Antinuclear

Australian news, and some related international items

Australian govt’s dodgy climate accounting tricks to be tested in Madrid

Australia’s ‘betrayal of trust’ emissions plan to be tested in Madrid, SMH, By Peter Hannam, December 9, 2019, The Morrison government could be forced to justify Australia’s plan to count “carry-over credits” towards the country’s Paris climate target, with a global summit set to debate eliminating their use.

The 25th Conference of the Parties (COP25) meeting in the Spanish capital of Madrid is scheduled to debate the so-called “rulebook” for the goals agreed by the nearly 200 Paris signatory nations.

According to the draft “guidance on cooperative approaches“, one “option” for debate will be that “Kyoto Protocol units, or reductions underlying such units, may not be used by any Party toward its [nationally determined goals]”.

The Morrison government has repeatedly said Australia is entitled to use “surplus” units the country will generate during the Kyoto period (2008-2020) to count against the 2021-2030 Paris target.

Australia’s latest emissions projections report, released over the weekend, showed the government is planning to count 411 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO-e) from the Kyoto-agreement era. The use of such credits would mean Australia could meet its pledge of cutting 2005-level emissions 26-28 per cent by 2030 with minimal effort.

Malte Meinshausen, co-director of the Energy Transition Hub at Melbourne University and a former climate negotiator with Germany, said it was good the Kyoto option appears “to be on the table”.

The use of Kyoto credits was “a betrayal of the trust which all countries signed up to at Paris”, Professor Meinshausen said, noting New Zealand, European Union and Pacific states opposed them.

While climate laggards such as Russia and Brazil may join Australia in opposing the Kyoto “option”, “it’s a reminder that the international community does not want to give up easily the good cooperative fruits developed in Paris”, he said…….

Australia will certainly have to defend its carryover and depending on how the text evolves might find itself increasingly isolated,” said Richie Merzian, an emissions analyst with The Australia Institute and former climate treaty negotiator for the Australian government.

“There are apparently over 100 countries supporting the restriction to limit Kyoto Protocol units from being used to meet Paris Agreement commitments,” he told the Herald and The Age from Madrid.

“Australia’s usual allies – other developed countries – either have ruled out using these credits voluntarily or don’t have skin in the game,” Mr Merzian said. “Australia’s only support might come from China and Brazil keen to use their carbon market credits from Kyoto to cash into Paris.”

Adam Bandt, Greens climate spokesman, said “Scott Morrison’s dodgy climate accounting is now up in lights on the world stage.

“Australia is burning at home, and Angus Taylor is turning up at an international event asking for the right to keep on polluting,” he said…….

“[The emissions drop] is driven mainly by declines in the electricity sector because of strong uptake of rooftop solar and the inclusion of the Victoria, Queensland and Northern Territory 50 per cent renewable energy targets,” the report said.

“The government is banking on all the renewable infrastructure that they tried to kill” to meet their goals, Mr Merzian said.

Jamie Hanson, head of campaigns at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said the Liberal National coalition had long been using “dodgy accounting tricks like these so-called carryover credits to mislead the Australian public on their appalling track record on emissions”.

“Scrapping the ability to rely on carryover credits and shifty accounting is a great step towards holding governments like Australia to account over their rising emissions,” he said. https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/australia-s-betrayal-of-trust-emissions-plan-to-be-tested-in-madrid-20191208-p53hyv.html

December 9, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, politics international | Leave a comment

Australia – water ownership and the politics of water

Forget big oil and big energy – on the driest continent, water is the new black

If you accept that food matters, we need to talk about what we want from our farmers, and what we want our regional landscapes to be.  Guardian, Gabrielle Chan @gabriellechan, Sun 8 Dec 2019 

“………When water titles were disconnected from land titles, farmer advocates applauded because it allowed another tradable commodity. But turning water into a commodity has opened the markets to any trader, national or international. The basic rules of supply and demand mean that if you treat water as just another asset and don’t need to grow anything, you can sit on water until supply is short. Like in a drought. What could go wrong?

