Australian uranium fuelled Fukushima
The Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission ‒ established by the Japanese Parliament ‒ concluded in its 2012 report that the accident was “a profoundly man-made disaster that could and should have been foreseen and prevented” if not for “a multitude of errors and wilful negligence that left the Fukushima plant unprepared for the events of March 11”.
The accident was the result of “collusion between the government, the regulators and TEPCO”, the commission found.
Mining
But overseas suppliers who turned a blind eye to unacceptable nuclear risks in Japan have largely escaped scrutiny or blame. Australia’s uranium industry is a case in point.
Yuki Tanaka from the Hiroshima Peace Institute noted: “Japan is not the sole nation responsible for the current nuclear disaster. From the manufacture of the reactors by GE to provision of uranium by Canada, Australia and others, many nations are implicated.”
There is no dispute that Australian uranium was used in the Fukushima reactors. The mining companies won’t acknowledge that fact — instead they hide behind claims of “commercial confidentiality” and “security”.
But the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office acknowledged in October 2011 that: “We can confirm that Australian obligated nuclear material was at the Fukushima Daiichi site and in each of the reactors — maybe five out of six, or it could have been all of them”.
BHP and Rio Tinto, two of the world’s largest mining companies, supplied Australian uranium to TEPCO and that uranium was used to fuel Fukushima.
Tsunamis
The mining companies have failed to take any responsibility for the catastrophic impacts on Japanese society that resulted from the use of their uranium in a poorly managed, poorly regulated industry.
Moreover, the mining companies can’t claim ignorance. The warning signs were clear. Australia’s uranium industry did nothing as TEPCO and other Japanese nuclear companies lurched from scandal to scandal and accident to accident.
The uranium industry did nothing in 2002 when it was revealed that TEPCO had systematically and routinely falsified safety data and breached safety regulations for 25 years or more.
The uranium industry did nothing in 2007 when over 300 incidents of ‘malpractice’ at Japan’s nuclear plants were revealed – 104 of them at nuclear power plants.
It did nothing even as the ability of Japan’s nuclear plants to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis came under growing criticism from industry insiders and independent experts.
Vicious cycle
And the uranium industry did nothing about the multiple conflicts of interest plaguing Japanese nuclear regulators.
Mirarr senior Traditional Owner Yvonne Margarula ‒ on whose land in the Northern Territory Rio Tinto’s Ranger mine operated ‒ said she was “deeply saddened” that uranium from Ranger was exported to Japanese nuclear companies including TEPCO.
No such humility from the uranium companies. They get tetchy at any suggestion of culpability, with the Australian Uranium Association describing it as “opportunism in the midst of human tragedy” and “utter nonsense”.
Yet, Australia could have played a role in breaking the vicious cycle of mismanagement in Japan’s nuclear industry by making uranium exports conditional on improved management of nuclear plants and tighter regulation.
Even a strong public statement of concern would have been heard by the Japanese utilities – unless it was understood to be rhetoric for public consumption – and it would have registered in the Japanese media.
Safety
But the uranium industry denied culpability and instead stuck its head in the sand. Since the industry is in denial about its role in fuelling the Fukushima disaster, there is no reason to believe that it will behave more responsibly in future.
Successive Australian governments did nothing about the unacceptable standards in Japan’s nuclear industry. Julia Gillard ‒ Australia’s Prime Minister at the time of the Fukushima disaster ‒ said the disaster “doesn’t have any impact on my thinking about uranium exports”.
Signification elements of Japan’s corrupt ‘nuclear village’ ‒ comprising industry, regulators, politicians and government agencies ‒ were back in control just a few years after the Fukushima disaster. Regulation remains problematic.
Add to that ageing reactors, and companies facing serious economic stress and intense competition, and there’s every reason for ongoing concern about nuclear safety in Japan.
Professor Yoshioka Hitoshi is a Kyushu University academic who served on the government’s 2011-12 Investigation Committee on the Accident at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations.
Regulation
They said in October 2015: “Unfortunately, the new regulatory regime is … inadequate to ensure the safety of Japan’s nuclear power facilities. The first problem is that the new safety standards on which the screening and inspection of facilities are to be based are simply too lax.
“While it is true that the new rules are based on international standards, the international standards themselves are predicated on the status quo.
“They have been set so as to be attainable by most of the reactors already in operation. In essence, the NRA made sure that all Japan’s existing reactors would be able to meet the new standards with the help of affordable piecemeal modifications ‒ back-fitting, in other words.”
In the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon called for an independent cost-benefit inquiry into uranium trade. The Australian government failed to act.
