It’s All About the Bomb. Civilian nuclear power is merely a cover for producing more nuclear weapons.
Presenting civilian nuclear power as the answer to climate change, as clean and safe electrical generation, or as energy “too cheap to meter” is simply a sales pitch. What is actually delivered by a robust nuclear energy fleet is the capacity for nuclear weapons and a nuclear Navy.
It does not matter if nuclear power can really solve climate change, it just has to be seen as an essential part of the solution to attract bright, young talent into what is made to appear as the cutting edge of technology and climate solutions, even though the civilian nuclear power industry worldwide has been in decline since 2002.
Why civilian nuclear power is merely a cover for producing more nuclear weapons. BY ALFRED MEYER , NOVEMBER 25, 2022
“……………………………………………………………………. the United States wanted to be recognized as the leader of the “free world” in the postwar years. In the early 1950s, the military needed to recast nuclear enterprise activities to appear to be peaceful, beneficial parts of our modern life, very distant from the wartime horrors.
…………….In a now famous speech on December 8, 1953, titled “Atoms for Peace,” Eisenhower proposed to the U.N. General Assembly an international program of sharing “peaceful” nuclear materials and know-how for untold bounty, to encourage development of nuclear programs around the world.
……… one should also recognize that the IAEA’s bluntly stated mission is to promote nuclear technology. The first leaders of the IAEA were from the United States, to ensure that U.S. interests were protected.
Nuclear enterprise infrastructure is an outgrowth of World War II. These new endeavors drew international interest in creating the huge nuclear marketplace now in existence. Atoms for Peace—a plan to share nonmilitary nuclear technology with other countries to “win hearts and minds”—placed nuclear materials and reactors in more than forty countries, including Iran. This generated ongoing business for many American nuclear enterprise companies while supporting and expanding the U.S. military’s nuclear infrastructure and capacity in the United States.
Having nuclear activities under the auspices of the United Nations conferred upon them the legitimacy and respect of that international body………………………………….
The generally favorable response to Atoms for Peace was a trifecta for the nuclear enterprise. U.S. nuclear activities were repackaged as the “peaceful” atom and given the patina of social acceptance through United Nations oversight. Eisenhower was lauded as a good leader for sharing the atom with the world, and the U.S. nuclear infrastructure got new business and growth, which supported more U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear Navy programs.
Atoms for Peace also served geopolitical ends. For instance, one reason the United States provided Iran with a research reactor in 1967 was to saddle that country with significant financial obligations, including paying for ongoing parts, services, and technical support from American companies.
The Atomic Energy Commission was created in 1946 to promote and regulate the development of this new industry. With the commission led by Wall Street banker Lewis Strauss for five critical years, it is not surprising that the scales heavily favored promotion over regulation. Encouraging private investment in these risky reactor projects was assisted by minimizing regulatory safety and operational demands upon the private operators.
But why was it so important for the U.S. government to develop and subsidize civilian nuclear power? Because it allowed the military, in essence, to spin off its nuclear reactor activities to private financing and corporate operations. Like Atoms for Peace, this repackaging of a military activity as a civilian one succeeded in making the endeavor socially acceptable and somewhat self-funding—although government subsidies are still perennially needed to carry on, and taxpayers are still covering the liability insurance costs of the private corporations.
Most importantly, as detailed in a 2017 report by former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, civilian nuclear power is an “essential enabler” of our national security. The Atlantic Council calculates the value of this contribution to national security to be $42.4 billion a year. Businesses contributing to the nuclear Navy’s supply chain are in forty-four U.S. states.
……………. Being the biggest nuclear enterprise on earth encourages the circular, self-sustaining dynamic of the nuclear arms race. The United States is busy modernizing its nuclear weapons infrastructure to be “strong enough” to negotiate the elimination of nuclear weapons. This is presented as official doctrine in the nonproliferation world. In reality, the United States is actually driving the growing international nuclear arms race.
…………… Presenting civilian nuclear power as the answer to climate change, as clean and safe electrical generation, or as energy “too cheap to meter” is simply a sales pitch. What is actually delivered by a robust nuclear energy fleet is the capacity for nuclear weapons and a nuclear Navy.
Over the decades, there have been numerous expert critiques of nuclear power, authoritatively debunking these misleading and false promises, yet these critiques seem to have no effect on the trajectory of the nuclear enterprise. I suggest that these sales pitches are diversionary techniques aimed at sapping our energy.
It does not matter if nuclear power can really solve climate change, it just has to be seen as an essential part of the solution to attract bright, young talent into what is made to appear as the cutting edge of technology and climate solutions, even though the civilian nuclear power industry worldwide has been in decline since 2002.
To protect ourselves from the dangers of the nuclear enterprise, we need to stop the nuclear weapons and nuclear power reactor programs—a tall order, for sure. But if we seek success in our efforts, we are well advised to understand the forces we are engaging with. It is all about nuclear weapons.
Russia building giant dome over Europe’s largest nuclear plant’s spent fuel stores, to shield them from Ukrainian attacks
The structure will shield stores of spent radioactive fuel from Ukrainian attacks.
https://www.rt.com/russia/568415-zaporozhye-nuclear-dome-ukrain 18 Dec 22
Russia is constructing a protective dome over spent radioactive fuel stores at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant as Ukrainian forces continue to target the facility, senior regional official Vladimir Rogov has said.