The thing about markets and their regulators is that they often assume everyone has perfect information. Right now, along the rivers and tributaries of the Murray–Darling Basin, ordinary multigenerational farmers – usually in family structures – are competing with behemoths, with full water-trading desks, and those giants have seen the future. So there is a squeeze between these two groups of farmers, large and small to medium. Adding on other high-industry users like mining, and increasingly, towns are running out of water.

Webster Limited has risen to prominence in water coverage because they have 150,000 megalitres, or 150,000 million litres of water entitlements. Webster is one of the largest irrigated farming producers in Australia. When you eat a walnut, it is probably a Webster walnut, given they produce 90% of Australia’s walnut crop.

Small to medium-sized farmers do a lot of things in a day – farming, trading, hedging, investing – but they are farmers at the end of the day. They are intimately involved in the day-to-day tasks and don’t have legal departments or a genius bar for water analysis. Yet, they have been tossed into what is fast becoming a water war. A 2016 World Bank report predicted: “Water scarcity, exacerbated by climate change, could cost some regions up to 6% of their GDP, spur migration, and spark conflict.” Forget big oil and big energy, water is the new black.

A 2018 study from the European Union’s Joint Research Centre found the five most vulnerable places are the Nile, Ganges-Brahmaputra, Indus, Tigris-Euphrates and Colorado rivers. The study acknowledges that the “combination of climate change and demographic growth is likely to exacerbate hydro-political issues”, and the researchers worry about cooperation between countries. That is the global picture.

In Australia, we have already seen the same issues fracture state relationships and regional communities. Water is fundamentally destabilising electorates for sitting members on safe margins. We are the driest continent in the world. We are a big agricultural exporter. Who wants a bucket of our water? The answer is everybody. In 2019, 10% of Australian water was owned by foreign interests, with the United States and China the biggest of those foreign owners. In the Murray-Darling Basin, foreign interests own 9.4% of water but it is unevenly spread. In the northern basin, the proportion of foreign water ownership is 20.9%. The place to be is at the top of the river.

A more fundamental issue than foreign ownership is transparency in the market. At the time of writing, we can’t see who is trading water – nay, we can’t even see how much water is in the system to know whether it is being traded according to the rules. We can’t see whether the water savings, paid for by taxpayers in the form of water buybacks, or water saving infrastructure exist. Our own Coalition water minister says that 14% of water rights are owned by people who have no land. The ticket clippers.

Then there are inherent conflicts in the system that put the in-betweeners at a distinct disadvantage. Private irrigation companies – formerly government-owned irrigation boards – hold the rights to deliver , regulate and also privately trade in water in an opaque system. The Murray-Darling Basin Authority, the key public regulator in the system, supports basin state governments to implement the Murray–Darling Basin plan and is in charge of compliance. That means the same authority is responsible for managing the politics of the MDB plan and its regulation. This is a conflict of interest, pure and simple. The Productivity Commission report labelled it a conflict and urged the authority to be split in December 2018. Silence ensued……

as a country we obsess about squeezing the last little bit of economic production out of our natural resources without a clear, long-term plan for food and farming in an uncertain global economy and an increasingly stressed environment. So much of the agriculture debate places farming in a single context – either as part of an economy or an environment. It is part of both.

This is an edited extract from Losing the Farm by Gabrielle Chan, Meanjin summer 2019 edition. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/08/forget-big-oil-and-big-energy-on-the-driest-continent-water-is-the-new-black?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR3zajzBbWjRbap1Fe25Lmd7UDbO3WYynFkZkYnLin5URhGZVljswzGE7HA

December 9, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL | Leave a comment

UN climate talks: what’s on the agenda in Madrid and what it means for Australia,

UN climate talks: what’s on the agenda in Madrid and what it means for Australia, Angus Taylor heads to COP25 next week, where Australia has already twice been given the ‘fossil of the day’ award, Guardian,  Adam Morton Environment editor. @adamlmorton, Sun 8 Dec 2019  For two weeks at the end of every year, the world’s governments meet to work on a global response to climate change. This year is the 25th meeting of what is known as the conference of the parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Those who attend know it as COP, or COP25.

