste Dump In South Australia· March 10 , 

From Keith Pitt’s Website…. There are some glaring problems with his understanding of the portfolio including “the people of Napandee”….storage of Low Level Waste when it is Disposal….the inference that waste at the other 100 sites is nuclear medicine related….that nuclear medicine “keeps us well”….just to name a few,

Interview with Paul Culliver, Breakfast program of ABC North and West SA, 4 March 2020

Interviewer: Paul Culliver
Subject: Radioactive waste facility site, community consultation, progress with facility legislation, National Party Government to be built in Kimba. I just asked him: coming to this portfolio, and this process, what his mindset is. ………

PAUL CULLIVER: Obviously, Matt Canavan’s been the face of it for the Government for many years now and it’s now going to be you. Does anything change?

KEITH PITT: ……. really we just want to move forward with the legislation, get it through the system in terms of the House, the Senate, get royal assent and start to deliver for the people of Napandee.

PAUL CULLIVER: ……… Obviously, there’s people still with very strong views about this and very strong concerns about the process. I mean are you interested in hearing from those people still or are you just pushing forward?

KEITH PITT: We’re moving forward. We’ll always continue to consult with the community, but there’s been very broad community support; 61 per cent of the voters in Kimba support the facility; close on 60 per cent of local businesses; close on 60 per cent of submissions supported it; 100 per cent of the direct neighbours that share a boundary support the facility……..

PAUL CULLIVER: And what’s your feeling on the fact that the Barngarla people feel left out of that consultation process when people talk about broad community support? The Barngarla people say well we didn’t get a say in that community vote.

KEITH PITT: Well firstly, we’ve worked very closely with Barngarla people and there’s still an opportunity for us to continue to work closely with them as we’ve said we would both publicly and privately.

PAUL CULLIVER: The legislation’s gone into Parliament now; it’s been referred to a Senate inquiry. Could you just explain sort of what the process is there? What’s going to happen with that legislation?

KEITH PITT: Well firstly, the legislation’s been introduced to the Parliament. It will probably be debated in the House of Reps sometime this week,……. It will be debated in the Senate. Once it passes both the House and the Senate, after the committee process, it goes to what’s called royal assent with the Governor-General and becomes law and then we push on.

PAUL CULLIVER: And what exactly does this legislation do?

KEITH PITT: So effectively, it does make some changes around some pre-existing legislation to identify the site at Napandee as the site. There’s some bits around the community development package. ……….. but one of the points I really want to make is, you know, the low level waste which we stored here, around 80 per cent of that comes from nuclear medicine. ……

PAUL CULLIVER: One criticism from people vocal about this facility is that the intermediate waste is going to have to be moved on again somewhere anyway, so what’s the point of parking it in one place if you’re just going to have to find a new facility for it later?

KEITH PITT: So what we’ve said from the beginning is that this will be a storage facility for low level, and potentially intermediate waste. …….. we just have to be able to deal with the waste in a practical and sensible way.

PAUL CULLIVER: Will you be visiting Kimba?

KEITH PITT: It’s certainly on the list……I’ve spoken with Rowan Ramsey a number of times and I’ll take the first opportunity I can to get down in South Australia and talk to the local community…… https://www.facebook.com/groups/941313402573199/

March 12, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics | Leave a comment

The continuing cover-up of the Fukushima nuclear disaster

Japan’s Nuclear Cover-up Continues, Nine Years after the Fukushima Disaster, Fairewinds Energy Education, March 10, 2020  by Arnie Gundersen

The six atomic power reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear site were severely damaged 9-years ago when a Richter 9 earthquake in the Pacific Ocean occurred at 2 p.m. on March 11, 2011 ravaging the nuclear reactors, flooding safety systems, and causing three atomic power meltdowns.

Fairewinds is using the 9th commemoration of the meltdowns at Fukushima to discuss how the government of Japan, TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Co), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the worldwide nuclear industries have perpetuated their coverup of the tragedy of the Fukushima meltdowns. These corporate and governmental groups and agencies have consistently misinformed the International Press, the citizens of Japan, and people around the world about the true consequences of the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns.

