Health risks due to high salt content in water, in a drought town
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Health expert warns residents are at risk from high sodium in water in drought-stricken NSW town of Walgett, ABC News, By Rachel Carbonell, National Regional Reporting Team, Jessie Davies and Danielle Bonica, 10 Dec 18, Walgett has always been a river town, perched near the junction of the Barwon and the Namoi rivers.But with the drought biting hard, the water from those rivers isn’t making it to this northern New South Wales town.
With nothing to pump from the local weir, Walgett is the latest town forced to go underground for water, a move that health experts say could have potentially serious health implications. Many locals are worried the emergency supply of bore water is damaging their health. Dharriwaa Elder, Thomas Morgan, said the water was no good for drinking. “Too much salt in it,” he said. “The kids, my grandkids, they’re starting to spit it out, they don’t like it.” Continue reading |
Climate change now brings bushfires to Australia’s Northern rainforests
 ‘Like opening a fan oven’: Australia’s rainforest threatened by bushfires, Guardian, Lisa Cox, 9 Dec 18Typically, rainforest should be able to self-protect during fire, with closed canopies that allow little sunlight to the forest floor and that keep the vegetation moist. But the cyclones have shredded the canopies, leaving an excess of fuel from debris on the ground, and a lack of rain meant the forest was dry. Since 22 November, more than 1m hectares has been burnt across Queensland, much of which lies in the tropics. Since the beginning of its bushfire season in August, more than 3.6m hectares have been destroyed. The most recent fires occurred on a magnitude never before seen in the state. Over a period of 12 days, the Queensland fire and emergency service said it had attended more than 1,200 fires, with help from crews from every state and territory in Australia. Andrew Piccone, a nature campaigner with the Australian Conservation Foundation, who did his studies in rainforest ecology, said that Australia would have to consider the future impact of warming conditions on a range of plant, animal and insect species in the wet tropics. “If catastrophic fire conditions are going to burn the rainforest in Queensland, what that means for the future of the wet tropics world heritage area could be quite concerning,” he said……… Philip Stewart, a fire ecologist with Queensland University’s school of earth and environmental sciences, agrees. He said governments and communities would need to become more proactive in fighting fires and that current processes were too reactive. “We do need to look at firefighting in a different light,” Stewart said. “We are a fire-prone country and more people are moving into fire-prone areas. We need to have an understanding of the danger of that and look at fighting fire with fire. He pointed to traditional burning used by Indigenous communities as a model, where prescribed burning occurs on a larger scale than hazard-reduction burns, which focus on reducing fuel in specific areas. Stewart said areas of rainforest impacted could take decades or even centuries to recover, adding that the next possible threat to those areas was mudslides as the wet season sets in. “High-intensity fire tends to create a layer within the soil that is hydrophobic and therefore water repellent causing mass soil erosion,” he said. “We are seeing this very phenomenon in the USA at Malibu where mass soil movement has taken place due to the heavy rains that followed the high-intensity and severe fires there.” https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/dec/09/australias-rainforest-under-threat-as-bushfires-rage-in-the-tropics |
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Electric cars, and the hazards of rare earths used in them
The electric-car revolution is here, but is that a good thing for the environment? ABC , By environment reporter Nick Kilvert for Life Matters 8 Dec18 “……..Rare earth metals like neodymium are often used in the batteries and magnets of electric cars, but there’s a catch, according to geologist Carl Spandler from JCU.
“There’s an association with rare earth ores with uranium and thorium, and they’re radioactive,” Associate Professor Spandler said.
Rare earth deposits are often found alongside uranium and thorium, meaning when you mine one, you get both.
In 2011, Mitsubishi spent $100 million on a quiet clean-up of a rare earth plant run by subsidiary company Mitsubishi Chemical near the villages of Ipoh and Papan in Malaysia.
From the time the plant opened in 1982, locals complained of eye-watering smoke and foul odour, and as time went on, villagers say they saw increased birth defects and leukemia.
Mitsubishi eventually removed more than 11,000 truckloads of radioactive material from the site, contaminated with thorium.
Despite the name, rare earths actually aren’t very rare at all, and there are significant deposits in Australia.
Australian company Lynas mines rare earths at its Mount Weld site in south-eastern Western Australia.