Here’s what you need to know about this year’s talks, which started on Monday in Madrid, and what they could mean for Australia.

Where does Australia stand coming into the talks?

There are nearly 190 countries represented at the UN climate talks and, contrary to some perceptions, Australia is not just a bit player.

Under UN greenhouse accounting, Australia is responsible for about 1.3% of annual pollution, which places it 16th on a ladder of polluting nations. It emits more each year than 40 countries with larger populations, including G7 members Britain, France and Italy.

On other measures Australia performs worse. It emits more per person than any other developed country (and far more than most developing countries), and a recent analysis found it was third for exported emissions.

It is the world’s biggest seller of coal, particularly metallurgic coal used in steel-making, and either number one or two for natural gas. It is easily the largest emitter in the south Pacific, and has been increasingly drawing criticism from Pacific leaders for not doing more to tackle the issue.

As the talks began last week, Australia was at the forefront of the climate emergency in other ways, as drought and bushfires made global headlines. Scientists say both are unprecedented and in line with climate projections.

Observers such as Howard Bamsey, the country’s former special envoy on climate change, say events in Australia are noticed and could be used to influence other countries to do more. But the government’s message focuses on its own actions: that it has set a 2030 emissions reduction target, that it more than met previous targets it set for itself and that it will meet this one.

Who is representing Australia?

Australia has a 21-strong delegation from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, led by Jamie Isbister, a senior diplomat who was appointed environment ambassador less than three weeks ago.

In the second week’s political stage, Australia will be represented by Angus Taylor, the minister for energy and emissions reduction. It is his first time at climate talks. He arrives under pressure on several fronts, including a bizarre public spat with American author Naomi Wolf.

How is Australia positioning itself?…….

Scott Morrison has indicated Australia has no plan to increase what it is doing beyond its 2030 target of a 26-28% cut compared with 2005 levels, which is less than what government advisors found would be Australia’s fair share or it could afford to do.

The prime minister has not acknowledged what groups representing business, unions, farmers, investors and the social policy sector this week spelled out in a joint statement – that the goals of the Paris agreement mean Australia will need to plan to stop emitting any carbon dioxide.

Australia’s emissions are not coming down and most experts believe it is not on track to meet its target.  ……. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/08/un-climate-talks-whats-on-the-agenda-in-madrid-and-what-it-means-for-australia

December 9, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming | Leave a comment

Peter Garrett urges Labor to reconnect with environmental movement, warns ‘true believers are dying’

December 9, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, environment, politics | Leave a comment

Money, Money, Money, or perhaps not. Plan to dump nuclear waste in the Flinders Ranges –

December 8, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, Federal nuclear waste dump | Leave a comment

Why Australia must retain its nuclear bans: Dr Jim Green explains to Senate Nuclear Inquiry.

REPORT ON PROCEEDINGS BEFORE  STANDING COMMITTEE ON STATE DEVELOPMENT URANIUM MINING AND NUCLEAR FACILITIES (PROHIBITIONS) REPEAL BILL 2019 At Macquarie Room, Parliament House, Sydney, on Monday 11 November 2019 

PRESENT The Hon. Taylor Martin (Chair) The Hon. Mark Banasiak The Hon. Mark Buttigieg The Hon. Wes Fang The Hon. Scott Farlow The Hon. Mark Latham The Hon. Natasha Maclaren-Jones The Hon. Mick Veitch (Deputy Chair)  JIM GREEN, National Anti-Nuclear Campaigner, Friends of the Earth Australia, affirmed and examined  DAVE SWEENEY, Nuclear Policy Analyst, Australian Conservation Foundation, affirmed and examined CHRIS GAMBIAN, Chief Executive, Nature Conservation Council of NSW, sworn and examined Monday, 11 November 2019 Legislative Council Page 30 

The CHAIR: Would anyone like to begin by making an opening statement?

