Labor pressures Coalition to rule out nuclear ‘fantasies’ or name sites for reactors Mark Butler says almost all proposed reactor sites since 1968 were near residential communities, Guardian, Sarah Martin and Amy Remeikis, 5 Sep 2019 Labor will pressure the government over its “flirtation” with nuclear energy by releasing parliamentary library research that shows almost 150 sites across the country have been proposed for reactors or dumps in the past 50 years.Calling on the prime minister, Scott Morrison, to either rule out nuclear or reveal where reactors would be located, Labor’s shadow energy minister, Mark Butler, said the government should instead direct its efforts to developing a “coherent energy policy”.
“Instead of indulging the policy fantasies of his restive backbench, Mr Morrison should reject the nuclear option or be upfront with Australians about exactly where he wants to build nuclear reactors,” Butler said. “Mr Morrison should forget nuclear energy and focus instead on practical ways of dealing with his government’s energy crisis.”
The list of locations that have been considered for nuclear activities includes about 40 locations for possible nuclear dump sites and almost 100 that have been examined as possible sites for nuclear reactors.
Labor MPs are expected to follow up the release of the information with localised campaigns highlighting the potential threat of nuclear facilities in the listed locations.
The parliamentary library research notes that some of the sites are highly speculative and have never been subject to a formal proposal, while others have been withdrawn or formally excluded as potential locations.
But Butler said that almost all of the proposed reactor sites since 1968 were near residential communities, noting that some locations – such as Townsville – had been proposed twice.
A study by the progressive thinktank Australia Institute in 2007 identified Townsville as one of 17 suitable sites for nuclear power plants across the country, based on key criteria such as electricity infrastructure, demand, transport, and water access.
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Labor’s anti-nuclear push comes as parliament’s standing committee on environment and energy prepares to conduct an inquiry into the “prerequisites for nuclear energy in Australia” with a report due later this year.
The committee was set up by the energy minister, Angus Taylor, after several conservative MPs publicly agitated for the inquiry.
By Helen Caldicott | 4 September 2019 The prospect of thorium being introduced into Australia’s energy arrangements should be subjected to significant scrutiny, writes Helen Caldicott.
AS AUSTRALIA is grappling with the notion of introducing nuclear powerinto the country, it seems imperative the general public understand the intricacies of these technologies so they can make informed decisions. Thorium reactors are amongst those being suggested at this time.
The U.S. tried for 50 years to create thorium reactors, without success. Four commercial thorium reactors were constructed, all of which failed. And because of the complexity of problems listed below, thorium reactors are far more expensive than uranium fueled reactors.
The longstanding effort to produce these reactors cost the U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars, while billions more dollars are still required to dispose of the highly toxic waste emanating from these failed trials.
The truth is, thorium is not a naturally fissionable material. It is therefore necessary to mix thorium with either enriched uranium 235 (up to 20% enrichment) or with plutonium – both of which are innately fissionable – to get the process going.
While uranium enrichment is very expensive, the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from uranium powered reactors is enormously expensive and very dangerous to the workers who are exposed to toxic radioactive isotopes during the process. Reprocessing spent fuel requires chopping up radioactive fuel rods by remote control, dissolving them in concentrated nitric acid from which plutonium is precipitated out by complex chemical means.
Vast quantities of highly acidic, highly radioactive liquid waste then remain to be disposed of. (Only is 6 kilograms of plutonium 239 can fuel a nuclear weapon, while each reactor makes 250 kilos of plutonium per year. One millionth of a gram of plutonium if inhaled is carcinogenic.)
So there is an extraordinarily complex, dangerous and expensive preliminary process to kick-start a fission process in a thorium reactor.
When non-fissionable thorium is mixed with either fissionable plutonium or uranium 235, it captures a neutron and converts to uranium 233, which itself is fissionable. Naturally it takes some time for enough uranium 233 to accumulate to make this particular fission process spontaneously ongoing.