Inadequate regulation was a root cause of the Fukushima disaster yet Australia has uranium supply agreements with numerous countries with demonstrably inadequate nuclear regulation, including China, India, Russia, the United States, Japan, South Korea, and Ukraine.
Overthrow
Likewise, Australian uranium companies and the government turn a blind eye to nuclear corruption scandals in countries with uranium supply agreements: South Korea, India, Russia and Ukraine among others.
Indeed, Australia has signed up to expand its uranium trade to sell into insecure regions.
In 2011 ‒ the same year as the Fukushima disaster ‒ the Australian government agreed to allow uranium exports to India.
This despite inadequate nuclear regulation in India, and despite India’s ongoing expansion of its nuclear weaponry and delivery capabilities.
A uranium supply agreement with the United Arab Emirates was concluded in 2013 despite the obvious risks of selling uranium into a politically and militarily volatile region where nuclear facilities have repeatedly been targeted by adversaries intent on stopping covert nuclear weapons programs. Australia was planning uranium sales to the Shah of Iran months before his overthrow in 1979.
Forced labour
A uranium supply agreement with Ukraine was concluded in 2016 despite a host of safety and security concerns, and the inability of the International Atomic Energy Agency to carry out safeguards inspections in regions annexed by Russia.
In 2014, Australia banned uranium sales to Russia, with then prime minister Tony Abbott stating: “Australia has no intention of selling uranium to a country which is so obviously in breach of international law as Russia currently is.”
Australia’s uranium supply agreement with China, concluded in 2006, has not been reviewed despite abundant evidence of inadequate nuclear safety standards, inadequate regulation, lack of transparency, repression of whistleblowers, world’s worst insurance and liability arrangements, security risks, and widespread corruption.
Civil society and NGO’s are campaigning to wind back Australia’s atomic exposures in the uranium trade with emphasis on uranium sales to China.
China’s human rights abuses and a range of strategic insecurity issues warrant a cessation of uranium sales. China’s ongoing human rights abuses in Tibet and mass detention and forced labour against Uyghurs in Xinjiang are severe breaches of international humanitarian law and UN Treaties.
Weapons
China proliferated nuclear weapons know-how to Pakistan, targets Australia in cyber-attacks, and is causing regional insecurity on the India border, in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and in the Pacific.
BHP’s Olympic Dam is the only company still selling Australian uranium into China. There is a case for the ‘Big Australian’ to forego uranium sales overall and an onus to end sales to China.
A federal Parliamentary Inquiry in Australia is investigating forced labour in China and the options for Australia to respond. A case is before this inquiry to disqualify China from supply of Australian uranium sales – see submission 02 on human rights abuses and submission 02.1 on security risks.
Australia supplies uranium with scant regard for nuclear safety risks. Likewise, proliferation risks are given short shrift.
Australia has uranium export agreements with all of the ‘declared’ nuclear weapons states – the US, UK, China, France, Russia – although not one of them takes seriously its obligation under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue disarmament in good faith.
Carte blanche
Australia claims to be working to discourage countries from producing fissile – explosive – material for nuclear bombs, but nonetheless exports uranium to countries blocking progress on the proposed Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty.
And Australia gives Japan open-ended permission to separate and stockpile plutonium although that stockpiling fans regional proliferation risks and tensions in North-East Asia.
Despite liberal export policies, Australian uranium sales are in long-term decline and now represent only 8.9 percent of world uranium usage.
With the Ranger mine shut down and no longer processing ore for uranium exports, there are only two operating uranium mines in Australia: BHP’s Olympic Dam copper-uranium mine and the smaller General Atomics’ Beverley Four Mile operation ‒ both in South Australia.
Uranium accounts for less than 0.3 percent of Australia’s export revenue and less than 0.1 percent of all jobs in Australia.
One wonders why an industry that delivers so little is given carte blanche by the government to do as it pleases.
These Authors
Dr Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia. David Noonan is an independent environment campaigner. For further information on BHP’s Olympic Dam mine click here.
Australia must learn the lessons of Fukushima
Australia must learn the lessons of Fukushima https://www.acf.org.au/we_must_learn_the_lessons_of_fukushima– Dave Sweeney, Australian Conservation Foundation’s nuclear free campaign, 11 March 21,
Ten years ago, the world held its breath, crossed its fingers and learnt a new word.
Fukushima went from being the name of a provincial Japanese city to global shorthand for a costly, contaminating and continuing nuclear disaster.
Fukushima means ‘fortunate island’ but the region’s luck melted down along with its reactors on March 11, 2011.
The Great Eastern earthquake and tsunami which rocked then inundated much of Japan’s eastern seaboard also swamped the defences of the Fukushima nuclear complex run by TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Corporation.