The Government of Japan, the nuclear industry, and its regulators  have “framed” what happened at Fukushima Daiichi and thereby have controlled the Fukushima narrative for 9-years. ‘Framing’ is choosing the right words to portray and control any narrative.  George Lakoff and his co-authors explain how controlling that framework of words controls how people view an issue. You may read more in their book that discusses ‘framing’ any issue entitled “Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate”. …….

The nuclear industry downplayed the radioactive danger being unleashed 

While the Japanese government kept denying that meltdowns had even occurred, the rest of the nuclear industry and the governments in the thrall of atomic lobbyists for the nuclear power and nuclear weapons industries actively downplayed the tragedy occurring right before our eyes.

In a brilliant analysis from the UK newspaper The Guardian, reporters uncovered a coordinated coverup that began within two-days of the onset of the Fukushima disaster:

British government officials approached nuclear companies to draw up a coordinated public relations strategy to play down the Fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and before the extent of the radiation leak was known.

Internal emails seen by the Guardian show how the business and energy departments worked closely behind the scenes with the multinational companies: EDF Energy, Areva and Westinghouse to try to ensure the accident did not derail their plans for a new generation of nuclear stations in the UK.

“This has the potential to set the nuclear industry back globally,” wrote one official at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), whose name has been redacted. “We need to ensure the anti-nuclear chaps and chapesses do not gain ground on this. We need to occupy the territory and hold it. We really need to show the safety of nuclear.”

On March 18, 2011, seven-days after the disaster began, US Department of Energy Secretary Chu said that Fukushima was at a Level-5 on the nuclear incident scale, which is similar to the level the US Government assessed at Three Mile Island (TMI), but not the level-7 that the world assessed for Chernobyl. On CNN that night, I was the first expert in the world to say publicly on mainstream media that Fukushima and its radioactive releases were already as bad as Chernobyl.

CNN’s John King: “Secretary Chu called it worse than Three Mile Island…”
Arnie: “I actually think it’s at Chernobyl level right now…100 time worse than the worst case we imagined a year ago.”

Every time Fairewinds released a video, podcast, newsletter or I appeared on television or radio, I was publicly slammed and called a liar and fear monger by the nuke industry that I had been directly been employed with for 20-years. I began my career first as a nuclear engineer and reactor operator and later progressed to become Senior Vice President of a nuclear power corporation – until I became a nuclear power whistleblower.  After being fired for telling the truth, I took on the role of nuclear safety critic, which I have had for the last 30-plus-years. In Fairewinds opinion, these corporate coverups were obvious to anyone who focused on the real science of nuclear engineering and was not afraid to look behind the curtain, where the Wizard of Oz was manipulating the truth.

Only 11-months after the meltdowns, I was flown to Japan in February 2012 by Shueisha Publishing to unveil the publication of Fairewinds book [entitled Fukushima Daiichi: The Truth and the Way Forward] and to speak at various venues in Tokyo, including the Japanese Foreign Correspondents Press Club. Here is a portion of what I said:

I was an expert on the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, and I see in Fukushima the same mistakes that the Americans made at Three Mile Island.  At Three Mile Island and at Fukushima, the plant management – the people in the plant – really understood the severity of the accident. But in both cases, 30 years apart, when the plant management contacted offsite management – it was General Public Utilities in the United States, and of course, it was Tokyo Electric in Japan – the process began to slow down.

What I saw on Three Mile Island was that the corporate office was trying to protect the corporate assets and they actually told the plant manager not to order an evacuation, despite the fact that the plant manager wanted an evacuation. And I see the same thing at Fukushima. I believe that the management onsite in the first day and the first week really understood the severity of it. But senior management working up the chain, for whatever their motivations were, failed to act quickly enough…. it seems to me like the lesson at Three Mile Island and the lesson at Fukushima really are institutional problems in that the corporate officers and corporate offices simply don’t respond quick enough. In addition to the internal problems between the plant and Tokyo Electric offices, there of course were the problems between Tokyo Electric and the Nation of Japan.