He took to Telegram on Saturday to post a short video of the work that’s taking place. It showed technicians setting up shields over the tanks that hold spent nuclear fuel.
The dome is designed to protect the storage facilities from shrapnel and improvised explosive devices carried by drones, the official explained, adding that it would be reinforced further at a later period.
Russia’s nuclear energy corporation Rosatom had earlier warned that damage to the spent-fuel containers risks a release of radioactive material into the atmosphere, with unpredictable consequences.
The construction of the dome comes amid continued attacks on the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant and the nearby town of Energodar, which Moscow blames on Kiev. Russia has repeatedly said that such strikes could result in a nuclear disaster that would eclipse the 1986 Chernobyl incident and affect many countries in Europe.
Ukraine initially claimed that the Russian military had been hitting the plant itself as part of “false-flag” operations to make Kiev look bad. However, Ukrainian general staff eventually admitted to striking the area around the nuclear facility.
The Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, which is the largest on the continent, has been under Russian control since February 28. All of the reactors at the facility are currently shut down due to the security situation.
Zaporozhye Region, together with three other former Ukrainian territories – Kherson Region and the People’s Republic of Donetsk and Lugnask – joined Russia in autumn after holding referendums.
Weapons delivered to Ukraine ‘beginning to filter’ to Africa: Nigeria
https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/weapons-delivered-to-ukraine-beginning-to-filter-to-africa: By Al Mayadeen English , Source: Agencies, 3 Dec 22
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari urges heads of states from neighboring states participating in the Lake Chad Basin Commission to confront the issue of Western arms smuggling from Ukraine.
Weapons supplied to Ukraine from Western countries are “starting to flow” into the Lake Chad basin region, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari warned this week.
Addressing the heads of states from neighboring states participating in the Lake Chad Basin Commission on Tuesday in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, the president said, “Regrettably, the situation in the Sahel and the raging war in Ukraine serve as major sources of weapons and fighters that bolster the ranks of the terrorists in the region.”
Buhari then urged his counterparts to increase security cooperation in order to confront the issue of arms smuggling.
The Nigerian president agreed to step up military coordination in their countries’ war against Boko Haram and ISIS terrorists, who are now apparently receiving weapons from Ukraine, alongside the leaders of Benin, Chad, Niger, and the Central African Republic.
Last month, Finnish police said that some of the “huge quantities” of weapons being shipped to Ukraine had made their way to Finland, where “three of the world’s largest motorcycle gangs” now operate, including Bandidos MC, which “has a branch in every major city in Ukraine.”
In August, an American news outlet unmasked that a shockingly large amount of weaponry heading for Ukraine was untraceable. “Like 30% of it reaches its final destination,” said a tweet that was later deleted after a swarm of online trolls attacked it.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had previously said the arms supplied by the West to Ukraine were ending up on the black market and spreading across West Asia.
Similarly, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had pointed out that Stingers and Javelin missiles, supplied by the West to Kiev, were already being sold at a discount on the black market and have surfaced in Albania and Kosovo, which Russia has warned for so long.
Ukraine has received billions and billions of dollars in donated arms from the United States and its allies such as the United Kingdom and other NATO states in the past few months.
Alliance of Pacific organisations condemns Japan’s decision to discharge nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean
NZ and Pacific urged to ‘step up’ against Japan’s nuclear plan, Stuff NZ, Christine Rovoil, Dec 17 2022,
Japan’s decision to discharge nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean for the next 30 years has been condemned by a Pacific alliance.
And the group of community members, academics, legal experts, NGOs and activists is calling on New Zealand and the Pacific to act to stop Japan.
Three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant had meltdowns after the earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 which left more than 15,000 people dead.
The Japanese government said work to clean up the radioactive contamination would take up to 40 years.
Following the Nuclear Connections Across Oceania Conference at the University of Otago last month, a working group was formed to address the planned discharge.
Dr Karly Burch at the OU’s Centre for Sustainability said many people might be surprised to hear that the Japanese government has instructed Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) to discharge more than 1.3 million tonnes of radioactive wastewater into the ocean from next year.
Burch said they had called on Tepco to halt its discharge plans, and the New Zealand Government to “step up against Japan”.
In June, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called for nuclear disarmament during her speech at the Nato Leaders’ Summit in Madrid.
“New Zealand is a Pacific nation and our region bears the scars of decades of nuclear testing. It was because of these lessons that New Zealand has long declared itself proudly nuclear-free,” Ardern said.
Burch said the Government must “stay true to its dedication to a nuclear-free Pacific” by taking a case to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea against Japan.
“This issue is complex and relates to nuclear safety rather than nuclear weapons or nuclear disarmament,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in a statement on Friday.
“Japan is talking to Pacific partners in light of their concerns about the release of treated water from Fukushima and Aotearoa New Zealand supports the continuation of this dialogue.
…………….. In Onahama, 60km from the power station, fish stocks have dwindled, said Nozaki Tetsu, of the Fukushima Fisheries Co-operative Associations.
