Is Minister Canavan lying about nuclear wastes, or is he just uninformed?
Susan Craig, Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA, 1 Aug 18, Mr. Canavan stated on ABC radio this morning that the radioactive waste dump proposed for South Australia was safe for both low level waste above ground storage and intermediate level waste above ground temporary storage. The ANSTO & ARPANSA report states that the low level waste be stored below the surface, however, the Federal Governments proposal is for above ground.
surface. However, the intermediate level waste for South Australia will be stored in ZWILAG TN81 container, above ground which only lasts 40 years.
EXTRACT FROM INTERIM WASTE STORE OPERATING LICENCE SUMMARY SAFETY CASE FOR THE INTERIM WASTE STORE AT LHSTC
ARPANSA AND ANSTO DOCUMENT
“The Government is currently assessing the siting and construction of the NRWMF, a co-located near surface disposal repository for Low Level Waste (LLW) and an above-ground store for Intermediate Level Waste (ILW).
Joy Engelman Unfortunately Susan, nuclear waste is not safe which is exactly why the government is not keeping it at Lucas Heights but wanting to put it as far from major urban areas as possible. It will never be safe. There are so many nuclear waste facilities around the world now with huge problems, leaking canisters, isotopes becoming active in the biosphere etc etc. It is also not possible to store canisters containg the waste above ground in the temperatures experienced in the outback nor with the possibility of flooding. Not only that, the waste does contain high level waste from Australia’s propensity to try to develop weapons grade waste over the late 20th Century. Canavan needs to be properly educated about the nuclear industry before he opens his mouth and not just be another puppet.
France, USA, UK, Japan call it High Level Waste: Australia calls it Intermediate Level Waste
Steve Dale Nuclear Fuel Cycle Watch South Australia,
Funny. Spent fuel rods (which the USA and other countries would call High Level Waste (HLW)) leaves this country. Vitrified waste remnants will return one day (which the French, USA, UK, Japan would call HLW) – but at no time in Australia will this be honestly called High Level Waste.
“‘The spent fuel rods at Lucas Heights can only sensibly be treated as high level waste The pretence that spent fuel rods constitute an asset must stop” from the Research Reactor Review, Future Reactions: Report of the Research Reactor Review, 1993
Seems like the pretense at ANSTO has a longer half life than some of the isotopes they produce. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1021186047913052/
Catholic Religious Australia: temporary nuclear waste dump will cause serious future problems
Catholic Religious Australia 1 August 2018
Catholic Religious Australia (CRA) comprises representatives of religious congregations of women and men throughout the nation. As a group historically involved with the education of generations of young Australians, CRA is concerned that short term proposals for the storage of Australia’s nuclear waste will leave insoluble problems for present and future generations.
Three sites, all in South Australia, have been shortlisted by the Federal Government for a nuclear waste facility that will permanently hold low-level nuclear waste and temporarily hold intermediate level waste, toxic for up to 10,000 years. Two are close to the international grain farming area near Kimba and one near Hawker in the iconic Flinders Ranges. All three sites are strongly contested.
‘Our members’, said CRA President, Sr Monica Cavanagh, ‘question the sense, the expense and the risks of transporting long lived intermediate nuclear waste from where it is temporarily housed at Lucas Heights, 1700 kilometres across the country to be temporarily stored in a regional, yet to be built, facility.’ ‘It is disturbing,’ she went on, ‘that it is not clear how long the intermediate level waste will be simply stored at this temporary site as there is no plan for its permanent disposal.’
CRA warns that acknowledging ‘Aboriginal peoples’ strong relationship to the land’ must be more than words. We are uneasy that acknowledgement and the promise of ready, substantial money to under-funded communities/regions both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, has exerted unfair pressure to expose their lands and community members to such risks now and for countless generations.
CRA points out that the unknown dangers of groundwater contamination have not been sufficiently examined and that transport accidents are a real possibility. Moreover, the Barndioota site, and the entire Flinders Ranges, is considered seismically active. Understandably, the Kimba international grain farming markets are also at risk by association.