Against a backdrop of wailing sirens and crackling Geiger counters we witnessed mass evacuations, hundreds of billions of dollars in economic loss and radioactive contamination of the air, soil and ocean that continues today.
Japanese and international nuclear authorities have confirmed it will take at least three more decades to stabilise radioactive and waste issues at the site.
The most pressing of these is how to manage a large volume of contaminated water that is stored is hundreds of vast steel tanks and is growing daily.
The preferred company plan – to dump this untreated contaminated water directly into the Pacific – is generating growing concern among Japanese coastal communities, not to mention outrage in Korea and the wider region.
In August 2012, a year after the initial disaster, I joined a delegation of international environmental monitors and public health experts to visit the Fukushima region.
We saw and spoke with ordinary people whose lives had been extraordinarily disrupted.
We drove through countryside and towns that had been emptied of people and hope.
We met with elderly evacuees in temporary housing who understood that they would never return home.
The words of Hasegawa Kenichi, a Fukushima dairy farmer who lost his herd and his livelihood, remain in my head. ‘It is important to make sure that what is happening in Fukushima is not forgotten.’
As pro-nuclear politicians and industry associations seek to distract from their inaction on meaningful efforts to address climate change by once more banging the drum for domestic nuclear power, we need to remember these words – and the deep reality that lies behind them.
Especially in Australia.
In October 2011 the head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s nuclear bureau formally confirmed that Australian uranium was routinely sold to the corner-cutting TEPCO and was fuelling the Fukushima complex at the time of the disaster.
Australian radioactive rocks are the source of Fukushima’s fallout.
As home to around 35% of the world’s uranium reserves, Australia has been a significant player in the global nuclear trade.
But, aptly enough, Australia’s uranium sector was hard hit by the market fallout from Fukushima.
In the last 10 years the global commodity price has flatlined, projects have been shelved, abandoned or placed in perpetual ‘care and maintenance’.
Australia’s longest operating uranium mine, the Ranger project in Kakadu, closed forever in January this year.
This brought an end to the controversial Kakadu mining chapter and has left mine owner Rio Tinto with a billion dollar clean up challenge that is attracting scrutiny from across Australia and around the world.
Australia’s uranium sector has long been constrained by political uncertainty, an absence of social license and strong First Nations and wider community resistance.
The industry’s prevailing business model seems to be to get the paperwork in order, cultivate friends in Canberra and wait in hope for better times.
But those times are unlikely to ever arrive.
The sector never really made sense and now it doesn’t even make dollars. The years since Fukushima have seen a dramatic decline in the popularity of nuclear power and a global surge in renewable energy projects and production.
Australia’s uranium sector is high risk and low return.
It leaves polluted mine sites at home and drives nuclear risk and insecurity abroad.
And it fuelled Fukushima – a profound environmental, economic and human disaster that continues to negatively impact lives in Japan and far beyond.
On this tenth anniversary it is time to honour Kenichi-san’s plea that the world not forget Fukushima.
We need a credible and independent review of the real costs and consequences of Australia’s uranium trade.
It is well past time for Australian politicians of all stripes to accept that we are in a period of irreversible transformation and that our shared energy future is renewable, not radioactive.
Read A joint statement from the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Electrical Trades Union.
Time that Australia looks beyond uranium mining, and towards rehabilitation of the environment
K-A, Nuclear Free Community Campaigner, 11 Mar 21, On the 10th anniversary of the Australian uranium-fuelled Fukushima nuclear disaster, it is time for a rethink on uranium Australia wide and for WA to look beyond mining towards rehabilitation.
WA’s four proposed uranium mines and the 85 exploration sites have been unable to develop into and all pose serious environmental, economic and public health risks. Some of the companies involved no longer exist, others are hanging on by a thread.
With a stagnant uranium price and a global nuclear power industry that is struggling to maintain the status quo, we should be looking to clean up Barnett’s failed attempt to establish uranium mines in WA and close that chapter in our history book.
Fukushima, ten years after the devastating Tsunami and subsequent multiple reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is still one of the most radioactive places on earth. It remains a profound human, economic and environmental tragedy that was fuelled by Australian uranium.
In Parliament in 2012 Dr Robert Floyd, Director General, Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation confirmed that Australian uranium was in each of the reactors at the time of the meltdown. Following the disaster, the UN Secretary-General urged every uranium-producing country to hold “an in-depth assessment of the net cost impact of the impacts of mining fissionable material on local communities and ecosystems.”