“From 25,000 tonnes per year before 2011, only 5000 tonnes of fish are now caught,” he said. “We are against the release of radioactive materials into our waters. What worries us is the negative reputation this creates.”
………………………. Burch said predictive models showed radioactive particles released would spread to the northern Pacific.
“To ensure they do not cause biological or ecological harm, these uranium-derived radionuclides need to be stored securely for the amount of time it takes for them to decay to a more stable state. For a radionuclide such as Iodine-129, this could be 160 million years.”
………… Burch said the Japanese government was aware in August 2018 that the treated wastewater contained long-lasting radionuclides such as Iodine-129 in quantities exceeding government regulations.
She has called for clarity from Tokyo, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Pacific Oceans Commission, and a Pacific panel of independent global experts on nuclear issues on the outcome of numerous meetings they have had about the discharge.
“We want a transparent and accountable consultation process which would include Japanese civil society groups, Pacific leaders and regional organisations.
“These processes must be directed by impacted communities within Japan and throughout the Pacific to facilitate fair and open public deliberations and rigorous scientific debate,” Burch said.
The Pacific Islands Forum secretary-general, Henry Puna, has been approached for comment.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/pou-tiaki/130784783/nz-and-pacific-urged-to-step-up-against-japans-nuclear-plan
Watchdog estimates civilian death toll from Ukrainian attacks on Donbass
https://www.rt.com/news/568395-us-troops-deployed-estonia/ 14 Dec 22, More than 4,500 people have been killed since mid-February, with supplies of NATO weapons resulting in a surge of deaths, observers claim.
Weapons supplied to Ukraine by NATO countries have allowed Kiev’s military to significantly ramp-up attacks on civilian targets in Donbass, a local watchdog has said.
The group claims that over 4,500 civilians have been killed and 4,000 injured since Ukrainian forces escalated shelling in mid-February.
Military terror has escalated beyond all limits after NATO members started supplying weapons to Ukraine,” the Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC), a monitoring group that tracks attacks on the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, said on Wednesday.
“We have recorded a four-fold increase in the number of victims among the civilian population,” Natalya Shutkina, a representative from the Donetsk People’s Republic at the JCCC, said as quoted by TASS.
The JCCC held a press conference on Wednesday during which it showed fragments of Western shells and rockets collected after Ukrainian strikes in Donbass and explained the toll these attacks had taken.
Since February 17, 4,527 civilians have been killed, including 154 children, Shutkina stated. Another 4,317 civilians, including 274 children, have been injured, she said, adding that Ukrainian attacks have damaged over 12,000 homes, 128 medical facilities, and 67 sites required for providing basic utilities, such as water and heating.
The record-keeping begins in mid-February when the Donbass republics reported a significant escalation of strikes by Kiev in the lead-up to Russia having recognized the DPR and LPR as sovereign states and pledged to defend them. The two regions have since been incorporated into Russia following referendums in September.
Shutkina pointed out that the weapon systems provided by the US and its allies are supposed to be more accurate than the Soviet-era artillery guns and rocket launchers that Ukraine possessed previously. This leads the JCCC to believe that the Ukrainian attacks on civilian facilities have been intentional rather than being part of indiscriminate strikes, she stressed.
READ MORE: Children injured in Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk – authorities
Darya Morozova, the human rights ombudsman for the DPR, urged international organizations to acknowledge Kiev’s actions, arguing that “if the world community didn’t encourage the Ukrainian leadership with its inaction, the war in Donbass would have stopped a long time ago.” She called on Kiev’s sponsors to stop sending heavy weapons to Ukraine.
Media enthuses over “sexy”high tech nuclear energy, but ignores the really effective one – energy saving.
It’s that time of year when editors seem happy to let a few dubious stories
through. Most of the media ran with this one on yet another nuclear fusion
breakthrough- this one at the Lawrence Livermore labs in California, at the
National Ignition Facility.
Well, with the climate change threat looming,
non-fossil energy is a big issue just now- and its certainly cold out! So
is help at hand? Well no, not for some time at least. And at unknown cost.
Even if this laser based system, which was designed primarily for
replicating the physics of H-bomb ignition, can be made to deliver energy
on a large scale reliably and safely, it’s going to take a while- it’s a
very long shot.
An equally familiar but arguably much more welcome
newspaper article was this one on energy saving. As seems to be said almost
every week now, saving energy saves money. And it’s available now. But no
one seems to notice.
Energy conservation is just not sexy. Not like high
tech fusion or hydrogen- which also these days regularly gets star billing.
Well hydrogen may have some applications, but in a wide ranging critique,
Michael Liebreich, BNEF founder, says not that many.
It’s not the
wonder-fuel it’s been billed as. He is not happy: ‘we are going to waste
huge amounts of money on the wrong use cases for hydrogen and the wrong
infrastructure in the wrong places’. Few seem happy either about the
proposed new coal mine in Cumbria, but support for solar farms seems to be
missing in Tory UK, although, in the EU, there seems to be support for
putting solar in space…What an odd world. With Russia still calling many
of the shots: according to a new Parliamentary Briefing Note, ‘it is
currently the only country capable of commercially providing the more
enriched fuel needed for Advanced Modular Reactors’, which some look to the
replace the current type of nuclear technology.
