Nuclear is not really back

Think the Cop29 climate summit doesn’t matter? Here are five things you should know,

Adam Morton in Baku, Guardian, Sat 23 Nov 2024 

…………………………………………………..Some media outlets went to great lengths this week to claim that nuclear energy was at the centre of Cop29 talks, and Bowen had been embarrassed by Australia not signing up to a UK-US civil nuclear deal.

Take it from a reporter on the ground: this has no basis in fact.

The UK made a mistake by listing on a press release Australia and another nine countries that it said it expected would sign up to a Generation IV International Forum on nuclear. That sentence were quickly removed once it was pointed out that no one had checked and it wasn’t true. Instead, Australia will continue as an observer, as it was in the forum’s previous iteration.

The slip-up had no obvious impact on the relationship between the countries – Bowen and his UK counterpart, Ed Miliband, held an event to sign a renewable energy agreement shortly after the story broke. And nuclear has been barely visible as an issue at the talks. 

Thirty-one countries have signed up to a side pledge to triple nuclear power capacity by 2050, with six new countries joining at Cop29. But the global focus is renewable energy. Cop28 agreed global investment in renewables needs to be tripled by 2030, and the bulk of the non-fossil energy investment is going that way.

Only one country that signed the pledge to triple nuclear, Slovakia, has started work on planning a new plant in the past year. And those plants take about 20 years to build………………………………………………………….  fact.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/22/think-the-cop29-climate-summit-doesnt-matter-heres-five-things-you-should-know

November 25, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

TODAY. Danger of a nuclear catastrophe as Ukraine sends missiles to Kursk area in Russia

We keep getting told how very dangerous it is for the Russians to be sending drones and now missiles into Ukraine, above all, because they might hit  Zaporizhzhia and other nuclear facilities. And yes, this is true, (although the Russians have been relatively restrained, so far, about use of missiles).

We all do know how awful this war is, and what radiological devastation would be released, if the Russians, or the Ukrainians, struck the  Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station, the largest in Europe. Rafael Grossi of the International Atomic Energy regularly reminds us of that danger, – (while almost simultaneously touting nuclear power stations as so very safe, and the essential cure for climate change.)

But what we don’t hear about – in our the media’s joyous promotion of a Ukrainian victory over Russia,- is the grave danger posed by American and British missiles fired by the Ukrainians into the Russian area of Kursk.

All sorts of “good reasons” for the Ukrainians doing this – to lower the morale of Russians, to destroy masses of North Korean troops gathering in the area, to hold onto a piece of Russian land as a bargaining chip if ever there’s a negotiation with Russia.

But no mention of Kursk nuclear power station, with its four Soviet RBMK-1000 reactors. The 2 operating reactors have no protective dome.– the same design as those at the Chernobyl nuclear plant which in 1986 became the scene of the world’s worst civilian nuclear disaster. Construction of the Kursk-2 power plant is under way, using essentially new reactors of the VVER-510 type, which began in 2018.  The Kursk NPP is among the three largest nuclear facilities in the country.

In August 2024, the remains of a Ukrainian drone were found within the area of the Kursk nuclear power plant, located roughly 100 metres (328 feet) from the plant’s spent fuel nuclear storage facility.

Ukraine fired at least 10 British-provided Storm Shadow missiles into Russia’s Kursk Oblast, The Wall Street Journal and several other media outlets reported on Wednesday.

You have to look to alternative media, to get any grip on what is happening in this conflict. Dave DeCamp , writes in ANTIWAR:

The US and the UK reportedly authorized Ukraine’s use of the Storm Shadows in strikes on Russian territory after President Biden gave the green light for Ukraine to use the ATACMS, US-made missiles with a range of about 190 miles. Ukraine launched ATACMS into Russia for the first time on Tuesday.

Both the Storm Shadows and ATACMS require intelligence from Western countries for Ukraine to fire them, meaning the US and NATO are now directly supporting long-range strikes on Russian territory. 

