Antinuclear

Australian news, and some related international items

‘Environmental violence’: inside the fight to save indigenous land from becoming a nuclear dumping ground

Andrew Lawrence, Tue 25 Aug 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/aug/25/to-use-a-mountain-documentary-interview

Nuclear energy was supposed to be our salvation, humanity’s chance to retool technology first conceived as a weapon of mass destruction into an engine of limitless prosperity. But even as the industry touted nuclear fission as an economic game-changer (never mind the astronomical startup costs), a safety paragon (never mind the spills at Chornobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima) and harmless fodder for an American comedy institution (never mind that glowing rod on Homer’s back or the three-eyed fish), there was no getting around the matter of what to do with all the toxic waste (never mind nuclear’s claimed green credentials).

The stagnant state of that dirty business brought Casey Carter, the director of the new avant-garde documentary called To Use a Mountain, back to his interview with a Washington state farmer who was part of a class-action lawsuit against the government over the release of radioactive material from the Hanford nuclear reservation – site of the world’s first full-scale plutonium production reactor. The farmer’s words still echo, despite ultimately being cut to fit the film’s 90-minute runtime. “He joked that nuclear power is the only faith-based energy because everyone always asks, ‘Do you believe in it?’” Carter says. “He was like, ‘You don’t have to believe in solar. It’s just a pretty good idea.’”

To Use a Mountain could exist as a coda to Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, showing how the Manhattan Project physicist’s fears about nuclear technology’s vast potential for devastation proved more justified than even he could have imagined. In particular, the film trains its lens on the passage of the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act – which, among other things, placed six rural communities across the US in a derby of sorts to become the permanent site for more than 90,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste.

The plan was for the waste to remain isolated for 10,000 years, and that humans would still be around to celebrate the Reagan-era edict as a triumph. But the affected communities are more inclined to believe there may be no one left to parcel out due credit once the waste leaches into groundwater, pollutes the air and contaminates the food chain. Ultimately, Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, about a two-hour drive from Las Vegas, was selected as the nuclear burial site, but after decades of scheming and development, legal challenges and obstruction from activists and prominent politicians such as Senate majority leader Harry Reid, the Yucca Mountain project was halted – leaving the US with no permanent repository for its nuclear waste. (In the meantime, the federal government pays utility companies tens of billions of dollars to hold on to their spent fuel until a place for it opens up.)

Carter’s documentary unspools like an art installation, steeped in mood and texture, as it urges viewers to reckon with the anxious state of play. Gone are the voice-of-God narrator, the talking-head experts and even basic chyrons; the subjects who appear on camera aren’t named until the film’s end credits. Instead, To Use a Mountain papier-maches reams of Department of Energy (DoE) surveys, analyses and internal memos on to contemporary footage of decaying storage sites and interviews with community members who speak to the personal and environmental damage those false starts have wrought. A sound bath that samples from salmon-rich rivers and one-room church worship only serves to further underscore the stakes.

It’s a prevailing sense of doom established in shaky handheld shots that search the sky for danger, then paid off in archival footage of Oppenheimer’s bomb going off beneath desolate US landscapes before giving way to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “I didn’t want to have a traditional journalistic conversation,” says Casey, stressing the importance of humanizing the communities and concerns that the energy department documents treat with clinical distance. “These people were written about, mapped and diagrammed in excruciating detail. The Department of Energy was looking at them through this purely utilitarian lens, just kinda scanning the American landscape and trying to figure out which place was disposable enough.”

Not surprisingly, the Department of Energy disposal list quickly homed in on sparsely populated rural communities that mining and farming industries had left behind. In some cases, those communities were largely made up of marginalized Black and brown people whose claims to the land date back generations. Advocates against the Yucca Mountain site argue that its designation as a DoE nuclear disposal ground disregards a US government treaty obligation to the Western Shoshone tribe. (“The treaty is the supreme law of the land under Article 6, Section 2 of the US Constitution,” Zabarte said in a follow-up email to the Guardian. “The Constitution is not a suggestion. It is law.”) The area’s history of seismic activity is another reason to be wary of Yucca’s structural integrity over the ensuing millennia.

