May 14 Energy News — geoharvey
Opinion: ¶ “Can Tesla’s Price War Accelerate Electrification?” • Tesla’s price reductions in the first quarter of the year have sent some waves through the auto industry. As legacy automakers and startups both try to catch up to Tesla’s EV dominance, some wonder whether the automaker’s price cuts could actually spur on a quicker transition […]
May 14 Energy News — geoharvey
This week’s budget confirms the death of Labor’s nuclear disarmament diplomacy
All the new money is to support AUKUS.
Albo and the nukes – the demise of Labor’s disarmament policy, by Philip Dorling | May 12, 2023 https://michaelwest.com.au/albo-and-the-nukes-the-demise-of-labors-disarmament-policy/
A new nuclear arms race is accelerating, but Australia won’t be doing much about this threat to global survival. This week’s budget confirms the death of Labor’s nuclear disarmament diplomacy. Former diplomat Philip Dorling explains.
At his AUKUS submarine announcement on 14 March 2023, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spoke of Australia’s “proud record of leadership” in nuclear non-proliferation. On 17 April Foreign Minister Penny Wong trumpeted Labor’s “proud history” of championing practical disarmament efforts”.
Labor does have a history of disarmament and non-proliferation leadership. In the 1990s Foreign Minister Gareth Evans was an outstanding diplomatic activist with Australia playing important roles in negotiation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Evans argued before the International Court of Justice that the use and threat of nuclear weapons is illegal. The Canberra Commission produced a landmark report charting steps to achieve the elimination of nuclear arsenals.
Dollars for diplomacy
Foreign Minister Wong is the latest custodian of Labor’s tradition of middle power disarmament diplomacy. But what are Labor’s priorities now? Well, at the end of the day, money talks and in Tuesday’s Federal Budget the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) picked up an extra $74.6m for nuclear diplomacy.
Of that, $52.7m is for DFAT to provide “international policy advice and diplomatic support for the nuclear-powered submarine program.” Another $21.9m will go to the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office (ASNO) to support the establishment of safeguard arrangements with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for the AUKUS project.
All the new money is to support AUKUS.
AUKUS safeguards
For the AUKUS project to proceed within the framework of Australia’s non-proliferation obligations, Australia must negotiate a special arrangement with the IAEA to allow the use of highly enriched uranium in submarine reactors. We already have a Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement (CSA) with the IAEA that covers civilian nuclear activities. Article 14 of the CSA allows for negotiation of an arrangement with the IAEA to oversee the use of nuclear material for non-explosive military purposes, i.e. nuclear naval propulsion.
It’s challenging to combine the safeguards transparency with the secret world of nuclear submarines; but the Australian Government and IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi appear confident an arrangement can be agreed to enable the IAEA to provide credible assurances that submarine fuel is not being used to manufacture nuclear weapons.
The Government has already affirmed that Australia will be provided with complete, sealed reactor units from which the removal of any nuclear material would be extremely difficult. The reactor fuel will “not be in a form that can be directly used in nuclear weapons without further chemical reprocessing, requiring facilities that Australia does not have and will not seek”. Australia’s wider non-proliferation obligations, including acceptance of IAEA inspections anywhere, anytime will remain in place.
A few days before the 14 March AUKUS announcement, Albanese and Wong wrote to Grossi to open formal negotiations. ASNO Director General Geoff Shaw also forwarded “preliminary design information” to the IAEA.
Diplomatic dogfight
However despite what DFAT describes as Australia’s “impeccable non-proliferation credentials”, the negotiations are already politically contentious with China claiming AUKUS “poses serious nuclear proliferation risks”. Beijing alleges Australia is “coercing the IAEA Secretariat into endorsement on the safeguards issue”. Chinese diplomats are demanding an “intergovernmental process” involving all IAEA members with any new arrangement “jointly discussed and decided by the international community”.
Australia’s government doesn’t want AUKUS derailed. We’re relying on advice from the IAEA in 1978 that states an Article 14 arrangement can be negotiated with the IAEA Secretariat before being provided to the IAEA Board of Governors for “appropriate action”. Australia would like Grossi to simply submit the negotiated arrangement to the Board as information. However the Board may insist on subjecting the arrangement to its approval. China and Russia will demand that, and they’ll likely vote against any arrangement regardless of its terms. IAEA Board approval is by no means assured. Even if the Board does approve, China won’t leave the matter there. A fractious dispute could drag on for years.
That’s why $74.6m has been committed to AUKUS diplomacy. This large and complex campaign will involve negotiation with the IAEA Secretariat and engagement with the 35 countries on the IAEA Board, indeed with all 176 members. Australia will be funding plenty of IAEA projects, seminars and workshops. In terms of diplomatic effort it’s equivalent to running for election to a seat on the United Nations Security Council, only more controversial and already actively opposed by China and Russia.