Dr GREEN: Yes, we all would, with your permission. I am going to speak about nuclear power. Dave will speak about uranium, and Chris will speak about New South Wales energy issues—opportunities, road blocks and so on. I am going to quickly run through issues canvassed in our joint submission, and in particular the reasons why we believe that State and Federal bans against nuclear power should be retained.

The first one is that those bans have saved Australia and saved New South Wales from the catastrophic cost over-runs with every reactor project in Western Europe and the United States over the past decade. It is a sad truth that every one of those reactor projects is at least A$10 billion over budget. That’s $10 billion—with a ‘B’. It is hard to believe that but it is true. Perhaps the most catastrophic of all those catastrophic projects was in South Carolina, where they have had to abandon a reactor project mid-stream, having already spent over A$13 billion.

Nuclear power could not possibly pass any reasonable economic tests, and it certainly would not pass the tests set by Prime Minister Scott Morrison. It could not possibly be introduced or maintained without massive taxpayer subsidies. There are a couple of examples. Hitachi has recently walked away from a project in Wales in the United Kingdom, despite the offer of staggering, unprecedented subsidies. Also in the UK, the lifetime subsidies for the Hinkley Point project alone—a 3.2 gigawatt project—are estimated by the European Union to be A$55 billion for a two-reactor project. Other credible estimates put those lifetime subsidies at A$91 billion. These are extraordinary figures. I know it is hard to believe but it is all documented.

The other economic test set by Prime Minister Morrison is that nuclear power would need to reduce electricity prices, and clearly it would do no such thing. It would clearly increase electricity prices. Legislation banning nuclear power should also be retained because of the lack of a social licence, and in particular numerous polls over the past 10 years have found that only 20 per cent to 28 per cent of Australians would support living in the near vicinity of a nuclear power plant. As the Clean Energy Council put it, in its submission to this inquiry, it would require “a minor miracle” to win community support for nuclear power in Australia.

There is a lot more that could be said about nuclear economics and I am happy to field questions on that issue. There is plenty of information in our joint submission and in the separate Friends of the Earth submission dealing specifically with small modular reactors. There is one point that I would particularly like to make to the committee and to the secretariat, which is that there is an excellent critique of some of the claims made by nuclear lobbyists, both to this inquiry and to the Federal inquiry. This article neatly corrects and debunks those claims. The article is by Giles Parkinson. It was published at reneweconomy.com.au on 23 October. It is called, “Why the nuclear lobby makes stuff up about cost of wind and solar”. Our joint submission also does some of that work— debunking highly questionable claims made by nuclear lobbyists about nuclear economics. In particular I would draw your attention to sections 3.5 and 3.6 of our joint submission.

The next issues is that we believe legal prohibition should be retained because the pursuit of a nuclear industry would almost certainly worsen patterns of disempowerment and dispossession experienced by Australia’s First Nations. To give just one example of that, the National Radioactive Waste Management Act dispossessed and disempowers traditional owners in many different ways. To list one of many, the Act states that the nomination of a site for a radioactive waste dump is valid even if Aboriginal owners were not consulted and did not give consent. I would ask this Committee to consider recommending that those appalling and indefensible clauses of the National Radioactive Waste Management Act be repealed.

Legislation banning nuclear power should also be retained because no-one could have any confidence that satisfactory solutions could be found for waste streams. Globally, no country has a repository for high-level nuclear waste. There is one deep underground repository for long-lived intermediate level waste in the United States. It was set up in the late nineties. Almost as soon as it was set up, safety standards and layers of regulatory oversight were peeled away, and those failures led to a chemical explosion in an underground waste barrel, which shut the repository down for three years. Direct and indirect costs amounted to about $3 billion. The thing that I really want to focus on there is that safety standards and regulatory standards fell away straight away—and you are dealing with plutonium, with a half life of 24,000 years. We need to safely manage this waste for millennia; they failed to safely manage it for one single decade.