Renew Extra 17th Dec 2022
https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2022/12/an-end-of-year-whimsy.html
Risen Energy to build its first big battery in Australia with “gamechanger” Arena funding — RenewEconomy
Arena funding means Risen Energy will build its first big battery in Australia, with another three in the company’s project pipeline. The post Risen Energy to build its first big battery in Australia with “gamechanger” Arena funding appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Risen Energy to build its first big battery in Australia with “gamechanger” Arena funding — RenewEconomy
Iberdrola, Abel to build giant renewable hydrogen and green fuels plant in Tasmania — RenewEconomy
Spanish energy giant Iberdrola to work with Abel Energy to build a world-scale green hydrogen and methanol production plant in Tasmania. The post Iberdrola, Abel to build giant renewable hydrogen and green fuels plant in Tasmania appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Iberdrola, Abel to build giant renewable hydrogen and green fuels plant in Tasmania — RenewEconomy
Neoen to add big battery to what is now Australia’s biggest solar farm — RenewEconomy
Neoen to add big battery to what is now the country’s biggest operating solar farm in Queensland. The post Neoen to add big battery to what is now Australia’s biggest solar farm appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Neoen to add big battery to what is now Australia’s biggest solar farm — RenewEconomy
TagEnergy to press go on big renewables hub in north Queensland after battery win — RenewEconomy
Rapidly emerging TagEnergy announces new renewables hub in north Queensland after ARENA battery funding win. The post TagEnergy to press go on big renewables hub in north Queensland after battery win appeared first on RenewEconomy.
TagEnergy to press go on big renewables hub in north Queensland after battery win — RenewEconomy
Star of the South gets head start as Australia’s offshore wind race officially launched — RenewEconomy
Australia’s offshore wind industry launched, with formal declaration of first development zone and a leg-up to the 2.2GW Star of the South project. The post Star of the South gets head start as Australia’s offshore wind race officially launched appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Star of the South gets head start as Australia’s offshore wind race officially launched — RenewEconomy
December 18 Energy News — geoharvey
Science and Technology: ¶ “Satellite Will Measure Most Water On The Planet” • The first mission to survey nearly all of the water on Earth has launched. It is a joint effort of NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales. It will survey water on more than 90% of the world’s surface, […]
December 18 Energy News — geoharvey
Australia’s defence industry and Minister Richard Marles dazzled by (useless) B-21 Raider Stealth Bomber
US B-21 tempts the Australian security establishment
more https://johnmenadue.com/star-struck-lunacy-the-b-21-tempts-the-australian-security-establishment/
By Binoy KampmarkDec 16, 2022,
The United States does not need it. No air force does. But the lesson of the dazzle from the B-21 Raider Stealth Bomber is that what the US develops and acquires Australia must have. Such a lesson ought to be unlearned as quickly as possible, but there is little chance of it with individuals such as Richard Marles in the defence portfolio.
The fantasy of having a deterrent effect to be projected over thousands of miles is found in a few documents that deserve to gather dust, most notably the 2020 defence strategic update which proved alarmist about Australia having a ten-year threat “window”. Marles, adjusting to the furnishings of his office, claims that the Australian Defence Force “must augment its self-reliance to employ and deliver combat power through impactful material and enhanced strike capability – including over longer distances.”
Marles, in his speech to the Sydney Institute, provides some padding around the commissioned Defence Strategic Review, which will feature war drums, loud signals of threat and existential doom, along with much belligerent hollering. It will, as Marles promises, acknowledge the replacement of “post-Cold War optimism” with “the reality of renewed major power competition.”
This was hardly a bad thing for Marles and other members of the national security state. Such competition made Australia “more relevant now than at any time in our history.” Far better to be relevant to your adversaries in danger than safe and less conspicuous in prosperity and development.
Support is also forthcoming from Marles’ shadow counterpart, Andrew Hastie. In his words delivered at a Business News Breakfast, having such bombers would allow Australia “to hold an adversary at risk beyond the archipelago to our north”, thereby maintaining “a strong deterrent to any regional aggressor”. This would “show that there is a great cost for any unilateral military adventurism. It is simply responsible national security, and is what Australians expect.”
What a novel way of reading the sentiment of Australians, one matched only by Hastie’s own sense of paranoia, which warns of “Chinese influence” and its projection like canker “deep into the Pacific Island chain, ensnaring the heart of at least one national leader.”
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute parrots the strategic delusion: that Australia must employ “the concept of deterrence by denial that is, having sufficiently robust capabilities to convince an adversary that the cost of acting military against Australia isn’t worth any gains that might be made.” It laments the “ADF’s strike cupboard” as being “rather bare.”
To aid this well-funded nonsense, much of it from the US military-industrial complex, the usual psychic disturbances typical among national security types are revealed. “The worst-case scenario for Australia’s military strategy has always been the prospect of an adversary establishing a presence in our near region from which it can target Australia or isolate us from our partners and allies.”
The authors positively salivate at the qualities of an “extremely stealthy bomber”, and while admitting that there is little in terms of clarity about what the B-21 can actually do, extol its “gold standard in strike capability” which “could potentially be delivered by 2032-33.” Yet again, defence fantasists inhabit a future that, when arrived at, tends to be rather different to the astrological version.