Our corporate Western media continues with its sacred utterance that “Ukraine must and will defeat Russia”. We never hear about the previous 8 long years of the Ukraine government’s war against its own region in the Donbass, a largely Russian-speaking region, which wanted to keep its autonomous status, supposedly guaranteed by the Minsk agreements . All this precipitated Russia’s action in February 2022. Zelensky was originally elected on a platform of honouring this agreement and negotiating with Russia.

But I digress.

The thing is, we are not being told the truth about this war. And Kursk is a kind of flashpoint that the Western mindset apparently does not understand.

The battle of Kursk

It is ironic that the battle of Kursk in 1943, the single largest battle in the history of warfare , is regarded as the “last gasp of Nazi aggression“. The Nazis invaded Kursk, but were defeated by the Russian forces. Russia lost an estimated 800,00 casualties. This battle, along with the Battle of Stalingrad several months earlier, is regarded as a turning point in World War 2.

It is sad, that in recent commemorations of World War 2, the role of Russia in defeating the Nazis is somehow erased. Oh well, we know from Hollywood’s portrayal of this war, it was the Americans who beat the Nazis.

NATO supports the missile attacks on Russian territory. It is possible that Kursk – the scene of a huge defeat of the 1943 German Nazi war machine, – could now be destroyed by the NATO-USA war machine, which includes Germany

November 23, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Rio Tinto to take full control of controversial mine in Kakadu

By Simon Johanson, 20 Nov 24,  https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/rio-tinto-moves-to-shut-down-controversial-mine-in-kakadu-20241120-p5ks2q.html

The last chapter in one of Australia’s big environmental battles is set to play out after mining giant Rio Tinto moved to take full control of the controversial Ranger uranium mine near the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park.

Rio, the world’s second-biggest miner by market value, told the ASX on Wednesday it will compulsorily acquire the remaining shares it does not own in its subsidiary Energy Resources of Australia (ERA), taking control of the contentious Ranger uranium mine and neighbouring Jabiluka deposit, one of the world’s richest known sources of untapped uranium.

ERA wound up its uranium oxide operation at Ranger in 2021, but the cost of rehabilitating the mine is on track to exceed $2.2 billion and concerns have lingered among traditional owners, the Mirarr people, about ERA’s intentions, particularly after it applied for a 10-year mining lease extension over Jabiluka in March this year.

Rio, which owned a large stake in ERA, began working with ERA on rehabilitating the mine in 2021. ERA was legally required to rehabilitate the operation by 2026 estimating it would cost $500 million, but budget blowouts and differences between ERA’s board and Rio led to a fractious relationship with its majority shareholder before Rio reached an agreement with ERA to take over management of the mine’s rehabilitation in April this year.

The push to mine Jabiluka at one stage sparked fierce opposition among traditional owners and environmental campaigners in 1998. Thousands of protesters took part in a human blockade at the site and hundreds were arrested in the ensuing clampdown.

The lease area covers a sacred site with hundreds of ancient rock art galleries. In the end, Jabiluka was never mined, and ERA pledged it would not develop the area as long as the Mirarr remain opposed to it.

Rio’s Australia chief executive Kellie Parker reaffirmed the dual London-Australia listed miner had “no intention to invest in mining or development of the Jabiluka deposit”.

“Proceeding with compulsory acquisition, after participating for our full entitlement in the ERA capital raising, underlines our commitment to Ranger’s rehabilitation,” Parker said.

Australian Conservation Foundation campaigner Dave Sweeney said Rio’s takeover of Ranger brings certainty to the delivery of rehabilitation works.

“There is a massive shortfall in funding for the Ranger clean-up and Rio has deeper pockets, more talent and greater reputational exposure than ERA,” Sweeney said.

ERA launched a capital raising in October that resulted in $766.5 million to fund rehabilitation of the Ranger mine. Rio bought its maximum entitlement in the raising, which pushed its shareholding up from 86 per cent to 98 per cent.