I want to make a quick point on wastage of another sort. That is that nuclear power reactors are voracious consumers of water. A single reactor typically consumes 50 million litres of cooling water every single day. Their water intake pipes are slaughter houses for fish and other marine creatures. Arguably, the best way to destroy a local fishery is to build a nuclear power plant nearby. This is just considering routine operations of a nuclear power plant. In the case of Fukushima, that disaster has crippled and almost killed the local fishing industry. Currently fishers in the region are fighting plans to dump vast amounts of contaminated water into the ocean surrounding the nuclear plant.

I have one final point. Legislation banning nuclear power should be retained because the introduction of nuclear power would delay and undermine the development of effective economic energy and climate policies based on renewables and energy efficiency. A December 2018 report by CSIRO and AEMO found that the cost of power from small modular reactors would be more than twice as expensive as power from wind and solar PV, even with some storage costs included. CSIRO and AEMO are about to release another report, which firms up that conclusion and also considers the costs of a higher degree of storage attached to renewables. They have canvassed the findings of that report. They find that, even with a considerable amount of storage factored in, renewables are still far cheaper than nuclear, comparable to the costs of existing fossil fuels and are almost certain to become cheaper than fossil fuels because of the clear cost trajectory of renewables and storage.

So nuclear simply is not even in this debate. There has been a big spat about the CSIRO and AEMO costings with respect to small modular reactors. Their costing is $16,000 per kilowatt of installed capacity, and the nuclear lobbyists are furious with that and strongly contesting it. What I would say is that if you average the cost of small modular reactors, which are actually under construction in China, Russia and Argentina, that average is higher than the figure given by CSIRO and AEMO. Also, if you look at the reactors being built in the United States—the large reactors—one again, the CSIRO and AEMO figure for nuclear is lower than the real-world cost for reactors that are actually under construction in the US. So the CSIRO and AEMO figure is entirely defensible. In conclusion I quote the senior vice-president of Exelon, which is the largest nuclear company in the United States, who said:

I don’t think we’re building any more nuclear plants in the United States. I don’t think it’s ever going to happen … They are too expensive to construct …

That is in the US where they have a vast amount of infrastructure and expertise but nuclear has clearly priced itself out of the market. The calculations in Australia would certainly be worse because we do not have that infrastructure, we do not have that expertise and we are blessed with renewable energy resources. As the Climate Council, comprising Australia’s leading climate scientists, puts it, nuclear power reactors “are not appropriate for Australia—and probably never will be.” I will leave it there.

December 7, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics | Leave a comment

Dr Jim Green busts ANSTO’s spin about nuclear wastes

Dr Jim Green at Senate Nuclear Inquiry , 11 Nov 19

WES FANG: I am unaware if you heard the evidence earlier today, but we heard from Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation about the advances that have developed not only in the development of power but also in the way that waste is handled. ANSTO is not a lobbyist; it is a scientific organisation.

Dr GREEN: ANSTO is a lobbyist and its claims about nuclear waste are demonstrably false. I mean that quite literally. If you take the example of the integral fast reactor, the idea is that you can use high-level nuclear waste, consume it in a reactor and then turn it into low-carbon power. That is an incredibly enticing proposition but the reality in Idaho—where they operated one of those demonstration reactors and are now trying to deal with the waste—is that they have turned one difficult, challenging form of nuclear waste, namely spent fuel, into multiple forms of challenging, difficult nuclear waste. They have not improved the situation; they have made a bad situation worse.

That is the reality of the theoretical arguments that you have heard from ANSTO this morning. I would also strong recommend that you read the articles that we have pointed to in our submission from Dr Allison Macfarlane, who is a former chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Committee. Once again, she has looked at demonstration advanced reactor projects. They are not improving waste management issues; they are making those issues more difficult to deal with—demonstrably in the real world, as opposed to the theoretical nonsense you have heard from ANSTO.