But the ore is shipped to Malaysia for processing where locals, whose limited experience with the rare-earth metals industry hasn’t been good, are in staunch opposition.
This week, Malaysia set new conditions on the Lynas plant, including that they must remove all radioactive by-products produced at the refinery, from Malaysia.
Some mining in China also has a poor environmental and social track record, according to Dr Spandler.
“They had small-scale operators just strip mining, but they’ve cut down on that quite a bit now because it was really doing a lot of damage to the environment.”
But despite the risks, radioactivity in rare earths is probably not such a big issue for Australian mines like Lynas, according to Dr Spandler.
“The mining companies are very well aware of [the radioactivity issues]. They’re obviously under strict regulations that they’ve got to control the radioactivity of their waste material and have a proper plan in place for how they deal with that waste,” he said.
“All of the [Australian] projects that are in the pipeline or up and coming now, they have fairly low levels of uranium and thorium, so they’re fairly manageable.”…… https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-12-08/electric-cars-revolution-environment/10589270
Northern Territory – legal case over climate change
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Key points:
Paul Vogel gave evidence this week in a landmark challenge brought against the EPA’s decision to not require an environmental impact assessment of a proposal to clear 20,000 hectares at the Maryfield cattle station south of Darwin. The case is considered to be the first in the Northern Territory to challenge the approval of land clearing on the basis of climate change impacts. Lawyers for the Environmental Defenders Office NT argued the authority was wrong in regarding itself unable to consider the impact of the clearing’s emissions because the Northern Territory had no climate policy and because the emissions would not have a nationally significant environmental impact. The Supreme Court heard that estimates of the likely emissions were not provided to EPA members in the briefing papers prepared for them, despite officers from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources calculating an estimate of 2.3 megatonnes or 18.5 per cent of the NT’s total annual emissions for 2015. Dr Vogel said while the EPA seeks to ensure that proponents keep emissions as low as possible, the impact of activities from individual projects on climate change is not measurable……….. Proposal raised ‘flashing red’ concerns: EPA member The Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) lawyers also argued the authority’s decision was invalid because the EPA had not followed its own meeting procedures nor voted on the final decision. Emails discussed in court between the EPA decision-makers, who mostly live outside the Territory, revealed concerns raised by a number of members. “For many projects with a much smaller area involved we have required extensive flora and fauna surveys.” Mr Wallis said the land-clearing proposal should be exposed to public scrutiny through an assessment process. Another EPA member suggested the authority clear the project for approval only on the basis that it ensure recommended conditions were met. Recommendations were made but some of the conditions were then rejected by the Pastoral Land Board, which ultimately approved the clearing. The matter will return to court later in December. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-08/nt-land-clearing-climate-change-legal-stoush-supreme-court/10590808 |
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It’s time: why Labor must join the global push to outlaw nuclear weapons
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/it-s-time-why-labor-must-join-the-global-push-to-outlaw-nuclear-weapons-20181206-p50kpx.htmlBy Robert Tickner, 10 December 2018 The key political players and decision makers of the Australian Labor Party are about to gather in Adelaide for their 48th national conference from next Sunday. They will consider Labor’s stand on a humanitarian issue that has been the focus of the party’s ideals and aspirations for decades. Will it back a new global move to outlaw nuclear weapons?
Support for signing and ratifying the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has already been endorsed by 78 per cent of members of the parliamentary Labor Party. They include national president Wayne Swan, deputy leader Tanya Plibersek, shadow treasurer Chris Bowen, Tony Burke, Mark Dreyfus, Mike Kelly, Joel Fitzgibbon, Linda Burney, Catherine King, Brendan O’Connor, Anthony Albanese and Patrick Dodson. More than 20 leading trade unions have joined the ACTU in this cause. Continue reading
Students lead anti-Adani protests, vow to remove Liberal Party from power
Stop Adani protesters gather in cities, take aim at Scott Morrison’s activism comments, ABC News, 9 Dec 18 By Kevin Nguyen Student activists who felt the Prime Minister was condescending last week over climate issues have vowed to remove the Liberal Party from power — and keep it out — as long as it maintains its current policies.
Key points:
- A national survey showed a majority of respondents supported student protests on climate change
- Rallies took place in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Cairns
- Junior activists said the Prime Minister’s comments compelled them to march
Thousands of protesters gathered in capital cities on the east coast on Saturday in a coordinated march against Indian energy giant Adani’s Carmichael mine and rail project.
At the end of last month, Adani announced the scaled-back $2 billion controversial coal mine in the Galilee Basin would go ahead and would be 100 per cent self-financed, with work starting before Christmas.
While the attendees at the rally were diverse, it was school-aged students who were leading the crowds.
“It’s awful to see our leader feels like we shouldn’t have opinions and we shouldn’t care and they shouldn’t listen to us,” 14-year-old Jean Hinchliffe said in response to Mr Morrison’s calls last week for “less activism in schools”.
“It’s just atrocious. As students we are very informed and very educated and that’s why we’re taking action.
“We’re fighting for our own futures.”………
PM’s comments galvanised students
Like Jean, many young students who appeared at the rallies on Saturday were part of the thousands of Australian students who defied Scott Morrison’s call to stay in school.
While school-aged students will not be eligible to vote in next year’s federal and state elections, they are becoming the face of the Stop Adani and climate strike movements determined to make it a persistent election issue.
Daisy Jeffrey, 16, from Conservatorium High School in Sydney, said she was interested in a future in politics and Mr Morrison’s comments had galvanised her, and dozens of her peers, to take to the streets.
“It wasn’t disheartening, it made us more angry and more determined to go out on the streets,” Daisy said.
In addition to Sydney, rallies were held in Brisbane, Melbourne and Cairns.
n Melbourne, hundreds of people sat down in the middle of the busy Flinders Street intersection, blocking traffic in a bid to draw attention to their cause………https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-08/adani-student-protesters-vow-to-keep-liberals-out-of-power/10597022
The choice of Maralinga as nuclear bomb site – and the effects on Aboriginal people
‘Aboriginal people were still living close to the test sites and were told nothing about radiation.
‘High rates of cancer were eventually documented in the 16,000 test workers, but no studies were done on Aboriginal people and others living in areas of fallout. It’s been called the cancer capital of Australia.’
Although many Aboriginal people were forcibly removed from their land, more than a thousand were directly affected by the bombs.
Vomiting, skin rashes, diarrhoea, fevers and, later, blood diseases and cancer were among the common conditions caused by the testing.
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How the Australian government offered up an outback Aboriginal settlement for nuclear bomb testing in the 1950s – saving a small English town but creating our ‘cancer capital’ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6466191/Australian-government-offered-outback-nuclear-testing-save-small-English-village.html
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Cost of rehabilitating Ranger uranium mine
World Nuclear News 7th Dec 2018 The estimated rehabilitation costs for the Ranger Project Area inAustralia’s Northern Territory have increased from AUD512 million (USD370
million) to AUD808 million, Energy Resources of Australia (ERA) has
announced. The estimate is based on preliminary findings from a feasibility
study which will be finalised in early 2019.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/ERA-updates-Ranger-rehabilitation-costs
The electric-car revolution is here, but is that a good thing for the environment?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-12-08/electric-cars-revolution-environment/10589270 By environment reporter Nick Kilvert for Life Matters
The electric-car revolution is well and truly upon us.
There were more than a million bought worldwide last year.
In Australia, 2017 sales were up more than 4,000 per cent compared to 2011.
By 2035, it’s estimated that there’ll be over 11 million electric cars bought every year worldwide, and more than half of those will be bought in China.
But they take more energy to produce than petrol and diesel cars and often they’re charged from a dirty electricity grid.
And producing enough batteries and magnets to power them is going to place a huge demand on rare-earth metals — the mining of which has a bad environmental track record.
So is the electric-car revolution actually going to do us more harm than good?
What if I charge my electric car with coal?
Transport is Australia’s third biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 19 per cent of our total emissions last year.
That includes planes, shipping, and trucks, but around half of that comes from our petrol and diesel-powered cars.
The beauty of an electric car is that once it’s charged, there are no emissions being pumped out of the exhaust pipe and into the atmosphere.
And if you can charge your car from a renewable source, like solar during the day, you’re effectively driving an emissions-free car.
Most Australians though, if they want to charge their car overnight, will be plugging into the grid.
The average running emissions budget of a petrol-powered car sold in 2016 was 182 grams of CO2 per kilometre (g CO2/km).