Later, the radioactive fuel would be removed from the reactor and reprocessed to separate out the uranium 233 from the contaminating fission products, and the uranium 233 then will then be mixed with more thorium to be placed in another thorium reactor.
But uranium 233 is also very efficient fuel for nuclear weapons. It takes about the same amount of uranium 233 as plutonium 239 – six kilos – to fuel a nuclear weapon. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has already, to its disgrace, ‘lost track’ of 96 kilograms of uranium 233.
A total of two tons of uranium 233 were manufactured in the United States. This material naturally requires similar stringent security measures used for plutonium storage for obvious reasons. It is estimated that it will take over one million dollars per kilogram to dispose of the seriously deadly material.
An Energy Department safety investigation recently found a national repository for uranium 233 in a building constructed in 1943 at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
It was in poor condition. Investigators reported an environmental release from many of the 1,100 containers could
‘… be expected to occur within the next five years because some of the packages are approaching 30 years of age and have not been regularly inspected.’
Deteriorated beyond cost-effective repair and significant annual costs would be incurred to satisfy both current DOE storage standards, and to provide continued protection against potential nuclear criticality accidents or theft of the material.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management now considers the disposal of this uranium 233 to be ‘an unfunded mandate’.
Thorium reactors also produce uranium 232, which decays to an extremely potent high-energy gamma emitter that can penetrate through one metre of concrete, making the handling of this spent nuclear fuel extraordinarily dangerous.
Although thorium advocates say that thorium reactors produce little radioactive waste, they simply produce a different spectrum of waste to those from uranium-235. This still includes many dangerous alpha and beta emitters, and isotopes with extremely long half-lives, including iodine 129 (half-life of 15.7 million years).
No wonder the U.S. nuclear industry gave up on thorium reactors in the 1980s. It was an unmitigated disaster, as are many other nuclear enterprises undertaken by the nuclear priesthood and the U.S. government.
Goodes abuse mirrors SA nuclear fight, Eureka Street, Michele Madigan, 03 September 2019 On 21 August I came out of an Adelaide preview of The Australian Dream, Stan Grant’s documentary about the racialised mistreatment of the former AFL footballer Adam Goodes, for a brief interview on our local ABC’s Evening Show. The topic: the resumption of federal government visibility and determination to both deposit and dump nuclear waste in either the Flinders Ranges or Kimba regions.
Later I reflected on this synergy. One of these threatened areas was the location for The Australian Dream’s dramatic opening panoramic shot: Adam Goodes, a tiny figure in a vast landscape, with the Ranges of his ancestors in majestic background. …..
I wonder sometimes if this kind of vehement rage towards certain persons has parallels with the attitude and actions of some among us ‘latecomers’ to this country, to the country itself. It shows itself in a determination to exploit the country, to commodify it, to rape it of its resources; all done with entirely no regard for the consequences — on lands, on precious waters and eventually on all of us, the human race, who rely on creation for our survival.
There is at best exasperation, and at worst, genuine anger shown to many Australians seeking to defend country: to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander defenders certainly. In regard to non-Aboriginal people, the word ‘greenie’ has become largely a term of derision………
The Flinders became a place of healing refuge for Goodes. Yet the glory of its incredible antiquity has not been enough to shame the Minister and the Department for Industry, Innovation and Science (DIIS) in the four-year journey of seriously considering this place of ancestry, beauty, earthquakes and floods as host to Australia’s nuclear waste which will remain dangerous for 10,000 years. Neither has being part of just six per cent of Australia’s arable lands served any protection for the international grain-farming region of Kimba as the alternative choice.
As Goodes paid heavily for his defence against racism, defending country continues to be a costly business for the people of the Flinders and Kimba regions whose communities are irrevocably torn apart by the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility project. Despite Barngala Traditional Owners appealing against Justice White’s 12 July decision that their native rights give them no right to vote, the Kimba Council has recently decided their opinion ballot is to go ahead anyway — from 3 October to 7 November. In contrast, the Flinders Ranges Council is requiring a risk assessment before proceeding with their ballot. The Adnyamathanha people’s appeal remains undecided.
