When it comes to power, solar is about to leave nuclear and everything else in the shade
In Australia, solar is pushing down prices
Australia’s energy market operator says record generation from grid-scale renewables and rooftop solar is pushing down wholesale electricity prices.
Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University July 2, 2024 https://theconversation.com/when-it-comes-to-power-solar-is-about-to-leave-nuclear-and-everything-else-in-the-shade-233644
Opposition leader Peter Dutton might have been hoping for an endorsement from economists for his plan to take Australian nuclear.
He shouldn’t expect one from The Economist.
The Economist is a British weekly news magazine that has reported on economic thinking and served as a place for economists to exchange views since 1843.
By chance, just three days after Dutton announced plans for seven nuclear reactors he said would usher in a new era of economic prosperity for Australia, The Economist produced a special issue, titled Dawn of the Solar Age.
Whereas nuclear power is barely growing, and is shrinking as a proportion of global power output, The Economist reported solar power is growing so quickly it is set to become the biggest source of electricity on the planet by the mid-2030s.
By the 2040s – within this next generation – it could be the world’s largest source of energy of any kind, overtaking fossil fuels like coal and oil.
Solar’s off-the-charts global growth
Installed solar capacity is doubling every three years, meaning it has grown tenfold in the past ten years. The Economist says the next tenfold increase will be the equivalent of multiplying the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors by eight, in less time than it usually takes to build one of them.
To give an idea of the standing start the industry has grown from, The Economist reports that in 2004 it took the world an entire year to install one gigawatt of solar capacity (about enough to power a small city). This year, that’s expected to happen every day.
Energy experts didn’t see it coming. The Economist includes a chart showing that every single forecast the International Energy Agency has made for the growth of the growth of solar since 2009 has been wrong. What the agency said would take 20 years happened in only six.
The forecasts closest to the mark were made by Greenpeace – “environmentalists poo-pooed for zealotry and economic illiteracy” – but even those forecasts turned out to be woefully short of what actually happened.
And the cost of solar cells has been plunging in the way that costs usually do when emerging technologies become mainstream.
The Economist describes the process this way:
As the cumulative production of a manufactured good increases, costs go down. As costs go down, demand goes up. As demand goes up, production increases – and costs go down further.
Normally, this can’t continue. In earlier energy transitions – from wood to coal, coal to oil, and oil to gas – it became increasingly expensive to find fuel.
But the main ingredient in solar cells (apart from energy) is sand, for the silicon and the glass. This is not only the case in China, which makes the bulk of the world’s solar cells, but also in India, which is short of power, blessed by sun and sand, and which is manufacturing and installing solar cells at a prodigious rate.
Solar easy, batteries more difficult
Batteries are more difficult. They are needed to make solar useful after dark and they require so-called critical minerals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt (which Australia has in abundance).
But the efficiency of batteries is soaring and the price is plummeting, meaning that on one estimate the cost of a kilowatt-hour of battery storage has fallen by 99% over the past 30 years.
In the United States, plans are being drawn up to use batteries to transport solar energy as well as store it. Why build high-voltage transmission cables when you can use train carriages full of batteries to move power from the remote sunny places that collect it to the cities that need it?
Solar’s step change
The International Energy Agency is suddenly optimistic. Its latest assessment released in January says last year saw a “step change” in renewable power, driven by China’s adoption of solar. In 2023, China installed as much solar capacity as the entire world did in 2022.
The world is on track to install more renewable capacity over the next five years than has ever been installed over the past 100 years, something the agency says still won’t be enough to get to net-zero emissions by 2050.
That would need renewables capacity to triple over the next five years, instead of more than doubling.
Oxford University energy specialist Rupert Way has modelled a “fast transition” scenario, in which the costs of solar and other new technologies keep falling as they have been rather than as the International Energy Agency expects.
He finds that by 2060, solar will be by far the world’s biggest source of energy, exceeding wind and green hydrogen and leaving nuclear with an infinitesimally tiny role.
In Australia, solar is pushing down prices
Australia’s energy market operator says record generation from grid-scale renewables and rooftop solar is pushing down wholesale electricity prices.
South Australia and Tasmania are the states that rely on renewables the most. They are the two states with the lowest wholesale electricity prices outside Victoria, whose prices are very low because of its reliance on brown coal.
It is price – rather than the environment – that most interests The Economist. It says when the price of something gets low people use much, much more of it.
As energy gets really copious and all but free, it will be used for things we can’t even imagine today. The Economist said to bet against that is to bet against capitalism.
Australian nuclear news headlines this week
Too uncertain, too slow: funds rule out financing Dutton nuclear plan. Without a massive grid upgrade, the Coalition’s nuclear plan faces a high-voltage hurdle. Dutton’s claim about G20 nuclear energy use doesn’t add up With its nuclear energy policy, Peter Dutton seems to have forgotten the Liberal Party’s core beliefs. Australia’s ‘carbon budget’ may blow out by 40% under the Coalition’s nuclear energy plan – and that’s the best-case scenario. Liberal National Party to debate nuclear despite ‘intriguing’ omission from Queensland state convention. Nuclear sidelined at LNP ‘unity’ convention (The Australian) . Dick Smith enters nuclear debate but CSIRO analysis shows his argument in meltdown. Australian conservation groups slam Federal Coalition’s “nuclear fantasy” plan as “a poison pill” When it comes to power, solar is about to leave nuclear and everything else in the shade. If you don’t know, vote ‘No’ to Dutton’s nuclear plan,
ALSO. Australians being kept in the dark about Pine Gap expansion. Australia to build ‘top-secret’ cloud for intelligence agencies in $2bn deal with Amazon. No House? Two-party Senate squeeze on cross-bench locks in Defence spending debacle.
The State Failed to Break Assange
Julian Assange has not been freed, passive voice, the beneficiary of decisions taken by the American and British judiciaries — and almost certainly in the Biden regime’s upper reaches. Julian Assange has achieved his freedom, actively. Even during the darkest moments of his years under house arrest, in asylum at Ecuador’s London embassy, and at Belmarsh, he never surrendered his sovereignty. He remained ever the captain of his soul, and never did he allow his captors entry onto his ship.
SCHEERPOST, JULY 1, 2024 Patrick Lawrence
After apparently lengthy negotiations via Julian Assange’s attorneys, the WikiLeaks founder agreed to plead guilty to one felony charge of illegally obtaining and publishing U.S. government documents of various kinds — many standing as evidence of war crimes and human rights abuses, others exposing the Democratic Party’s corruptions during the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Assange was sentenced Wednesday to a term of five years and two months, precisely the time he spent at Belmarsh, the maximum-security prison in southeast London. It was from Belmarsh that Assange fought requests for his extradition to the U.S., where he would have faced multiple charges and a lengthy sentence under the 1917 Espionage Act. When he departed for Australia at the conclusion of the proceeding in Saipan, the largest of the Northern Marianas and also the capital city, he became a free man for the first time in 14 years, counting from his time under house arrest in 2010.
Let us take the utmost care with our diction at this surprising and welcome turn. This will enable us to fathom the moment clearly.
Julian Assange has not been freed, passive voice, the beneficiary of decisions taken by the American and British judiciaries — and almost certainly in the Biden regime’s upper reaches. Julian Assange has achieved his freedom, actively. Even during the darkest moments of his years under house arrest, in asylum at Ecuador’s London embassy, and at Belmarsh, he never surrendered his sovereignty. He remained ever the captain of his soul, and never did he allow his captors entry onto his ship.