All this comes with big opportunity costs.
A new nuclear arms race
The international situation is deeply worrying. Tension between China and the United States over Taiwan continues to rise. There’s already a naval arms race of which AUKUS is a small part, but the bigger strategic shift is manifest with China’s expansion of its nuclear forces. Construction of hundreds of new silos for a greatly expanded strategic missile force raises the prospect that Beijing is seeking an arsenal much closer to parity with the US.
At the same time, Russia has suspended the New START nuclear arms treaty which will expire in 2026. Moscow’s development of new and potentially destabilising delivery systems makes the future strategic calculus more uncertain. In turn, the prospect of three way nuclear arms competition with China and Russia has led to calls in the US Congress for an expansion of US nuclear forces.
Australian diplomats express concern about “the opaque nuclear arsenal build up in our region”. Others are less coy about the nuclear danger. Veteran foreign policy analyst Professor Joseph Siracusa recently warned that “We are literally on the eve of destruction .
The demise of Labor’s disarmament diplomacy
Labor’s national platform commits the government to move to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), a recent agreement produced under UN auspices to advance nuclear disarmament. Albanese championed Labor’s 2018 commitment to sign the TPNW. In June last year a large group of former Australian Ambassadors and High Commissioners urged the new government to follow through and join the TPNW as demonstration of “a principled foreign policy … that advances the global common good”.
The United States has no enthusiasm for the TPNW and DFAT worried that the new Labor Government would be receptive to something that could complicate AUKUS, especially ensuring bipartisan support in the US Congress.
They needn’t have been concerned. Labor’s pledge to join the TPNW was a dead letter the moment Labor’s leadership signed up to the nuclear submarine project. DFAT submissions released under FOI show Wong agrees that TPNW isn’t a priority. She massaged Labor rank and file concerns by sending Labor backbencher Susan Templeman as an observer to the first TPNW states parties meeting in Vienna in June 2022. But as DFAT noted, “our attendance as an observer did not represent a decision to join the TPNW.”
Questioned in March by independent MP Zoe Daniel about the backflip, Albanese again referenced Labor’s “proud history” of disarmament efforts, but wouldn’t commit to joining the TRNW.
Lost opportunity
Australia could be working with TPNW countries to put an international spotlight on the dangers of a new nuclear arms race. Realistic and practical measures that could be pursued include those proposed by former ASNO Director General John Carlson; pressing nuclear weapon states for “no first use” commitments, a cap on existing arsenals, no modernisation or new weapons and a draw down towards minimum deterrence capabilities.
However with AUKUS dominating the agenda, there isn’t any room for the middle power diplomacy once practiced by Gareth Evans. Instead, Australian diplomats are busy defending our nuclear submarine pact. At a recent meeting in Geneva on nuclear risks, Australian spent nearly as much time and effort rebutting Chinese allegations about AUKUS as what was devoted to substantive issues.
The Government’s budget allocation to DFAT shows they know they have a long diplomatic fight on their hands. It will suck the life out of Australian disarmament diplomacy. We’ll be talking ad nauseam about AUKUS while a nuclear arms build-up makes the world much less safe.
Labor’s disarmament activism is dead, cannibalised by AUKUS.
Philip Dorling
Philip Dorling has some thirty years of experience of high-level political, public policy and media work, much of that at the Australian Parliament.
He has worked in the Australian political environment from most angles, in both the national and state levels of government including as a senior executive; as a senior policy adviser for the Federal Labor Opposition and for cross bench Senators; and as an award-winning journalist in the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery.
Budget reveals cutbacks on funding for Australia’s military and navy, in order to pay $billions for nuclear submarines.
Budget reveals pressures on Defence for savings to fund nuclear-powered submarines, The Strategist, 10 May 2023|
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Spending is rising faster than inflation in each year, broadly following the profile set out in the 2020 Defence Strategic Update, but the two big changes over the past year—incorporating the switch from the French conventionally-powered submarine to the AUKUS SSNs, and the unexpected surge in inflation—are squeezing real spending relative to the budget planning ahead of last year’s election.
……………………..AUKUS is a long-term program and the budget forward estimate period, out to 2026-27, only contains the very beginning of spending on the submarines. However, the Defence Department’s portfolio budget statement shows that initial commitment is expected to reach $5.6 billion over the next four years. The statement shows an initial $515 million will be spent in 2023-24, which will include the establishment of the Australian Submarine Agency to manage the project.
The portfolio statements show a big payment of $3.7 billion on submarines in 2025-26, however they say the final allocation of spending will be decided ahead before the end of June.
Capital spending on new capabilities is taking a hit elsewhere. The downsizing of the Army’s planned purchases of infantry fighting vehicles will have an impact over the budget period, with capital outlays in 2024-25 and 2025-26 falling 7.6% from last year’s estimate to $8.5 billion. Capital spending in the Air Force is down 13.1% to $6.9 billion in the same period.
The Navy is also taking a hit on capital outlays. Defence has split out the naval shipbuilding and sustainment program from general acquisition of naval capabilities while the cancellation of the French program also makes direct comparison with last year’s portfolio budget statements difficult. However, Navy capital spending, excluding the shipbuilding and the nuclear submarine program show a 35% or $5.3 billion fall out to 2025-26. The naval shipbuilding program is only $891 million over that period.
……… The portfolio statement highlights the difficulty Defence has had in meeting its staffing targets with the total workforce of 75,464 people falling 3600 short of the goal set last year. The army has had the greatest problem, missing its target by 8.3%, reflecting a higher number of resignations. The Defence department public service met its recruitment target.
Pacific leaders remain steadfast against nuclear waste disposal
National Indigenous Times, Gorethy Kenneth (PNG Post Courier) – May 11, 2023
Pacific has a combined voice on “no nuclear waste” in the Pacific, Prime Minister James Marape told reporters in Port Moresby on Tuesday.
He was asked by reporters if the country would support Japan on its nuclear waste issue.
Mr Marape said that he would release a statement at a later date on the latter.
Japan allegedly reported that it was due to start dumping one million tonnes of nuclear waste from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific ocean in only a few months.
And according to Japan’s government, the waste water was to be treated by an Advanced Liquid Processing System, which would remove nuclides from the water.
However, the Pacific island leaders united and demanded that Japan share pivotal information about the plan.
Japan, however, assured the Pacific leaders that there was no such threat, and instead defended that the country and their government had no plans to dump more than one million tonnes of radioactive waste water into the Pacific ocean……….. https://nit.com.au/11-05-2023/5922/pacific-leaders-remain-steadfast-against-nuclear-waste-disposal-png23
As Donetsk civilians live in constant fear of Ukrainian shelling, from on the ground, I detail the terror
May 11, 2023, -Eva Karene Bartlett https://www.patreon.com/posts/as-donetsk-live-82857680?utm_medium=post_notification_email&utm_campaign=patron_engagement&utm_source=post_link
Heavy Ukrainian shelling of central Donetsk on April 28 killed nine civilians – including an eight-year-old girl and her grandmother – and injured at least 16 more. The victims were burned alive when the minibus they were in was hit by a shell.
The attack also targeted a major hospital, apartment buildings, houses, parks, streets, and sidewalks. All civilian areas – not military targets.
According to the Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DPR) Representative Office in the JCCC (Joint Monitoring and Co-ordination Center on Ukraine’s War Crimes), Kiev’s forces fired high-explosive fragmentation missiles “produced in Slovakia and transferred to Ukraine by NATO countries.” Regarding an earlier shelling on the same day, the JCCC noted that US-made HIMARS systems were used, targeting “exclusively in the residential, central quarter of the city.”
I was outside of Donetsk interviewing refugees from Artyomovsk (also known as Bakhmut) when both rounds of intense shelling occurred, the first starting just after 11am. I returned to see a catastrophic scene, with a burnt-out bus – still smoking – and some of its passengers’ charred bodies melted onto the frame. This tragic picture was sadly not a one-off event.
Elsewhere, city workers were already removing debris and had begun repaving damaged sections of the roads. I’ve seen this following Ukrainian shelling many times, including on January 1 this year, when Ukraine fired 25 Grads into the city centre. Similarly, in July 2022, Ukrainian shelling downtown killed four civilians, including two in a vehicle likewise gutted by flames. When I arrived at the scene about an hour later, workers were repaving the affected section of the street.
The damage to the Republican Trauma Center hospital was quickly cleaned up, but videos shared on Telegram immediately after the shelling show a gaping hole in one of the walls. The room concerned contained what was, apparently, Donetsk’s sole MRI machine.
Along Artyoma street, the central Donetsk boulevard targeted countless times by Ukrainian attacks, the destruction was evident: Two cars caught up in the bombing, residents of an apartment building boarding up shattered windows and doors, the all-too-familiar sound of glass and debris being swept away. In the residential area, the first to be targeted that day, in a massive crater behind one house, the walls and roof of another home were intermixed with rocket fragments.
Another year of Ukrainian war crimes
In April 2022, following strikes on a large market area in Kirovsky district, in western Donetsk, which killed five civilians and injured 23, I went there to document the aftermath, not expecting to see two of the five dead still lying in nearby lanes. This shelling was just before noon, a busy time of day in the area. Bombing at such periods is an insidious tactic to ensure more civilians are maimed or killed.
Double and triple striking the same areas is another method used by Ukrainian forces. In an interview last year, the director of the Department of Fire and Rescue Forces of the DPR Ministry of Emergency Situations, Sergey Neka, told me, “Our units arrive at the scene and Ukraine begins to shell it. A lot of equipment has been damaged and destroyed.”
Andrey Levchenko, chief of the emergency department for the Kievsky district of Donetsk, also hit by Ukrainian attacks, said: “They wait for 30 minutes for us to arrive. We arrive there, start assisting people, and the shelling resumes. They wait again, our guys hide in the shelters, as soon as we go out, put out the fire, help people, then shelling resumes.”
I was here in Donetsk in mid-June, during a day of particularly intense Ukrainian shelling of the very centre of the city, which killed at least five civilians. The DPR authorities reported that “within two hours, almost 300 MLRS rockets and artillery shells were fired.” One Grad rocket hit a maternity hospital, tearing through the roof.
The following month, Ukraine fired rockets containing internationally-banned ‘petal’ mines. The streets of central Donetsk, as well as the western and northern districts and other cities, were littered with the hard-to-spot mines designed to grotesquely maim, but not necessarily kill, anyone stepping on them. These mines keep claiming new victims to this day – when I last wrote about them here, 104 civilians had been maimed, including this 14-year-old boy. Three had died of their injuries. Since then, the number of victims has risen to 112.
In August, heavy Ukrainian shelling of the centre of Donetsk hit directly next to the hotel I was staying in, along with dozens of other journalists and cameramen. Six civilians were killed that day, including one woman outside the hotel, as well as a child. She been a talented ballerina due to leave to study in Russia soon, and along with her grandmother, her ballet teacher was also killed that day, herself a world-famous former ballerina.
Three bouts of Ukrainian shelling of the city centre in a span of just five days in September killed 26 civilians. Four were killed on September 17, among them two people burned alive inside a vehicle on the same central Artyoma Street. Two days later, 16 civilians were killed, the remains of their bodies strewn along the street or in unrecognizable piles of flesh. Three days later, Ukraine struck next to the central market, killing six civilians, two in a minibus, the rest on the street.
In my subsequent visits to Donetsk and surrounding cities in November and December, I filmed the aftermath of more Ukrainian shelling (using HIMARS) of civilian areas of Donetsk and the settlement of Gorlovka to the north. The November 7 shelling of central Donetsk could have killed the toddler of the young mother I interviewed. Fortunately, after hearing the first rockets hit, she ran with her son to the bathroom. When calm returned, she found shrapnel on his bed.
The November 12 shelling of Gorlovka damaged a beautiful historic cultural building, destroying parts of the roof and the theatre hall within. According to the centre’s director, it was one of the best movie theatres in Donetsk Region, one of the oldest, most beautiful, and most beloved buildings in the city. He noted that the HIMARS system is a very precise weapon, so the attack was not accidental.
The shelling goes on
Early morning during Easter Mass on April 16, the Ukrainian army fired 20 rockets near the Cathedral of the Holy Transfiguration in the centre of Donetsk, French journalist Christelle Neant reported, noting that one civilian was killed and seven injured. The shelling extended to the central market just behind the cathedral. Just over a week prior, on April 7, another shelling of that market killed one civilian and injured 13, also considerably damaging the market itself.
Ukraine continues to shell the western and northern districts of Donetsk, also pounding Gorlovka, as well as Yasinovatya just north of Donetsk (killing two civilians some days ago).
On April 23, shelling in Petrovsky, a hard-hit western Donetsk district, killed one man and injured five more. The same day, in a village northeast of Donetsk, a rocket killed two women in their 30s. Security camera footage shows the moment when the women attempted to take cover. The munition that killed them hit directly next to where they huddled.
A few days later, on my way to interview refugees from Artyomovsk sheltering in another city, I passed along the tiny village where those women were killed. It’s a road I’ve driven a dozen times or more, a quiet, calm, scenic region of rolling hills, a lovely river, a beautiful church. It’s far from any front line. The murder of these two women was another Ukrainian war crime.
The people here are constantly terrorized by Ukrainian shelling or the threat of it, and have been since Kiev started its war on the Donbass in 2014.
Rolls-Royce falls 6% as update lacks oomph and news on small nuclear business
Oliver Haill, 11 May 23, Proactive Investor 11th May 2023
Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC’s (LSE:RR.) shares fell 6% to a month’s low after its trading update contained nothing new, analysts said, with some concern about the lack of updates about its small nuclear reactor business…………
Australia! Don’t fall for nuclear lobby propaganda!
The well-funded nuclear lobby is really taking aim at Australia.Not just in government, in (bought) universities and corporate media circles, but also with a public petition.
Above you see their them – -but I’ve just ever so slightly altered it…
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 