To 26 May, nuclear and climate news.
Can’t keep up with the pandemic news – I hope you can.
One thing, though. Beyond Nuclear has pointed out the significance of the floods in Midland, Michigan, where they do have one nuclear research reactor, but fortunately no commercial ones. They warn on ” the almost impossible challenge of evacuating people to safety during simultaneous catastrophic events.” The floods bring together the climate, pandemic, and nuclear dangers all in one area.
Public attention is not on this one. BUT, the 2020 Review Conference of a landmark international treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), is due soon, though postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is also at risk. It’s under the radar, while everyone worries about COVID-19 and climate, – but the danger of nuclear weapons use is escalating, as Donald Trump unravels the treaty system that is aimed at preventing nuclear war. He also wants USA to hugely increase its nuclear weaponry.
Some bits of good news – Maasai Nature Conservancy Asks For Help To Fight Pandemic—And 100,000 People Answer. World’s Most Endangered Primate Population Triples After 17 Years of Careful Conservation
AUSTRALIA
NUCLEAR
National Radioactive Waste Dump PLan. Peter Remta: Misleading and inaccurate information provided by authorities on National Radioactive Waste Management. The false economics promised by the government’s National Radioactive Waste Management plan. Napandee is geologically and geophysically unsuitable for Australia’s nuclear waste dump. Australian Law on radioactive waste to be changed in order to prevent any judicial review!.
National Radioactive Waste Management Facility (NRWMF) under scrutiny – fact checking.
Some more submissions to the Senate on National Radioactive Waste Bill:
- Felicity Wright: appalled at effect on Aboriginal communities of decision on National Radioactive Waste Dump Site.
- Rose Costelloe – Kimba traditional Aboriginal area not suitable for nuclear waste dump.
- Dianne Ashton on Government untrustworthiness – the rushed, unethical decision on nuclear waste site.
- Felicity Wright: appalled at effect on Aboriginal communities of decision on National Radioactive Waste Dump Site.
- Nick Pastalatzis questions the government’s boast about jobs at the planned nuclear waste dump.
- Terry Schmucker- unfairness of community funding for nuclear dump has split the local community.
- Sue Woolford recommends the Canadian model for selecting a Nuclear Waste Facility Site.
Small Modular Nuclear Reactors included in Morrison govt’s energy plan?.
Australian govt and ERA squabble over monitoring of Ranger uranium clean-up.
CLIMATE Australia, and other countries – deaths from global hatinge are being underestimated . Australian government’s climate and post-Covid policy is a sop to the fossil fuel industries. National Coordination COVID-19 Commission – a fossil fuel mates’ rort of staggering proportions.
Morrison’s lack of transparency is undermining green recovery, Coalition’s Technology Investment Roadmap: Poor policy in practice. Leaked plan for huge gas subsidies– Coalition’s ‘grey’ baseline and credit scheme could pay companies to increase emissions. The Morrison government manipulates, to paint the coal industry as “clean” and “renewable”
MPs sayLeading doctors in Australia (over 180 of them) want Australia’s Australia’s Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) made stronger, not weaker. Minerals Council of Australia keen to keep Australia’s environmental law the same, (or make it even worse)
RENEWABLE ENERGY. Greens pitch Green New Deal, 100% renewables target for post-Covid recovery. Huge 2GW of wind, solar and storage to deliver green future for Queensland industrial hub.
INTERNATIONAL
A moment of reckoning – when coronavirus meets climate change. Coronavirus: How to prevent a new nuclear arms race – and future pandemics.
The danger to children of low level nuclear radiation has been underestimated.
The international nuclear weapons race. Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty at risk, due to Donald Trump’s accusations ?
Antarctic krill threatened by warming waters – climate change’s danger to the marine ecosystem.
The false economics promised by the government’s National Radioactive Waste Management plan
on all proper assessments and studies it is quite clear that the suggested benefits will not become a reality and in fact may lead to a deterioration in the value of the farming lands and residential properties at Kimba due the presence of the nuclear waste facility.
the government is doing no more than attempting to create a false economy which regrettably is being seized on by some members of the Kimba community as the misconceived salvation of its present depressed rural conditions which are actually common to the rest of Australia.
This is an extract from Peter Remta – submission to Senate Committee on National Radioactive Waste Management Amendment (Site Specification, Community Fund and Other Measures) Bill 2020 [Provisions] Submission 65
“………FINANCIAL GRANTS
The government has made significant financial grants to Kimba and also previously Hawker to gain community approval for its proposals. While it is a little difficult to ascertain the exact amounts of the grants the list of
recipients indicates that many of them were for rather nebulous and unnecessary purposes with little support or justification. In December 2018 the government first mentioned a so called community purposes
grant of $31million but failed to provide full details of the grant and its application.