December 7, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Australia burns, as government leaders choose not to discuss this

Leading scientists condemn political inaction on climate change as Australia ‘literally burns
Climate experts ‘bewildered’ by government ‘burying their heads in the sand’, and say bushfires on Australia’s east coast should be a ‘wake-up call’, Lisa Cox, Sat 7 Dec 2019 , Leading scientists have expressed concern about the lack of focus on the climate crisis as bushfires rage across New South Wales and Queensland, saying it should be a “wake-up call” for the government.

Climate experts who spoke to Guardian Australia said they were “bewildered” the emergency had grabbed little attention during the final parliamentary sitting week for the year, which was instead taken up by the repeal of medevac laws, a restructure of the public service, and energy minister Angus Taylor’s run-in with the American author Naomi Wolf.

Escalating conditions on Thursday and Friday led to dozens of out-of-control bushfires, including in the NSW’s Hawkesbury region, where a fire at Gospers Mountain merged with two other blazes burning in the lower Hunter on Friday.

Sydney has been blanketed with a thick smoke haze that health officials said had led to a 25% increase in people presenting in emergency departments for asthma and breathing problems.

Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist with the University of NSW’s Climate Change Research Centre, said she was “surprised, bewildered, concerned” that the emergency had prompted little discussion from political leaders this week.

“Here we are in the worst bushfire season we’ve ever seen, the biggest drought we’ve ever had, Sydney surrounded by smoke, and we’ve not heard boo out of a politician addressing climate change,” she said.

“They dismissed it from the outset and haven’t come back to it since.

“They’re burying their heads in the sand while the world is literally burning around them and that’s the scary thing. It’s only going to get worse.” Continue reading →

December 6, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, politics | Leave a comment

Fire? What fire? It’s business as usual in Morrison’s Canberra bubble

December 6, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, politics | Leave a comment

Australia’s submarine project is dubious, as supplier France’s nuclear industry withers

The French nuclear revolution is rusting away, December 6, 2019, THE AUSTRALIAN, Henry Ergas “……..France’s nuclear power industry faces a future that is more uncertain than ever.  The problems gripping the industry were highlighted late last month in an official report prepared by the former president and chief executive of PSA Peugeot Citroen, Jean Martin Folz.

While the report’s focus is on the difficulties that have plagued the construction of a new reactor at Flamanville in northwestern France, its implications reach much further.

With nuclear power plants accounting for more than 70 per cent of its overall electricity generation, no country is as dependent on nuclear energy as is France.

The decision to rely so massively on nuclear energy was taken in 1974, after the oil shock of the previous year had underlined France’s vulnerability to Middle Eastern oil. Prime minister Pierre Messmer launched a crash program that led to the construction of 56 reactors in just 15 years.

…….. however, most of France’s generators are approaching the final decade of their useful life. Planning for their replacement has been a stop-start affair, with the Greens’ increasingly strident opposition to nuclear power deterring successive governments from taking action.

As a result, only the Flamanville plant received the go-ahead, with construction beginning in 2007 for an expected entry into service in 2012. Virtually from the outset, the project was beset by woes. At this stage, the total costs of construction are four times greater than initially estimated, while the plant will not enter service before the end of 2022.

The problems stem partly from the sheer complexity of the new reactor, which is the first of its kind to be built in France.

Additionally, the catastrophe at Fukushima in 2011 led to regulatory changes that necessitated costly redesigns. And the project has suffered more than its fair share of mismanagement, aggravated by a byzantine allocation of responsibilities between EDF, the main French electricity utility, which oversaw the project, and many layers of subcontractors.

However, as the Folz report shows, the primary cause of the difficulties lies in the erosion of the industry’s skill base during the long hiatus from the end of the crash program in 1990 to the initiation of Flamanville………

There is, at this point, no prospect of France scaling up its nuclear program ………The cost blowout at Olkiluoto drove Areva, the “national champion” of France’s nuclear industry, into bankruptcy.

Even with an injection of $7.3bn in public funds EDF, which acquired Areva, lacks the balance sheet strength to underwrite new projects, while the French government’s borrowing ability is hampered by its already too high levels of debt.