In a lunatic turn, the report also suggests the purchase of 12 such bombers. (Yet again, the magic 12 appears, just as it did with the scotched Naval Group-Australian submarine contract.) The price will come in at a foolish, draining, AUD$28 billion (or possibly three million dollars less – but who’s counting?). We can at least be assured that it would be “significantly less than nuclear-powered submarines.”
The authors justify this flight of fancy by suggesting various advantages that “potentially offset” the cost. “A single B-21 can deliver the same effect as many F-35As. The stealth bombers would not require the overhead of supporting capabilities such as air-to-air refuellers when operating in our region.” And wait, another fabulous advantage: such bombers could “prosecute targets from secure bases in Australia’s south, where they would have access to workforce, fuel and munitions.”
Veteran strategist Hugh White, at the very least, offers a voice of balance, opining that thinking about the military, not as a practical tool “but as a symbol of strategic intent” is an “expensive habit”. White advocates, in place of such an overpriced, and essentially irrelevant acquisition, splashing out for “a larger fleet of cheaper aircraft” capable of delivering “more missiles against an enemy fleet than a smaller fleet of more expensive ones. It would be equally capable of launching long-range stand-off attacks on Chinese bases in the Southwest Pacific.”
Such behaviour and decision-making can only suggest how serious Australia’ defence planning should be taken, which is obviously not much. Such an inability to discern real threats, incapable of using delicate diplomacy, and slavishly embracing the latest souped-up trends from Washington, Beijing must surely see those in Canberra as less threatening than habitually foolish.
The revolving door: Kim Beazley, former WA governor, ex Labor defence minister moves quickly on to a Defence industry board
Revolving doors and undue influence
The ‘revolving door’ is a term used to describe the movement of individuals from public roles into related private industry roles and vice versa. Such moves are not illegal and not necessarily problematic. Declassified Australia is not alleging any illegal activity by Kim Beazley. However, given the potential for undue influence and conflicts of interest, global integrity bodies recommend clear guidelines and a transparent process of scrutiny and approval before such appointments take place.
Unfortunately, Australia’s guidelines for managing revolving door appointments are weak and largely unenforced. It is also unclear whether they exist for certain positions, such as state governors.
Bomber’s revolving doorway, By Michelle Fahy Dec 16, 2022
There is a never-ending conga line of politicians, intelligence, military and defence officials quick-stepping through revolving doorways onto the boards of lucrative military weapons companies.
Kim Beazley, former WA governor, ex Labor defence minister, two-time federal opposition leader, and former ambassador to the USA, was known, because of his enthusiasm for all things military, as ‘Bomber Beazley’ during his Defence ministership.
Just two months after his vice-regal role ended on 30 June this year, he joined the board of defence contractor Luerssen Australia. The move is another example in the long list of Australia’s revolving door appointments in the military-industrial sector.
In 2018 the federal government awarded Luerssen Australia, the WA-based subsidiary of the German naval shipbuilder Lürssen, a contract to supply twelve Offshore Patrol Vessels to the navy. The $3.7 billion contract was one of 28 projects listed as a concern in October by new defence minister Richard Marles, and was said to be running a year behind schedule.
Quality issues with the hull of the third vessel, being built by Luerssen’s WA project partner, the engineering firm Civmec, were revealed last month by unnamed defence sources to the Australian Financial Review. The first two vessels were built by Luerssen’s South Australian partner, ASC, at Osborne near Adelaide.
In February this year, Beazley, then WA state governor, made an official visit to Luerssen at Civmec’s facility in the Australian Marine Complex at Henderson, 35 kilometres south of Perth, where the remaining ten vessels are planned to be built.
The Morrison Government invested around $1.5 billion in infrastructure at both the marine complex at Henderson and at Fleet Base West at HMAS Stirling. Just across the waters of Cockburn Sound from Henderson, Stirling, Australia’s largest naval base, has long been coveted by the US military as an Indian Ocean base for its nuclear submarines and other naval ships.
Photos and a story of Beazley’s visit to Henderson were posted on the WA Government House website, including his description of the Luerssen vessel as ‘the ship of the future’.
Then, in early May this year, Governor Beazley met with a delegation of Luerssen executives at WA’s Government House. Present at this meeting were two Australian executives, Jens Nielsen, Luerssen Australia’s chief executive, and Matt Moran, its strategy and government relations executive. More significantly, however, there was also Tim Wagner, the chief executive of Naval Vessels Lürssen (NVL) Group, the German multinational conglomerate that owns Luerssen Australia. Government House downplayed Wagner’s presence, describing him only as the chairman of Luerssen Australia.
The Government House webpage says the Luerssen executives updated the Governor on the offshore patrol vessel program and that discussion then turned to ‘the possibilities of relocating further defence industry works to Western Australia to bolster our sovereign shipbuilding capabilities’. No further details are provided.
There is a wider context that raises questions about what was discussed at this meeting, which took place less than three weeks before the federal election and just four months before Beazley joined Luerssen’s board. In response to a request from Declassified Australia for more details, Beazley said only that, “Discussions centred on the subject on the website”, the subject being the sentence quoted above.
What is Lürssen seeking?
The possibility of a multinational naval shipbuilder relocating potentially billions of dollars of additional works to Henderson is significant. It could become more so if reports in international media of potential consolidation in the German naval shipbuilding industry, including speculation about a possible merger between ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) and Lürssen, prove accurate. TKMS is the large naval shipbuilding subsidiary of German industrial giant ThyssenKrupp. It was one of the three firms shortlisted for Australia’s ill-fated submarine contract, losing out to France’s Naval Group.
Lürssen launched its new NVL Group entity, which Wagner leads, in October 2021 to house its naval shipbuilding businesses, separating them from its super yacht division, a move that indicates it may be positioning itself for future industry consolidation.
In November, executives from TKMS were in Canberra seeking meetings with Australian Navy officials to discuss a potential new shipbuilding project, which the Financial Review said could lead to the Navy scrapping the offshore patrol vessels and replacing them with more heavily armed corvettes.
This may be significant because Lürssen and TKMS are already working in partnership (also see here) supplying the German navy with corvettes. No formal Australian corvette project yet exists, but it’s reported that it is being considered as an option by the Albanese government’s Defence Strategic Review.
Beazley’s term as WA Governor ended on 30 June 2022. Luerssen Australia announced his appointment to its board on 30 August 2022.
Beazley has joined the former chief of navy, Christopher Ritchie, and former Howard government cabinet minister John Sharp on the Luerssen Australia board. Both Ritchie and Sharp have also accepted other board positions with foreign arms manufacturers.
Sharp was with European group Airbus, a significant federal defence contractor, from 2002–2015, prior to joining Luerssen in 2017. Ritchie was a director of Lockheed Martin Australia, local subsidiary of the world’s largest arms manufacturer, from 2013–2020, adding the Luerssen board in 2017.
Ritchie is also chair of the AMDA Foundation, curiously a registered charity, that organises arms industry expos around Australia for local and international defence officials, military representatives, and arms corporations to network and do business.
The Luerssen board appointment is not Beazley’s first move through the revolving door. After returning from Washington DC, where he had been ambassador from 2010 to 2016, he joined Chris Ritchie on the board of Lockheed Martin Australia.
Around this time, Beazley was appointed as co-chairman of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue, a Director and Distinguished Fellow at the Perth USAsia Centre, and president of the Australian Institute for International Affairs
Beazley was also appointed a Distinguished Fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), for whom he wrote and spoke regularly. ASPI is designed to be the federal government’s ‘independent’ primary source of external advice on defence and national security matters, though there are serious questions over its independence, as shown previously by Declassified Australia.
Beazley left Lockheed’s board in April 2018 ahead of taking up the WA governorship. Since resigning as governor, he has taken up the role of chairperson of the Australian War Memorial, which has been sponsored by weapons manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Thales, BAE, and Boeing.
Defending the state
Two months after the Turnbull government signed the offshore patrol vessel contract with Luerssen Australia in late January 2018, WA Labor Premier Mark McGowan visited Lürssen’s Bremen headquarters in Germany. There he discussed the program and Western Australia’s potential as a base for defence exports into the Asia-Pacific region.
McGowan said his government had “identified defence as a key pillar for diversifying Western Australia’s economy, creating more jobs for Western Australians”.
Within days of returning to Australia, McGowan announced Kim Beazley’s appointment as governor. “[He is] a great West Australian, a great advocate for our state, someone respected across the political divide, someone that can represent our state overseas… someone that can represent us interstate and be an advocate for WA in a unique way.” Beazley commenced in the vice-regal role on May 1.
The following year, Governor Beazley undertook his first official visit, to the United Kingdom and Germany, from 25 March–2 April 2019. While in Germany, his official engagements included a site visit to the Lürssen corporation. Beazley and WA Government House both declined to respond to Declassified Australia about the purpose of this visit.
While in London, in addition to meeting with Queen Elizabeth II, some of Governor Beazley’s engagements were specifically defence industry related. He met with Sir Roger Carr, the chair of BAE Systems, the UK’s and Europe’s largest arms manufacturer, and sixth largest globally. He made a site visit to Airbus, a global top 15 arms multinational, which has established a drone launch site in WA. He also gave a keynote address to a gathering at the King’s College London’s Menzies Australia Institute event, Contemporary thinking in Australian defence policy.
Expanding the role of governor into ‘strategic’ advocacy
In May 2019, WA Today reported that Governor Beazley had won an additional $1.4 million in the McGowan government’s 2019 Budget. The budget on page 85 revealed that the extra funding covered the new Governor’s ‘expanded role of advocacy and representation’.
WA Treasurer Ben Wyatt told Perth radio the budget increase was because the Governor would help attract a bigger share of Australia’s defence industry to WA in addition to performing his job under the constitution, the report said. It quoted Wyatt:
The deal is that the Governor is uniquely placed to advocate for WA in respect of doing what we’ve been trying to be doing… in attracting more defence investment into Western Australia…
As a result of that, that’s why three extra staff have been allocated to the Governor.
This is unique, there’s no question about that in respect of roles the Governor has traditionally played. But, because we’re very fortunate to have a Governor that has quite a global background… we want to attract more jobs.