Eventually it was explained that this grant would be a community development package to build economic capacity skills and resilience within those communities and to help realise the economic benefits of hosting the facility.
The three components of the package were:
(a) $8 million for community skills and development
(b) $3 million from the government’s Indigenous Advancement Strategy to support economic opportunities for the local Aboriginal community
(c) $20 million as a community fund to contribute towards a range of community focused projects including sustainable health services agricultural research and development and enhancements to local infrastructure such as roads and telecommunications
Even if component (a) were excluded the remaining applications of money should be part of the normal expenditure by the federal and state governments and be completely unrelated to and independent of the community’s acceptance of the facility.
In fact the local Aboriginal community considers that the moneys from the Advancement Strategy would be available to it in any event under previous arrangements.
Yet at the Senate estimates hearing on 21 February 2019 Manager Chard of the so called national radioactive waste management taskforce stated on behalf of the Department that the community development package of $31 million (she referred to it as $30 million) was being “enshrined” in legislation because this was requested by the community.
She also said that fund – being presumably the component of $20 million of the total package – was “not dependent on the legislation change” since it was envisaged that a fund would be established to support the community when the existing legislation was “conceived” in 2012 even though there had never been any public release or mention of the package and its value until December 2018.
ECONOMIC BENEFITS
The government has constantly promoted the notion and claimed that the establishment of the facility will lead to significant economic benefits for the Kimba region and its community.
The argument espoused and promoted by the government is that Kimba is a dying agricultural area with no future prospects of revival and consequently the establishment of the facility will provide significant increased employment and other infrastructure benefits ensuring its future for an even quoted figure of 300 years. The economic prospects for Kimba would also be augmented and improved by the intended grants from the government already described as the community development package.
However on all proper assessments and studies it is quite clear that the suggested benefits will not become a reality and in fact may lead to a deterioration in the value of the farming lands and residential properties at Kimba due the presence of the nuclear waste facility.
Based on proper and considered financial advice it seems that the government is doing no more than attempting to create a false economy which regrettably is being seized on by some members of the Kimba community as the misconceived salvation of its present depressed rural conditions which are actually common to the rest of Australia.
This is a completely wishful but unrealistic perception since it has already been shown by other examples that the facility would in a normal commercial sense need less than 10 workers unlike the government’s constantly quoted figure of 45 workers. Moreover the construction of the facility at Kimba will probably be carried out by already qualified and well experienced contractors from outside of Kimba and their presence during the building stage will add little to the local community……….”
New study – health effects of low level nuclear radiation on children has been underestimated
 How dangerous is low-level radiation to children? https://climatenewsnetwork.net/how-dangerous-is-low-level-radiation-to-children/#.Xsn914VYtCg.twitter May 22nd, 2020, by Paul Brown A rethink on the risks of low-level radiation would imperil the nuclear industry’s future − perhaps why there’s never been one.
The threat that low-level radiation poses to human life, particularly to unborn children, and its link with childhood leukaemia, demands an urgent scientific reassessment. This is the conclusion of a carefully-detailed report produced for the charity Children With Cancer UK by the Low-Level Radiation Campaign. It is compiled from evidence contained in dozens of scientific reports from numerous countries over many decades, which show that tiny doses of radiation, some of it inhaled, can have devastating effects on the human body, particularly by causing cancer and birth defects. The original reports were completed for a range of academic institutions, governments and medical organisations, and their results were compared by the newest report’s authors, Richard Bramhall and Pete Wilkinson. They believe they have provided overwhelming evidence for a basic rethink on so-called “safe” radiation doses. They write: “The fundamental conclusion of this report is that when the evidence is rationally assessed it appears that the health impacts, especially in the more radio-sensitive young, have been consistently and routinely underestimated.” Ceaseless controversy The pair concede this is not the first time such a call has been made, but it has never been acted upon. Now they say it must be. What constitutes safety for nuclear workers and for civilians living near nuclear power stations, or affected by fall-out from accidents like the ones at Sellafield in Cumbria in north-west England in 1957, Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011, has always been highly controversial. Bramhall and Wilkinson detail how the debate began in earnest in the 1980s, when a cluster of childhood leukaemia cases, ten times higher than would be expected, was identified around Sellafield. Government inquiries followed but reached no settled conclusion, and low-level radiation safety has been a scientific battleground ever since. The official agencies appointed by governments are still using dose estimates based on calculations made in 1943, when Western governments were trying to develop an atomic bomb.