On 13 August, DIIS, in meeting with the Barndioota Consultative Committee in the Flinders, confirmed that the size of the proposed site would now be 60 per cent larger. On 21 and 22 August Minister Canavan visited both areas for brief ‘consultative’ meetings, declaring the site decision is likely before the end of this year, and acknowledging that this may take place before the Flinders ballot. While again refusing to give a named acceptable percentage on such a ballot, Senator Canavan stressed the ballot was just one component in the decision making. Other evidence will include the 1000 submissions in this still open process.
Today, in further flagrant and conscious censorship, no British, Australian or American newspaper is carrying a report on Waters’ initiative and the rally.
Roger Waters and John Pilger make powerful defence of Julian Assange in London, WSWS 3 September 2019
Up to 1,000 people gathered last night in central London to hear internationally acclaimed musician Roger Waters deliver a musical tribute to imprisoned WikiLeaks’ publisher Julian Assange.
Performing outside the UK Home Office, just miles from Belmarsh Prison where Assange is being held as a Category A prisoner, Waters sang Pink Floyd’s iconic song “Wish You Were Here.” He was accompanied by guitarist Andrew Fairweather Low.
Supporters filled the forecourt and pavement on both sides of Marsham Street, many carrying banners and placards demanding Assange’s freedom and the release of imprisoned whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Spontaneous chants rang out, “Free, Free Julian Assange!” and “There’s only one decision: No extradition!”
John Pilger, a veteran filmmaker and investigative journalist and a personal friend of Assange, opened the event with an impassioned speech. Pointing in the direction of the Home Office, Pilger told the crowd: “The behaviour of the British government towards Julian Assange is a disgrace. A profanity on the very notion of human rights. It’s no exaggeration to say that the treatment and persecution of Julian Assange is the way that dictatorships treat a political prisoner.”
John Pilger, a veteran filmmaker and investigative journalist and a personal friend of Assange, opened the event with an impassioned speech. Pointing in the direction of the Home Office, Pilger told the crowd: “The behaviour of the British government towards Julian Assange is a disgrace. A profanity on the very notion of human rights. It’s no exaggeration to say that the treatment and persecution of Julian Assange is the way that dictatorships treat a political prisoner.”………
Pilger warned that Assange’s condition was a matter of grave concern. “I worry a great deal about him if he spends many months in Belmarsh,” he said. “The regime there is imposing a kind of isolation on him that is deeply psychologically wounding. He’s in a small cell in the hospital ward. They seem not to know what to do with him. Of course, what they should be doing is letting him out. He certainly should not be in a maximum-security prison.”…….
Underscoring the point made by Kristinn Hrafnsson about the mainstream media, no major British television station reported on the event on their evening news broadcasts. Today, in further flagrant and conscious censorship, no British, Australian or American newspaper is carrying a report on Waters’ initiative and the rally.
Via social media and publications such as the WSWS, however, reports and video of Waters’ performance, Pilgers’ speech and the statements of Gabriel Shipton are circulating widely and will be viewed by hundreds of thousands of people internationally over the coming days.
Australian Medical Association labels climate change ‘a health emergency’, SBS, 3 Sept 19The Australian Medical Association has joined other international medical groups in recognising climate change as a “health emergency”. The Australian Medical Association says the evidence on climate change is irrefutable and warns there will be more deaths from heat stress, severe weather events, hunger and disease.The AMA Federal Council declared at its meeting in Canberra that, “climate change is real and will have the earliest and most severe health consequences on vulnerable populations around the world, including in Australia and the Pacific region”.
The AMA has joined other international health organisations, including the American Medical Association, the British Medical Association, and Doctors for the Environment Australia, in labelling it a “health emergency”.
“The Federal Council recognises climate change as a health emergency, with clear scientific evidence indicating severe impacts for our patients and communities now and into the future,” the federal council says……..