Wyatt said while advocacy was not the Governor’s formal role, the Governor’s expanded responsibilities were ‘not political’: “Under the constitution, this is a broader remit that has been asked of him and it’s one that I think is not in conflict with the constitution.”
The WA Government House website entry for ‘Role of the Governor’ was updated to read: ‘The Governor advocates for the State’s strategic interests and capabilities’, and ‘The Governor has a key role in… promoting the strategic interests and capabilities of the State’.
Premier McGowan said the inclusion of advocacy by Beazley had ‘modernised’ the role of governor.
Revolving doors and undue influence
The ‘revolving door’ is a term used to describe the movement of individuals from public roles into related private industry roles and vice versa. Such moves are not illegal and not necessarily problematic. Declassified Australia is not alleging any illegal activity by Kim Beazley. However, given the potential for undue influence and conflicts of interest, global integrity bodies recommend clear guidelines and a transparent process of scrutiny and approval before such appointments take place.
Unfortunately, Australia’s guidelines for managing revolving door appointments are weak and largely unenforced. It is also unclear whether they exist for certain positions, such as state governors.
The WA Public Sector Commission has developed an integrity strategy for public authorities. It has however advised Declassified Australia it doesn’t issue a code of conduct for the WA Governor. WA Government House declined to respond to questions from Declassified Australia about whether any such guidelines exist for the role of governor.
In 2018, the Grattan Institute produced a report – Who’s in the room? – which notes that Australia is vulnerable to policy capture by vested interests and that a key risk factor is Australia’s “lax revolving door rules [which] permit ‘cosiness’ between politicians and influence-seekers”.
Transparency International advises as follows for revolving door appointments:
Reasonable minimum cooling-off periods (12-18 months) should be adopted by governments to mitigate the risk of conflicts of interest. They should accompany a comprehensive, transparent and formal assessment procedure which assesses whether post-public office employment is compatible with former duties.
In response to Declassified Australia’s questions, Kim Beazley said: “Whilst Governor I visited many industries involved in Defence in Western Australia and industries in other sectors. All were aimed at encouraging investment in WA. With none of them at any stage did I discuss a role with them after my time as Governor.”
Luerssen Australia declined to respond to questions, instead pointing to its August media release announcing Beazley’s appointment to its board.
“FUSION NET GAIN” is manufactured ignorance.
The only thing limitless and free about fusion power is the hype it generates
ARENA ONLINE, DARRIN DURANT, 16 DEC 2022 On 5 December 2022, fusion power researchers at California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) achieved two technical milestones which by 12 December had encouraged a media-fuelled, gigantically unfounded and exaggerated projection about impending cheap, carbon-free, infinite electricity supply. Yes, ‘ignition’—a sustained, lab-controlled fusion reaction—was achieved. So too was ‘gain’, [?really] as the energy released by the fusion reaction was greater than that required by the lasers used to heat and compress a deuterium-tritium fuel pellet.
But we are light years away, at minimum, from fusion power contributing electricity into a grid and in any way helping to resolve the climate crisis. What is going on in all the pretending otherwise?
Almost every word written about ‘net energy gain’ from a fusion reaction is a species of manufactured ignorance generated by managing uncomfortable knowledge, which is complicated by a tension between the desire to trust fusion experts but the knowledge that those experts operate under powerful incentives to engage in hype.
INERTIAL CONFINEMENT
We have been at the doorstep of fusion hype before. In fact, ever since the 1950s fusion power has been just over the horizon. The fusion illusion has become its own cottage industry, with competing fusion research teams over-calling each other in a series of breakthroughs and decisive advances that generate hype, but no electricity.
For instance, on 9 February 2022 the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor in the UK announced that it had produced 59 Megajoules of energy and that this indicated ‘powerplant potential’. Yet JET consumed significantly more power than it produced. Hence I suggested that the claim of a net power gain was a form of hyped science communication in which future promise colonises present limitations.
Researchers at LLNL’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) are the most recent hype-mongers. In fusion research, there are two main approaches: doughnuts and lasers. The ITER tokamak reactor in France is a doughnut-shaped machine that uses high-temperature magnetic confinement to create a stable and continuous plasma in which fusion can occur. By contrast, in the inertial confinement approach, discrete fusion reactions produce bursts of energy. In NIF experiments, a weak laser pulse is created, split, amplified, converted from infrared to ultraviolet energy, and then, in the form of 192 beams, focused onto a capsule containing deuterium and tritium, heating and compressing (fusing) the nuclear fuel to create alpha particles and release neutrons.
In their 13 December announcement of NIF’s experimental result, the US Department of Energy (DOE) advertised the result as a ‘game changer’ and quoted a host of US politicians directly linking the result to commercial fusion power and the goal of a ‘net-zero carbon economy’. Media outlets which really should adopt stricter editorial standards gushed about the result implying ‘limitless, zero-carbon power’ or stating that it ‘changes everything’ and heralds a decisive step towards ‘carbon-free energy’ for ‘everyone’ for ‘millions of years’.
The only thing limitless and free about fusion power is the hype it generates.
Back in reality, the DOE specified that ‘LLNL’s experiment surpassed the fusion threshold by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output’. The DOE suggested ‘there is momentum to drive rapid progress towards fusion commercialization’, but what does that 1.10 MJ ‘gain’ in fact mean?