The new report highlights that this was when very little was known about how tiny doses of ingested radiation could affect the body − and when DNA was yet to be discovered. Despite the fact that international standards are based on these scientifically ancient, out-of-date assumptions, they have not been revised. If they were, the results could be catastrophic for the nuclear industry and for the manufacturers of nuclear weapons. The report makes clear that if the worst estimates of the damage that low-level radiation causes to children proved anywhere close to correct, then no-one would want to live anywhere near a nuclear power station. Most would be appalled if they knew even small numbers of children living within 50 kilometres of a station would contract leukaemia from being so close. It acknowledges that the stakes are high. If the authors’ findings are accepted, then it will be the end of public tolerance of nuclear power. Revolution needed Despite this long-lived institutional pushback from governments and the industry, the report says what is needed is a scientific revolution in the way that low-level radiation is considered. It compares the situation with the treatment of asbestos. It was in the 1890s that the first evidence of disease related to asbestos exposure was laid before the UK Parliament. But it was not until 1972, when the causal link between the always fatal lung cancer, mesothelioma, and human fatality rates was established beyond reasonable doubt, that the use of asbestos was banned. This delay is why on average 2,700 people still die annually in the UK: they were at some point exposed to and inhalers of asbestos. Another example, which the report does not quote but is perhaps as relevant today, is air pollution. It has taken decades for the scientific community to realise that in many cities it is the tiniest particles of air pollution, invisible to the naked eye, that are taken deepest into the lungs and that cause the most damage, killing thousands of people a year. So far governments across the world have not yet outlawed the vehicles and industrial processes that are wiping out their own citizens in vast numbers. Anxiety not irrational The report cites many studies, with perhaps the most telling those that compare the actual numbers of cancers and malformations in babies which occurred in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident with the numbers to have been expected if the currently accepted and out-of-date risk calculations had been used. Despite the difficulties of getting information from reluctant governments close to Chernobyl, the report says: “The discrepancy between the number of congenital malformations in babies expected after Chernobyl and the number actually observed was between 15,000 and 50,000.” The authors say their object “is to dispel the repeated assertion that public anxiety about the health impact of radioactivity in the environment is irrational.” Both Wilkinson and Bramhall have considerable experience of dealing with governments, both inside official bodies as members, and as external lobbyists. They detail how they believe the concerns of both ordinary people and scientists have been swept aside in order to preserve the status quo. Clearly, in sponsoring the report, Children with Cancer UK agrees. − Climate News Network |
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Australia, and other countries – deaths from global heating are being underestimated
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Experts Warn Climate Change Is Already Killing Way More People Than We Record, Science Alert ,CARLY CASSELLA, 25 MAY 2020
People around the world are already dying from the climate crisis,and yet all too often, official death records do not reflect the impact of these large-scale environmental catastrophes. According to a team of Australian health experts, heat is the most dominant risk posed by climate change in the country. If the world’s emissions remain the same, by 2080 Australian cities could see at least four times the number of deaths from increasing temperatures alone. “Climate change is a killer, but we don’t acknowledge it on death certificates,” says physician Arnagretta Hunter from the Australian National University. That’s a potentially serious oversight. In a newly-published correspondence, Hunter and four other public health experts estimate Australia’s mortality records have substantially underreported heat-related deaths – at least 50-fold. While death certificates in Australia do actually have a section for pre-existing conditions and other factors, external climate conditions are rarely taken into account. Between 2006 and 2017, the analysis found less than 0.1 percent of 1.7 million deaths were attributed directly or indirectly to excessive natural heat. But this new analysis suggests the nation’s heat-related mortality is around 2 percent. “We know the summer bushfires were a consequence of extraordinary heat and drought and people who died during the bushfires were not just those fighting fires – many Australians had early deaths due to smoke exposure,” says Hunter……. “Death certification needs to be modernised, indirect causes should be reported, with all death certification prompting for external factors contributing to death, and these death data must be coupled with large-scale environmental datasets so that impact assessments can be done.” …… Such action, they say, is imperative. Not only for Australia but many other countries in the world. The United Kingdom has documented some problems with accurately filling out death certificates, and cities in several parts of the world are on track for similar heat-related mortality rates as Australia. But there are some places that will need to do more than just update their current system. In the tropics, there’s little valid mortality data on the more than 2 billion people who live in this heat-vulnerable region. And that makes predicting what will happen to these communities in the future much trickier. “Climate change is the single greatest health threat that we face globally even after we recover from coronavirus,” says Hunter. “We are successfully tracking deaths from coronavirus, but we also need healthcare workers and systems to acknowledge the relationship between our health and our environment.” In an unpredictable world, if we want to know where we’re going, we have to know where we’ve been. Figuring out how many of us have already died from climate change will be key to that process. We can’t ignore it any longer. The correspondence was published in The Lancet Planetary Health. https://www.sciencealert.com/official-death-records-are-terrible-at-showing-how-many-people-are-dying-from-the-climate-crisis |
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Australian government’s climate and post-Covid policy is a sop to the fossil fuel industries
Angus Taylor suggesting it is not government policy to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, and the government giving in-principle support to recommendations made by a panel headed by a former CEO of Origin Energy, Grant King, to allow the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation fund projects involving carbon capture and storage.