MP Josh Wilson’s excellent submission Senate, about nuclear wastes
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another well written submission – presented as a speech this time in Parliament in 2020
 Josh Wilson MP, Federal Labor Member, Shadow Assistant Minister for Environment, June 2020 “There is no question that Australia needs to make progress when it comes to the proper long-term storage of nuclear waste. It is just that this bill doesn’t help take us towards that end. It’s taken us 40 years and it’s cost $55 million to get us to this point. There’s no question that we benefit significantly from nuclear medicine, from the use of radiopharmaceuticals, especially as a diagnostic tool. We benefit here in Australia and we provide those benefits to other parts of the world. We have the nuclear facility, the OPAL reactor, that’s operated by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, ANSTO, at Lucas Heights. It creates the relevant material for nuclear medicine and it creates the need to carefully and safely deal with the waste. It’s not an easy task to do that, but this bill doesn’t help.Effectively this bill seeks to rush and force the issue of community acceptance, which is a mistake. The minister has the power to make the decision in question. You can only guess that the reason for this legislation is to lock in an outcome, when the minister and the government accept that there are some concerns with the community acceptance process that has occurred so far. The bill effectively also wants to ignore, avoid and further neglect the key issue of a permanent disposal site for intermediate-level waste. There are two kinds of waste that this bill proposes to send to a site in South Australia—low-level waste and intermediate-level waste—and they are very different. A lot of what has been said, including what the minister said in introducing this bill, glides over that difference in a way that is wrong and is certainly not helpful in terms of getting to where we need to get to with a permanent disposal site for low-level waste and a permanent site for intermediate-level waste.
If we know anything about nuclear technology, we know that it relies upon toxic radioactive material and it generates toxic radioactive waste. That’s why there are serious engineering challenges in relation to waste and that’s why there are quite legitimately very serious issues in relation to social licence around nuclear technology. People are wary of it, especially of nuclear waste, and they should be. We have to get towards a long-term disposal solution, and yet this bill raises two serious questions about how the government wants to take us there. There’s concern over the site selection process, which goes to the question of consultation, engagement and community agreement, and there are concerns about the purpose and function of the facility. I want to talk mostly about the latter, but, in relation to the former, in relation to community decision-making, I support the fundamental proposition that the people of South Australia, or any state or territory where a waste disposal site is proposed, should decide, and the agreement about a site should be a meaningful agreement without the serious question marks that remain in this case. Really, for the government to take us to that end, it would do better to work on achieving that meaningful agreement rather than steamrolling over the top in the way that this bill seeks to do.
The second issue is the fact that this site is proposed to be a permanent disposal site for low-level waste and a temporary storage site for intermediate-level waste. To the extent that it proposes that it’s going to be a temporary storage site, it really stretches the ordinary concept of the word ‘temporary’. The problems with that are really quite considerable. There is a very serious risk, and no-one in this place should be ignorant of the possibility, that intermediate level waste will go to this site and it will be there forever, effectively. I’m sure that moving it from its current location will mean that the long-neglected task of preparing for a permanent disposal site will only be further delayed and ignored.
As other speakers have mentioned, low-level waste is mostly personal protective equipment and it contains limited amounts of long-lived radioactive substances. It needs to be stored for a few hundred years in what are described as near-surface facilities. At the moment, it’s stored in 200-litre drums in a big shed at Lucas Heights, and presumably it would be not dissimilarly stored at a site in South Australia if that’s where it went. Intermediate-level waste is something quite different. Intermediate-level waste comes from spent and reprocessed nuclear fuel and the residue from parts of the radioisotope production process. It does not decay in a way that makes it acceptable for near-surface-level disposal. You get a sense of the toxicity of intermediate-level waste when you consider the time frame that’s involved. The proposal here for the permanent disposal of low-level waste is for it to be stored and for the facility to be actively operated for a period of 100 years and then ‘institutionally monitored’— that is the phrase in the explanatory memorandum—for a further period of 200 years. Intermediate-level waste, by contrast, needs to be stored for thousands of years. It remains toxic for thousands and thousands of years. It needs to be buried deep in the ground.
I also make the point that there is no permanent disposal site for high-level waste anywhere in the world. At the time when members of the government are going around spruiking the take-up of nuclear power in Australia—in defiance of all logic, in defiance of the international trends away from nuclear and in defiance of the economic evidence and the energy needs of this country—let’s remember that this is a 70-year-old industry. It’s been around for 70 years, and the industry still is incapable of dealing with its most toxic waste.