With impressionistic flourish, the film traces the arc of the resistance. Among others, it follows Ian Zabarte – a Shoshone principal who has lost family members to radiation-related diseases connected to the government’s nuclear testing on tribal lands. As he goes from testifying on Capitol Hill as a young man to hiking the desolate area decades later, Zabarte never wavers in his belief that Yucca belongs to the Shoshone, arguing effectively that eminent domain is just racism by another name. “It’s heavy, it’s tragic and unfortunately it’s an all-too-familiar state of affairs,” Carter says. “The amazing thing was having these conversations and really gaining a deeper understanding of the duration, persistence and willpower within these communities.”

In one scene drawn from archival footage from Hanford, which was fully decommissioned in the 1980s and has since been described as “the most contaminated place in the western hemisphere”, the film lowers viewers into a disused storage tank that has been leaking contaminants into the groundwater system and threatening the Columbia River – a lifeline to Portland, Oregon; Boise, Idaho; and scores of communities in between.

“In traveling to these places, you realize each one of them has dealt with issues of environmental violence or racism even prior to being nominated as a potential nuclear waste storage facility,” Carter says. “It’s gut-wrenching to think about people encountering this level of treatment from their government. It really shows how much of this anger exists in many parts of rural America, not just Maga rural America. This film is just a tour of example after example.”

Carter’s stylistic confidence suggests he’s been at this auteur thing for a while. But the truth is, To Use a Mountain is his first attempt at an ambitious, feature-length people’s history. A double major in physics and photography, Carter went to grad school for architecture in hopes of “unifying my left and right brain”, he says. That thirst for scientifically driven aesthetics, combined with formative years spent in the shadow of Oak Ridge national laboratory in east Tennessee, which also figured prominently in the Manhattan Project, compelled Carter to devote six years to retracing the US government’s slog-footed effort to bury its nuclear shame. In hindsight, there’s no missing those signatures in the CAD images Carter uses to depict Yucca Mountain and other disposal-site candidates.

Doubtless, some audiences may be tempted to return the concerns raised in To Use a Mountain to the back burner – to file it under “not my problem” because the energy department hasn’t sized up their community or their local power plant hasn’t been designated a Superfund site yet. Never mind that just last month, Idaho, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Utah were named as finalists for “nuclear lifecycle innovation campuses” – federal sites that would handle spent fuel and waste management. The DoE plans to pick three host states by the end of this year. Oppenheimer’s existential dread is roaring back to the fore.

If anything, Carter’s film is a reminder of how our unsolved nuclear problem connects to all the other existential threats that keep us doomscrolling through the night and calling on a higher power – God? The government? – to restore our faith that humanity can outlive the toxic waste it leaves behind. “When I started this film in the summer of 2018, Covid hadn’t happened,” Carter says. “War in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran hadn’t happened. Artificial intelligence hadn’t been invented yet. The big tech companies are advocating for microreactors to power datacenters. Even by taking this methodological approach to making the film, it’s still opened up to this kaleidoscope of impacts that touches on military history, the environmental impacts and human psychology and fear. There’s just a sprawling network of consequences associated with this material.”

To Use a Mountain is out in the US now with UK and Australia release dates to follow

August 31, 2026 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Emergency plan for ‘unlikely’ AUKUS nuclear accident mapped out by WA authorities, (but what about South Australia?)

COMMENT Nuclear preparationAdelaide residents need to know if emergency services in SA have followed their WA counterparts, who have mapped out the local, national and international response for potential radiation leaks if there is an accident with a AUKUS nuclear submarine reactor in Perth.

The WA Department of Health already has plans to distribute supplies of iodine tablets to local hospitals to treat affected people if needed. Plans have also been made to evacuate people. We need to know if similar plans have been developed for Adelaide, especially the LeFevre peninsula near the Osborne AUKUS site. Adelaide needs to be prepared for all nuclear eventualities.

By Nicolas Perpitch 27 Aug 26

In short:

WA emergency services have mapped out the local, national and international response if gamma radiation or radioactive iodine was to seep out during a nuclear reactor accident.

The state hazard plan, published last week, reviews safety standards and response measures and was prompted by the increased rotation of nuclear submarines under AUKUS.