New nuclear arms race brings higher risk of global catastrophe, The New Daily, Quentin Dempster@QuentinDempster 2 Sept 19The world is at its highest risk of a global catastrophe in decades, thanks to an unpredictable resumption in the nuclear arms race.
Veteran defence and security analyst Brian Toohey has warned that talk of war between the West, and China and Russia, along with brinkmanship with North Korea and Iran, has escalated the conditions that can lead to catastrophic accidents and mistakes.
Adding to the potential for disastrous nuclear consequences, Mr Toohey’s latest book – to be published this week – reveals that “many missile control systems can now be hit by a wide range of previously unknown cyber-warfare tools available to terrorists, hoaxers and governments”.
Mr Toohey’s book, Secret – The Making of Australia’s Security State, outlines a terrifying situation where nuclear weapons continue to exist in massive numbers………
Australia is complicit
Mr Toohey said Australia continued to rely on the US “nuclear umbrella” and was directly complicit in the US nuclear program through the Pine Gap and North West Cape intelligence and communications bases linked to US submarines tasked to detect and destroy Russian and Chinese nuclear-armed submarines.
Coalition governments in Australia had declined to push for nuclear disarmament, with former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull refusing to support a 2017 United Nations resolution to establish a legally binding treaty prohibiting the development or possession of nuclear weapons.
The Turnbull government refused to congratulate ICAN after it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2017.
Mr Turnbull later declared that Australia and the US were “joined at the hip”.
The Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons concluded in 1996 that “the proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used – accidentally or by decision – defies credibility”.
The only complete defence was the elimination of nuclear weapons with a strong international verification regime to convince the existing nuclear powers to disarm.
Calls for Australia to join the race
Current calls for Australia to consider a nuclear arms capability for its submarines to deter an invasion from China re-emerged from strategic think tanks and academics.
“It is doubtful if China’s relatively small nuclear forces could survive a US attack. The US has a total of 6550 warheads –1350 deployed on long-range missiles and bombers – compared to China’s total of 280,” Mr Toohey writes.
“Ever since George W Bush unilaterally abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the US has deployed conventional missiles on ships and land that can destroy nuclear-armed ballistic missiles.”
“Its attack submarines can track and sink China’s four ballistic-missile submarines. This means China must expand its nuclear forces to ensure that enough retaliatory missiles would survive to deter a first strike”.
Quentin Dempster is a Walkley Award-winning journalist, author and broadcaster. He is a veteran of the ABC newsroom. He was awarded an Order of Australia in 1992 for services to journalism nuclear-arms-race/
The Coalition is now taking yet another slice of that pudding. Unlike New Zealand, Germany, France, the UK and others, it will continue to draw on unused emission “credits” from the Kyoto era, which expires next year, to meet the modest 2030 target it set for itself in Paris four years ago.
With the exception of two brief years when a carbon price was in operation, emissions have continued to rise. So the Morrison government, like its predecessors, doesn’t mention them. Instead it refers repeatedly to “our target”, which we are meeting “in a canter”.
Australia has now been playing its Kyoto card for over 20 years, and shows no sign of ending the deception.
The Morrison government is engaging in the kind of international chicanery we used to associate with tinpot dictatorships. When the United Nations emerged out of World War II, Australia was widely recognised as a model international citizen, a light helping to guide the world in a new age of diplomacy.
Civilisation’s answer to the wreckage left by nationalism was the UN’s multilateral world order. Both Coalition and Labor leaders knew that it gave a leg up to a middle-sized power like Australia, and worked hard to build our country’s reputation as a good global citizen.
Many older northern nations struggled with the new order, but Australia punched above its weight, notably in environmental advocacy. We led the world in pressing for UN measures to protect natural values in our part of the world, including the Southern Ocean and Antarctica.
Our efforts were noticed. We secured the first UN presidency. UNESCO’s World Heritage committee held its first southern hemisphere meeting in Sydney, and the first Antarctic Treaty meeting was held in Canberra. We hosted the headquarters, in Hobart, of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).