It was for this, most fundamentally, that Assange has suffered these past years, especially the five he spent in a cell at Belmarsh. The project was precisely to destroy his sovereignty, to break him one way or another, and he refused to break. His will — and I simply cannot imagine the awesome muscularity of it — has seen him through to victory.
When news of his impending freedom arrived with us last Monday evening, I reacted without hesitation, “It is not a bad deal. Everyone knows the truth and worth of what Assange did. Nothing lost. A good man’s life hung in the balance — this a gain.”
“Everyone” seems already an overestimation, but I will get to this in a moment.
Among the curious details of Assange’s plea is the choice of the federal courthouse in the Northern Marianas, a U.S. possession, for the denouement of his case. Assange’s legal team requested this peculiar location, let us not miss. It is remote from the U.S. mainland but close to his native Australia. There are two things to surmise from this, I think.
One, it is likely Assange’s attorneys thought it a very bad idea for their client to set foot on American soil anywhere near the court in Washington’s environs where cases of this kind, national-security cases, are customarily tried — tried before jurors drawn from a pool well populated with active and retired national security operatives, bureaucrats and assorted apparatchiks.
That the locale for the final settlement was negotiated away from the District Court of Eastern Virginia indicates that Assange’s lawyers remained mistrustful of U.S. assurances of a fair treatment under the law even while their talks proceeded.
Two, and the larger point here, moving the case to so out-of-the-way a courtroom indicated that Assange and his legal defense almost certainly had considerable leverage in determining the terms under which he achieved his freedom. This tells us something important about the years Assange spent at Belmarsh subjected to disgracefully punitive conditions and the circus various judges, Vanessa Baraitser high among them, made of the British courts.
I have long assumed, as many others may have, that the Biden regime and its predecessor simply did not want Assange extradited because it did not want to take up a trial that would more or less automatically lead to a sentence of 170 years. Too potentially messy, too politically risky, too harsh a light on this administration’s hypocrisies in the matter of press freedom and its indifference to, if not its approval of, the British authorities’ inhumane treatment of a man whose organization exposed war crimes.
How else to explain the lengthy delays in the London courts these past five years? And I cannot but think with something close to conviction that the corporate press in America, chiefly The New York Times, had some modest voice in the decision to negotiate a plea that reflects to some extent the Assange side’s terms?
The Times has avoided serious reporting of the Assange case for years. Embarrassing it would have been for the paper to report proceedings in Eastern Virginia, as it would have been obliged to do. We all remember that The Times made full use of WikiLeaks releases until, in April 2017, Mike Pompeo denounced Assange as “a state actor of Russia.” It was at that point Washington turned frontally against the organization and its founder, and the corporate press dutifully followed the lead of Trump’s egregious secretary of state.
The Biden regime has managed at last to drop a hot potato, but it is a stretch to assume it has not burned its fingers. As others have remarked, it could have vacated its case entirely and, indeed, gone so far as to offer Assange compensation for his suffering while facing unjust charges.
That would have marked a dramatic redemption. Instead, it leaves the door still wide open to pursuing cases such as Assange’s whenever a reporter’s truths are similarly inconvenient. This is self-inflicted damage atop years of self-inflicted damage, in my read. The Biden government’s exit from this case more or less mutilates any claim it will henceforth assert to respect press freedom and First Amendment rights.
Sheer Endurance
I measure the magnitude of Julian Assange’s triumph not in passing political terms, although the politics of his achievement of freedom are important. I view it in more personal terms. His greatest victory lies in the strength and sheer endurance he summoned and consistently displayed as the machinery of two sovereign states attempted to destroy him.
Several years ago, readers will recall, Nils Melzer testified in Baraitser’s court that Assange’s treatment met official definitions of psychological and physical torture. Not long after the U.N.’s special rapporteur on torture gave his testimony, I began an essay on the Assange case for Raritan, the cultural and political journal. It came to me as I wrote “Assange Behind Glass,” which I reproduce here from my web site archives, that we had to see it in the context of the “total domination” Hannah Arendt explored in The Origins of Totalitarianism, her look back, in 1951, at the horrors of the 20th century’s first half. “Its intent is to strip humanity of all identity and individuation,” I wrote of Arendt’s theme. And from her text:……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
…………….Are there undisclosed codicils attaching to the Assange’s camp’s plea agreement? Will his professional activities henceforth be curtailed by agreement? These are inevitable questions, even if one does not care to pose them. The answers are unclear and may never be clear. Out of respect and admiration for a man who has just won his freedom after paying a very high price in his fight for it, I leave these matters to him and those around him. https://scheerpost.com/2024/07/01/patrick-lawrence-the-state-failed-to-break-assange/
Dutton’s Nuclear ‘Thuggery’ Will Heat Up Debate And Energy Prices, But It Won’t Cool The Climate
An uncooperative Senate could block Dutton’s nuclear power plans, but could not stop him expanding and prolonging the use of fossil fuels and derailing the renewable energy transition.
Only voters can do that.
Jim Green on July 2, 2024, https://newmatilda.com/2024/07/02/duttons-nuclear-thuggery-will-heat-up-debate-and-energy-prices-but-it-wont-cool-the-climate/
Bullying your way to nuclear power might play out well in the Liberal-National Party room, but it’s unlikely to win favour with the states, or the punters, writes Dr Jim Green.
Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull famously described Coalition leader Peter Dutton as a “thug”. That description appears particularly apt in Dutton’s nuclear power plans.
The Coalition’s nuclear project is opposed by state Labor governments in each of the five states being targeted. Victoria, NSW and Queensland have laws banning nuclear power. The Labor governments in SA and WA may follow suit if they think state legislation will give them some legal protection, or political advantage. Or both.
Could a Dutton Coalition government override state laws banning nuclear power? Anne Twomey, a Sydney University Professor Emerita with lengthy experience teaching and practising in constitutional law, argues that states probably could not prevent the Commonwealth establishing a nuclear power plant, nor could they prevent necessary associated operations such as transmission lines and nuclear waste transport.
Would a Dutton Coalition government attempt to override state opposition to nuclear power plants? Almost certainly it would. Nationals leader David Littleproud said in March that “if the Australian people vote for us that’s a fair indication to premiers that they should get out of the way”.
Coalition and Labor federal governments have pursued attempts to impose a national nuclear waste dump in SA and the NT despite state/territory laws banning such facilities. Those attempts have all failed, largely due to community opposition led by affected Traditional Owners.
Legal challenges helped stop three of the four proposed nuclear dump sites — Woomera (SA) under the Howard government; Muckaty (NT) under the Abbott government; and Kimba (SA) under the Morrison and Albanese governments. But the legal difficulties could have been overcome if the government of the day was ruthless enough and wasn’t suffering too much political pain because of its racist, undemocratic thuggery.
No doubt a Dutton Coalition government would ignore the wishes of Traditional Owners and Native Title holders opposed to the construction of a nuclear reactor on their country. They would be stripped of their land rights and heritage protections, as has been the case with nuclear waste dump proposals.
Compulsory acquisition
What about the companies who own the sites being targeted by the Coalition for nuclear power plants, and who have their own multi-billion dollar plans to develop their own clean energy industrial hubs based around renewables. According to energy minister Chris Bowen, six of the owners of the seven targeted sites have ruled out agreeing to nuclear power reactors on their land.