Charging an electric car on Australia’s cleanest grid — Tasmania — has an emissions cost of just 27g CO2/km, or around one-seventh the emissions of petrol. In South Australia, that goes up to 95g CO2/km — still around half that of petrol.
In fact, in every state except Victoria, you’re producing less emission by driving an electric car charged from the grid, than by driving a combustion-powered car.
If we’ve got a chance of meeting our modest 2030 Paris target of 26-28 per cent emissions reduction on 2005 levels, greening our grid could have the two-fold benefit of greening our transport.
n 2019, researchers at the University of Queensland (UQ) are looking at rolling out vehicle-to-grid technology at a couple of demonstration sites.
The technology is already in limited use in Japan, Europe and the United States, and an electric vehicle model will be released in Australia next year with vehicle-to-grid charging capability.
Vehicle-to-grid capacity effectively means that an electric car and its battery can be plugged into a house to provide power when other sources, like solar, aren’t available, according to Jake Whitehead from UQ.
“In the first instance, that could be for powering the building, supplementing the solar and the built-in battery storage,” Dr Whitehead said.
An average three-person home in south-east Queensland uses just over 15 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity daily.
This means an electric car battery can easily supply the energy needs of a house overnight, and the driving needs of its occupants during the day, as long as there’s at least an hour of downtime to top up at a supercharging station.
According to Dr Whitehead’s calculations, electric car batteries have the potential to supply all our household energy storage in the future.
“If you look at the light vehicle fleet in Australia — just over 14 million cars and light commercial vehicles — if all of those were to be transitioned to be electric … you would have enough potential energy storage across that fleet to power the entire country across every sector for an entire day,” he said.
“If you could charge and discharge every day, that would essentially mean the entire fleet could run the country all year. So there’s all this potential there, but we’re a long way off 14 million EVs [electric vehicles].”………..
What’s better than an electric car?
Side by side, electric cars are a better environmental option than internal combustion vehicles.
Oil drilling and refining does, after all, come with its own equivalent set of environmental and geopolitical baggage.
But with China and India’s growing middle classes, it’s estimated that more than 500 million electric cars will have been produced worldwide by 2040, putting a massive strain on raw materials. Even if mining adheres to the strictest environmental parameters, deforestation from mining operations is inevitable and at odds with a sustainable future.
Better than both fuel and electric car options is no car at all, according to Martin Brueckner from Murdoch University.
While Dr Brueckner sees a role for electric transport in the future, he argues that we need a fundamental overhaul of how see transport.
“We’ve basically adopted wholeheartedly a US model of city development — an inner city and sprawling suburbia,” he said.
“As the density increases we’re now looking at clogged city arteries … it’s impossible basically, having large cities functioning using that old way of thinking.”
Instead, he’s advocating for better infrastructure, where cities are designed around public transport rather than cars.
According to the ABS, Australian cars travelled an average of 37 kilometres each day in 2016 — a couple of hours at most.
Replacing individually owned cars with car-share models could also cut down on the number of cars, according to Dr Brueckner.
“[Electric cars] don’t change congestion issues, it doesn’t change pedestrian-unfriendly cities and all the problems that are associated with that,” he said.
“We need whole new mobility concepts. In all likelihood it would also be electrified, but not necessarily individual car-based.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-12-08/electric-cars-revolution-environment/10589270
Exciting South Australian film project “Unwilling Nation”
Kim Mavromatis Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste In The Flinders 10 Dec 18 Ranges SELECTED FOR DOCULAB 2018 – We are really excited to be one of 6 teams selected to participate in the South Australian Film Corporation and Screen Australia Doculab Initiative.
OUR PROJECT : “Unwilling Nation” – a film about the 40 year fight to stop Nuclear Waste getting dumped in South Australia.
PROJECT KEY CREATIVES (Participating in the Doculab) :
Kim Mavromatis and Quenten Agius (Producers).
Robyn Ravenna (Writer / Researcher).
Supporting the development of a range of documentary and factual projects in South Australia, Doculab is an intensive three day lab for factual screen-makers.
Courtney Gibson (SAFC Chief Executive ) said “Doculab is about putting weight behind SA documentary projects and teams, bringing them together as a community to provide latest market intelligence and develop their projects to optimal creative strength before they’re out to market, and we’re so pleased to be partnering with Screen Australia to make this happen”.
