Life after coal: the South Australian city leading the way
It was a coal town, predicted to be wiped out by the closure of two ageing power plants. Now Port Augusta has 13 renewable projects in train, Guardian by Adam Morton20 July 18
The largest solar farm in the southern hemisphere lies on arid land at the foot of the Flinders Ranges, more than 300km north of Adelaide. If that sounds remote, it doesn’t do justice to how removed local residents feel from what currently qualifies as debate in Canberra.
As government MPs and national newspapers thundered over whether taxpayers should underwrite new coal-fired power, mauling advice from government agencies as they went, residents of South Australia’s Upper Spencer Gulf region have been left to ponder why decision-makers weren’t paying attention to what is happening in their backyard.
In mid 2016, this region was on the brink, hit by the closure and near collapse of coal and steel plants. Now it’s on the cusp of a wave of construction that investors and community leaders say should place the region at the vanguard of green innovation – not just in Australia but globally. There has been an explosion in investment, with $5bn spread over the next five years. There are 13 projects in various stages of development, with more than 3,000 construction and 200 ongoing jobs. The economy of this once-deflated region has been transformed and those who live here are starting to feel hopeful again….
In simple terms, the Upper Spencer Gulf transition story goes like this. ……
At the same time, further around the gulf, the steel town of Whyalla was teetering precipitously after the owner, Arrium, put the mill in voluntary administration facing debts of more than $4bn.
Yet as the doom hit, there were also rays of hope as several clean power projects were mooted for the surrounding area.
Two years on, the Port Augusta city council lists 13 projects at varying stages of development. And Whyalla has unearthed a potential saviour in British billionaire industrialist Sanjeev Gupta, who not only bought the steelworks but promised to expand it while also spending what will likely end up being $1.5bn in solar, hydro and batteries to make it viable.
Gupta says the logic behind his investment in solar and storage is simple: it’s now cheaper than coal.
Johnson says he expects the Upper Gulf region to receive $5bn in clean energy investment over the next five years. “My gut feel – and I’m an optimist – is that they will all go ahead,” he says. “They are different technologies and they are playing in different markets, so they are not competing for power purchase agreements.”By any measure, theBungala solar power plantis vast. Once its second stage is complete, 800,000 photovoltaic modules will cover an area the size of the Melbourne central business district……
Bungala is nearing completion, with work on the $425m plant expected to be finished by January. Its first section started feeding into the national electricity grid in May. Further west, ground has been broken on the 59-turbine, 212MW Lincoln Gap wind farm, though progress has temporarily stalled after developer Nexif Energy discovered unexploded ordnance from historic military testing on site.
As Guardian Australia visited the region, the South Australian Liberal government gave final approval for a $600m hybrid wind-and-solar energy park on the south-eastern edge of Port Augusta that proponent DP Energy says will be the largest development of its kind in the country. A second stage with more solar and a 400MW battery is slated to follow.
The world is going slow on coal, but misinformation is distorting the facts
At Cultana, just north of Whyalla, Energy Australia is investigating building the country’s firstsaltwater pumped hydro energy storage plant. It would draw water from the Spencer Gulf, pump it uphill when energy is plentiful and cheap, and convert it to hydro electricity at times of high demand. A decision on the project is expected in 2019.
All are potentially agenda setting, but none are as anticipated as the Aurora solar thermal power station. It is the culmination of a push that began in 2010. A research paper by advocacy group Beyond Zero Emissions formed the basis for the creation of Repower Port Augusta, a community group that built widespread support for bringing the developing technology to the region among councils, business and unions.
US developer SolarReserve took notice. It plans to use a field of mirrors to heat a molten salt system inside a 234-metre tower. It will both generate electricity and store eight hours of energy that can be sent out when the sun isn’t shining. The company says the $650m plant, to be built at the Carriewerloo sheep station about 30km north of Port Augusta, will be the world’s largest solar tower with storage and provide 5% of the state’s energy needs.