The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) would coordinate the emergency response to any radiological or nuclear emergency……………………………………………………………………https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-27/emergency-plan-for-aukus-nuclear-accident-revealed/107079978

August 31, 2026 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

NSW court draws a line between criticism of Israel and antisemitism

the public repudiation by a majority of Australians of Israeli policies (a Pew Research Centre poll from 4 June 2026 found that 79 per cent had an unfavourable view of that country) reflecting a ‘humanitarian reaction to Israel’s genocide of the Gazans since 7 October 2023, the livestreaming of which to mobile handsets would be difficult to ignore’.

It followed that any assertion that 79 per cent of Australians might be ‘antisemitic because they disapprove of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians’ was bound to be ‘preposterous’.

By Binoy Kampmark | 27 August 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/nsw-court-draws-a-line-between-criticism-of-israel-and-antisemitism,21480

A landmark NSW Supreme Court ruling challenges attempts to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, writes Dr Binoy Kampmark.

THE TERM “antisemitism” is now so commonly used as an accusation as to be beyond questioning. This is particularly so in countries claiming some protections for free speech or lawful assembly. Use that term to your heart’s content and stifle discussion.

Carry a placard accusing Israeli policy of genocidal propensities — antisemitic. Raising the issue of dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israeli authorities — antisemitic. Mention specific slogans, some used with full-throated approval by Israeli Zionists themselves — antisemitic.

But an interesting New South Wales Supreme Court decision, delivered by Justice Desmond Fagan, restores much-needed and merciful balance. Put it simply, not all acts directed at Israel or unflattering views held about that country, however crudely framed, carry the antisemitic streak.

The acts in question in the case before Fagan were certainly crude. The 22-year-old Mohommed Farhat had been a vandal for hire, defacing parked motor vehicles (nine in total) and the walls of various buildings (four in total) in the eastern Sydney suburb of Woollahra using spray paint. His November 2004 acts featured slogans including ‘PKK’, ‘PKK coming’ and ‘Fuk Israel’. A vehicle was also set alight. 

It transpired that $4,000 had been given to Farhat to execute his acts of arson and graffiti, including a complement of drugs. The recruiter also suggested the wording used in the vandalism. 

On pleading guilty, Farhat was given a term of imprisonment of a year and eight months by the NSW Local Court Magistrate Scott Nash on 18 November 2025. Important in this case was the use of powers available to the State Government under the Terrorism (High Risk Offenders) Act 2017 (NSW) to deem an offender an “unacceptable risk” in committing a serious offence in the event of being released on parole. 

Farhat would have been eligible for release after ten months, but for the concerns of the Corrective Services, which deemed him a “national security risk” inmate in January this year. The State then requested an extended supervision order of a year’s duration with 55 attached conditions. The proceedings, taking place over four days of hearings, centred on whether Farhat’s crimes could be regarded as posing such a risk.

While Fagan delivered his decision on 30 July, the reasons were published on 17 August. In his reasons, a controlling factor for Fagan was the Federal Court case of Wertheim v Haddad (2025), where Justice Angus Stewart postulated what ‘the reasonable, ordinary listener’ would understand as being said in the context of critiquing Israel and Zionism. Depending on the context, such a reasonable person could ‘understand that not all Jews are Zionists and that disparagement of Zionism constitutes disparagement of a philosophy or ideology and not a race or an ethnic group’.

It also followed that political criticism directed at Israel ‘however inflammatory or adversarial, is not by its nature criticism of Jews in general or based on Jewish racial or ethnic identity’.

Fagan reasoned that such phrases as ‘Fuk Israel’ could only be considered antisemitic as ‘dictated… according to established common usage in Australia’. He found that Farhat had not intended to ‘express hatred of Jews’. Slogans such as ‘Fuk Israel’, construed objectively, were ‘crude expressions of political hostility to the state of Israel’, a ‘curse against a foreign state’.

They were ‘not antisemitic according to the ordinary understanding of that concept in the Australian community’. It also did not matter that the graffitied slogans had been made in a locality with a high proportion of Jewish residents: this did ‘imbue the curse with an antisemitic character’.

The judgment also gave the definition of antisemitism so treasured by the Australian government, most state governments and their agencies, and the Special Envoy for Antisemitism Jillian Segal, a frightful dressing down.  The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition deems antisemitism to be “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

This semantic spray did not impress Fagan. With bracing clarity, he stated that the text was ‘so verbose and imprecise that it could not realistically be attributed to the ordinary, reasonably informed member of the Australian public’. It was unclear what a ‘certain perception’ was. Might it manifest ‘in the expression of some other, less egregious, sentiment towards Jews and, if so, what?’

The inclusion of ‘non-Jewish individuals’ was also baffling and ‘counterintuitive’, as was the lack of limits to the notion of which ‘rhetorical [or] physical manifestations’ might amount to antisemitism. 

The Justice was far from alone in making remarks about the shoddy formulation. He noted the views of Sir Stephen Sedley, a former judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales who accepted the proposition that the IHRA failed ‘the test of any definition: it is indefinite’.

Fagan also drew on the critical submission by the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA) to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, established in response to the Bondi terrorist attack of 14 December 2025:

‘Discussion of the IHRA wording and adoption of it by some institutions does not change the established meaning of a word that has been in use in the English language for 150 years.’ 

Many of the submissions made to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee informing its October 2024 report on the Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024 (No. 2) also noted the conflation of ‘political criticism of Israel with antisemitism’.

The IHRA definition was, the judgment asserted, not intended to give effect to common understandings of antisemitism but aimed at furthering another goal:

‘Its tendency and the apparent purpose of promoting it, is to graft onto the community’s abhorrence of antisemitism, understood as hostility to Jews for their Jewishness, a parasitic rejection of protest against Israel.’

Such a rejection refused to acknowledge the public repudiation by a majority of Australians of Israeli policies (a Pew Research Centre poll from 4 June 2026 found that 79 per cent had an unfavourable view of that country) reflecting a ‘humanitarian reaction to Israel’s genocide of the Gazans since 7 October 2023, the livestreaming of which to mobile handsets would be difficult to ignore’.

It followed that any assertion that 79 per cent of Australians might be ‘antisemitic because they disapprove of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians’ was bound to be ‘preposterous’.

Justice Fagan was convinced that the state had not made the case ‘that the defendant poses an unacceptable risk of committing a serious terrorism offence if not subject to extended supervision’. What mattered was whether he might succumb to using ‘illicit drugs and lower order crime’; there was no evidence that Farhat had been ‘politically radicalised’.

Beyond court proceedings, there have also been broader concerns that Farhat’s case has seen fiddling on the part of NSW Police.

Greens MP Sue Higginson wrote to the NSW oversight body, the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC):

‘The material failure of police to provide critical evidence to the court has resulted in Mr Farhat’s prolonged and quite possibly wrongful incarceration, as well as serious errors of fact and law.’

Fagan’s reasons provoked howls of protest from the offices of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ). This was a dangerous example of judicial ‘activism’ that avoided ‘the community impact’. (Presumably a judge favouring an aggressively wide interpretation of antisemitism, one armouring and fortifying Israeli policy from scrutiny, would not be entertaining activism.) 

The co-chair of the ECAJ, Alex Ryvchin,  groaned on Sky News:

“It’s quite extraordinary [given] where we are as a society, as a country, globally with antisemitism, that we’re still being dragged back to these foundational discussions about is and what isn’t antisemitism.”

Jamie Hyams, director of public affairs at the Australia Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), chastised Fagan for appearing ‘to range a long way past the question the court had to decide, into contested questions of history, politics and international law on which his honour appears to have had no independent expert evidence’. Such expert evidence, it would seem, can only be sought by those sacred sources approved by a select cartel, one sympathetic to Israeli policies, whatever their import.

The authorities in NSW have shown what can only be contempt for Justice Fagan’s ruling that Farhat had been subject to a ‘serious miscarriage of justice’. The commissioner for corrective services, Gary McMahon, had already intervened last December to have the parole order revoked without a hearing from the defence team, a nasty denial of natural justice that should provoke further comment. 

The parole authority’s 24 August decision also refused to acknowledge the ruling and the reasons by Farhat that he had been a vandal for hire: he would be kept in prison as ‘the offending was reflective of a deep-seated adherence on the part of the offender to an extremist ideology of an antisemitic character’. The purported ignorance of the meaning of the phrases used was also rejected. It follows that this miscarriage of justice, and the project of inoculating Israeli policy from stern and valid criticism, continues.

August 31, 2026 Posted by | legal | Leave a comment