Following the triple meltdowns in 2011, I became acquainted with Naoto Kan, the Prime Minister of Japan at the time of the meltdown. At a venue where we were both keynote speakers, I told him that I thought he had not been given the correct information about the meltdowns. He replied,

“The information I received from both TEPCo and METI (Japan’s nuclear regulator) was neither timely nor accurate.” 

Please think about the enormity of that single sentence!  Any industry so powerful that it does not feel compelled to tell the truth to the leader of a nation is failing its country and their people……….

The bottom line is that in Japan during the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns, the lives of women and children were sacrificed to create the appearance that TEPCO had the triple meltdowns under control.

Grossly underestimating the cost of the Disaster

People living and working in Japan and the country’s own citizens were clearly deceived about the severity of the meltdowns, the urgent need to evacuate, and the significant health impact for generations of families following the Fukushima disaster. And, these people were also deceived about the astronomical cost to dismantle the four severely damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi site, protect the ocean and surrounding areas from the ongoing migration of radioactivity, and the total cost to complete the partial remediation of Fukushima Prefecture.  I say partial remediation, because the remediation [the removal of radioactivity] will always be partial. So much radioactivity blew into the mountains, and the mountains and forests are so contaminated with highly radioactive isotopes including plutonium, that it will take tens of thousands of years for that radioactivity to dissipate [the industry term is decay away].

Every time in rains or the snow melts or the wind blows from or through the mountains, that radioactivity is spread farther away and also back into areas that were allegedly cleaned. The government informed people that these contaminated areas are clean and that they should now move back into their old communities and homes, and that the government stipends they had been receiving were ending and all the evacuee housing was being closed. What are people to do when they have no place to live and no money to live on except to go back to their old community?

A “lowball” price estimate showing that recovery from the meltdowns would be inexpensive was designed to show Japan’s citizens that the meltdowns were not that bad after all.  ………https://www.fairewinds.org/demystify/japans-nuclear-cover-up-continues-nine-years-after-the-fukushima-disaster

March 12, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News | Leave a comment

The ocean as a dump for nuclear wastes

Radioactive dumping ground, The main reason behind the radiation along the northern French coastline isn’t the underwater barrels, but rather the nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at La Hague. It is located directly on the coast and “legally discharges 33 million liters of radioactive liquid into the sea each year,” says Rousselet. He thinks it’s scandalous.

Spike in cancer rates, According to a study by the European Parliament, statistics show cancer rates are significantly higher in the region surrounding La Hague.

Fukushima: How the ocean became a dumping ground for radioactive waste, DW, 11 Mar 20  The nuclear disaster at Fukushima sent an unprecedented amount of radiation into the Pacific. But, before then, atomic bomb tests and radioactive waste were contaminating the sea — the effects are still being felt today…….

A study from the European Parliament reached a similar conclusion. The research found that “even the smallest possible dose, a photon passing through a cell nucleus, carries a cancer risk. Although this risk is extremely small, it is still a risk.”

And that risk is growing. Radioactive pollution in the ocean has been increasing globally — and not just since the disaster at Fukushima.

Atomic bomb tests

In 1946, the US became the first country to test an atomic bomb in a marine area, in the Pacific Bikini Atoll. Over the next few decades, more than 250 further nuclear weapons tests were carried out on the high seas. Most of them (193) were conducted by France in French Polynesia, and by the US (42), primarily in the Marshall Islands and the Central Pacific.

But the ocean wasn’t just being used as a training ground for nuclear war. Until the early 1990s, it was also a gigantic dump for radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.

From 1946 to 1993, more than 200,000 tons of waste, some of it highly radioactive, was dumped in the world’s oceans, mainly in metal drums, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Several nuclear submarines, including nuclear ammunition, were also sunk during this time.

Is the ocean a perfect storage site?