At the UN’s Earth Summit in 1992 Australia lobbied hard for the proposed framework convention on climate change and quickly ratified its agreement. Everyone expected as much. We had the reputation of taking a holistic view, supporting best collective outcomes.
But then something changed. Australia demanded special treatment at the 1997 Kyoto climate conference. Most developed countries agreed to lower their carbon emissions, but Australia was allowed a significant increase over 1990 levels.
How many know that, on behalf of us all, ANSTO is already preparing the groundwork for the deployment of Gen VI reactors in the 2030s?
ANSTO stooge Prof Edwards speaking to the Prerequisites Standing Committee “…….. Australia …. has chosen, ….. supporting two reactors: the very high temperature reactor and the molten salt reactor.”
in terms of the reactors Australia has chosen, we’re supporting two reactors: the very high temperature reactor and the molten salt reactor. The very high temperature reactor is probably the highest technology readiness level, or TRL, in that there are a couple being constructed in China at the moment. As part of the generation forum, I will be visiting those in October. They’ve actually started co-commissioning those plans. …. Those two reactors are particularly suitable for Australia
John Quiggin’s reply to the AFR’s misleading headline, and Aaron Patrick’s article:
“This is a typical gotcha from Aaron Patrick. My view is that, if we could get a substantial carbon price (at least $50/tonne) now, it would be worth removing the existing nuclear ban. As I’ve written elsewhere, nuclear power can’t get started here for at least 20 years, and in the meantime renewables would wipe out all coal and most gas.”
Left-wing economist John Quiggin has urged the NSW Parliament to legalise nuclear power, making the University of Queensland academic the most prominent environmentalist to support the controversial energy source.
Economist John Quiggin supports nuclear power. [?]
Professor Quiggin told a NSW parliamentary inquiry into uranium mining and nuclear power that the ban should be lifted simultaneously with the introduction of a price charged for emitting Greenhouse gases.
“The Parliament should pass a motion … removing the existing ban on nuclear power,” he said in a written submission. “Nuclear power is not viable in the absence of a carbon price.”
The inquiry, one of three similar under way, is seen by some Coalition MPs as the start of a long process of convincing voters to support nuclear reactors to replace the state’s ageing coal power stations, including Liddell in the Hunter Valley, which is due to close after the summer of 2023……..
The Minerals Council of Australia, a lobby group, successfully pushed for a federal parliamentary inquiry into nuclear, which is examining the feasibility of a new generation of compact power plants that are meant to be safer and much cheaper than the huge stations that supply about 11 per cent of the world’s electricity……..
The NSW inquiry is the result of a private members bill introduced by state One Nation leader Mark Latham that would allow uranium mining. Nuclear power is banned in NSW under federal and state regulations…….
The biggest impediment to development of the industry is opposition from the Labor and Greens parties, environmental groups and left-wing think tanks such as The Australia Institute.
The conditional support of left-wing academics such as Professor Quiggin could, over time, lessen opposition to nuclear power, which supporters say could be used as a back up for wind and solar power.
In Victoria a parliamentary inquiry began two weeks ago at the request of a Liberal Democrat MP, David Limbrick.
The 12-month inquiry will explore if nuclear energy would be feasible and suitable for Victoria in the future, and consider waste management, health and safety and industrial and medical applications, AAP reported.
Aaron Patrick is The Australian Financial Review’s Senior Correspondent. He writes about politics and business. Connect with Aaron on Twitter. Email Aaron at apatrick@afr.com.au
Before the nuclear lobby has even got the Australian Parliament to overturn Australia’s legislation prohibiting nuclear power, they are launching their “win hearts and minds”action.
With this catchy title “Stand Up For Nuclear”- they are holding a rally on Sunday October 20, 2019 at 3 PM – 6 PM at an undisclosed location in Collins St Melbourne.