pushes for the same energy mixes that were being advocated a decade ago – more gas, the discredited carbon capture, as well as nuclear power.
The climate crisis looms as the Coalition fiddles with fossil fuels https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/24/the-climate-crisis-looms-as-the-coalition-fiddles-with-fossil-fuelsGreg Jericho The government is like a smoker switching to low-tar cigarettes. Its energy policy is just a sop
We may be dealing with a health crisis, but the climate change crisis has not gone away, nor become any less urgent. In fact, the opposite.
A few conservative commentators have suggested Covid-19 shows what a real crisis looks like compared with, in their opinion, the hyperventilating over climate change.
What bollocks.
Nasa estimates that last month was the hottest April on record and the first four months of this year are the second hottest start to a year.
The past seven months have all been 1C or higher than the 1951-1980 average (roughly around 1.3C above the pre-industrial average) – tied with the longest streak set from October 2015 to April 2016. But unlike in 2015 and 2016 the Bureau of Meteorology records we are currently not in El Niño.
That very much suggests the pace of warming is speeding up.
The linear trend of temperatures over the past 60 years suggests we will hit 2C above pre-industrial levels in 50 years; the trend of the past 20 years has it happening in around 30 years, but the trend of the past decade would see us hit that level in 2038 –just 18 years’ time.
And no, the virus has not bought us more time.
A study published this week in Nature Climate Change estimates the annual global drop in emissions due to virus shutdowns will be “comparable to the rates of decrease needed year-on-year over the next decades to limit climate change to a 1.5°C warming”.
That it took forcing people to stop their lives to achieve such cuts highlights just how big the job ahead of us is and how it cannot be done through individual action alone.
Cutting emissions without crippling the economy requires not everyone self-isolating, but changing industries and the very foundations of our economy.
We need to move away from oil, coal and gas to renewable energy.
And so it should be of great concern that the government is using the coronavirus as cover to push fossil fuels.
This week Adam Morton revealed that a manufacturing taskforce, headed by Dow Chemical executive and Saudi Aramco board member Andrew Liveris, is recommending to the National Covid-19 Coordination Commission (itself headed by the current deputy chairman of Strike Energy, Neville Power) that “the Morrison government make sweeping changes to ‘create the market’ for gas and build fossil fuel infrastructure that would operate for decades”.
It comes off the back of Angus Taylor suggesting it is not government policy to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, and the government giving in-principle support to recommendations made by a panel headed by a former CEO of Origin Energy, Grant King, to allow the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation fund projects involving carbon capture and storage.
Taylor also this week released a discussion paper for a “framework to accelerate low emissions technologies”. While suggesting renewables are vital, it essentially pushes for the same energy mixes that were being advocated a decade ago – more gas, the discredited carbon capture, as well as nuclear power.
It’s the wrong policy at precisely the wrong time.
As Morton has reported, organisations and governments around the world are advocating using economic stimulus measures to push towards a greener economy.
A report released this week by the Australian Conservation Foundation echoed the Grattan Institute’s recent “Start with steel: A practical plan to support carbon workers and cut emissions” report, arguing that we should see the virus as an opportunity to transform our economy and invest in renewable energy.
But no. It is clear the government remains wedded to a fossil-fuel based economy in which its climate change policy is merely a sop rather being designed to deal with a major crisis that is only becoming more urgent.
Leading doctors in Australia (over 180 of them) want Australia’s Australia’s Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) made stronger, not weaker
More than 180 doctors sign open letter calling for overhaul of ‘failing’ environmental laws, https://www.sbs.com.au/news/more-than-180-doctors-sign-open-letter-calling-for-overhaul-of-failing-environmental-laws 25 May 20, More than 180 health professionals have signed a letter warning the Commonwealth must strengthen Australia’s environmental laws to protect people’s health.