To make matters worse, the regulated prices at which EDF has to sell the power it generates mean that it cannot charge its European clients the full value of the baseload it supplies.

As for global investors, who might provide the debt financing EDF would require, they are wary of projects that are risky in themselves ….

Given those constraints, the government has announced a modest plan to eventually build six additional reactors. So far, however, there are no actionable decisions beyond the completion of Flamanville. And work on the next generation of reactors….. has been quietly downgraded, making it likely that there will no fourth generation reactor of French design.

The consequences for France itself are far-reaching. Beginning in the late 1950s, French firms succeeded in one high-technology market after the other by developing or acquiring a rather basic design (including the Westinghouse Pressurised Water Reactor, the Mirage jet fighter and the TGV high-speed train) that they up­graded while producing it on a large scale.

That era is over, and there is every sign France is struggling with almost all the major projects it has in train.

The Folz report should therefore come as an ominous warning for our submarine project, as it identifies French industry’s serious managerial and technological weaknesses in a range of areas, such as precision welding, that are crucial to that project’s success……. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/the-french-nuclear-revolution-is-rusting-away/news-story/afe4546ed799939cf117d71f05035c5e

December 6, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics | Leave a comment

Bushfires crisis in New South Wales, smoke pollution in Sydney, and even New Zealand

NSW ‘living in fear’ as bushfires continue to rage,  SBS, 6 Dec 19, So much of NSW is now alight that smoke from the bushfires is impacting communities across the Tasman Sea in New Zealand, the NSW RFS says.

The NSW bushfire crisis has people “living in fear” with more than 100 blazes burning across the state and Sydney choking on harmful smoke pollution.

Firefighters will have a brief window over the weekend to get on top of the crisis before the weather deteriorates early next week.

The Bureau of Meteorology has painted a grim picture for the coming week, with winds forecast to whip dangerous fire grounds and no rain relief in sight. At one point on Friday there were nine fires burning at an emergency level, including the massive Gospers Mountain blaze, which has merged with neighbouring fire grounds to create a “megafire”.

Smoke from the fires was drifting to New Zealand and affecting communities there, NSW Rural Fire Service commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said on Friday.

There were 108 fires burning in NSW on Friday afternoon, with 74 of those burning out of control.

Hazardous air pollution readings were recorded in many parts of the state, with emergency departments seeing an increase in presentations for respiratory issues…….

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said residents from the South Coast up the Queensland border are “living in fear”.

“The difference now as we lead into the summer months is previously [bushfires] were pretty much confined to the northern part of NSW but what we are seeing this week is our resources stretched across the entire coastline,” she told reporters……

Fire crews have arrived from interstate as well as New Zealand and Canada, while a team from the US will arrive on Saturday.

Total fire bans will be in place on Saturday for the far north coast, New England, the northern slopes, the greater Hunter, greater Sydney, the central ranges and the nortwestern regions…… https://www.sbs.com.au/news/nsw-living-in-fear-as-bushfires-continue-to-rage

December 6, 2019 Posted by | climate change - global warming, New South Wales | Leave a comment

Huge bushfire North of Sydney, with conditions forecast to worsen

Australia fires: five blazes merge north of Sydney as conditions forecast to worsen, More than 100 bushfires were burning in New South Wales on Friday, more than half of them out of control, Guardian,  Ben Doherty and Helen Davidson, Fri 6 Dec 2019  Five fires burning to the north of Sydney joined up into one huge conflagration on Friday, with out-of-control blazes threatening homes and lives.On a day that brought choking smog to Sydney, the premier of New South Wales said the entire coastline of the state was on fire.

Six people have died, and more than 680 homes have already been lost to bushfires in NSW this fire season, and on Friday more than 100 fires were burning, more than half of them out of control. Eight fires have emergency warnings, which means they pose an immediate risk to lives and property.

The largest fire – a conglomeration of five blazes which have joined up north of Sydney – has burned over 335,000 hectares.

The forecast for coming days is for more hot, dry conditions. Strong winds are likely to continue to fan blazes towards towns and properties.

The NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, said while fires had been burning across the state for weeks, the sheer scale of the current fire threat was stretching crews’ ability to fight the blazes……..

Sydney has been choked by thick smoke for almost a week.

Hospital emergency departments have seen a 25% increase in people presenting with asthma and breathing problems, and ambulance crews are responding to between 70 and 100 call-outs a day for respiratory conditions, including to school children as young as six.

Some schools across the state have been closed because of the fire risk, while others have kept children inside because of the worsening air quality…… https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/06/australia-fires-five-bushfires-merge-north-of-sydney-as-conditions-forecast-to-worsen

December 6, 2019 Posted by | climate change - global warming, New South Wales | Leave a comment

Environment is downgraded, as Morrison merges government departments

Concerns for environment as Morrison merges government departments Newsline, 5 Dec 19, “……. Farmers for Climate Action spokesperson Verity Morgan-Schmidt said strong environmental policy was essential to make the agriculture sector sustainable.

“We’re failing to address climate change, which is the biggest threat to agriculture, and the concern in this merger is that ecological outcomes will be overlooked,” Ms Morgan-Schmidt said.

……. Farmers for Climate Action spokesperson Verity Morgan-Schmidt said strong environmental policy was essential to make the agriculture sector sustainable.

“We’re failing to address climate change, which is the biggest threat to agriculture, and the concern in this merger is that ecological outcomes will be overlooked,” Ms Morgan-Schmidt said.

……. Infrastructure, transport, regional development, communications and the arts will also come together in another massive new department.

Education, skills and employment will be merged in a move welcomed by vocational education advocates…….. https://www.newsline.com.au/2019/12/05/concerns-for-environment-as-morrison-merges-government-departments/

December 6, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, environment, politics | Leave a comment

Grim summer is forecast for Murray Darling river system

“Campaigns led by irrigators and the NSW National party to derail the basin plan do not represent the interests of all communities across the basin. Governments must listen to all voices in this debate, not just the loudest and most belligerent,”

Murray-Darling authority warns of ‘dire’ summer of mass fish deaths and blue-green algae https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/06/murray-darling-authority-warns-of-dire-summer-of-mass-fish-deaths-and-blue-green-algae  

Alert comes as Indigenous group issues plea for states to stick with basin plan or risk marginalising vulnerable communities and endangering river health,  Anne Davies, 6 Dec 19,

The Murray-Darling Basin Authority has warned of more mass fish deaths and blue-green algae events throughout the Murray-Darling River system as the peak group representing First Nations issued a plea for the states to stick with the plan.

The MDBA issued a communique on Friday saying the summer outlook from the Bureau of Meteorology was “dire”, and there was a greater than average chance of drier, warmer conditions and an elevated fire danger across the basin.

“We are already seeing the drying of critical aquatic refuges in the north, and water quality issues such as blue-green algae and stratification are becoming more widespread,” the MDBA said.

These were the conditions that led to mass fish deaths at Menindee in January this year.

The MDBA reiterated how important it is to use what little environmental water that remained available to protect critical habitats and maintain water quality.

It has produced a detailed water quality map that will be updated as the drought worsens. Continue reading →

December 6, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming | Leave a comment

BHP’s plan to take yet more water for huge copper-uranium mine

https://www.melbournefoe.org.au/olympic_dam_uranium_mine_expansion1219

The federal government is inviting public comment on BHP’s proposed expansion of the Olympic Dam copper-uranium mine (ODM) until Tues. 10 Dec 2019.

BHP plans to increase extraction of precious Great Artesian Basin water to an average 50 million litres per day for the next 25 years, with likely serious adverse impacts on the unique and fragile Mound Springs ‒ which are listed as an Endangered Ecological Community and are of significant cultural importance to Aboriginal people.

Please make a brief submission to the Federal Minister for Environment. You can use our pro-forma submission and just add your name (and you can add any additional comments you like).

More information:

December 5, 2019 Posted by | environment, South Australia, uranium | Leave a comment

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