Sally Caplan (Head of Content at Screen Australia) said “The calibre of content emerging from SA is both locally and internationally recognised and it’s important to continue nurturing its vibrant screen community. The Doculab initiative is committed to developing the skills and knowledge of diverse documentary filmmakers. We firmly believe that incubating people and projects through mentorships, funding and fostering pitching skills to penetrate specific markets is essential. We’re excited to see new South Australian projects develop from this initiative that we hope provide longevity for the industry.”
Students lead thousands in nationwide protests against Adani coal mine
SBS, 9 Dec 18 Thousands of people have marched through Australia’s capital cities in protest of Adani’s Queensland coal mine project. Thousands of people have protested Indian mining giant Adani’s plans to dig a new thermal coal mine in Queensland and have called on state and federal governments as well as the federal opposition to stop it going ahead.
Protesters marched the streets in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Cairns just a week after upwards of 15,000 school students demonstrated against government inaction on climate change.
It follows the announcement last month by Adani it would self-fund the controversial project after scaling back its size and scope.
The coal project is being downsized from a 60-million-tonnes a year, $16.5 billion mega-mine to a more manageable 10-to-15 million tonnes a year costing around $2 billion.
“No longer will we sit back and be lectured to by people who are outdated and out of touch,” Thomas Cullen told hundreds of protesters gathered in Brisbane on Saturday.
The 17-year-old was one of the thousands of students criticised by Prime Minister Scott Morrison for skipping school to stage national strikes calling for immediate action on climate change just over a week ago…….https://www.sbs.com.au/news/students-lead-thousands-in-nationwide-protests-against-adani-coal-mine
Cash-strapped UN climate fund needs Australia to continue contributing
Australia has been asked to reconsider its decision to withdraw support for a multi-billion-dollar Green Climate Fund, as finance has emerged as a key stumbling block to progress in talks in Poland on implementing the Paris Agreement. ... (subscribers only)
Read the fine print: future funding for Kimba/Hawker nuclear waste dump is NOT guaranteed
Kim Mavromatis Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA 8 Dec 18, Funding for Hawker / Kimba – WILL ERODE – GUARANTEED. Out of the proposed 31 million carrots, 21 million carrots will be supposedly delivered after the proposed site is built – do we really trust the fed liberal govnt to deliver the 21 million carrots after the site is built?? Read the fine print – how gullible do they think we are?? The same mob stabbed their leaders (prime ministers) in the back – told us the 10,000 barrels of radioactive waste dumped at woomera was only low level and nothing to worry about, then Rex Patrick discovers the waste includes intermediate level radioactive nuclear waste – lie after lie after lie – the fed libs deserve to get clobbered at the next election.
Kim ABC report: Carr says that Lucas Heights getting full of nuclear waste: the evidence contradicts him
Kazzi Jai Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA, 8 Nov 18 Heard the North and West ABC news grab this morning regarding Kim Carr saying that…. the current site in Sydney is getting full and a new site has to be found quickly. It is unsustainable as it is and may not get further registration because of it….This is CONTRARY to the RECORDED INFORMATION from the Senate Inquiry and NRWMF Debate from DIIS, ANSTO and ARPANSA!!
Great time (NOT) for North and West ABC to have a technical fault with their news section for today. Could have tagged a link to their North and West FB page for this comment from Kim Carr…
Bushfires near Kimba, proposed site for nuclear waste dump
Adelaide weather: Another scorcher as KI bushfire continues to burn, Adelaide Now Gabe Polychronis, Mitch Mott, The Advertiser, December 7, 2018 A large bushfire continues to burn on Kangaroo Island, as the CFS bring in dozens of reinforcement firefighters and trucks ahead of expected wind charges later today.
1 This month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/235274195556
20 May – Webinar – The dangerous world of AUKUS, US, military occupation and suppression of dissent
National Webinar, 20th May, 2026, 6.30pm AEST. Confronting laws restricting/suppressing protest speech and action
Speakers: Former Sen. Rex Patrick, Lawyer Nick Hanna ,Arthur Rorris ,Jorgen Doyle, Sen David Shoebbridge,
Facilitator Kelley Tranter.
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 