Even science magazines regurgitated the hype, suggesting the fusion reaction released ‘roughly 54% more than the energy that went into the reaction’. Yet when any of these media sources came up for air, typically late into the triumphant narrative, there were somewhat grudging estimates of total energy input, always attributed to some scientists who otherwise had gushed about technological promise. These scientists estimated that the total energy consumed by NIF’s 192 lasers was between 300 megajoules and 500 megajoules. Multiple credulous sources split the difference at 400 megajoules. As one sceptical physicist noted, ‘consuming 400 MJ and producing 3.15 MJ is a net energy loss greater than 99%’, akin to you giving me $400 and me returning to you $3.15, then trying to pump your tyres about how wealthy you just became.
UNCOMFORTABLE KNOWLEDGE
I am not a particle or theoretical physicist, and am admittedly biased by finding nuclear fission as a commercial electricity option to be a kind of technological creationism, and certainly a white elephant for Australia. Moreover, my field of Science and Technology Studies is known more for deconstructing facts than building them up. But as a sociologist of knowledge interested in theorising the positive, ‘partnership’ role experts can play in democratic decision-making, I ask, could experts with specialist knowledge relevant to fusion engineering be doing a better job of reining in the unwarranted hype about fusion net gain?
Specialist commentators on fusion power could do worse than get more comfortable with uncomfortable knowledge. Uncomfortable knowledge is information or understanding that is available but unevenly distributed or acknowledged, inadvertently or strategically obscured or left undone, and actually or potentially disruptive for the goals and interests of select organisations and institutions.
In fusion research, the fact that net energy gain is not the goal of either magnetic confinement or laser inertial confinement is the most salient piece of uncomfortable knowledge. ITER recently withdrew its claim of net energy gain—of 500 MW of fusion power from 50 MW of input power (a Q value of 10)—and now says that ITER is ‘the investigation and demonstration of burning plasmas’, in which the energy of helium nuclei produced by fusion reactions is enough to maintain plasma temperature.
The LLNL team admitted as much as well, describing the NIF result as a ‘proof of concept [not designed] to plug the NIF into the grid’, with other physicists adding that NIF was designed to be a big laser that could ‘give us the data we need for the [nuclear] stockpile research programme’.
Given the hype about limitless clean energy just over the horizon, another type of uncomfortable knowledge involves the judgements about the feasibility of commercial electrical power from fusion. Put differently, rather than being regaled by hyped milestones and heroic assumptions about future developments, why not cold, hard assessments of uncertainties and obstacles?
While it seemed easy to find a dozen experts willing to gush on record about how remarkable it was to spend $3.5 billion to produce an energy output that might boil a few kettles, frank assessments of future prospects are confined to scattered observations by disconnected critics.
But the list of uncertainties includes: how to increase the fusion reaction frequency from 1 per day to maybe 10 per second; how to reduce the cost of the capsule ‘target’ from tens of thousands of dollars to a few cents, especially as production ramps up from one capsule per week to up to one million per week; how to ensure the laser can reliably fire ten times per second, not once per day; whether energy out can increase versus energy in from 1.54x to 30x; how the heat produced by the fusion will be extracted; whether the efficiency of the yield can be increased by least two orders of magnitude; and whether it is possible to breed enough of the tritium fuel for a commercial industry.
Where such uncomfortable knowledge about feasibility is tackled in depth, it is only by critics. One physicist thus suggested commercial feasibility would demand an increase in fusion output of 100,000 per cent, a mastery of exceedingly strict conditions vis a vis temperature, shape of target capsule and vacuum chamber, a solution to the problem that the machine breaks when it works and requires hours to recover, and an overcoming of the low supply of tritium fuel and its prohibitive cost.
A final form of uncomfortable knowledge includes drawbacks, which are typically managed through practices that include denial (avoiding acknowledging information even if others bring it to collective attention), dismissal (manufacturing justifications for rejecting a counter-claim), diversion (distracting via a decoy issue) and displacement (swapping problems).
Two examples will suffice. One is the deuterium-tritium fuel needed for any future fusion reactor. It scarcely exists in nature (a fact met with denial) and must be produced either in heavy water reactors or by breeding it from enriched lithium-6, which is in short supply (met with dismissal), and, no, it is not solved by speculations about extracting the fuel from sea water (a diversion).
A second drawback is that nuclear fusion may be not the perfect energy source for a climate crisis but, as a former fusion physicist put it, is ‘in some ways close to the opposite’. Put succinctly, the fact that neutron streams comprise 80 per cent of fusion energy output in deuterium-tritium reactions makes it an odd electrical energy source. The neutron streams damage the structure of the machine, produce relatively bulky radioactive waste, require biological shielding, and constitute a proliferation risk (Pu-239). The fusion reactor itself has a high parasitic power consumption, a scarce fuel supply, and likely high operating costs due to continual radiation damage…………………………………… more https://arena.org.au/fusion-net-gain-is-manufactured-ignorance/
1 This month.
Australians deserve the truth
about
AUKUS – https://aukuspublicinquiry.com/
Australians deserve the truth
about AUKUS
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 