In relation to this site, I want to make a few points about how we’ve got here. It has taken 40 years and, as I said, cost $55 million to get to the point of nearly selecting a site. Departmental officials came before the energy and environment committee when we were inquiring into nuclear energy, and they gave us some very rough estimates of what the construction of the site itself would cost. That will be somewhere around $340 million to $350 million. That’s for the construction of the site, and that was described to us as a conservative estimate. Bizarrely, there is no current process underway with even a single dollar of government resources going towards the issue of a permanent disposal site for intermediate-level waste. It’s quite strange. It’s almost hard to believe that, when it’s taken us 40 years to get to the brink of a permanent site for low-level waste, there is not yet any departmental group or any taskforce on this and there’s not a single dollar going to the process of site selection, engineering design or anything else around the question of a permanent disposal site. We actually have an answer on notice from the then Department of Industry, Innovation and Science on that issue:
“A government decision on the entity responsible for the waste management technical coordination function— in relation to intermediate-level waste—has yet to be determined and is required before an Intermediate Level Waste disposal project timeline and budget can be determined.”
So, while we’ve taken 40 years and $55 million to get to the brink of a permanent low-level waste disposal site, no process is advancing by a single hour, let alone a day or a year, towards what the department itself said will likely be another 30- or 40-year process.
So this bill says, ‘Let’s send intermediate-level waste to South Australia for temporary storage.’ What does ‘temporary storage’ mean to the average person? Do you think it means 30, 40, or 50 years or forever? I doubt that very much. But that is, in effect, what this bill seeks to do with intermediate-level waste, which is a whole other kettle of fish.
The government, in the material, suggests there are reasons for the waste being moved, and a lot of the members from the government have said that they’re running out of space at Lucas Heights. That might be true for low-level waste. It is not true for intermediate-level waste. Like the previous speaker, I’ve been into the enormous shed. It’s bigger than the chamber in which I stand—well, it’s about the same size as the chamber in which I stand—and there’s a canister of intermediate-level waste. There’s one of them. There’s another one due back before long. There is plenty of room in that interim storage facility, so there’s no issue with space as far as intermediate-level waste is concerned, and there’s no issue in relation to safety or health concerns either. That is really important. If anyone is suggesting that there are health and safety reasons for moving intermediate-level waste to South Australia, they should point to the evidence of that, and then they should answer the question of how it came to be there in the first place, because we started receiving intermediate-level waste, the reprocessed fuel rods, back in 2015. There was a proper process, supervised by ARPANSA, that saw that waste come and be stored at Lucas Heights, and there’s never been any suggestion whatsoever that there is a safety or health concern about the location of intermediate-level waste at that site. If the government are in possession of any evidence to that effect, they should share it with the public. The member who spoke previously said that he walked up and gave the canister a hug. I was there and I found that quite strange to observe. But where is the evidence that there is any problem with the intermediate-level waste staying where it is, as it should do, until the government of Australia identifies and resources an appropriate permanent disposal site for intermediate-level waste?
When the interim facility was set up, there was no suggestion it was only for a few years. The licence that exists for the storage of the intermediate-level waste at Lucas Heights runs to 2055. ARPANSA itself addressed this issue in the submission that it made to the Senate inquiry. I want to quote from it, because this is important:
“ARPANSA is aware that some stakeholders have interpreted ARPANSA’s decisions regarding the IWS— which is the intermediate-level storage— as a requirement for relocation of the waste stored in the IWS, even suggesting that there is an urgent need for relocation. This is not correct. ARPANSA has not raised safety concerns regarding storage of waste at the IWS. ANSTO seems to share this view. ANSTO has indicated to ARPANSA that the mandatory recertification of the TN-81 casks every 10 years can be carried out at the IWS …”
But the claims that the government and government members in this place have made that intermediate-level storage needs to go to South Australia because there’s no room for it and that there are health and safety concerns about where it is currently are rubbish. And so it should stay where it is as a spur to the government to get on with the process, which currently hasn’t even started, of finding and resourcing a permanent disposal site. That is not occurring, and that’s one of the chief flaws of this bill.
The government is going about this important task the wrong way. Labor support a permanent national radioactive waste facility. We know it needs to be created. We just think the government should do it in the right way. They shouldn’t steamroll over the issue of community acceptance and community engagement, and they don’t need to. If they do that, they are going to put social licence at risk, and that will be even worse if they move intermediate-level waste to South Australia. They need to immediately start and resource the process of a permanent disposal site for intermediate-level waste. They should commit to maintaining that waste where it is currently stored, which is another reason for an inquiry on this issue.
More broadly, the government need to recognise that the social licence for nuclear technology is fragile at best. And that’s for good reason. We have our own chequered history in this country. We allowed the British to detonate 10 nuclear bombs in this country, all of which were as big or bigger than the bombs dropped on Japan. That didn’t go through a parliamentary process. What’s worse, we allowed the British government to explode nuclear material just to see what would happen if an aeroplane carrying nuclear material was shot out of the sky. That meant that radioactive material was strewn over South Australia, the clean-up efforts for which didn’t conclude until the early part of this century, and cost millions and millions of dollars, which the British government only very reluctantly contributed to. We know there are problems with uranium mining. We’ve watched events like Chernobyl and Fukushima. Yet there are members of the government running around saying that nuclear power should be part of our energy mix in our communities across Australia. Frankly, that is not only deeply irrational but ridiculous and unhelpful in the task this bill presents to us.