Their lying propaganda claims that:
“”Only nuclear can lift all humans out of poverty while protecting the natural environment.
anti-nuclear activists are funded by natural gas and renewable energy interests.” – (that’s news to me – 12 years of running this site I have received zero funding)
Queensland extinguishes native title over Indigenous land to make way for Adani coalmine
Palaszczuk government did not announce decision Wangan and Jagalingou people say makes them trespassers on their own land, Guardian, Ben Doherty@bendohertycorro, Sat 31 Aug 2019 The Queensland government has extinguished native title over 1,385 hectares of Wangan and Jagalingou country for the proposed Adani coalmine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin – without any public announcement of the decision.
The decision could see Wangan and Jagalingou protesters forcibly removed by police from their traditional lands, including lands used for ceremonies.
W&J Council leader Adrian Burragubba, and a group of Wangan and Jagalingou representatives, had been calling on the government to rule out transferring their land, arguing they had never given their consent for Adani to occupy their country.
In a meeting with government officials Friday, seeking a halt on leases being issued for mine infrastructure, they learned the state government had instead granted Adani exclusive possession freehold title over large swathes of their lands on Thursday, including the area currently occupied for ceremonial purposes.
“We have been made trespassers on our own country,” Burragubba said. “Our ceremonial grounds, in place for a time of mourning for our lands as Adani begins its destructive processes, are now controlled by billionaire miner Adani.
“With insider knowledge that the deal was already done, Adani had engaged Queensland police and threatened us with trespass.”
To mine any land under a native title claim, a miner needs an Indigenous land use agreement, essentially a contract that allows the state to extinguish native title.
Adani has a ILUA over the land: five of the 12 native claimants have opposed it, but have lost successive legal challenges in court to prevent it. Seven, a majority, of the native title claimants support the Adani mine.
Burragubba and a group of supporters set up camp on the land ahead of its legal transfer to Adani. He said they will refuse to leave.
He said a notice received by the council said their country “is to be handed over to Adani on 3 August 2019”. The notice also says “Adani will request the assistance of police to remove Mr Burragubba and his supporters from the camp”.
Burragubba, whom Adani has bankrupted over costs from legal challenges, said his group would not abandon their protest nor quit their lands.
“We will never consent to these decisions and will maintain our defence of country,” he said. “We will be on our homelands to care for our lands and waters, hold ceremonies and uphold the ancient, abiding law of the land.” ……..
Australian governments will give $4.4bn in effective subsidies to Adani’s Carmichael coal project, which would otherwise be “unbankable and unviable”, new analysis reported this week has found.
The Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis concluded that the project would benefit from several Australian taxpayer-funded arrangements – including subsidies, favourable deals and tax concessions – over its 30-year project life.
It said the project would be further supported by public handouts, tax breaks and special treatment provided to Adani Power, the proposed end-user of the thermal coal in India.
Nuclear power in Australia not realistic for at least a decade, Ziggy Switkowski says
Expert who led 2006 review says ban on nuclear should be lifted, but much more overseas evidence is needed on small modular reactors, Guardian, Adam Morton Environment editor@adamlmorton, 29 Aug 2019 It will be about a decade before it is clear whether small nuclear reactors are suitable for Australia and would take about 15 years to bring a plant online if a decision was made to build one, one of the country’s leading experts has said.
But Ziggy Switkowski, who headed a 2006 review of nuclear power for the Howard government, said the technology had no chance of being introduced unless Australia had a coherent energy policy.
“Can you graft a long-term commitment to nuclear energy on to a currently unconfirmed national energy policy? The answer to this is no, in my opinion,” he told the first hearing of a parliamentary inquiry into what would be necessary to develop a nuclear power industry
The inquiry was called by the energy minister, Angus Taylor, following calls from backbench MPs for nuclear to be reconsidered. Taylor said there were no plans to drop the existing moratorium on nuclear energy but it was government’s role to plan for the decades ahead.
Switkowski said though nuclear power had “no social licence at this time” the legislative ban against it should “absolutely” be abolished. “We really should not be making decisions in 2019 based on legislation passed in 1999 reflecting the views of 1979,” he said.