The lion’s share of dumped nuclear waste came from Britain and the Soviet Union, figures from the IAEA show. By 1991, the US had dropped more than 90,000 barrels and at least 190,000 cubic meters of radioactive waste in the North Atlantic and Pacific. Other countries including Belgium, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands also disposed of tons of radioactive waste in the North Atlantic in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

“Under the motto, ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ the dumping of nuclear waste was the easiest way to get rid of it,” says Horst Hamm. Continue reading →

March 12, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News | Leave a comment

Nuclear is too risky – say protestors

Nuclear is too risky – say protestors – Coffs Coast Advocate 10 Mar 20- (subscribers only)

March 12, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News | Leave a comment

ANSTO lies about necessity of nuclear reactor: Nuclear medicines are being made in Adelaide, without dirty nuclear reactor

Brett Burnard Stokes No Nuclear Waste Dump Anywhere in South Australia  12 Mar 20    Nuclear medicines are being made here in Adelaide the modern way, with no waste problems.
To say this illegal dump is needed for nuclear medicines – that is deception. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1314655315214929/

MITRU  https://www.sahmriresearch.org/our-research/mitru?fbclid=IwAR0tczN-f9IOt3hYdWbtEtFArX6ahzpnVKZIwCtP8CWfNQuG-pE-A3v5mUg

The Molecular Imaging and Therapy Research Unit (MITRU) is a pharmaceutical production and research unit focused on developing tracers for molecular imaging centred on incorporating radiation. The site began the task of becoming a Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) manufacturing facility when the SAHMRI team moved in at the end of 2013. Eight months later they had their first federal inspection and achieved a TGA licence to provide a radiopharmaceutical FDG, a cancer diagnosis imaging tool, for patient administration across Australia. The unit began to provide the FDG for South Australia imaging facilities soon after allowing patients to no longer be reliant on this tracer being imported into the state. The demand for FDG, has begun to grow slowly in South Australia, limited currently by the lack of scanners in the state, however the SAHMRI has been able to obtain smaller scanners to utilise this and future agents through Research funding.

Since the initial move to the SAHMRI iconic building on North Terrace at the end of 2013 the team has grown from two persons to a total of 10, awaiting another senior radiochemist to join within the next few months. The unit has expanded its work to include PET-generator based products to ensure expansion further into the radiopharmaceutical field and recently using the particle accelerator, GE Cyclotron, into generating further isotopes that could be provided regularly across Australia forging new research grounds. The unit is currently developing radioactive tracers that have shown promise in neurology in early diagnosis detection of Alzheimer’s, various dementia models and spinal cord injuries as and when funding is secured. It is further involved in commercial process for labelling safely radio-therapeutic drugs for several cancer to allow access across Australia using ANSTO developed materials.

MITRU is a commercial facility, able to conduct research when required, that has obtained the highest manufacturing standards to allowing their current and future developments to be moved into clinical practice sooner. The timeframes for projects are often smaller as they have a unique funding model where costs are recuperated through sales once initial funding is obtained to ensure that there is a further demand. Overall this reduces the costs and adds a demand focus to the units’ endeavours.

The unit is also involved with pre-arranged tours to the public, high-school and University students, where several of the team lecture on or are associated with South Australian Universities. Currently the unit has a shared supervision of several students developing agents for diagnosis and to increase disease understanding. All the team in unit do not have direct funding from grants and look for funding through either philanthropic or general research opportunities to allow them to development further into new tracer avenues with some small success which has helped the unit to become a centre of excellence for several equipment vendors.

The profile in the community has grown through public and peer talks, conferences, radio, TV and newspaper articles, which is hoped to be furthered with the presence on the unit on the internet in the near future. The unit hopes to develop further tracers to ensure small animal trials to understand mechanism of disease and use this to move quickly into human work, as seen with Ga68-PSMA for prostate cancer where in less than 6months from initial donation to patient injection was possible. Work has begun to align and work together with facilities globally by developing satellite radiopharmaceutical and imaging centres using common protocols. The unit continues to expand its TGA licence and it is hoped in the near future will ensure testing of pharmaceuticals used in cold kits for SPECT imaging and implementation of new global diagnostic PET-agents for examination in Australia safely.

March 12, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, health | Leave a comment

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