Doctors for the Environment Australia and the Climate and Health Alliance have sent an open letter to federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley as she undertakes a once-in-a-decade review of environmental protection laws.
Australia’s Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) was established more than 20 years ago at a time when the doctors say the effects of climate change and its links to human health were not widely considered to be related.
The review comes amid the COVID-19 pandemic and follows Australia’s catastrophic summer bushfires with the health professionals warning that failing to conserve the environment will expose Australians to further devastation and health risks.
“We must protect the natural environment in order to prevent further and potentially even more deadly pandemics,” the letter says.
“The degradation of Australia’s natural environment and loss of our unique biodiversity is in effect a dismantling of our life support systems.”
The doctors argue the laws have failed as Australia has the second-highest rate of biodiversity in the world and is recognised as a land clearing and deforestation hotspot.
“The EPBC Act has failed to achieve its objectives of protecting Australia’s environment and promoting ecologically sustainable development and biodiversity conservation,” the letter says.
The letter, also signed by former Australian of the Year Professor Fiona Stanley, calls for an “entirely new generation” of environmental laws that focus on the impacts on human health and which have greater protections in place for biodiversity.
Associate Professor Katherine Barraclough from Doctors for the Environment Australia argues clearing forests and wildlife habitat increases the risk of infectious diseases being transferred from wildlife to people.
“The COVID-19 pandemic and the summer’s fires serve as a wake-up call. We must recognise the interconnections between humans, animals and natural places,” she said in a statement.
Climate and Health Alliance founder Fiona Armstrong said the government listened to the science in its response to COVID-19 and should do the same in regards to the environment and climate change.
An interim report into the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act review is expected mid-year with the final report expected in October.
National Coordination COVID-19 Commission – a fossil fuel mates’ rort of staggering proportions.
 Coalition’s COVID-19 Commission: Another reason for a Federal ICAC Now! Independent Australia By Ross Jones | 25 May 2020 Just how much slush do you reckon is going to wash around the Coalition’s so-called National Coordination COVID-19 Commission?
It is brutally evident that, much like birds in a Hitchcock movie, masses of spivs are preening their flight feathers, readying themselves for a terrifying assault on Australia’s fragile environment to line their own – and others’ – already luxurious nests. This is going to be a mates’ rort of staggering proportions. There are a lot of approaches Australia could take to emerge from the COVID-19 problem a better place. Certainly, Australia is awash with economic problems — high unemployment, battered production capabilities, smashed asset values and a looming surplus of exports are just the start. As you would expect, the Morrison Government eschewed any sensible approaches to these problems, like rebooting manufacturing to set the country up for efficient, long-term solutions, which would enable us to contribute to global attempts to slow climate change while boosting levels of meaningful employment. Instead, the Coalition wants to unleash the dogs of destruction, just to make sure no other generation of Australians has anywhere near the opportunity this lot of privileged elitists has enjoyed. Once fracked and drilled, that land – our children’s land – will be rendered useless. Destroyed. Why are they doing this? Money. Lots of it. Greed, bribes, backhanders and sly winks will ensure the brown paper bags – or Cayman Island cupboards – are nice and plump for all the abusers of our long-term well-being to jam their porky little mitts into. This is exactly why we need an empowered Federal ICAC and that is exactly the reason IA is proposing the formation of a new Australian political party to be named — Federal ICAC Now (FIN). A Federal ICAC won’t stop all the malfeasance but it could put a fair-sized dent in it. Also, it would be great to have a few senators in the House whose focus is on corruption detection and prevention. The next half-senate election, when the term of those elected in 2016 expires, can be held as early as 7 August 2021 but must be held by 30 June 2022. Before the election, and especially in the last months leading up to the big event a registered FIN party would have a presence alerting voters to the issues. At the election, the above-the-line party might just have a chance. A previous IA article floated the idea of FIN and asked readers if they would be willing to join such a party………. https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/coalitions-covid-19-commission-another-reason-for-a-federal-icac-now,13928 |
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May 24 Energy News — geoharvey
Opinion: ¶ “With The Navajo Generating Station Gone, We Need Help Luring Renewable Energy Investment To Our Land” • Navajo Generating Station closed last December, over twenty years early, because it was no longer economically viable for its corporate owners. Navajo Power can provide renewable energy and jobs, but it needs funding. [AZCentral.com] Science and […]
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 