The submissions to the Senate inquiry make sobering reading. This process makes communities feel powerless – no support is given to those with opposing views, it is a process that is heavily favoured towards those pro-nuclear and when the rules keep changing to suit those in favour it really gives people a sense of hopelessness. Kimba resident (Submission No. 61)
Given that most of Australia’s intermediate level nuclear waste comes from Lucas Heights many believe that it should be kept there, at least until a final disposal solution is established.
‘Surely care of Earth and reverence for our land should be our underlying principles’, concluded Sr Monica.
Processing of radioactive wastes at Woomera to take 5 to 10 years
Woomera’s 10,000 nuclear waste barrels have ‘low levels’ of radiation, says CSIRO, ABC News 30 July18 Ten thousand barrels of radioactive waste stored at Woomera in South Australia’s far north have no significant levels of radiation, according to the latest assessment from Australia’s leading scientific research agency.
Investigative journalism greatly threatened by Nine-Fairfax merger
Nine-Fairfax merger rings warning bells for investigative journalism – and Australian democracy https://theconversation.com/nine-fairfax-merger-rings-warning-bells-for-investigative-journalism-and-australian-democracy-100747?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20August%201%202018%20-%20107769581&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20August%201%202018%20-%20107769581+CID_13595e5e9a6e76046365f409b090bf10&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=Nine-Fairfax%20merger%20rings%20warning%20bells%20for%20investigative%20journalism%20%20and%20Australian%20democracy
Incoming Associate Professor at LaTrobe University. Former Lecturer, Political Science, School of Social and Political Sciences; Honorary Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne
If you value the media’s watchdog role in democracy, then the opening words in the deal enabling Channel Nine to acquire Fairfax Media, the biggest single shake-up of the Australian media in more than 30 years, ring alarm bells.
The opening gambit is an appeal to advertisers, not readers. It promises to enhance “brand” and “scale” and to deliver “data solutions” combined with “premium content”. Exciting stuff for a media business in the digital age. But for a news organisation what is missing are key words like “news”, “journalism” and “public interest”.
Those behind the deal, its political architects who scrapped the cross-media ownership laws last year, and its corporate men, Fairfax’s and Nine’s CEOs, proffer a commercial rather than public interest argument for the merger. They contend that for two legacy media companies to survive into the 21st century, this acquisition is vital.
Perhaps so. But Australia’s democratic health relies on more than a A$4 billion media merger that delivers video streaming services like Stan, a lucrative real estate advertising website like Domain, and a high-rating television program like Love Island.
The news media isn’t just any business. It does more than entertain us and sell us things. Through its journalism, it provides important public interest functions.
Ideally, news should accurately inform Australians. A healthy democracy is predicated on the widest possible participation of an informed citizenry. According to liberal democratic theorists, the news media facilitate informed participation by offering a diverse range of views so that we can make considered choices, especially during election campaigns when we decide who will govern us.
Journalists have other roles too, providing a check on the power of governments and the excesses of the market, to expose abuses that hurt ordinary Australians.
This watchdog role is why I am concerned about Nine merging with Fairfax. To be clear, until last week, I was cautiously optimistic about the future of investigative journalism in Australia.
Newspapers like The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the Newcastle Herald and the Financial Review have a strong record of using their commercial activities to subsidise expensive investigative journalism to strengthen democratic accountability by exposing wrongdoing. Channel Nine does not.
Since the formation of The Age’s Insight team in 1967, Fairfax investigations have had many important public outcomes after exposing transgressions including: judicial inquiries, criminal charges, high-profile political and bureaucratic sackings, and law reforms. Recent examples include the dogged work of Fairfax and ABC journalists to expose systemic child sex abuse in the Catholic Church and elsewhere, leading to a royal commission and National Redress Scheme for victims. Another was the exposure of dodgy lending practices that cost thousands of Australians their life savings and homes, which also triggered a royal commission.
The problem with Nine’s proposed takeover of Fairfax (if it goes ahead) is that it is unlikely to be “business as usual” for investigative journalism in the new Nine entity. First, there is a cultural misalignment and, with Nine in charge, theirs is likely to dominate.
With notable exceptions such as some 60 Minutes reporting, Nine is better known for its foot-in-the-door muckraking and chequebook journalism than its investigative journalism. In comparison, seven decades of award-winning investigative journalism data reveal Fairfax mastheads have produced more Walkley award-winning watchdog reporting than any other commercial outlet.
Second, even as the financial fortunes of Fairfax have waned in the digital age, it has maintained its award-winning investigative journalism through clever adaptations including cross-media collaborations, mainly with the ABC. This has worked well for both outlets, sharing costs and increasing a story’s reach and impact across print, radio, online and television.
How will this partnership be regarded when Fairfax is Nine’s newlywed? Will the ABC be able to go it alone with the same degree of investigative reporting in light of its successive federal government budget cuts?
Third, my latest research (see graph, on original) ) has shown that in Australia, as in Britain and the United States, investigative stories and their targets have changed this decade to accommodate newsroom cost-cutting.
Investigations are more likely to focus on stories that are cheaper and easier to pursue. This means some areas such as local politics and industrial relations have fallen off the investigative journalist’s radar. Here and abroad, this reflects cost-cutting and a loss of specialist reporters.
Echoing this, The Boston Globe’s Spotlight editor, Walter Robinson, warned:
There are so many important junctures in life where there is no journalistic surveillance going on. There are too many journalistic communities in the United States now where the newspaper doesn’t have the reporter to cover the city council, the school committee, the mayor’s office … we have about half the number of reporters that we had in the late 1990s. You can’t possibly contend that you are doing the same level or depth of reporting. Too much stuff is just slipping through too many cracks.
Of concern, Australian award-winning investigations already cover a smaller breadth of topics compared to larger international media markets. The merger of Fairfax mastheads with Channel Nine further consolidates Australia’s newsrooms. If investigative journalism continues, story targets are likely to be narrow.
Finally, investigative journalism is expensive. It requires time, resources and, because it challenges power, an institutional commitment to fight hefty lawsuits. Fairfax has a history of defending its investigative reporters in the courts, at great expense.
Will Nine show the same commitment to defending its newly adopted watchdog reporters using earnings from its focus on “brand”, “scale” and “data solutions”? For the sake of democratic accountability, I hope so.
Overnight secret transport of nuclear wastes through Sydney
Radioactive nuclear rods leave Sydney bound for France, ABC 30 July 18
Bringing to the fore Indigenous voices the media ignore
Stephen Langford www.greenleft.org.au/glw-authors/stephen-langford
July 27, 2018
Driving Disunity: The Business Council Against Aboriginal Community
By Lindy Nolan
Bexley: Spirit of Eureka, 2017
‘In reviewing this important – but not self-important – book by Lindy Nolan,
I can hardly do better than start by quoting Rosalie Kunoth-Monks,
Northern Territory Australian of the Year in 2015 and Amatjere Elder,
from the backcover of the book: “Such deep and fearless truth.”
‘Award-winning journalist Jeff McMullen, meanwhile notes:
“This important study highlights destructive strategies in the neoliberal era
that undermine Aboriginal progress through the age old tactic of divide and conquer.” …
‘Lindy Nolan is an activist in the Stop The Intervention Collective Sydney (STICS).
This is a small but talented group of people who organise events against the NT Intervention,
now 11 years since its disastrous and fraudulent imposition
by the John Howard government. …
‘Nolan has written a book full of Indigenous voices that most people will not have heard,
because the mainstream media has been mainly accepting Murdoch’s anointed “leaders”. …
‘I hope you buy or borrow Driving Disunity – and read it.
It is full of Indigenous voices you simply will not hear in the mainstream.’
Read much, much more of Stephen Langford‘s comprehensive & interesting review of Lindy Nolan‘s book:
www.greenleft.org.au/content/bringing-fore-indigenous-voices-media-ignore
99% of South Australians are excluded from vote on nuclear waste dump for South Australia
Susan Craig Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA, 24 July 18
• The proposed site is for an ABOVE GROUND temporary facility, stored in above ground bins, 40kms from Wilpena Pound and in our wheat farming land at Kimba.
• Both low level and INTERMEDIATE radioactive waste will be stored.
• INTERMEDIATE level is classified HIGH GRADE in France and has a half- life of TENS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS. The containers proposed for storage only last for a few hundred years.
• ANSTO have the capacity (500 hectares) and the expertise to continue storage at Lucas Heights for another three decades.
• We should use this time to prepare a PERMANENT UNDERGROUND intelligent and cohesive solution to Australia’s burgeoning nuclear waste.
• Not just move it from one site to another.
• Mr. Canavan said and I quote: “It’s perfectly safe”. So why move it?
• ANSTO currently store 10 tonne of intermediate level nuclear waste at Lucas Heights NSW.
• Another similar quantity of intermediate level nuclear waste is arriving from Britain in a few years and proposed for South Australia.
• Current nuclear medicine using isotopes can be replaced with new technology using Cyclotrons which have a half-life of just hours rendering the waste benign. Awesome!
• Many countries around the world are moving to Cyclotrons for nuclear medicine and Australia should investigate this!
*ANSTO are developing a nuclear waste storage system called SYNROC it’s a synthetic casing for nuclear waste. However, this will only be used at LUCAS HEIGHTS and there is no intention of using SYNROC for the storage of nuclear waste proposed for South Australia.
The Federal Government is showing total disregard, disrespect and contempt for the people of South Australia, including the Adnyamathanha community of the Flinders Ranges. https://www.facebook.com/groups/344452605899556/
Nuclear reactor’s costly processes for medical isotopes: cyclotron production clean and cheaper
Steve Dale Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA 28 July 18 ANSTO ships most of its isotopes overseas, yet Australia has to deal with 100% of the large amount of waste produced from its messy isotope process.
PET/cyclotron isotopes give better imaging and no waste. If ANSTO was truly a commercial company and had to pay the true cost of its waste it would go broke immediately. https://www.facebook.com/groups/344452605899556/
Journalists’ rights in danger, if Julian Assange is prosecuted for Wikileaks
Judges Hear Warning on Prosecution of WikiLeaks https://www.courthousenews.com/judges-hear-warning-on-prosecution-of-wikileaks/ July 24, 2018MARIA DINZEO NAHEIM, Calif. (CN) – Prosecuting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing leaked documents related to the 2016 presidential election would set a terrible precedent for journalists, the top lawyer for The New York Times said Tuesday.
Addressing a room full of federal and circuit judges at the Ninth Circuit’s annual judicial conference, David McCraw, the deputy general counsel for The New York Times, explained that regardless of how one feels about Assange and traditional news outlets receiving the same kind of deference over publishing leaked materials, his prosecution would be a gut punch to free speech.
“I think the prosecution of him would be a very, very bad precedent for publishers,” McCraw said. “From that incident, from everything I know, he’s sort of in a classic publisher’s position and I think the law would have a very hard time drawing a distinction between The New York Times and WikiLeaks.”
McCraw went on to clarify that while Assange employs certain methods that he finds discomfiting and irresponsible, such as dumping unredacted documents revealing the personal information of ordinary people, Assange should be afforded the same protections as a traditional journalist.
“Do I wish journalism was practiced in a certain way, like it is with The New York Times, The Washington Post, or The Wall Street Journal? Of course. But I also think new ways of publishing have their value. Our colleagues who are not only challenging us financially but journalistically have raised an awareness that there are different ways to report,” McCraw said.
“But if someone is in the business of publishing information, I think that whatever privilege happens to apply – whatever extension of the law that would apply – should be there. Because the question isn’t whether he’s a journalist. It’s in that instance was he committing an act of journalism.”
Assange has long considered himself a journalist operating no differently than other news outlets. This has complicated matters, because if Assange can be prosecuted for publishing leaked information, why not prosecute news organizations like The New York Times?
Earlier this month, a grand jury returned an indictment against twelve Russian military spies for hacking into the servers and emails of the Democratic National Committee and state election officials, stealing documents and staging the release of those documents to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. While the indictment did not name Assange and WikiLeaks specifically, it has been widely suggested that WikiLeaks received the materials and could very well be the group referred to in the indictment as “Organization Number 1.”
Barry Pollack, who represents Assange in an ongoing criminal investigation in the Eastern District of Virginia, weighed in on the indictment Tuesday.
“If you read the indictment that just came out on Russians and you look at what Organization Number 1, which is clearly WikiLeaks, is alleged to have done in that indictment, it is doing exactly what The New York Times and The Washington Post do every day of the week,” Pollack said. “He [Assange] is communicating with a source, the source provides him with information, he publishes that information.
“There are no questions about the truthfulness or accuracy or authenticity of that information. And then he encourages the source to give him more information. He says ‘don’t give it to my competitors, give it to me. This story will have more impact if I publish it.’”
Pollack and McCraw spoke as part of a panel titled “The Law of Leaks,” a session on how the United States has ramped up efforts to prosecute people who have leaked state secrets. Thirteen people have been prosecuted under the first law against leaking state secrets, the Espionage Act of 1917, most under the Obama administration.
President Donald Trump has waged an unprecedented war against the media, taking to Twitter last year to call the media “the enemy of the American people.” Yet no publisher has ever been indicted over leaks, and both McCraw and Pollack expressed doubts about whether it will happen any time soon.
“Unlike firing off a tweet, bringing a prosecution requires a career professional prosecutor to sign off on the prosecution, so there also is a tremendous check there that doesn’t exist in some of the rhetoric we hear,” Pollack said.
“Prosecutions of journalists would be difficult,” McCraw said. “I think they’d be unpopular, I think they’d be wrong, and I think they’d be unsuccessful. I see this PR campaign against the press as almost an alternative to legal measures.”
Nuclear industry bigwig Jim McDowell now boss of South Australia’s public sector
JimMcDowell, most recently CEO of BAE Systems Saudi Arabia, now chair of Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation
South Aust gets new public sector boss,
Former BAE Systems chief executive Jim McDowell has been appointed to head up South Australia’s Department of Premier and Cabinet.
Premier Steven Marshall described Mr McDowell as a talented leader with decades of international business experience in industries critical to South Australia’s future prosperity.
“Mr McDowell is well placed to guide the South Australian public sector as we seek to take full advantage of the Commonwealth’s naval shipbuilding program and other defence contracts based in South Australia,” Mr Marshall said on Thursday.
Scrutiny on Hansard reveals the Australian government’s confusion about nuclear wastes
Federal nuclear waste dump will have large storage for intermediate to high grade storage
The $31 million bribe to entice Hawker to become a nuclear waste sacrifice zone
$31 million boost for nuclear location, The Transcontinental, Marco Balsamo -23 July 18 The Flinders Ranges community could receive up to $31 million through a Community Development Package if the Wallerberdina Station site is chosen to host the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility.
Initially touted to be about $10M, federal government has more than tripled the package to be awarded to the selected community.
“This enhanced package will ensure the successful community is ready and able to take advantage of the benefits of hosting this facility both during construction and the lifetime of its operation,” he said.
“What shipbuilding or aircraft bases do for some communities, and steel-making or mining does for other towns, the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility will do for its host town in terms of employment, opportunities for new careers in trades and university qualified positions and flow-on benefits.”
The package includes a $20M National Radioactive Waste Management Facility Community Fund, delivering infrastructure and development benefits to the community………
The announcement from federal government has been slammed by Australian Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who recently visited the Wallerberdina Station site.
“Resources Minister Matt Canavan should be ashamed of himself for trying to bribe the community in return for dumping radioactive waste on them,” Ms Hanson-Young said.
“Putting money on the table, just weeks before the Kimba and Hawker communities vote on whether they want a nuclear waste dump in their front yard smacks of desperation and bribery.
“Polling shows the majority of South Australians want our state to put a stop to this project. Nuclear waste is not welcome in Kimba or the Flinders Ranges, and the rest of the state is behind these two communities in their fight against this proposal.”
Ms Hanson-Young also questioned why the Liberal government has not revealed how much profit former Liberal Senator Grant Chapman, who owns the Wallerberdina Station site, would earn from a successful bid.
The Wallerberdina Station site is one of three nominated locations for the national facility, with the other two both based in Kimba.
A postal ballot is set to commence on August 20 to measure the community support for the three nominated sites.
Federal Member for Grey Rowan Ramsey said the successful community would have the opportunity to “create a long-term future for itself”.
“Now, coupled with the commitment of a minimum 45 jobs on site, it will really give the citizens of both communities something to contemplate before next month’s vote,” Mr Ramsey said.
“This facility will provide wonderful opportunities for either community if selected.” https://www.transcontinental.com.au/story/5540993/31-million-boost-for-nuclear-location/
The death of Australia’s quality news media – Fairfax gobbled up by Nine
A modern tragedy: Nine-Fairfax merger a disaster for quality media, The Conversation, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne,
All deaths are sudden, even if long expected.
Appropriately enough, this is the opening sentence of a book called Journalism in a Culture of Grief.
And if ever there was a time of grief for journalism in Australia, it is today, with the announcement that Nine Entertainment is taking over Fairfax Media.
It means the death of Fairfax and is the most consequential change in Australian media ownership in 31 years.
It also means that three of Australia’s best and biggest newspapers – The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review – are now subsumed into a media conglomerate whose editorial culture is characterised by mediocre journalism.
Nine’s news bulletins consist largely of police stories with a tincture of politics, and highlights of colourful or violent events overseas.Its current affairs program, A Current Affair, is a formulaic procession of stories about consumer rorts and personal tragedies.
So there is a huge question mark over the future editorial quality of the newspapers.
A particularly pressing question is: what will happen to The Age’s investigative unit?
It is led by two of the best investigative reporters Australia has produced, Nick McKenzie and Richard Baker.
In addition to breaking an extraordinary range of major stories on subjects like organised crime and scandals in the banking industry, they have developed a highly successful collaboration with the ABC’s Four Corners team.
It seems very unlikely Nine would allow this collaboration to continue, since it involves a rival television channel.
There is also a question about editorial independence.
Fairfax has a charter of editorial independence, which all owners since 1990 have signed up to. Will Nine sign up to it? Will the charter have any meaning when the newspapers are owned by a company whose chairman, Peter Costello, was treasurer in the Liberal-National Coalition government of former Prime Minister John Howard?
The answers to these questions will not be known for some time. They will depend largely on who is given editorial control of the combined operation. Since the Nine CEO, Hugh Marks, is to be CEO of the combined operation, it seems more likely than not that it will be a Nine executive who calls the editorial shots, too.
The takeover also means a further loss of diversity in an already highly concentrated media-ownership landscape. The big players are now down to four: News Corp, Nine, Seven West Media and the ABC.
And it is almost certain to mean the loss of yet more journalists’ jobs.
Since 2012, more than 3,000 jobs have been lost across Australian journalism. Yet, if the takeover is really going to represent “compelling value” for shareholders, as Fairfax chairman Nick Falloon says, then newsroom “synergies” – to borrow the corporate jargon – are likely to be essential.
The Fairfax company’s death throes have been painful and prolonged……https://theconversation.com/a-modern-tragedy-nine-fairfax-merger-a-disaster-for-quality-media-100584?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20July%2027%202018%20-%20107389538&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20July%2027%202018%
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 