This bill is not a sensible or appropriate way in which to move towards the waste storage solution. It puts the program at risk. That’s why we don’t support the bill.” –
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French Nuclear tests: revelations about a cancer epidemic
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Nuclear tests: revelations about a cancer epidemic https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/090321/essais-nucleaires-revelations-sur-une-epidemie-de-cancers MARCH 9, 2021 BY DISCLOSE
In a confidential report, the Polynesian government acknowledges the existence of a “cluster of thyroid cancers” directly linked to French nuclear tests.On July 2, 1966, in the greatest secrecy, France carried out its first nuclear test in the Polynesian sky. That day, at 5:34 am, Aldebaran, the name given to the bomb, was fired from a barge installed on an azure lagoon, near the Mururoa atoll. A few microseconds after the explosion, a fireball appears. This incandescent mass of several thousand degrees rises in the sky and forms, as it cools, a huge cloud of radioactive dust dispersed by the winds. No less than 46 “atmospheric” tests like this one have been carried out in the space of eight years. Each time, the explosion generated fallout contaminating everything in their path. Starting with the inhabitants of the islands. In total, they were exposed 297 times to intense levels of radioactivity. The general staff have always held to the same line of defense. The atmospheric tests, presented as “clean”, would not have had “consequences for the health” of the Polynesians. For years, the associations defending the victims of the trials have been convinced to the contrary. As for the scientific community, it has tried several times to verify this position through in-depth analyzes of official data, without success. Latest illustrations of this failure: the study published by the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) on February 18. At the end of this work commissioned by the Ministry of Defense eight years ago, Inserm considered that the “links between the fallout from atmospheric tests and the occurrence of radiation-induced pathologies” were difficult to establish, due to a lack of data. reliable on the contamination of the archipelagos. Cluster of cancers ” However, a confidential report submitted to the Polynesian government a year earlier, in February 2020, argues the opposite. Disclose has obtained a copy of this never-before-released document. Soberly titled “Health consequences of French nuclear tests in the Pacific”, this eight-page report was written by a French military doctor at the request of the Monitoring Medical Center, an administration created in 2007 by the French and Polynesian governments and responsible for screening radiation-induced diseases. In other words, pathologies linked to repeated exposure to ionizing radiation. According to the author, some 10,000 Polynesians, including 600 children under the age of 15 living in the Gambier Islands, Tureia or even Tahiti have thus received a dose of radioactivity of 5 millisieverts (mSv), that is to say five times more than the minimum threshold (1 mSv) above which exposure is considered dangerous for human health. But the most embarrassing information is on page 5 of the document. For the first time, an official report establishes a direct link between nuclear tests and the extent of the number of cancers in the population. “The presence of a ‘cluster’ of thyroid cancers focused on the islands subjected to fallout during aerial shots, and in particular in the Gambier Islands, leaves little doubt about the role of ionizing radiation, and in particular of thyroid exposure to radioactive iodine, in the occurrence of this excess of cancers, ”says the author. The thyroid, an organ at the base of the neck, is particularly sensitive to ionizing radiation, especially in childhood, when the risk of developing thyroid cancer is greatest. The incidence of thyroid cancer and the link with the atmospheric gunfire campaign were precisely the subject of an Inserm analysis in 2010. According to this study, 153 thyroid cancers were diagnosed between 1985 and 1995 in the population born before 1976 and residing in French Polynesia. As a result, the number of people with thyroid cancer was two to three times higher than in New Zealand and Hawaii. Without being able to establish a direct link with nuclear tests, the college of experts already deplored the lack of available data. Based on data from the time, Disclose and Interprt, in partnership with the Science and Global Security program at Princeton University (United States), reassessed the doses of radioactivity received in the thyroid by the inhabitants of the Gambier, of Tureia and Tahiti during six of the most contaminating nuclear tests. Our estimates show that the doses received would be between two and ten times higher than the estimates established by the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) in 2006. How can we explain such a gap between our results and those of the CEA? The answer lies in the details of the calculation options chosen by the scientists at the Atomic Energy Commission. Take the example of Aldebaran, the first test in the open air. The CEA estimated that the population of the Gambier Islands, very exposed to toxic fallout, only drank river water, but no rainwater, which is much more loaded with radioactive particles. Many witnesses met in Polynesia