He reiterated his belief that the window for large-scale nuclear plants had closed, a view shared by Taylor, but said he believed there would be an opportunity for small modular reactors, known as SMRs, of between 60 and about 200 megawatts.
He said they were most likely to be successful in regional communities with about 100,000 people or in powering mining or desalination sites. “But we won’t know until the SMRS are deployed in quantity [overseas],” Switkowski said. “That’s unlikely to happen for another 10 or so years.”
He listed the positives and concerns associated with developing a nuclear industry. The disadvantages included that, given historic disasters at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, “the possibility of catastrophic failure in a nuclear system is non-negligible”.
He said conventional nuclear reactors were “now very expensive”, partly due to safety requirements in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. Nuclear powerwas the most capital-intensive energy technology and took the longest to recoup investment. Unlike with solar and wind energy, there did not appear to be economies of scale – the cost of nuclear electricity grew as technology advanced. Switkowski said as far he was aware, no coherent business case to finance an Australian industry had been presented. Any business case would require significant government support.
“Given that Australia would begin from a standing start, the first reactor of any commercial scale would take about 15 years to reach normal operation and generate revenues,” Switkowski said.
Based on experience overseas, he said it was more likely that 15 years would be an underestimate than an overestimate of how long it would take. He said the commercial and political risks of developing an industry over what could be more than five political cycles were substantial…….
Risk of ‘catastrophic failure’ if Australia adopts nuclear energy: Switkowski, The Age, By Rebecca Gredley August 29, 2019, There is a risk of “catastrophic failure” if Australia adopts nuclear energy, a federal parliamentary inquiry has heard.Ziggy Switkowski, who led a Howard government review into the power source, drew attention to the nuclear disasters of Chernobyl in Ukraine, Fukushima in Japan and Three Mile Island in the US.
After those events, the possibility of catastrophic failure within the nuclear system is non-negligible“, he told the committee in Sydney on Thursday.
Issues also arose around managing nuclear waste and the cost burden on future generations, Dr Switkowski said……. The committee heard from several government agencies on Thursday, including the Australian Energy Market Operator and the Australian Energy Regulator. It will consider waste management, health and safety, environmental impacts, affordability and reliability, economic feasibility and workforce capability. https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/risk-of-catastrophic-failure-if-australia-adopts-nuclear-energy-20190829-p52m2h.html
The push for an Aussie bombIt took former PM John Gorton almost three decades to finally come clean on his ambitions for Australia to have a nuclear bomb. THE AUSTRALIAN, By TOM GILLING 30 Aug 19,
In December 9, 1966, the Australian Government signed a public agreement with the US to build what both countries described as a “Joint Defence Space Research Facility” at Pine Gap, just outside Alice Springs. The carefully misleading agreement expressed the two countries’ mutual desire “to co-operate further in effective defence and for the preservation of peace and security”.
Officially, Pine Gap was a collaboration between the Australian Department of Defence and the Pentagon’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, but the latter was a red herring meant to conceal the real power at Pine Gap: the Central Intelligence Agency….the truth was that the Joint Defence Space Research Facility was joint in name only and its purpose was not (and never would be) “research”. It was a spy station designed to collect signals from US surveillance satellites in geosynchronous orbit over the equator. ……
The building of an experimental reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney’s south was supposed to be the first step in a nuclear program that within a decade would see the development of full-scale nuclear power reactors. ……
During the 1950s Australian defence chiefs lobbied vigorously for an Australian bomb. When it became clear that the prime minister, Robert Menzies, had reservations, they went behind his back. Menzies did agree, however, to let Britain test its nuclear weapons in Australia — a decision, according to historian Jacques Hymans, taken “almost single-handedly… without consulting his Cabinet and without requesting any quid pro quo, not even access to technical data necessary for the Australian government to assess the effects of the tests on humans and the environment”……….