Dutton hasn’t bothered to consult these companies, but he has sought legal advice. This is what he said: “We will work with the companies, the owners of the sites. If we find a situation where we apply a national interest test and we require that site to be part of the national grid, then the legal advice that we have is that the Commonwealth has ample power to compulsorily acquire that with ample compensation.”
The Coalition also hasn’t bothered to consult communities around the sites targeted for nuclear reactors. And, like state governments and the owners of the targeted sites, opposition from local communities will be overridden.
Nationals deputy leader Perin Davey made the mistake of saying that the Coalition would not impose nuclear power plants on communities that were adamantly opposed. Davey was corrected by Littleproud, who said: “She is not correct and we made this very clear. Peter Dutton and David Littleproud as part of a Coalition government are prepared to make the tough decisions in the national interest.”
Likewise, Dutton said: “Perin I think made a mistake yesterday as everybody does from time to time…. We’ve identified the seven locations and we believe it’s in the community’s interests and the national interest to proceed.”
Democracy is for wimps, apparently, and for traitors who oppose the ‘national interest’ as Comrades Dutton and Littleproud see it.
All this stands in stark contrast to a 2019 parliamentary inquiry led by current shadow energy minister Ted O’Brien. The Committee’s report was titled ‘Not without your approval: a way forward for nuclear technology in Australia’.
Announcing the release of the parliamentary report, O’Brien said in 2019 that a future government should only proceed with nuclear power on the condition that it make “a commitment to community consent as a condition of approval for any nuclear power or nuclear waste disposal facility”. He also waffled on about “maintaining a social license based on trust and transparency” and putting the Australian people “at the centre of any approval process”.
That was then, this is now. The ‘national interest’ is at stake.
Prof. Anne Twomey notes that the Dutton government would need to get legislation through Parliament, including the Senate, both to repeal federal laws banning nuclear power and also “to provide any necessary legal support and protection for a nuclear power industry in Australia”.
An uncooperative Senate could block Dutton’s nuclear power plans, but could not stop him expanding and prolonging the use of fossil fuels and derailing the renewable energy transition. Only voters can do that.
South Australia
Here in SA, we’ll get one or more nuclear power reactors in SA whether we like it or not and whether or not we need the additional power supply. SA has gone from 1 percent renewable electricity supply to 74 percent over the past 16 years and the government aims to reach 100 percent net renewables by 2027.
While there’s doubt about the 2027 timeline, it’s a safe bet we’ll reach 100 percent net renewables by the time a nuclear reactor could possibly begin generating electricity 20-plus years from now.
The Northern Power Station near Port Augusta, one of the seven sites targeted by the Coalition, was shut down in 2016 and the region has since become a renewables hub. Are Dutton and O’Brien unaware of these developments? Are they planning a renewables-to-nuclear transition for SA? It’s difficult to see their non-negotiable plan for a nuclear power plant in SA as anything other than an ill-conceived, uncosted thought bubble.
The Coalition insists that nuclear power would reduce power bills. But there’s no evidence to support that claim, and plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise. The claim isn’t supported by CSIRO’s ‘GenCost’ report; or in a recent report prepared for the Clean Energy Council by Egis, a leading global consulting, construction and engineering firm; or in a recent report on small modular reactors by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis; or in the latest economic analysis released by investment firm Lazard.
SA Premier Peter Malinauskas isn’t convinced about the Coalition’s economic claims either, saying: “Every single objective, independent analysis that has looked at this has said nuclear power would make power more expensive in Australia rather than cheaper. Why we would impose that burden on power consumers in our country is completely beyond me.”
* Dr Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and co-author of a new report released by the Australian Conservation Foundation, ‘Power Games: Assessing coal to nuclear proposals in Australia’.
“They just fit in with what we do:” Farmers reap rewards as they play host to wind and solar
ReNewEconomy Liv Casben, Jun 29, 2024
Renewables in agriculture are gaining momentum across the nation as Australia pushes to reach its net-zero emissions target by 2050.
Australia’s energy market operator has declared renewables as the most cost-effective way of reaching net-zero targets in the grid, but just how much of the load will be carried by the farming sector remains unclear.
Across pockets of the nation, farmers are already doing their bit to reduce their carbon footprint.
“Anecdotally, we have seen a huge increase in farmers seeking renewables projects as farmers seek to increase the productivity of their farms,” Farmers for Climate Action’s Natalie Collard told AAP.
“Renewables offer drought-proof income, and drought-proof income keeps farms going through the toughest of times.”
The Lee family has farmed at Glenrowan West for 150 years, but for the past three years they’ve also added solar to the mix.
A German-based company leases the land from the Lees and maintains the solar panels, which run alongside the sheep farming operation.
“The lessee basically runs it just as another paddock, the sheep go in just as they would under any other farming operation,” Gayle Lee said. “We haven’t found there to be any noticeable loss of production.”
……………………………………………………. Karin Stark, who will host the annual Renewables in Agriculture conference in Toowoomba next week, says consultation is key to farmers playing a “critical role” in the renewables transition and keeping everyone happy…………… more https://reneweconomy.com.au/they-just-fit-in-with-what-we-do-farmers-reap-rewards-as-they-play-host-to-wind-and-solar/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0qML5s3XgsQ3EZd5pJl15CdGXQ60-BC3TLkIVpcaWkgLsBSarHkHoPUYI_aem_OC5kzgz0cTiwWtnLVva56A
The Coalition’s nuclear fantasy serves short-term political objectives – and its fossil fuel backers
This is the truth at the heart of the Coalition’s latest climate fantasy: it gives people concerned about the speed and impact of the energy transition an alternative reality where this change doesn’t have to happen.
This is the truth at the heart of the Coalition’s latest climate fantasy: it gives people concerned about the speed and impact of the energy transition an alternative reality where this change doesn’t have to happen.
Dutton’s policy latches on to genuine concerns about power prices and disruption evident in the latest Guardian Essential report, but what are its real motivations?
Peter Lewis, 2 July 24 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/02/coalition-nuclear-policy-peter-dutton-power-plants
In 1959 the US government hatched a covert scheme to replace every single bird with a replicant surveillance drone to spy on its own citizens. This is only the second silliest theory flying around the internet right now.
Peter Dutton’s make-believe nuclear plan bears some of the hallmarks of Peter McIndoe’s actual piss-take, “Birds Aren’t Real”, which became so real he wound up doing interviews with Fox News and running large-scale community rallies where only some of the participants were chanting his nonsense slogan ironically.
There’s not too great a distance from ‘bird truthers’ to the Coalition’s latest permutation of fossil-fuelled climate skepticism.
In a world where information is driven by platform algorithms designed to maximise attention and reinforce existing prejudices, any theory can find a home; the crazier and louder the claims, the more likely they are to take off.
This is the truth at the heart of the Coalition’s latest climate fantasy: it gives people concerned about the speed and impact of the energy transition an alternative reality where this change doesn’t have to happen.
As this week’s Guardian Essential Report shows, support for renewable energy is contested. Lining up renewables, nuclear and fossil fuels, we found a lack of consensus on price, environmental impact and economic consequence.
While renewables are seen as the best energy source for the environment and most desirable overall, fossil fuels are seen as cheaper and better for jobs. It is here that the Coalition’s nuclear fantasy plays a critical bridging role.
The rollout of the renewable energy grid is a genuinely disruptive development; coal communities genuinely fear for their long-term economic future; consumers genuinely feel power prices rising as the rollout of renewables gathers momentum.
Coalition energy spokesperson Ted O’Brien is tasked with convincing those who have genuine concerns that if they just embrace nuclear, they can stop all these things they don’t like and still hit net zero by 2050.
Just like the bird conspiracy, this nuclear policy isn’t real: it has no scope, no production estimate, no costings, no timeline. But it’s a device that serves a flock of short-term political objectives.
It creates a reason to delay decommissioning coal and gas because, like magic, nuclear will provide a short cut. That’s good for the LNP’s fossil fuel backers and communities that rely on the production of these energy sources.
It offers hope to coal communities that they can become home to a new heavy industry. While critics of nuclear can make fun of the three-headed fish near the Springfield, the truth is Homer Simpson enjoyed the sort of secure job these communities fear will soon disappear.
And it sends a message to every regional community that they might not need to host the new renewable energy grid that is being rolled out. Because if you have a choice between looking out across a valley or looking out across power lines, who wouldn’t take the valley?
The problem for the Albanese government is that while each of these justifications is patently false, attacking them head-on risks a rerun of the voice referendum dynamic where “two sides” reporting creates a false equivalence that ends up defining the contest as a coin toss.
Exacerbating this challenge is the fact that fewer people trust the main proponents of the energy transition – the government and energy companies. Instead, trust is anchored at the level of the local.
The only people we really trust are those who we know personally – our friends and family and members of our community. Which raises the question, who do the people we trust get their information from? Perversely, the answer can only be “us”.
As McIndoe riffs in a hilarious piece of performance media: “Just because it’s a theory doesn’t mean its fake. It’s on the media, you can find it … Truth is subjective … There’s different proof out there for different things and if you do your research, you just might find it.”
Given this environment, the choice for Labor is whether to get dragged into a nuclear showdown where alternate facts will be wished into existence or simply dismiss the whole charade as the piece of political theatre it is.
A final question in this week’s report suggests the more effective way of confronting the nuclear “debate” is what disinformation experts call “pre-bunking” by calling out the opposition’s real motivations.
These findings show that half the electorate – and nearly two-thirds of young people – will reject the idea that this is a legitimate debate at all. Taking these people out of the equation before embarking on any merit analysis drastically reduces the number of votes in play.
Rather than trading economic models or platforming nuclear safety fears, the best approach might actually be the most honest one: to drag nuclear back into the political swamp from which it has risen.
First, expose the interests that will benefit from Dutton’s nuclear fantasy. Put the spotlight on the fossil fuel and nuclear players, who runs them, where they converge, who they pay to keep their dream alive and how much they stand to make by delaying the energy transition for a couple more decades.
Second, take away the oxygen for nuclear by doing the hard work required to build social licence for renewables, responding to legitimate concerns by giving communities a greater say in the way development occurs and how both costs and benefits are distributed.
Finally, turn the opposition to renewables back on to the LNP. While the political opportunism of the Dutton nuclear play is obvious, there are also risks that this decision comes to define not just him as a leader, but his entire political apparatus.
In a world where younger generations just want to get on with the job of addressing climate change, a major political party is walking away from this challenge in the interests of its corporate masters.
That’s the real conspiracy. And it’s not just a theory.
- Peter Lewis is the executive director of Essential and host of Per Capita’s Burning Platforms podcast
Does the nuclear ‘plan’ add up? Australia’s carbon emissions under the Coalition’s proposal
Professor Clive Hamilton, 2 July 24, https://news.csu.edu.au/latest-news/does-the-nuclear-plan-add-up-australias-carbon-emissions-under-the-coalitions-proposal
The recent proposed nuclear power plan announcement by the federal Opposition prompted a Charles Sturt University climate change analyst and a colleague to model the necessary energy sources implied by the plan. They found that it doesn’t add up.
- A Charles Sturt University analysis of the Opposition’s nuclear power proposal finds that relying on nuclear power to attain net zero by 2050 would require four times as many nuclear power plants to be built in the 2040s as the Coalition currently plans
- The analysis indicates that the increasing reliance on gas generation implied under the Coalition’s plan would result in Australia having much higher carbon emissions through to 2050 than under the current renewables roll-out trajectory
- The analysis indicates that slowing the pace of the renewables roll-out implied or stated by the Coalition would have a severe negative impact on the renewables industries but would be a major boost to the gas industry
The recent proposed nuclear power plan announcement by the federal Opposition prompted a Charles Sturt University climate change analyst and a colleague to model the necessary energy sources implied by the plan. They found that it doesn’t add up.
Charles Sturt University Vice-Chancellor’s Chair of Public Ethics Professor Clive Hamilton and colleague the highly respected energy expert Dr George Wilkenfeld have analysed the implications for Australia’s emissions path of the Coalition’s nuclear plan and how it might help to meet the commitment to net zero by 2050.
The Coalition announced that it plans to commission seven nuclear power stations by 2050 and said it would abandon the government’s 2030 target of reducing the nation’s emissions by 43 per cent (compared with 2005 levels).
Professor Hamilton said their analysis shows that the Coalition’s nuclear strategy, if it met its stated aims, would see nuclear plants account for approximately 12 per cent of total electricity generation by 2050.
“The slowed pace of the renewables roll-out implied or stated by the Coalition would result in renewables supplying 49 per cent of total supply, compared with 98 per cent under Labor’s plan, and gas generation supplying approximately 39 per cent, compared with two per cent under Labor’s plan,” he said.
“It would likely have a severe negative impact on the renewables industries but would be a boon to the gas industry.
“With high continued supply of electricity from gas under the Coalition’s plan, attaining net zero emissions by 2050 would be out of the question.”
Professor Hamilton said the modelling indicates that attaining net zero by 2050 would require four times as many nuclear power plants to be built in the 2040s as the Coalition currently plans.
“Under Labor’s renewables plan, Australia’s electricity emissions are expected to decline year on year until they reach almost zero on 2050,” he said.
“Under the Coalition’s plan for nuclear power, a declining emphasis on renewables and an unavoidably greater role for fossil fuels means emissions from the electricity sector in 2050 would be nearly 19 times higher than under Labor’s plan.”
The full analysis was published in Renew Economy on Thursday 27 June.
‘No one serious takes their plan seriously’: PM on nuclear power
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese blasts Liberal MP Ted O’Brien over his question on the affordability of energy.
“Implicit in that question from the Member for Fairfax is that if we just have a nuclear reactor in every state in every electorate sometime in the 2040s, it’ll all be fixed,” Mr Albanese said at Question time on Monday.
“No one seriously takes their plans seriously because it’s done on the back of a beer coaster without any cost, without any detail, and without any substance.”
Nuclear more costly and could ‘sound the death knell’ for Australia’s decarbonisation efforts, report says
Analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance says even if nuclear is successfully implemented it would be ‘at least four times’ more expensive than average cost of renewables
Peter Hannam Economics correspondent, Fri 28 Jun 2024
A nuclear-powered Australian economy would result in higher-cost electricity and would “sound the death knell” for decarbonisation efforts if it distracts from renewables investment, a report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) argues.
The report comes as ANZ forecast September quarter power prices will dive as much as 30% once government rebates kick in. A separate review by the market watchdog has found household energy bills were 14% lower because of last year’s rebates.
BNEF said the federal opposition’s plan to build nuclear power stations on seven sites required “a slow and challenging” effort to overturn existing bans in at least three states, for starters.
Even if they succeeded, the levelised cost of electricity – a standard industry measure – would be far higher for nuclear power than renewables. Taking existing nuclear industries in western nations into account, their cost would still be “at least four times greater than the average” for Australian wind and solar plants firmed up with storage today, Bloomberg said…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. more https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/28/nuclear-energy-report-australia-expensive-decarbonisation-renewables
Nuclear news to 2nd July
Some bits of good news –Nature restoration, rewilding and battery innovations: Positive environmental stories from 2024 A Living Seed Bank Is Preserving the Amazon’s Incredible Plants.
UK activists won a ‘stunning’ victory against big oil.
TOP STORIES
Julian Assange Is Finally Free, But Let’s Not Forget the War Crimes He Exposed. Julian Assange: Free at last, but guilty of practicing journalism. ‘Julian Assange Is Free’: WikiLeaks Founder Strikes Plea Deal With US. https://www.youtube.com/embed/4DF_Ag8NWeI?si=O-gRYvFVhtIaWfrG Assange Is Free, But US Spite Will Chill Reporting for Years.
Most important issue facing US, world, largely absent from presidential debate.
Save Ukraine from American meddling.
The Suspect Body Count: The Death Toll in Gaza is Much Higher Than We’re Being Told
From the archives. The persecution of Wilfred Burchett and Julian Assange.
Climate. Wildfires ravaging Arctic Circle – EU monitor. Deaths mount as Pakistan swelters in heatwave. Newly identified tipping point for ice sheets could mean greater sea level rise.
Noel’s notes. Australia’s Liberal-National Party really communist – wants a NATIONALISED NUCLEAR industry! The Assange case – a win for journalism? Sort of. Time to abandon the hypocrisy about Israel’s nuclear weapons – they are now a perilous target.
AUSTRALIA. Heaps of media about Peter Dutton’s plan to set up government-run-and funded nuclear industry – see all the article links at FROM 25 JUNE THE MOST RECENT AUSTRALIAN NUCLEAR NEWS.
The Coalition’s nuclear fantasy serves short-term political objectives – and its fossil fuel backers. Hidden costs? Cheaper energy? ‘Farcical’ locations? Debunking the hype around nuclear. How the media facilitates Dutton’s nuclear lies.
LABOR AGAINST WAR says nuclear power and nuclear submarines and their wastes should have no part in Australia. Nuclear option ‘not enough’ to avoid rush for more wind and solar. Nuclear more costly and could ‘sound the death knell’ for Australia’s decarbonisation efforts, report says.
Defence Minister Richard Marles takes on reality, comes off second-best in growing Thales scandal.
More news about Julian Assange – at Julian Assange News.
………………………………………………………………
NUCLEAR ISSUES
| CLIMATE. Climate-Nuclear Nexus. | CIVIL LIBERTIES. The State Failed to Break Assange |
ECONOMICS.
- Australian Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s nuclear plan could cost as much as $600bn and supply just 3.7% of Australia’s energy by 2050, experts say.
- Nuclear power’s financial problems exposed in new report. Very late and over budget:
- Why newest large nuclear plant in US is likely to be the last.
- UK’s nuclear plant will cost nearly three times what was estimated.
| More ECONOMICS. CEO, staff suddenly depart New Brunswick reactor developer ARC Clean Technology. | EDUCATION. Small Modular Nuclear Reactors cost concerns challenge industry optimism. | ENERGY. “They just fit in with what we do:” Australian farmers reap rewards as they play host to wind and solar. Big Tech is turning to nuclear power because it needs more energy for AI. |
| ENVIRONMENT. The $91 billion wasted on nuclear weapons last year could transform ecosystem restoration. | EVENTS. Confronting NATO’s War Summit in Washington – 6 July | HISTORY. How Israel Became a Nuclear Power. |
| LEGAL. Why cost should not be an obstacle to compensating nuclear survivors Why WikiLeaks founder will plead guilty – and what happens next. | MEDIA. The Release of Julian Assange: Plea Deals and Dark Legacies. Webinar # 7 June 20, 2024 – What’s the harm? Julian Assange is finally free, but no thanks to the media. Radiation, Radioactive Emissions and Health. | OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR . A vigil behind bars: pair who protested US nuclear bombs in Germany serving time. Greenpeace activist climbs on top of Conservative election campaign bus. Uranium and the Grand Canyon – A Call to Close and Cleanup the Pinyon Plains Uranium Mine. |
| POLITICS. Congress’s Nuclear Addiction. U.S. Congress Votes To Bar State Department From Citing Gazan Health Ministry. Australia: Peter Dutton’s nuclear power plans are an ironic backflip to nationalisation for the Liberal Party. UK Election: A Different Kind of Nuclear Bomb. Nuclear weapons spending report reveals corporate intervention in UK nuclear policy – CND. Labour plans for nuclear expansion in Scotland are flying under the radar ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2024/06/30/2-b1-labour-plans-for-nuclear-expansion-in-scotland-are-flying-under-radar/ | POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. Iran Says Cooperation With UN Nuclear Watchdog Limited to Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The Australian Opposition party’s nuclear strategy relies on Trump winning the USA election, and tearing up global climate politics. |
| SAFETY. What does Chevron mean for nuclear? The USA courts can now supercede the safety role of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Scary truths on civilian nuclear power are coming to the fore. UK’s Nuclear weapons pose a risk to proposed new homes. | SECRETS and LIES. UK government hires scandal-ridden Fujitsu company to account and track its nuclear waste!. | SPINBUSTER. Complete BS from the IAEA about the non-existent “global consensus” on nuclear power. |
| TECHNOLOGY. Do thorium reactors prevent nuclear weapons proliferation risks? | WASTES. Japan starts 7th discharge of Fukushima nuclear-contaminated wastewater despite opposition. |
| WAR and CONFLICT. Unable to back down, Israel and Hezbollah move closer to all-out war. Israeli Defense Minister Vows to Return Lebanon to ‘Stone Age’. Israel’s main goal is the extermination of Palestinians – retired NATO colonel . Ukraine hit Russia’s space communications and early warning center. IDF Report Found Multiple Cases of Friendly Fire Deaths on Oct 7. The Nordic region from peace zone to war zone – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LahVN_wmftU Ukraine hit Russia’s space communications and early warning center. IDF Report Found Multiple Cases of Friendly Fire Deaths on Oct 7. WAR OR PEACE: Towards a Ukrainian Peace or a Direct NATO-Russian War. How far can American money push the Kiev regime’s suicidal war with Russia? | WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES. Test site activity sparks fears of more nuclear blasts. The US nuclear arms control community needs a strategic plan. US can’t trace $62 million of military aid sent to Ukraine – watchdog.. |
The Release of Julian Assange: Plea Deals and Dark Legacies
It ultimately goes to the brutal exercise of US extraterritorial power against any publisher, irrespective of outlet and irrespective of nationality…………….. the measure extracts a pound of flesh from the fourth estate. It signals that the United States can and will seek out those who obtain and publish national security information that they would rather keep under wraps under spurious notions of “harm”.
June 27, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark https://theaimn.com/the-release-of-julian-assange-plea-deals-and-dark-legacies-2/
One of the longest sagas of political persecution is coming to its terminus. That is, if you believe in final chapters. Nothing about the fate of Julian Assange seems determinative. His accusers and inquisitors will draw some delight at the plea deal reached between the WikiLeaks founder’s legal team and the US Department of Justice. Others, such as former US Vice President, Mike Pence, thought it unjustifiably lenient.
Alleged to have committed 18 offences, 17 novelly linked to the odious Espionage Act, the June 2020 superseding indictment against Assange was a frontal assault on the freedoms of publishing and discussing classified government information. At this writing, Assange has arrived in Saipan, located in the US commonwealth territory of Northern Mariana Islands in the Western Pacific, to face a fresh indictment. It was one of Assange’s conditions that he would not present himself in any court in the United States proper, where, with understandable suspicion, he might legally vanish.
As correspondence between the US Department of Justice and US District Court Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona reveals, the “proximity of this federal US District Court to the defendant’s country of citizenship, Australia, to which we expect he will return at the conclusion of proceedings” was also a factor.
Before the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, he will plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information under the Espionage Act of 1917, or section 793(g) (Title 18, USC). The felony carries a fine up to $10,000 and/or up to 10 years in prison, though Assange’s time in Belmarsh Prison, spent on remand for some 62 months, will meet the bar.
The felony charge sheet alleges that Assange knowingly and unlawfully conspired with US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, then based at Operating Base Hammer in Iraq, to receive and obtain documents, writings and notes, including those of a secret nature, relating to national defence, wilfully communicated those documents from persons with lawful possession of or access to them to those not entitled to receive them, and do the same from persons unauthorised to possess such documents.
Before turning to the grave implications of this single count and the plea deal, supporters of Assange, including his immediate family, associates and those who had worked with him and drunk from the same well of publishing, had every reason to feel a surreal sense of intoxication. WikiLeaks announced Assange’s departure from London’s Belmarsh Prison on the morning of June 24 after a 1,901 day stint, his grant of bail by the High Court in London, and his release at Stansted Airport. Wife Stella regularly updated followers about the course of flight VJ199. In coverage posted of his arrival at the federal court house in Saipan, she pondered “how overloaded his senses must be, walking through the press scrum after years of sensory depravation and the four walls” of his Belmarsh cell.
As for the plea deal itself, it is hard to fault it from the emotional and personal perspective of Assange and his family. He was ailing and being subjected to a slow execution by judicial process. It was also the one hook upon which the DOJ, and the Biden administration, might move on. This being an election year in the US, the last thing President Biden wanted was a haunting reminder of this nasty saga of political persecution hovering over freedom land’s virtues.
There was another, rather more sordid angle, and one that the DOJ had to have kept in mind in thinning the charge sheet: a proper Assange trial would have seen the murderous fantasies of the CIA regarding the publisher subject to scrutiny. These included various possible measures: abduction, rendition, even assassination, points thoroughly explored in a Yahoo News contribution in September 2021.
One of the authors of the piece, Zach Dorfman, posted a salient reminder as news of the plea deal filtered through that many officials during the Trump administration, even harsh critics of Assange, “thought [CIA Director Mike] Pompeo’s extraordinary rendition plots foolhardy in the extreme, and probably illegal. They also – critically – thought it might harm Assange’s prosecution.” Were Pompeo’s stratagems to come to light, “it would make the discovery process nightmarish for the prosecution, should Assange ever see trial.”
From the perspective of publishers, journalists and scribblers keen to keep the powerful accountable, the plea must be seen as enormously troubling. It ultimately goes to the brutal exercise of US extraterritorial power against any publisher, irrespective of outlet and irrespective of nationality. While the legal freight and prosecutorial heaviness of the charges was reduced dramatically (62 months seems sweetly less imposing than 175 years), the measure extracts a pound of flesh from the fourth estate. It signals that the United States can and will seek out those who obtain and publish national security information that they would rather keep under wraps under spurious notions of “harm”.
Assange’s conviction also shores up the crude narrative adopted from the moment WikiLeaks began publishing US national security and diplomatic files: such activities could not be seen as journalistic, despite their role in informing press commentary or exposing the venal side of power through leaks.
From the lead prosecuting attorney Gordon Kromberg to such British judges as Vanessa Baraitser; from the national security commentariat lodged in the media stable to any number of politicians, including the late California Democrat Dianne Feinstein to the current President Joe Biden, Assange was not of the fourth estate and deserved his mobbing. He gave the game away. He pilfered and stole the secrets of empire.
To that end, the plea deal makes a mockery of arguments and effusive declarations that the arrangement is somehow a victory for press freedom. It suggests the opposite: that anyone publishing US national security information by a leaker or whistleblower is imperilled. While the point was never tested in court, non-US publishers may be unable to avail themselves of the free speech protections of the First Amendment. The Espionage Act, for the first time in history, has been given a global, tentacular reach, made a weapon against publishers outside the United States, paving the way for future prosecutions.
Richard Marles takes on reality, comes off second-best in growing Thales scandal
Is the defence minister right when he says his department handles contracts just fine? A long list of critical reports shows that’s garbage.
Crikey BERNARD KEANE, JUL 01, 2024
“I don’t think that there is a systemic issue within Defence in relation to the way in which defence contracts are managed” – .Defence Minister Richard Marles, June 30, 2024
The scandal around the Department of Defence’s $1.3 billion munitions factory contract with Thales gained an extra dimension late last week. French television reported the French arms company was raided by police in France, the Netherlands and Spain over two investigations: one into bribery concerning submarines and a naval base in Brazil; the other into “similar offences linked to the sale of military and civilian equipment abroad”.Defence-Thales scandal heads for corruption watchdog.…………………………………… (Subscribers only) more https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/07/01/richard-marles-defence-contract-thales-scandal/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1719808494
Labor gains in Newspoll as Australians narrowly oppose the Coalition’s nuclear energy plan
Adrian Beaumont, The Conversation, 1 July 24
Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne
A national Newspoll, conducted June 24–28 from a sample of 1,260 people, gave Labor a 51–49% lead over the Coalition, a one-point gain for Labor since the previous Newspoll, three weeks ago. Primary votes were 36% Coalition (down three), 32% Labor (down one), 13% Greens (up two), 7% One Nation (steady) and 12% for all others (up two).
…………………………………..Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s net approval slumped six points to -16, his lowest since October 2023. Albanese led Dutton by an unchanged 46–38% as better PM.
By 45–42%, voters disapproved of the Coalition’s “plans to build nuclear reactors in Australia on seven sites of current and former coal-fired power stations before 2050”.
Controversy over the nuclear plans has probably boosted Labor in two-party terms, despite the continued cost of living pressures hurting Albanese’s ratings.
Resolve poll on nuclear power
A national Resolve poll for Nine newspapers, conducted after Dutton’s nuclear plan announcement (June 20–23) from a sample of 1,003 people, had voters supporting nuclear power by 41–37%. In a more open question, 32% (down four since February) said they supported nuclear power, 28% were opposed (up five) and 30% (up three) did not have a strong view, but were open to investigating it.
Renewables, in general, had a net likeability of +66, nuclear-powered electricity +8 and coal-powered electricity +2.
Asked to choose between “Labor’s plan to use 100% renewables (supported by gas for the next decade or two)” and “the Coalition’s plan to use nuclear power and some gas to support the renewables”, voters backed Labor’s plan by 43–33%.
Essential poll: Labor’s first lead since April
A national Essential poll, conducted June 12–16 from a sample of 1,181 people, gave Labor a 48–46% lead including undecided after a 48–48% tie in early June.
This is Labor’s first lead in an Essential poll since April, with weak respondent-allocated preference flows for Labor partly responsible.
Primary votes in this poll were 32% Coalition (down four), 31% Labor (down one), 13% Greens (steady), 8% One Nation (up three), 1% UAP (down two), 9% for all others (up one) and 6% undecided (up two)…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. more https://theconversation.com/labor-gains-in-newspoll-as-australians-narrowly-oppose-the-coalitions-nuclear-energy-plan-232693
Why cost should not be an obstacle to compensating nuclear survivors
The United Kingdom provided a “full and final” settlement payment of £20 million to Australia in 1993 to remediate former nuclear tests sites there, in comparison to the £6.5 billion ($8.1 billion) it spent on its nuclear arsenal in 2023.
By Alicia Sanders-Zakre, Susi Snyder | July 1, 2024, https://thebulletin.org/2024/07/why-cost-should-not-be-an-obstacle-to-compensating-nuclear-survivors/?utm_source=Newsletter+&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=MondayNewsletter07012024&utm_content=NuclearRisk_CompensatingNuclearSurvivors_07012024
Passing an extended and expanded Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) would be an enormous victory for those affected by US nuclear weapons testing and development who will receive compensation from the legislation. A proposed revised bill would include many communities formerly left out from the compensation program, including additional residents of Arizona, Nevada and Utah, for the first time, residents of Colorado, Idaho, Guam, Montana and New Mexico, uranium miners after 1971, veterans of nuclear waste clean-up in the Marshall Islands, and St. Louis area residents exposed to nuclear waste. The bill, originally estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to cost $147 billion over 10 years, was cut down to cost $50 billion over 10 years, due to concerns by members of Congress about the expense. A RECA bill has gained overwhelming support in the Senate, but it has yet to be passed by the House, in part due to ongoing concerns about the price tag.
Our research shows that more resources exist and should be directed to this important effort, in the United States and internationally, where many nuclear survivors still wait for justice. In our report, we found that nuclear-armed countries spent $91.4 billion on nuclear weapons in 2023 alone. That’s nearly $3,000 every second. The United States spent more than half of that total – $51.5 billion or $1,633 per second. In the five years that we have done this research, from 2019 to 2023, governments have spent a total of $387 billion on nuclear arsenals. The United States alone spent more than $212 billion of that total.
The amount that the United States and other nuclear-armed governments have put towards addressing the harmful legacy of nuclear weapons for their citizens pales by comparison. Since RECA was passed in 1990, the United States has put $2.67 billion into one-time settlements to compensate those whom the United States considered eligible. To address the nuclear legacy of its testing in the Marshall Islands, the United States gave $150 million to establish a Nuclear Claims Tribunal in 1987, but has not provided further funds explicitly for this purpose since.
Internationally, compensation for survivors also comes up short. Russian nuclear test veterans receive one-time compensation for harm to health of 22,102 roubles ($245 as of February 1, 2024) as well as small monthly stipends for food. In 2023, Russia spent 710.5 billion roubles ($8.3 billion) on its nuclear arsenal. In France, CIVEN, le Comité d’Indemnisation des Victimes des Essais Nucléaires, provided 14.9 million euros ($15.9 million) to victims of its nuclear testing in Algeria and French Polynesia in 2022. Last year, France spent 5.6 billion euros ($6.1 billion) on its nuclear weapons. The United Kingdom provided a “full and final” settlement payment of £20 million to Australia in 1993 to remediate former nuclear tests sites there, in comparison to the £6.5 billion ($8.1 billion) it spent on its nuclear arsenal in 2023.
It is no coincidence that, around the world, formerly colonized and Indigenous populations were the first to be bombed and the last to receive recognition and compensation. Existing programs rarely address the multifold harms of nuclear testing beyond physical harm from radiation, such as the psychological and economic toll of displacement, deprivation of traditional ways of life or the fear of children also suffering the scars of nuclear weapons.
But international efforts to address nuclear harms, grounded in human rights principles, have increased in recent years. In July 2017, 122 governments adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The treaty includes Articles 6 and 7, creating for the first time an international collective effort to address the impacts of nuclear weapons use and testing on people and the environment. States affected by nuclear weapons use and testing that have joined the treaty—such as Kazakhstan, Kiribati, Fiji, and New Zealand—take the lead in identifying needs for affected people and for environmental remediation in their countries and designing national plans of action and structures to address those needs. All governments that have joined this treaty pledge to help if they are able. States are currently discussing establishing an international trust fund to support this work.
Providing adequate assistance to those suffering from nuclear harm and beginning to remediate contaminated environments will cost money. It will also take time. But the cost is not an excuse to forgo necessary nuclear justice programs. Our research clearly shows that ever-growing budgets to build and rebuild nuclear arsenals are readily approved by every nuclear-armed government, while funds to help those suffering are a pittance in comparison.
The exorbitant funding poured into producing and maintaining weapons of mass destruction—as those who have borne the brunt of their impacts are dismissed—constitutes a gross dereliction of duty by the nuclear-armed countries. Governments must work together at the national and international level to address the multifaceted harms that nuclear weapons production and testing have inflicted on survivors and the environment. Extending and expanding RECA would be a good place to start. House leaders should stop stalling and start acting.
Julian Assange Is Finally Free, But Let’s Not Forget the War Crimes He Exposed
Contrary to US government claims, WikiLeaks’s revelations actually saved lives — and drove demand for US accountability.
| By Editor on June 29, 2024 https://truthout.org/articles/julian-assange-is-finally-free-but-lets-not-forget-the-war-crimes-he-exposed/ |
After a 14-year struggle, including five years spent in Belmarsh, a maximum-security prison in London, WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange is finally free. Under the terms of a plea deal with the U.S. Department of Justice, Assange pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain documents, writings and notes connected with the national defense under the Espionage Act. Assange was facing 175 years in prison for 18 charges in the indictment filed by the Trump administration and pursued by the Biden administration.
The plea agreement requires that before entering his plea, Assange must have done everything he could to either return or destroy “any such unpublished information in his possession, custody, or control, or that of WikiLeaks or any affiliate of WikiLeaks.”
As stipulated in the plea deal, Ramona Manglona, U.S. Chief Judge of the District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, sentenced Assange to 62 months with credit for the time he served in Belmarsh Prison. The U.S. sentencing guidelines say the range for this “offense” is 41-51 months, so Assange served 11 to 21 months longer than this type of case would typically garner.
Assange was prosecuted because WikiLeaks exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. In 2010, U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who had a “TOP SECRET” U.S. security clearance, furnished WikiLeaks with 700,000 documents and reports, many of which were classified “SECRET.”
These documents included the “Iraq War Logs,” 400,000 field reports documenting 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians, as well as systematic rape, torture and murder after U.S. forces transferred detainees to a notorious Iraqi torture squad.
They also contained the “Afghan War Diary,” comprising 90,000 reports that documented more civilian casualties by coalition forces than the U.S. military had reported. And they included the “Guantánamo Files” — 779 secret reports containing evidence that 150 innocent people had been held at Guantánamo Bay for years. The reports explain how the nearly 800 men and boys there had been tortured and abused, which violated the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
Manning also provided WikiLeaks with the infamous 2007 “Collateral Murder” video, which depicts a U.S. Army Apache attack helicopter crew targeting and killing 12 unarmed civilians in Baghdad, including two Reuters journalists, as well as a man who came to rescue the wounded. Two children were injured in the attack. A U.S. Army tank drove over one of the bodies, severing it in two. In a conversation after the attack, one pilot said, “Look at those dead bastards,” and the other responded, “Nice.” The video reveals evidence of three violations of the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Army Field Manual.
WikiLeaks provided material for news outlets around the world to report on U.S.-led atrocities. Informing the public about the illegality of George W. Bush’s “war on terror” resulted in calls for accountability.
“10 years on, the War Logs remain the only source of information regarding many thousands of violent civilian deaths in Iraq between 2004 and 2009,” John Sloboda, co-founder of Iraq Body Count (IBC), wrote in his submitted testimony for Assange’s extradition hearing in October 2020. IBC is an independent NGO that has done the only comprehensive monitoring of credibly reported casualties in Iraq since Bush’s 2003 invasion.
“WikiLeaks cables have contributed to court findings that US drone strikes are criminal offences and that criminal proceedings should be initiated against senior US officials involved in such strikes,” Clive Stafford Smith, co-founder of Reprieve and attorney for seven Guantánamo detainees, wrote in his submitted testimony.
“They took a hero [Assange] and turned him into a criminal,” Vahid Razavi, founder of Ethics in Tech, told Common Dreams. “Meanwhile, all of the war criminals in the files exposed by WikiLeaks via Chelsea Manning are free and never faced any punishment or even their day in court.”
The Iraq War Logs
The Iraq War Logs contained extensive evidence of U.S. war crimes. Several reports of detainee abuse were supported by medical evidence. Prisoners were blindfolded, shackled and hung by their ankles or wrists. They were subjected to punching, whipping, kicking, electrocution, electric drills, and cutting off fingers or burning with acid. Six reports document the apparent deaths of detainees.
Secret U.S. Army field reports revealed that U.S. authorities refused to investigate hundreds of reports of murder, torture, rape and abuse by Iraqi soldiers and police. The coalition had a formal policy of ignoring these allegations, marking them “no investigation is necessary.”
Although U.S. and U.K. officials maintained that no official records of civilian casualties existed, the logs document 66,081 noncombatant deaths out of 109,000 fatalities from 2004-2009.
The log describes video footage of Iraqi army officers executing a prisoner in Tal Afar. It says, “The footage shows approximately 12 Iraqi army [IA] soldiers. Ten IA soldiers were talking to one another while two soldiers held the detainee. The detainee had his hands bound … The footage shows the IA soldiers moving the detainee into the street, pushing him to the ground, punching him and shooting him.”
The Afghan War Diary
The Afghan War Diary also revealed evidence of U.S. war crimes from 2004-2009. The reports describe how a secret “black” unit composed of special operations forces hunted down accused Taliban leaders for “kill or capture” without trial. Secret commando units — classified groups of Navy and Army special operatives — used a “capture/kill list,” which resulted in the killing of civilians, angering the Afghan people.
Moreover, the CIA expanded paramilitary operations in Afghanistan, carrying out ambushes, ordering airstrikes and conducting night raids. The CIA financed the Afghan spy agency, operating it like a subsidiary.
A 2007 meeting between Afghan district officials and U.S. civil affairs officers was documented in the reports. Afghan officials are quoted as saying, “The people of Afghanistan keep loosing [sic] their trust in the government because of the high amount of corrupted government officials. The general view of the Afghans is that the current government is worst [sic] than the Taliban.”
The logs recorded numerous civilian casualties from airstrikes, shootings on the road, in villages and at checkpoints; many were caught in the cross fire. The victims weren’t suicide bombers or insurgents. Several deaths were not reported to the public.
The Guantánamo Files
The Guantánamo Files say that only 220 of the 780 people held at the prison camp since 2002 were classified as “dangerous international terrorists.” Of the rest of the detainees, 380 were classified as low-level foot soldiers and 150 were considered innocent Afghan or Pakistani civilians or farmers.
Many detainees were held at Guantánamo for years based on paltry evidence or confessions extracted by torture and abuse. Among the detainees, for example, were an 89-year-old Afghan villager with senile dementia and a 14-year-old boy who was the innocent victim of a kidnapping.
The files document a system aimed more at extracting intelligence than detaining dangerous terrorists. One man was transferred to Guantánamo because he was a mullah with special knowledge of the Taliban. A taxi driver was sent to the prison camp because he had general knowledge of certain areas in Afghanistan. An Al Jazeera journalist was held at Guantánamo for six years to be interrogated about the news network.
Nearly 100 detainees were classified with depressive or psychotic disorders. Several joined hunger strikes to protest their indefinite detention or attempted suicide, the files revealed.
No One Was Harmed by WikiLeaks’s Revelations
Although the U.S. government alleged that WikiLeaks’s publication of information had caused “great harm,” they “admitted there was not a single person anywhere that they could produce that was harmed by these publications,” Assange’s attorney Barry Pollack said at a June 26 press conference in Australia.
The plea agreement says, “Some of these raw classified documents were publicly disclosed without removing or redacting all of the personally identifiable information relating to certain individuals who shared sensitive information about their own governments and activities in their countries with the U.S. government in confidence.”
The U.S. government claims that Assange endangered U.S. informants who were named in the published documents. But John Goetz, an investigative reporter who worked for Germany’s Der Spiegel, testified at the 2020 extradition hearing that Assange went to great lengths to ensure that the names of informants in Iraq and Afghanistan were redacted. Goetz said that WikiLeaks underwent a “very rigorous redaction process” and Assange repeatedly reminded his media partners to use encryption. Indeed, Goetz said, Assange tried to stop Der Freitag from publishing material that could result in the release of unredacted information.
Moreover, WikiLeaks’s revelations actually saved lives. After WikiLeaks published evidence of Iraqi torture centers established by the U.S., the Iraqi government refused then-President Barack Obama’s request to grant immunity to U.S. soldiers who committed criminal and civil offenses there. As a result, Obama had to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.
Obama took credit for ending U.S. military involvement in Iraq. But he had tried for months to extend it beyond the December 31, 2011, deadline his predecessor negotiated with the Iraqi government. Negotiations broke down when Iraq refused to grant criminal and civil immunity to U.S. troops.
What Assange’s Plea Bargain Means for Free Speech
Before she accepted Assange’s guilty plea, Judge Manglona asked him what he did to violate the law. “Working as a journalist, I encouraged my source to provide information that was said to be classified,” Assange said. “I believed the First Amendment protected that activity, but I accept that it was a violation of the espionage statute.” Assange then added, “The First Amendment was in contradiction with the Espionage Act, but I accept that it would be difficult to win such a case given all these circumstances.”
Even though Assange will go free, his plea deal raises concerns for First Amendment advocates in the U.S.
“The United States has now, for the first time in the more than 100-year history of the Espionage Act, obtained an Espionage Act conviction for basic journalistic acts,” David Greene, head of civil liberties at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The New York Times. “These charges should never have been brought.”
Charlie Savage, who has covered the Assange case extensively for years, warned that Assange’s plea sets a “new precedent” that “will send a threatening message to national security journalists, who may be chilled in how aggressively they do their jobs because they will see a greater risk of prosecution.” But, Savage noted, since Assange pled guilty and didn’t mount a constitutional challenge to the Espionage Act, that eliminated the risk that the U.S. Supreme Court would ultimately sanction a narrow interpretation of First Amendment press freedoms.
“WikiLeaks published groundbreaking stories of government corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful accountable for their actions,” WikiLeaks said in a statement announcing the plea agreement. “As editor-in-chief, Julian paid severely for these principles, and for the people’s right to know. As he returns to Australia, we thank all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom.”
There is no doubt that but for the sustained activism of people around the world and the work of his superb legal team, Julian Assange would still be languishing behind bars for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes.
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 