question this assertion. This is the case with Julie Lequesme, 12 years old at the time of the events. “We had only that, rainwater,” says the resident of Taku, a village northeast of Mangareva, the main island of the Gambier archipelago. The same goes for Rikitea, the capital of the island, where “the running water network was not completed until the end of the 1970s”, specifies Jerry Gooding, the former president of the association. , the main organization supporting civilian victims of nuclear tests. Rainwater consumption is also confirmed by at least four official documents we obtained. A study by the Office for Scientific and Technical Research Overseas (Orstom) published in August 1966, one month after the start of the tests, thus notes that some of the islanders only consumed rainwater, in particular in because of their isolation. Same conclusion in a report from the Joint Biological Control Service (SMCB), an army service, dated April 24, 1968. By reintegrating the consumption of rainwater after Aldebaran, our estimates for the exposure of a child aged 1 to 2 at the time are 2.5 times higher than official calculations. Of the six tests we reconstructed, the consumption of rainwater was the main source of exposure to radioactivity for five of them. By choosing not to incorporate this data or by minimizing its importance, the state has therefore knowingly underestimated the extent of the contamination. In the Gambiers, cancer as a legacy According to the Ministry of the Armed Forces, the Gambier Islands have been affected by atmospheric fallout 31 times. In fact, the archipelago was struck by all the tests carried out between 1966 and 1974. Since then, cancer has spread everywhere. From Rikitea to Taku, to the shore of Taravai, the inhabitants are convinced: this plague is directly linked to atomic experiments. By investigating the field and meeting dozens of witnesses, Disclose was able to map the disease in Mangareva, the main Gambier island. Although we have not been able to establish a direct link between the trials and the number of cancers on site, the result is instructive. Yves Salmon developed carcinoma, a radiation-induced cancer of the blood, in 2010. His wife contracted breast cancer. She was recognized as a victim of French nuclear tests. The same goes for his sister. Utinio, Yves Salmon’s neighbor, contracted thyroid cancer in 2001. The man, who still lives near the village of Taku, spent his childhood in the Gambiers. In 2010, the French state finally recognized him as a victim of nuclear tests. Monique, 69, is Utinio’s cousin. She was a thyroid cancer survivor after two years in hospital and received state compensation in August 2011. Monique has six children, four of whom have thyroid cancer. Her two daughters have sought compensation from the Nuclear Test Victims Compensation Committee (Civen) without having received any answers yet. Sylvie (first name has been changed) and her older sister, born in 1972 and 1971, both suffered from breast cancer. “It was when our elders started dying that we really began to wonder,” said the eldest. Their mother died of the same disease in 2009. She was recognized as a victim of nuclear tests, just like Sylvie. This resident of Mangareva now fears for her daughter. Julie Lequesme’s father, an elder from Taku village, died of throat cancer in 1981 after working in Mururoa. “The island doctor told me that based on my father’s X-rays, he was a heavy smoker,” she says. However, my father never touched a cigarette. Her husband, a CEA alumnus, also died of cancer in 2010. In the family of Catherine Serda, a former resident of the small village of Taku, eight people suffered from cancer between the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1990s. Their common point: they all lived in Mangareva at the time. tests. If you have any information to give us, you can contact us at enquete@mediapart.fr. If you wish to send documents through a highly secure platform, you can connect to the frenchleaks.fr site |
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Problem in accepting higher level radioactive wastes in Texas
  Waste Control Specialists won’t move high level nuclear waste to Permian Basin without state’s approval https://www.cbs7.com/2021/03/10/waste-control-specialists-wont-move-high-level-nuclear-waste-to-permian-basin-without-states-approval/
In a meeting on environmental regulation yesterday, Waste Control Specialists said they would not be moving high-level nuclear waste into the Permian Basin without the state’s approval. By Kate Porter Mar. 10, 2021 ANDREWS, Texas (KOSA) – In a meeting on environmental regulation yesterday, Waste Control Specialists said they would not be moving high-level nuclear waste into the Permian Basin without the state’s approval.Texas lawmakers, such as Representative Brooks Landgraf, have presented legislation that would shut the door on WCS ever bringing high-level nuclear waste to Andrews county. Representative Landgraf tells CBS 7 that the nuclear waste facility here in Andrews houses rubber gloves and hospital gowns. Landgraf says WCS proposed a plan to bring higher-level nuclear waste like rods used at nuclear testing sites. That proposal spurred representative Landgraf into action – he presented a bill to block all high-level waste being stored or disposed of here in Texas. I reached out to WCS several times today for comment but have not heard back as of right now. This thinking isn’t isolated to the Republican party.