Gorton’s political reservations about the non-proliferation treaty masked a deeper fear: that signing the treaty might cause Australia’s nascent atomic energy industry to be “frozen in a primitive state”. Gorton and the head of Australia’s Atomic Energy Commission, Philip Baxter, were both committed to pursuing the development of an Australian bomb. Scientists at the AEC worked with government officials to draw up cost and time estimates for atomic and hydrogen bomb programs. According to the historian Hymans, they outlined two possible programs: a power reactor program capable of producing enough weapons- grade plutonium for 30 fission weapons (A-bombs) per year; and a uranium enrichment program capable of producing enough uranium-235 for at least 10 thermonuclear weapons (H-bombs) per year. The A-bomb plan was costed at what was considered to be an “affordable” $144 million and was thought to be feasible in no more than seven to 10 years. The H-bomb plan was costed at $184 million over a similar period.
Aware of opposition to any talk of an “Aussie bomb”, Gorton carefully played down the military aspect and argued instead for the economic benefits of a nuclear power program. ………
a US mission did visit Canberra at the end of April 1968. Officials from the AEC had impressed the US visitors with “the confidence of their ability to manufacture a nuclear weapon and desire to be in a position to do so on very short notice”.
The Australian officials, they said, had “studied the draft NPT [non-proliferation treaty] most thoroughly… the political rationalisation of these officials was that Australia needed to be in a position to manufacture nuclear weapons rapidly if India and Japan were to go nuclear… the Australian officials indicated they could not even contemplate signing the NPT if it were not for an interpretation which would enable the deployment of nuclear weapons belonging to an ally on Australian soil.”
Eighteen months after Rusk’s fractious visit to Canberra, Gorton called a general election. He declared his commitment to a nuclear-powered (if not a nuclear-armed) Australia, announcing that “the time for this nation to enter the atomic age has now arrived” and laying out his scheme for a 500-megawatt nuclear power plant to be built at Jervis Bay, on NSW’s south coast. While the defence benefits of such a reactor were unspoken, there was no mistaking the military potential of the plutonium it would be producing.
The Jervis Bay reactor never got off the drawing board, although planning reached an advanced stage. Detailed specifications were put out to tender and there was broad agreement over a British bid to build a heavy-water reactor. A Cabinet submission was in the pipeline when Gorton lost the confidence of the party room and was replaced by William McMahon, a nuclear sceptic who moved quickly to defer the project.
It would be another 28 years before Gorton finally came clean on the link between the reactor and his ambition for Australia to have nuclear weapons. . In 1999 he told a Sydney newspaper that “we were interested in this thing because it could provide electricity to everybody and… if you decided later on, it could make an atomic bomb”. Gorton did not identify who he meant by “we” (although Philip Baxter was almost certainly among them) but Gorton and those who shared his nuclear ambitions were unable to win over the doubters in his own government.
Australia signed the non-proliferation treaty in 1970 but even as it did so it was clear that Gorton had no intention of ratifying the treaty. Australia would not ratify it until 1973, and then only after McMahon’s Coalition government had lost power to Gough Whitlam’s Labor Party. As well as ratifying the treaty, the Whitlam government cancelled the Jervis Bay project that had been in limbo since McMahon became prime minister. And with that, Whitlam effectively ended Australia’s quixotic bid to become a nuclear power.
Australia never got its own bomb, although as late as 1984 the foreign minister, Bill Hayden, could still speak about Australian nuclear research providing the country with the potential for nuclear weapons. The Morrison Government is unlikely to let the nuclear genie out of the bottle, with a spokesperson from the Department of Defence telling The Weekend Australian Magazine that “Australia stands by its Non-Proliferation Treaty pledge, as a non-nuclear weapon state, not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons”. ….. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/gorton-and-the-bomb-australias-nuclear-ambitions/news-story/00787e322a41d2ff37a146c86a739f02
The Australian government is not being up front with the public. The plan to set up a supposedly “temporary” nuclear waste dump in South Australia must be involved with some idea of what to do with these wastes permanently.
Is this plan in fact the precursor to a secret plan to set up a dump for the importation of nuclear wastes?
Antinuclear 