It immediately said it would move to mop up the remaining shares held by minority investors in ERA under the compulsory acquisition rules of the Corporations Act for the same price, $0.002 per ERA share, as the entitlement offer.

“We remain committed to the successful rehabilitation of the Ranger Project Area to a standard that will establish an environment similar to the adjacent Kakadu National Park, a World Heritage site,” Parker said.

ERA’s board said it would keep shareholders informed of any subsequent developments and steps taken by Rio Tinto.

The global miner’s purchase of new shares under the capital raising will boost its voting power in ERA to 98.43 per cent, overwhelming a vocal minority of shareholders who were seeking to block Rio boosting its stake and who have been pushing for the Jabiluka deposit to be developed.

November 22, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Britain’s Nuclear Bomb Scandal: Our Story review – how the UK’s atomic testing programme devastated lives

Trauma, terror and potential medical effects that last for generations – those who experienced the fallout of nukes in Australia and the Pacific tell their horrifying tale

Jack Seale, Thu 21 Nov 2024 https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/nov/20/britain-nuclear-bomb-scandal-our-story-review

Grenfell, the Post Office, infected blood, Hillsborough … Britain has witnessed a long series of injustices where walls of silence and lies have stopped the powerless inconveniencing the powerful by telling their whole truths. To that list, in the section where further disclosure is still urgently required, we should add the UK’s nuclear testing scandal. This calmly scathing documentary sets out the case.

Post-second world war, the US and the USSR engaged in a nuclear arms race, and Britain – desperate to cling to its place at the world’s top table – felt obliged to join them. As it tried to keep up with developments in atomic and hydrogen bombs, nuclear tests were desired, but letting off nukes anywhere near regular British citizens was politically unviable, so distant lands were sought and human guinea pigs identified.

The locations chosen were Pacific atolls and the Australian outback and coast; the unwitting human test subjects were, as well as the local people, around 39,000 British and Commonwealth servicemen and scientists. Between 1952 and 1963, they witnessed 45 atomic and hydrogen bombs being detonated, along with hundreds of other radioactive experiments. Many of those affected, who had been stationed at the blast sites so the effects on humans could be monitored, are interviewed in this film.

Leading the talking heads are British veterans who, as young men in the 1950s and 60s, were offered the chance to sail halfway around the world to serve their country. Initially, when they arrived at, say, Christmas Island or the Monte Bello archipelago off the coast of north-western Australia, they were in paradise, living a life of sunshine, beer, seafood and beach football with, as one says, “no idea what we were letting ourselves in for”. Now, they live with cancers and other health problems they are convinced are linked to what they experienced – or with the traumatic memories of coming face to face with humanity’s most powerful, awful creation.

Not every study has backed the men’s claims about the negative health impacts of the nuclear tests, but plenty have and, in any case, the problem is that the picture is incomplete. Court cases and dogged freedom of information requests have been required to access records from the Ministry of Defence, the existence of which the MoD had previously denied. But the veterans still wouldn’t have enough to claim for compensation, even if Britain had an equivalent to the nuclear-testing compensation schemes that exist in other countries.

Here and now, we have the men’s own testimony, which is frightening. Their recollection of sitting on a beach with their bare hands over their eyes, waiting for an unholy explosion to go off in the sea behind them, is eerie and nightmarish. One man’s memory of being flown in a plane through a mushroom cloud, looking down at a crimson inferno below before being flipped upside down by the force of the explosion, is hard to even comprehend.

Almost more upsetting are the tales of what came next, particularly among the men’s offspring. Children were born with disabilities and disfigurements; grandchildren show signs of genetic defects. The official line remains that there is no correlation between this and the tests, and that “no information is withheld from veterans”. The veterans, bitterly and tearfully, disagree.