Midland County Democrat, David Rosen, agrees that high-level nuclear waste does not have a place in the Permian Basin. The bottom line for Andrews residents: WCS will still store nuclear waste There, but it’s up in the air about the level of radioactivity. |
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Northern Beaches Council goes 100 pct renewable, puts wind up Abbott — RenewEconomy
The Sydney Local Government Area that is home to anti-wind crusader Tony Abbott is now powered almost entirely by wind. The post Northern Beaches Council goes 100 pct renewable, puts wind up Abbott appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Northern Beaches Council goes 100 pct renewable, puts wind up Abbott — RenewEconomy
Environment groups say Victorian gas import terminal not needed after gas use cuts — RenewEconomy
Gas import terminal in Victoria may not be needed as new analysis suggests energy efficiency programs could eliminate predicted gas shortfalls. The post Environment groups say Victorian gas import terminal not needed after gas use cuts appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Environment groups say Victorian gas import terminal not needed after gas use cuts — RenewEconomy
Angus Taylor has failed as a politician and energy minister. He should be moved on — RenewEconomy
Yallourn closure will be quickly followed by others, and Taylor’s response shows the Coalition government has nothing to offer and doesn’t even understand what’s happening. The post Angus Taylor has failed as a politician and energy minister. He should be moved on appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Angus Taylor has failed as a politician and energy minister. He should be moved on — RenewEconomy
Australia’s coal collapse is coming, and Angus Taylor needs to get out of the way — RenewEconomy
Yallourn’s early closure highlights a dawning realisation cropping up around the world – no grid needs coal. We can be rid of it quickly. The post Australia’s coal collapse is coming, and Angus Taylor needs to get out of the way appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Australia’s coal collapse is coming, and Angus Taylor needs to get out of the way — RenewEconomy
March 10 Energy News — geoharvey
Opinion: ¶ “Who’s To Blame For A $17,000 Electric Bill In Texas?” • When the polar vortex hit Texas, demand for electricity increased as the supply collapsed, and wholesale prices shot up, increasing to hundreds of times above normal. Some customers had bills as high as $17,000. The cause of this was ultimately an utter […]
March 10 Energy News — geoharvey
Yallourn exit could be fully offset by energy efficient Victorian homes — RenewEconomy
New calculations show the 2028 exit of Yallourn from Victoria’s electricity mix could be fully offset by home energy saving measures recently funded by the state government. The post Yallourn exit could be fully offset by energy efficient Victorian homes appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Yallourn exit could be fully offset by energy efficient Victorian homes — RenewEconomy
No amount of government subsidies can halt decline of gas — RenewEconomy
Coal and the more expensive gas can’t compete against cheaper renewables, and the Coalition’s gas-fired subsidy scheme is wasted money on a declining industry. The post No amount of government subsidies can halt decline of gas appeared first on RenewEconomy.
No amount of government subsidies can halt decline of gas — RenewEconomy
Victoria and AEMO welcome certainty of Yallourn’s early exit, as Taylor stokes fears — RenewEconomy
AEMO, the state government and industry welcome early notice of Yallourn closure, with only Angus Taylor warning of dire consequences. The post Victoria and AEMO welcome certainty of Yallourn’s early exit, as Taylor stokes fears appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Victoria and AEMO welcome certainty of Yallourn’s early exit, as Taylor stokes fears — RenewEconomy
NSW ramps up energy efficiency targets in quest to save $2.4bn in energy costs — RenewEconomy
NSW government ramps up targets under its Energy Saving Scheme, that could deliver substantial energy savings for households and businesses. The post NSW ramps up energy efficiency targets in quest to save $2.4bn in energy costs appeared first on RenewEconomy.
NSW ramps up energy efficiency targets in quest to save $2.4bn in energy costs — RenewEconomy
1.This month.
The Road to War brings a sharp focus to why it is not in Australia’s best interest to be dragged into a war with China which will almost inevitably go nuclear very quickly. The filmmaker has interviewed some of Australia’s senior foreign policy analysts who have vast experience behind them in analysing what really is going on here as the United States rattles its sabres with China. And sets us up to be its proxy, like the poor Ukranians have been fed into the Meatgrinder. So America can remain the Top Dog. The Road to War reveals how the United States through its spy base at Pine Gap and by stationing six nuclear capable B52 bombers in the Top End (without permission from the traditional owners) is making Australia a prime nuclear target if the current war of words suddenly melts down into full scale war.
The Road to War shows the implicit connection between Carbon emissions (the US military uses a whopping 70% of America’s annual petroleum to move its armies and vast War Machine around the globe to its 800+ military bases..but under a loophole wangled at Kyoto, the US military does not have to report its C02 annual emissions). The Road to War starts screening at selected cities and regional centres in March. See the trailer end for details.
Antinuclear 