Aurora is not the only solar-thermal project linked to the region. Port Augusta is already home to a small concentrated solar-thermal plant owned by Sundrop Farms that it uses to run a hydroponic greenhouse that provides Coles with tomatoes.
Also on the horizon, and just as unique design-wise, is a proposal by Solastor, chaired by former Liberal party leader John Hewson. It promises new graphite-based technology to capture solar energy and store it in a load-shifting battery. Hewson says it will be a world-class project. “Solar thermal will take the market, there’s no doubt about that,” he says.
Why are developers choosing the Upper Spencer Gulf? Investors say it has several things going for it: great sunshine; a history of electricity generation that left strong connections into the national grid; nearby industry – particularly mine developments – demanding reliable energy; strong facilitating support from the Weatherill Labor government that has continued under the new Liberal premier, Steven Marshall.
…………“The Upper Spencer Gulf happens to be a very good place to start,” Garnaut says. “Some coal generation regions have good renewables and others don’t, and no others have them as good as Port Augusta. [But] the Port Augusta developments could be replicated in any region that has good solar and wind resources.”
The inclusion of solar thermal is crucial as it means jobs on a semi-industrial scale. Wind and solar photovoltaic plants bring plenty of jobs in construction, but few in operation. Solar thermal has more in common in operation with coal, using steam to spin a turbine. SolarReserve expects to have a 50-strong permanent workforce at the Aurora plant. …….https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/20/life-after-coal-the-south-australian-city-leading-the-way
It might be too late to save these Australian ecosystems from climate change
A series of sudden and catastrophic ecosystem collapses has hit Australia – and researchers think they may be irreversible, INDEPENDENT, Rebecca HarrisDavid Bowman 19 July 18
To the chagrin of the tourist industry, the Great Barrier Reef has become a notorious victim of climate change. But it is not the only Australian ecosystem on the brink of collapse.
Our research, recently published in Nature Climate Change, describes a series of sudden and catastrophic ecosystem shifts that have occurred recently across Australia. These changes, caused by the combined stress of gradual climate change and extreme weather events, are overwhelming ecosystems’ natural resilience.
Variable climate
Australia is one of the most climatically variable places in the world. It is filled with ecosystems adapted to this variability, whether that means living in scorching heat, bitter cold or a climate that cycles between the two. Despite land clearing, mining and other activities that transform the natural landscape, Australia retains large tracts of near-pristine natural systems.
Many of these regions are iconic, sustaining tourism and outdoor activities and providing valuable ecological services – particularly fisheries and water resources. Yet even here, the combined stress of gradual climate change and extreme weather events is causing environmental changes. These changes are often abrupt and potentially irreversible.
They include wildlife and plant population collapses, the local extinction of native species, the loss of ancient, highly diverse ecosystems and the creation of previously unseen ecological communities invaded by new plants and animals.
Australia’s average temperature (both air and sea) has increased by about 1C since the start of the 19th century. We are now experiencing longer, more frequent and more intense heatwaves, more extreme fire weather and longer fire seasons, changes to rainfall seasonality, and droughts that may be historically unusual.
The interval between these events has also shortened, which means even ecosystems adapted to extremes and high natural variability are struggling. As climate change accelerates, the magnitude and frequency of extreme events is expected to continue increasing.
What is ecosystem collapse?
Gradual climate change can be thought of as an ongoing “press”, on which the “pulse” of extreme events are now superimposed. In combination, “presses” and “pulses” are more likely to push systems to collapse.
We identified ecosystems across Australia that have recently experienced catastrophic changes, including:
kelp forests shifting to seaweed turfs following a single marine heatwave in 2011;
the destruction of Gondwanan refugia by wildfire ignited by lightning storms in 2016;
dieback of floodplain forests along the Murray River following the millennial drought in 2001–2009;
large-scale conversion of alpine forest to shrubland due to repeated fires from 2003–2014;
community-level boom and bust in the arid zone following extreme rainfall in 2011–2012, and
mangrove dieback across a 1,000km stretch of the Gulf of Carpentaria after a weak monsoon in 2015-2016.
Of these six case studies, only the Murray River forest had previously experienced substantial human disturbance. The others have had negligible exposure to stressors, highlighting that undisturbed systems are not necessarily more resilient to climate change.
The Turnbull government recently introduced legislation into parliament designed to lower the threshold for calling out the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to assist state police forceswith public incidents.
Currently, the military can only be called upon by state and territory authorities when they’ve exhausted all other options. The new bill would allow for a call out request to be actioned, when it’s decided that ADF personnel can “enhance” the ability of state police in dealing with an incident.
The new legislation also allows the PM and other authorised ministers to send in the troops when state authorities haven’t requested assistance, but Commonwealth interests are at stake. And it provides ADF members with enhanced search capabilities and limited shoot-to-kill powers.
A much broader scope
Australian attorney general Christian Porter told journalists that the Lindt Café siege, along with the potential for a Paris terrorist attack-style incident being carried out in Australia, make streamlining the process of calling out “SAS or commando regiments” necessary.
However, the call out powers don’t just apply to terrorism. They target “domestic violence.” This is a broad term set out under section 119 of the Australian Constitution, which provides that the federal government should protect states and territories against invasion and rebellion.
Indeed, Mr Porter has stated that the ADF could be sent in to quell widespread rioting. While civil liberties advocates stress that these new powers have the potential to be used upon peaceful protests and industrial actions.
Against strikes and demonstrations
Civil Liberties Australia CEO Bill Rowlings points out that the bill allows the government to call out the ADF to protect declared infrastructure. “Given the current government’s policies, troops are likely to be called out around coal-fired power stations and ports that export coal,” he explained.
“The federal government can use the army to break environmental protests just like the government did in the late 1940s to break coal strikes,” Mr Rowlings told Sydney Criminal Lawyers. “And this new law makes it clear troops can again be used to break strikes.”
The legislation also provides that military personnel can use lethal force during certain civilian incidents. Proposed section 51N(3) outlines that this can be done in the protection of an individual’s life, to take action against an aircraft or vessel, as well as in the protection of declared infrastructure.
Military police
The Defence Call Out Bill makes “it sound like the military will only be supporting local police, yet troops under this law get powers to detain, search and question Australians,” Mr Rowlings made clear. These are “powers that ought to be exercised only by police.”
……… An incremental erosion“A real danger of laws like these are how they might be used by a more extreme government in five, ten or twenty years from now.” Mr Rowlings warned. He added that current situations in Turkey and Hungary should serve as “cautionary examples.”
The new bill comes on the back of more than 70 pieces of legislation that have been enacted at the federal level since 9/11 in the name of national security and counterterrorism, which have consistently been whittling away at citizens’ civil rights.
Reuters 18th July 2018 ,China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) has acquired a 75 percent
stake in a Swedish wind power project from Australia’s Macquarie Group and GE Energy Financial Services, state news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday.
As I’ve been going through 98 submissions to The Senate Inquiry on Selection process for a national radioactive waste management facility in South Australia , I’ve been able to learn some of the reasons why people support the idea of the nuclear waste dump . Almost every one of the the 40 supporting submissions come from local residents, several explaining that they have been very thoroughly informed by the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, including tours of the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor. 4 submissions spent time praising DIIS and ANSTO(Ashworth, P No. 52 , and Baldock B No 72 , Baldock H No 64 and ANSTO itself, No 58)
These are some points that came up as they answered the Term of Reference, especially (f) – Any related matters.
Survival of the town as reason to have the dump: (submissions from Carpenter I No 3, Carpenter D No 1, Clements No 35 , Joyce, J, McInnis, J, Name Withheld, no 91, Stewart)
Opposition to misleading information from anti-nuclear activists(Joyce, J No 33, Koch, D No 75, McInnis, J No 4)
Need for dump for nuclear medicine (DIIS No 40, SA ARPS No 41)
Dump will have no negative impact(Lienert, M and M No 53, Schmidt, D No 13)
Dump good for local business(Kemp No 88, SACOME No 69)
Dump important for necessary expansion of Lucas Heights, (Heard,B No 15)
Dump as beneficial to Australia,( Koch, K No 28)
Very opposed to outsiders having a say (Hennessy, J No 7)
Need detail on important financial benefits (Kimba District Council No 19)
Needless to say, these pro nuclear submissions were almost unanimously in favour of the 5 Terms of reference – i.e that the financial compensation was OK, the project has “broad community support”. indigenous people satisfactorily consulted, Community Benefit Program is fine, and community support should not be sought beyond the local area.
The few pro nuclear submissions that did not address those TORs are from – ANSTO No 58, ORIMA No 108, Orman, M No 77, RDA Far North No 41, SACOME No 69)
Part time tutor in Medical Education, University of Dundee
The scheduling of Tokyo 2020 Olympic events at Fukushima is being seen as a public relations exercise to dampen fears over continuing radioactivity from the reactor explosion that followed the massive earthquake six years ago.
It brings to mind the British atomic bomb tests in Australia that continued until a month before the opening of the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne – despite the known dangers of fallout travelling from the testing site at Maralinga to cities in the east. And it reminds us of the collusion between scientists and politicians – British and Australian – to cover up the flawed decision-making that led to continued testing until the eve of the Games.
Australia’s prime minister Robert Menzies agreed to atomic testing in December 1949. Ten months earlier, Melbourne had secured the 1956 Olympics even though the equestrian events would have to be held in Stockholm because of Australia’s strict horse quarantine regimes.
The equestrians were well out of it. Large areas of grazing land – and therefore the food supplies of major cities such as Melbourne – were covered with a light layer of radiation fallout from the six atomic bombs detonated by Britain during the six months prior to the November 1956 opening of the Games. Four of these were conducted in the eight weeks running up to the big event, 1,000 miles due west of Melbourne at Maralinga.
Bombs and games
In the 25 years I have been researching the British atomic tests in Australia, I have found only two mentions of the proximity of the Games to the atomic tests. Not even the Royal Commission into the tests in 1985 addressed the known hazards of radioactive fallout for the athletes and spectators or those who lived in the wide corridor of the radioactive plumes travelling east.
At the time, the approaching Olympics were referred to only once in the Melbourne press in relation to the atomic tests, in August 1956. It is known that D-notices from the government “requesting” editors to refrain from publishing information about certain defence and security matters were issued.
The official history of the tests by British nuclear historian Lorna Arnold, published by the UK government in 1987 and no longer in print, reports tests director William Penney signalling concern only once, in late September 1956:
Am studying arrangements firings but not easy. Have Olympic Games in mind but still believe weather will not continue bad.
This official history doesn’t comment on the implications. And nowhere in the 1985 Royal Commission report is there any reference to the opening of the Olympics, just one month and a day after the fourth test took place 1,000 miles away.
The 1984 report of the Expert Committee on the review of Data on Atmospheric Fallout Arising from British Nuclear Tests in Australia found that the methodology used to estimate the numbers of people who might have been harmed by this fallout at fewer than 10 was inappropriate. And it concluded that if the dose calculations were confined to the communities in the path of the fallout and not merged with the total Australian population “such an exercise would generate results several orders of magnitude higher than those based on conventional philosophy”. There was no mention of the Olympic Games.
Neither Prime Minister Menzies nor his cabinet ever referred publicly to what had been known from the outset – that the British atomic tests in Australia would almost coincide with the Melbourne Olympics. The tests and the Games were planned simultaneously through the first half of the 1950s.
In May 1955, 18 months before the Olympics were due to start, Howard Beale, the Australian minister for supply, announced the building of “the Los Alamos of the British Commonwealth” (a nuclear test site in New Mexico) at Maralinga, promising that “tests would only take place in meteorological conditions which would carry radioactive clouds harmlessly away into the desert”.
An Atomic Weapons Tests Safety Committee was formed by the Australians but was closely controlled by physicist Professor Ernest Titterton, the only Englishman on the panel. The 1985 Royal Commission stated explicitly that the AWTSC was complicit in the firing of atomic detonations in weather conditions that they knew could carry radioactive fallout a thousand miles from Maralinga to eastern cities such as Melbourne.
Hazards of radioactivity
Professor Titterton, who had recently been appointed to a chair in nuclear physics at the Australian National University after working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, and at Aldermaston in England, explained why the atomic devices were being tested in Australia:
Because of the hazards from the radioactivity which follows atomic weapons explosions, the tests are best carried out in isolated regions – usually a desert area … Most of the radioactivity produced in the explosion is carried up in the mushroom cloud and drifts downward under atmospheric airstreams. But particular material in this cloud slowly settles to the ground and may render an area dangerously radioactive out to distances ranging between 50 and several hundred miles … It would therefore be hazardous to explode even the smallest weapons in the UK, and it was natural for the mother country to seek test sites elsewhere in the Commonwealth.
The AWTSC published two scientific papers in 1957 and 1958 which flat out denied that any dangerous levels of radioactivity reached the eastern states. But their measurements relied on a very sparse scattering of sticky paper monitors – rolls of gummed film set out to catch particles of fallout – even though these could be washed off by rain.
Despite their clear denials in these papers, meteorological records show that prior to the Games there was rain in Melbourne which could have deposited radioactivity on the ground.
The AWTSC papers included maps purporting to show the plumes of radioactive fallout travelling north and west from Maralinga in the South Australian desert. The Royal Commission published expanded maps (see page 292) based on the AWTSC’s own data and found the fallout pattern to be much wider and more complex. The Australian scientist Hedley Marston’sstudy of radioactivity uptake in animals showed a far more significant covering of fallout on a wide swathe of Australian grazing land than indicated by the sticky paper samples of the AWTSC.
The 1985 Royal Commission report into British Nuclear Tests in Australia discussed many of these issues, but never in relation to the proximity and timing of the 1956 Olympic Games. Sixty years later, are we seeing the same denial of known hazards six years after the reactor explosion at Fukushima?
Tim Bickmore No Nuclear Waste Dump Anywhere in South Australia.16 July 18 “When I was speaking to Adi Paterson, who’s the CEO of ANSTO, I said, ‘I don’t really favour the intermediate-level waste coming here, because I worry about it becoming stranded waste if the political landscape changes.’
He said: ‘Why wouldn’t you want the intermediate-level waste? Without it, there’s no real economic benefit for the community.‘ So the CEO of ANSTO is telling me that, without the intermediate-level waste—and this will in the long run just be a low-level waste facility—there’s no economic benefit. “https://www.facebook.com/groups/1314655315214929/
Cameron Scott, Supplementary submission for the senate inquiry into the national radioactive waste facility siting process, Senate Standing Committees on Economics
Since my previous submission I have been trying to gain more information from CSIRO about the Waste and Storage Facility at Woomera. I have also asked them for their expert opinion on aspects of the facility using their international experience in Nuclear Facilities and processes. I have had direct contact with a Senior Principle Research Scientist at CSIRO who had previously presented to us when our Agricultural group went on a tour to ANSTO. During this Ag trip he told me that he would try and get me a tour of Woomera, since returning despite his efforts he was unable to gain access to the Woomera facility. He had been very forthcoming with his expert opinion and information until I was using the information he had giving me to question certain issues with the Department.
I have now been advised that if I want further information from CSIRO I will need to go directly to the Department of Industry Innovation and Science or via the Kimba Consultative Committee. It seems that the only expert opinions we are allowed to have are those who read off the Department script.
I would like to take this opportunity to recall a conversation I had with Bruce Wilson on this same Ag trip where he assured us that the Kimba Consultative Committee would be made up of people with equal numbers for and against the facility. After my recent conversations with CSIRO I am concerned that the international models which this KCC is based on, in countries such as Belgium the community committee were used in reporting community consent ie unanimous community support actually meant unanimous consultative committee support. I have always thought the Government had rigged this committee for a reason and I am very worried it will be used in reporting to justify broad community support.
As the HCDB is now neutral in concern to the NRWMF until the formal vote is counted this page will now be going into recess until this has occurred. Future meeting dates will be advertised on ‘Get About’ Hawker and in the town Crier. See you all again in September
comment from Brett Stokes “Jacobs, the company that bought out SKM” Jacobs MCM were paid by the Scarce Royal Commission to produce a business case for nuclear waste imports. Same mob?
the firm was bought out by Californian contracting giant Jacobs. The government continues to award contracts to Jacobs on defence-related projects.
Australia handed out millions in aid contracts to company accused of bribery, Guardian , Sinclair Knight 15July18Merz, a donor to both Labor and Liberal parties, won contracts worth $489m for Asia-Pacific projects.
The Australian government awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid contracts to a company that was found to have been systematically bribing high-level Vietnamese officials.
Australian consulting firm Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM), a donor to both the Labor and Liberal parties, was a significant corporate player in the government’s foreign aid program for more than a decade, winning 83 contracts worth $489m for projects across the Asia-Pacific.
But Guardian Australia can reveal evidence of widespread corruption by the firm as it operated in one south-east Asian nation and allegations over dealings in another.
In Vietnam, the firm was found to have repeatedly bribed public officials to secure work on three aid projects funded by the World Bank.
“[The firm used] comparably sophisticated means of affecting and covering up the illegitimate payments through the use of third-party agreements, ghost contracts, and fake invoices,” the World Bank’s independent integrity arm alleged, according to a sanctions decision.
Different SKM subsidiaries were used to help mask the bribes and make the payments. A range of staff appeared to have knowledge of the payments.
One staff member gave damning testimony that SKM had made “provision[s] for illegitimate payments in all of the projects for which [the firm] tendered since 2000”.
SKM is also now facing criminal prosecution in Australia for conspiring to bribe officials in two countries: Vietnam and the Philippines
Court documents seen by Guardian Australia allege SKM offered bribes to Vietnamese officials between 2006 and November 2011 to secure work on four infrastructure projects, including in Thanh Hoa, Da Nang and the northern mountains. The company is alleged to have offered benefits of $USD880,000 ($AUD1,193,632).
SKM also allegedly conspired to bribe officials on five separate projects in the Philippines between 2000 and mid-2005, including sewage, river rehabilitation, and air quality projects in Manila, and an urban services project on Mindanao.
The firm is accused of offering benefits worth about PHP 6,543,578.94 ($AUD165,768.09) to “unknown public officials” from the Philippines working on the tender approval process for infrastructure projects.
There is no evidence SKM directly used Australian taxpayers’ money to bribe foreign officials and there is no suggestion it acted improperly to win aid contracts from the Australian government
But the case has raised questions about the strength of Australia’s supposedly “zero tolerance” approach to foreign bribery and the level of scrutiny applied to Australian corporations that win big through the foreign aid program.
Australian authorities are likely to have known about the bribery allegations since at least 2012, when the firm self-reported to the World Bank’s integrity arm, which has a formal information sharing agreement with the federal government.
The Australian federal police (AFP) began investigating the allegations in July 2013.
Despite this, the government continued to contract SKM on foreign aid projects until the end of 2013, when the firm was bought out by Californian contracting giant Jacobs. The government continues to award contracts to Jacobs on defence-related projects.
In total, the company received 83 contracts worth $489m from Australia’s aid program between 2000 and 2014, according to government figures. It worked largely on infrastructure-related aid projects, and advisory, consulting and service-oriented contracts relating to a diverse range of topics, including sanitation, energy, and health care on Nauru.
SKM was awarded Australian aid contracts specifically relating to Vietnam in 2008, 2009 and 2011, and the Philippines in 2008 and 2012.
Anti-corruption advocates have long warned against continuing to give government contracts to firms found to have paid bribes to foreign officials.
In 2016, Transparency International urged the government to legislate to bar such companies from government work if they are found to have bribed overseas officials – an approach taken in Canada and the United States……..
Aid/Watch, an NGO that scrutinises Australia’s aid program, said there had been a significant shift to favouring large corporates to deliver foreign aid since 2013.
The group’s coordinator, Natalie Lowrey, said this corporatisation of aid made it more difficult to ensure accountability. NGOs who deliver government-funded aid are subject to extreme scrutiny, requiring accreditation, solid governance structures, a proven track record, and compliance with strict transparency measures, Lowrey said.
“There is no accountability for private companies administering aid, whereas, Australian NGOs are strictly accredited,” she said. ……..
The decision to prosecute SKM was not publicly announced and the cases went unreported when they first appeared in a Sydney court last month.
Rather than a hasty new nuclear waste dump, what is urgently needed is an independent and open assessment of the full range of options for managing Australia’s radioactive waste, writes Dave Sweeney.
IT IS A NATIONAL PROBLEM that has taken 60 years to make and will last 10,000 years, but according to Canberra, it will be sorted by Christmas.
Radioactive waste management has been a challenge for successive Federal governments, with communities across South Australia and the Northern Territory consistently rejecting plans for the dumping and storage of wastes in their region. Now the pressure is right back on regional South Australia, with a concerted Federal push to locate a site either near Kimba on the Eyre Peninsula, or Hawker in the iconic Flinders Ranges.
The plan sounds straightforward: take radioactive waste from around Australia to a central site, where low-level material would be disposed of and higher-level wastes stored, pending a final management decision.
But, as ever, the devil is in the detail. Or in this case, in the profound lack of detail.
Despite two years of promotional newsletters, shopfronts and drop-in centres, and publicly funded visits from pro-nuclear advocates, there remains a disturbing lack of clarity and deep concerns over the Turnbull Government’s plan and process.
Radioactive waste is a complex policy area. The stuff lasts a long time, poses a real management challenge and, understandably, raises community concerns. Responsible decisions are best based on the “T” factor: talk, time, testing and trust. Sadly, the current Federal push has failed to learn from this history and is replicating a failed formula.
Despite plenty of talk about the benefits of the plan, the Turnbull Government has actively and consistently refused to debate critics in an open forum, key project assumptions have never been independently verified or tested, and many community members, Aboriginal landowners and wider stakeholders do not trust the process. Further, time is running out with Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Matt Canavan recently announcing a siting decision will be made this year.
Soon, registered voters in the Flinders Ranges and Kimba District Council districts will receive a ballot in the mail asking if they support a national radioactive waste facility in their region. The Turnbull Government has been spending big and promising large, with job and community benefit estimates and assurances soaring since the ballot was announced.
The Government is working to localise this issue and present it as an economic opportunity for a small region, but this plan is a national issue with profound and lasting implications.
Around 95 per cent of the material planned to be moved to any new facility is currently managed at two secured Federal sites. Low-level waste that needs to be isolated for 300 years is currently at the Woomera defence lands in South Australia’s north. The more problematic intermediate level waste, that needs isolation for 10,000 years, is stored where it was made at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation’s (ANSTO) Lucas Heights facility in southern Sydney
Both sites have the physical, technical and regulatory capacity to continue to store these wastes for many years, and the current sense of Federal urgency and pressure is being driven by politics and ANSTO’s corporate preferences, rather than by evidence or need.
In any discussion around radioactive waste management, a lot of airspace is devoted to the question of nuclear medicine. No one disputes either the importance or the need for secure access to nuclear medicine. The planned national radioactive waste facility is not expected to receive nuclear medicine waste from any hospital or medical clinic in Australia.
These wastes would continue to be managed at these multiple sites on the current “store and decay” basis. A national radioactive waste facility would take nuclear reactor waste from the process that generated the nuclear medicine, but not nuclear medical waste. Importantly, this means that a national waste facility is not required to ensure access to nuclear medicine.
Currently, Australia’s most serious radioactive waste is stored above ground at ANSTO. This makes sense, as the waste is already on site and Lucas Heights also has clear tenure, high levels of security and policing, the most advanced radioactive monitoring and emergency response capacity in the country, and it is the workplace of around 1,200 people.
The Federal Government plan is to move this material from this facility to one in regional South Australia with far less capacity and institutional assets.
There is no radiological protection rationale to move this material from extended above ground storage in Sydney to extended above ground storage with far fewer checks and balances in regional Sout Australia. The current Federal approach to the intermediate level waste is not consistent with international best practice and is merely kicking the can further down a less travelled road.
A Senate Inquiry is currently taking place into siting issues. This important and welcome initiative is no substitute for what is urgently needed — an independent and open assessment of the full range of options for managing Australia’s radioactive waste.
The current Federal plan is a retreat from responsibility, which is playing short-term politics with a long-term hazard. It is extraordinary that, after over six decades of making waste and two decades of sustained and successful community resistance to Federal siting plans, Australia has never had an objective review of management practises and options. We need this now.
Silex pulls out of U.S. laser enrichment projects, JUNE 13, 2018
Silex Systems Limited, an Australian company that own the Silex laser enrichment technology, announced that it will not be participating in the restructuring of the Global Laser Enrichment (GLE), a venture that was set up by General Electric and Hitachi to use the technology to build uranium enrichment facilities in the United States. Canadian company Cameco joined the project in 2008.
In 2012 GLE obtained a license to build an enrichment facility in Wilmington, NC. That project, however, was put on hold as the demand for enrichment services dropped after Fukushima. In 2014, GLE expressed interest in building a facility in Paducah, at the site of the gaseous diffusion plant closed down in 2013. The new plant was supposed to enrich tails of the old enrichment operation to produce “natural-grade” uranium. In November 2016 GLE secured an agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy to acquire the tails. In April 2016, however, GE-Hitachi announced its intent to leave GLE. Silex Systems considered acquiring the GE-Hitachi stake in the company (which is 76%), but now ti decided against it.
In addition, Silex said it intends to give notice to GLE of the termination of the SILEX technology license “unless circumstances change dramatically in the short term”. This most likely means that all plans to build a Silex-based commercial uranium enrichment facility in the United States are now terminated.
France signs agreement with Australia on research reactor fuel reprocessing, JULY 9, 2018 Mycle Schneider
On 6 July 2018, the French Official Journal published a decree making formal a 23 November 2017 inter-governmental agreement for AREVA NC (now Orano) to reprocess at La Hague spent fuel from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) research reactor OPAL.
The reprocessing of OPAL spent fuel at the La Hague facility is foreseen to occur between January 2019 and 31 December 2034. The ownership of the extracted plutonium and uranium will be transferred to Orano. The plutonium is to be used in a civil reactor.
The reprocessing wastes are to be shipped back to Australia until 31 December 2035, unless the contract is extended for additional quantities of fuel. In that case, the very last date for waste return is 31 December 2040.
The quantity of spent fuel covered under the agreement and contract is “up to 3.6 tons.” Under a previous agreement, 0.236 tons of OPAL spent fuel have been reprocessed at La Hague by the end of 2014.
As of the end of 2017, of the 9,970 tons of spent fuel stored in the La Hague spent fuel pools, 99.6 percent was domestic power reactor fuel belonging to Électricité de France (EDF). The La Hague facilities have a licensed reprocessing capacity of 1,700 tons per year of spent fuel.
The Turnbull government recently introduced legislation into parliament designed to lower the threshold for calling out the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to assist state police forceswith public incidents.
Antinuclear 