Then there is the small matter of the Indigenous Australians whose ancestral homelands were deemed to be uninhabited before British nuclear tests were carried out. At Emu Field in south Australia in 1953, warnings about the prevailing wind were ignored, and the radioactive cloud was blown towards an Indigenous community that included the late Yami Lester, who was blinded by radiation exposure and became an anti-nuclear campaigner. We hear his famous description, given in 1999, of “this black mist coming over and quietly rolling through the mulga trees, black and shiny, oily looking”. Community members reported unusual, serious health issues within hours.

There is also an interview with Australian air force veteran and whistleblower Avon Hudson, who risked imprisonment to draw attention to the effects of the tests at Maralinga, a little south of Emu Field. Hudson, a resolute but deeply sad man, leads the film-makers to the programme’s starkest image: the cemetery in the small military town of Woomera, with its rows of tiny graves. The surge in infant deaths and stillbirths was never satisfactorily explained.

Hudson fought for a royal commission, which convened in 1984 and went some way to healing the damage done in Australia, but the surviving Brits – now grandfathers, sharp of mind but with faces etched by worry, and with their time running out – are still waiting for a public inquiry, for compensation, and for the release of their own full medical records. Answering their questions honestly looks like the least we can do.

 Britain’s Nuclear Bomb Scandal: Our Story aired on BBC Two and is on iPlayer.

November 22, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Australia mistakenly included on list of countries joining US-UK civil nuclear deal, British government says

Albanese government denies media reports it is signing up to collaboration to share advanced nuclear technology

Guardian Adam Morton in Baku and Sarah Basford Canales, 19 Nov 24

The UK government has conceded that Australia was mistakenly included on a list of countries that were expected to sign up to a US-UK civil nuclear deal.

The Albanese government flatly denied media reports on Tuesday that it would join the UK and the US in a collaboration to share advanced nuclear technology. The UK and the US announcement said they would speed up work on “cutting-edge nuclear technology”, including small modular reactors, after inking a deal at the Cop29 UN climate summit in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku.

The UK government’s original media release noted Australia was one of 10 countries “expected” to sign on to the agreement, but mention of Australia was removed a short while later. The other nine countries were also removed…………………………………………………………………..

………… The acting prime minister, Richard Marles, told question time Australia was not signing up to the deal.

“It is an agreement which goes to civil nuclear energy – that means nuclear reactors which provide energy to cities and to electricity grids, and we do not have that in this country, and so as a result … this agreement is not relevant to Australia,” Marles said.

The Australian climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, and the UK minister for energy security and net zero, Ed Miliband, on Tuesday morning in Baku signed a climate and energy partnership to cooperate on renewable energy technology and investment and help “coordinate global climate action under the Paris agreement”. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/19/australia-mistakenly-included-on-list-of-countries-joining-us-uk-civil-nuclear-deal-british-government-says

November 21, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Australian nuclear news headlines 18 – 25 November

Headlines as they come in:

• Submissions to Parliamentary Inquiry into nuclear power generation in Australia – (Part one)
• Coalition-linked nuclear expert questioned by parliament over coal industry ties
• Nuclear is not really back.
• Consultation, full disclosure, and an environmental audit: Nuclear Free Local Authorities’ triple demand of Australian government over nuke sub waste dump down under
• Trump, AUKUS and Australia’s Dim Servitors.
• Signing US/UK nuclear deal would shred Australia’s credibility: Turnbull.
• Britain’s Nuclear Bomb Scandal: Our Story review – how the UK’s atomic testing programme devastated lives.
• Australia mistakenly included on list of countries joining US-UK civil nuclear deal, British government says
• AUKUS will ‘cannibalize’ other programs with no budget boost: Former top Aussie general.
• Albanese government gives firm ‘no’ to joining UK-US agreement to advance nuclear technology
•  Nuclear Propaganda Exposed.   
• Big batteries and EVs to the rescue again as faults with new nuclear plant cause chaos on Nordic grids.   
•  David Crisafulli stares down LNP division on abortion and nuclear power  

November 20, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment