2017 – Federal Budget – nuclear issues SUMMARY
Budget Paper 1.
Risks
- There may be potential claims made in relation to asbestos relates diseases from asbestos at the ANSTO site – potential costs have not been identified
- The Government has formally agreed (21/04/2016) to indemnify ANSTO and ANSTO officers, and ANM and ANM Officers from any loss or liability arising from claims caused by ionising radiation. This is in place until April 2026.
- The Government claims it has already indemnified the Maralinga Tjarutja people in respect of claims arising from test site contamination (through the terms of the Maralinga Nuclear Test Site Handback Deed.)
- Cessation of funding for the development of a detailed business case for the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility
Budget Paper 2.
Expenses * British Nuclear Test Veterans * three different figures (pg’s 48,57, 59, 175 &186) *more details on pg 93 of Budget Paper 4.
$133.1 over four years for health care (public or private) for any medical condition, irrespective of whether the condition is linked to their service. Includes participants in the British nuclear test program in Australia and vetereans of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (who were deployed in or near Hiroshima).
National Medical Stockpile. Pg – 188.
The government will provide $85.4 million over 3 years to replenish national medial stockpiles – a strategic reserve in response to any chemical, biological or nuclear event.
Budget Paper 3.
Rum Jungle, pg 55
Environmental Management of the former Rum Jungle uranium mine site: $6.1 million 2017-2018, and $4 million in 2018-2019. This funding is a National Partnership payment to support State environment services. The funding is for a program of work established to improve the management of the site and further develop a rehab strategy.
Ranger, pg 77
Commonwealth provides general assistance to the NT on uranium at Ranger (because the Commonwealth owns NT uranium) *payments are made at a royalty rate of 1.25 % of net proceeds of sales. *** unclear what $ if any goes from Commonwealth to the NT….
May 10, 2017
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It’s budget night, and while the government was tight-lipped about measures affecting Indigenous Australians, there were a number of leaks ahead of the treasurer’s announcments.
On Monday afternoon, it transpired that the Veteran’s Affairs Minister, Dan Tehan, was preparing to announce that Aboriginal people who were near British nuclear testing in the in 1950s and 1960s would finally receive a gold health card, which would mean access to improved health care, and most costs covered.
“The measure will provide Gold Cards to Indigenous people present at or near Maralinga, Emu Fields or the Monte Bello Islands at the time of the British Nuclear Tests in the 1950s or 1960s,” Mr Tehan told the ABC’s Q&A program.
The Government will also provide a gold card to cover the health care costs of the surviving participants of the British Nuclear Test program and veterans who served as part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF). The Government has allocated $133.1 million for this initiative to cover eligible veterans.
The announcement has been a long time coming for many Indigenous people and veterans alike, who have campaigned for decades to receive compensation.
Yankunytjatjara man Yami Lester, who was blinded by atomic fallout says the support comes “60 years too late”.
“Most of our people have passed away. They were young ones then, now they’re older ones now, a few of them still living now today.”
May 10, 2017
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Atomic veterans to be recognised after 61 years, Mandurah Mail, 8 May 17, The service of veterans exposed to British atomic testing off the coast of Western Australia in the 1950s is to be recognised in the federal budget on Tuesday.
On Sunday Canning MP Andrew Hastie announced $133 million would be spent giving the men who served in the Montebello Islands, where three nuclear weapons tests took place in 1952 and 1956, access to Department of Veterans Affairs gold cards.
Mr Hastie said the gold cards, which entitled the veterans to free public and private health care, were an acknowledgment the men had served in dangerous circumstances.
“It says to them that the Australian government, on behalf of the Australian people, care about them and are going to see their responsibility to care for them through,” he said.
“For these men it is recognition they did serve in hazardous conditions, that they were exposed to nuclear radiation after atomic testing, so for them it means a lot, especially since quite a few of them have suffered from cancer.”
Only 51 of the 89 servicemen who were conscripted to assist with the atomic tests are still alive.
Half of those who have since died succumbed to cancer……..
Many of the veterans said they had not been told of the dangers of nuclear radiation and were not issued protective gear.
“We got up there and didn’t even know what was happening, all we knew is that something big was happening so we got out on the upper deck and the count down came down,” Australian Ex-Services Atomic Survivors Association secretary Jim Marlow said.
“We were told to turn our backs, so we turned our backs and there was a blinding flash and a push of wind and a whole lot of noise and we turned back again and saw the smoke going up.”
Mr Marlow said he was back working in the ship 10 minutes after the blast.
He said the survivors association had been lobbying for recognition for more than a decade. http://www.mandurahmail.com.au/story/4647184/atomic-veterans-to-be-recognised-after-61-years/
May 10, 2017
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http://wanganjagalingou.com.au/senate-should-not-reward-brandis-native-title-bill-scam/9 May 2017
Proper consultation with Indigenous Leaders needed
Adani shouldn’t determine Native Title reform agenda
“The Attorney General George Brandis has cut corners and conducted a shabby consultation process on the Native Title Bill to be debated in the Senate this Wednesday, failing to include
Traditional Owners across Australia, say Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners fighting Adani’s coal mine in Central Queensland.
“Senior spokesperson for the Wangan and Jagalingou (W&J)Traditional Owners Council, Mr Adrian Burragubba said, “The Attorney General has whipped up a false sense of urgency so he can push through this Bill, which is designed for everyone but the Traditional Owners whose rights it is meant to uphold.
““Brandis has engineered a cursory and limited consultation process which is grossly inadequate for amendments which will have such a significant and long term impact on our rights. …
“The Labor Party, who were the original architects of native title laws under Prime Minister Paul Keating, understood that good native title laws are built on direct consultation with a broad group of Aboriginal leaders, and are meant to right an historic wrong.
““We are encouraged by reports that the Opposition, in this 25th anniversary year of the Mabo decision,
is troubled by the Government’s handling of this Bill,
and is seeking to ensure proper consultations with Traditional Owners.
We have urged all Labor, Green and Xenophon Senators not to pass this bill. …
“Youth spokesperson for the W&J Traditional Owners Council, MsMurrawah Johnson, said, “As Traditional Owners we have a right to determine our own future and make our own decisions about our lands and waters. It is not up to unelected CEOs and lawyers who are talking to the Government.
““The Government has failed to make a case for why this Bill is urgent, or make a convincing argument why it needs to overturn the Federal Court’s decision in McGlade. …
May 10, 2017
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https://nick.nxtmps.org.au/media/releases/finally-some-justice-for-
australias-nuclear-test-veterans/7 MAY 2017 Negotiations with the Nick Xenophon Team were instrumental in finally securing the Gold Card benefit for Australian veterans who served in the British Occupation Forces in Japan from 1945-1952 and also those involved in the British nuclear tests in Australia from 1952-1967.
Until the Federal Government’s announcement today, Australian nuclear veterans were not eligible for the Gold Card – which covers medical expenses and treatment for all of a veteran’s medical conditions.
It is automatically available for all veterans who served in theatres of war – but inexplicably was denied to those who were subjected to a nuclear blast.
Until now, Australia’s nuclear veterans had to jump over the onerous hurdle of proving their illness and medical conditions were directly linked to the exposure to radiation.
Senator Nick Xenophon has pursued this issue for over six years in the Senate, moving amendments to extend the Gold Card to nuclear veterans, including those Australians who served in the British Occupation Forces in Japan from 1945-1952, involved in the clean up and occupation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
More recently he has been joined in advocacy for the veterans by his NXT colleagues in Canberra, particularly Senator Skye Kakoschke-Moore.
“Ignored, and treated with contempt by successive governments since the 1950s, these nuclear veterans will finally get the recognition and assistance they so strongly deserve,” Nick said.
“Getting access to the Gold Card will make a very big difference to the surviving veterans – many of whom have suffered terrible health and illnesses as a result of their exposure to radiation.”
Of the 17,000 Australian soldiers and civilians directly involved in the British nuclear tests in Australia, at Emu Field and Maralinga in SA and Monte Bello Islands off the coast of WA, it is believed only about 1,100 are still alive. “This has been a shameful episode of Australian history. This at least is a belated recognition for the hazardous warlike service these veterans endured,” said Nick.
May 8, 2017
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Health and climate change, The Saturday Paper, The World Health Organisation’s director-general describes climate change as ‘the fifth horseman’ of the apocalypse, as doctors are encouraged to speak out more about illness and death caused by extreme weather. By Marie McInerney. 6 May 17, “……….The World Health Organisation is clear, declaring climate change “the defining issue” for this century. The WHO’s director-general, Dr Margaret Chan, has described it as “the fifth horseman” of the apocalypse, a new threat riding across the public health landscape.
The health risks posed for Australia have been catalogued by the Climate and Health Alliance (CAHA), a coalition of health and social policy groups that has developed a framework for a national strategy on climate, health and wellbeing in the absence of government or departmental leadership.
At the top of the list of risks are increasing frequency and ferocity of extreme weather events such as heatwaves, floods and storms such as cyclone Debbie. A warmer climate and changing rainfall patterns will increase the range and prevalence of food, water and vector-borne diseases. The evidence also warns of mental health impacts, worsening allergies and asthma, disrupted food and water supplies, and health issues for people who work in the outdoors or respond to escalating disasters.
Groups such as CAHA say a big struggle on climate change has been to persuade people that it’s not just an environmental issue, and that the health urgency is personal and immediate.
That’s where Dr Bastian Seidel sees a role for GPs as “climate witnesses”. Seidel moved to Tasmania a decade ago from Germany and was recently elected president of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Australia’s largest medical organisation.
He says not a day goes by in his rural Huon Valley practice that he doesn’t hear about a climate change impact for his patients. Seasons are now pretty much unpredictable. He sees cherry farmers struggling to get crops out at Christmas, graziers dealing with prolonged drought, salmon producers worried about unseasonably hot weather. Hayfever cases now seem to go all year round.
The trouble is, he says, that not enough questions are being asked – by politicians, the media, public service, and also the medical profession – about what is causing these shifts and what health services need to do about them.
Seidel points to the recent thunderstorm asthma outbreak in Victoria that resulted in nine deaths and overwhelmed services – Victoria’s health minister Jill Hennessy likened it to 150 bombs going off in different places at once. While the government’s report into the event briefly acknowledges the influence of climate change on key conditions, Seidel says there was barely any scrutiny of its role.
“It looks like climate change has almost become the Voldemort of health impact research and policy – it shall not be named,” he says.
Seidel says GPs have to be bold enough to nominate climate change as a cause of illness and to campaign to have health policies “blueprinted” against climate change effects.
A priority example, he says, is the federal government’s Closing the Gap report. While many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities are at heightened risk from climate change, he says the term is only mentioned once in the 2017 report – in reference to the number of Indigenous employees at the Climate Change Authority.
While others may still shy away from the debate, Simon Judkins sees speaking out on climate change as a growing professional responsibility based on two core principles of healthcare: that prevention is better than cure, and that doctors have a duty of care for patients such as Ruby and others most immediately susceptible to climate change effects.
“Obviously there is the science to support, and we are scientists,” he said. “But we also need to advocate for the people we look after. The people who are going to be most affected by climate change are those who need a very robust public health system and GP support system because they can’t buy their way out of this. We do have a voice that is hopefully respected and I don’t think we use that voice enough in this space.” https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/2017/05/06/health-and-climate-change/14939928004580
May 7, 2017
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Queensland
20,000 jobs in solar power proposal
A US firm is scouting sites in Queensland for up to six solar thermal power stations, each of which would cost about $600m to build and need 4000 construction workers…..
http://www.couriermail.com.au/business/solar-power-queensland-plans-for-up-to-six-solar-thermal-stations/news-story/500edfdd61cdd0603bb876a8a558e3b0
May 7, 2017
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Renowned scientist Tim Flannery warns NT against investing in gas
The former chief commissioner of Australia’s Climate Council says the NT should take heed of the risks posed by hydraulic fracturing when considering gas projects such as the proposed Jemena pipeline.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-06/tim-flannery-warns-against-nt-pipeline/8502186
Western Australia
Tribunal rules against Indigenous anti-fracking protestor in WA
An Aboriginal man who has spent more than two years protesting mining companies from a makeshift camp in northern WA declares victory, despite a tribunal ruling likely to end his campaign.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-05/tribunal-rules-against-anti-fracking-protester/8501544
May 7, 2017
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There’s just too much news on renewable energy! Unable to cope, I give you some brief notes.
May 6, 2017
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AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, energy |
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Chris Douglas, who specialised in terrorism financing and organised crime, believes the rogue country is more than capable of smuggling a nuclear device into an Australian port via shipping routes.
“A fanatical regime facing extinction wouldn’t think twice about sending a container bearing a nuclear device to the US or an allied country and detonating it,” he said in an article published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
Mr Douglas told The West Australian those ports could included Fremantle and that concealing the device would be easy and it would be foolish to focus only on the possibility of North Korea launching a missile into Australia if current tensions escalated.
“It’s time to check our thinking about what North Korea’s counter-attack response might be,” Mr Douglas said. “Nuclear weapons could be smuggled out of North Korea … and then be placed into containers on a cargo ship for transport to a port anywhere in the world.”
Last month, the state-run Democratic People’s Republic of Korea news agency warned Australia could hit by missiles. “If Australia persists in following the US moves to isolate and stifle the DPRK and remains a shock brigade of the US master, this will be a suicidal act of coming within the range of the nuclear strike of the strategic force of the DPRK, ” it said.
Mr Douglas suggested another terrifying scenario would involve several nuclear devices in different sea containers. “With over 17 million shipping containers in circulation, weaponised containers would be hard to detect,” he said. “A failure in imagination in any assessment of North Korea’s options to respond to a US attack could have a devastating impact not only on the US, but the rest of the world, involving significant loss of life and global economic ruin.”
A United Nations report in 2010, highlighted the lengths North Korea has gone to while pursuing its nuclear ambitions. A weapons expert doesn’t believe North Korea has capability to reach Darwin with one of their missiles
Private jets were hired through offshore companies and shipping containers were falsely labelled. In a separate UN report this year, North Korea was accused of “flouting sanctions through trade in prohibited goods, with evasion techniques that are increasing in scale, scope and sophistication”. Mr Douglas said North Korean ships had been used previously to transport drugs near the Australian coast.
May 5, 2017
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The Global Uranium Industry & Cameco’s Troubled History, May 2017, Jim Green − Friends of the Earth, Australia http://tinyurl.com/cameco-may-2017
Table of Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- THE GLOBAL URANIUM INDUSTRY
Australia’s Uranium Volume and Exports – 2006-2015
Australia’s top export revenue industries – Compared to uranium
“It has never been a worse time for uranium miners”
If there is a recovery, it will be a long time coming
Explaining the uranium market’s malaise
- CAMECO BATTLING URANIUM DOWNTURN, TAX OFFICE, TEPCO
- CAMECO’S URANIUM DEPOSITS IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA ‒ A BRIEF SUMMARY
- CAMECO’S INCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTS: 1981‒2016
1. INTRODUCTION This report covers two overlapping issues.
Firstly: the miserable state of the global uranium industry. For several years, the uranium prices (the spot price and long-term contract price) has been well below the level that would incentivise new mines. There is no end in sight to the industry’s current malaise ‒ as acknowledged by numerous industry insiders and market analysts.
Secondly: the problems facing uranium mining company Cameco, which provides about 17% of the world’s production from mines in Canada, the US and Kazakhstan, and
has two uranium projects in Western Australia ‒ Kintyre (70% Cameco / 30% Mitsubishi) and Yeelirrie (100% Cameco).
Cameco has been continuously downsizing for the past five years and the company acknowledges that the situation will get worse before it gets better.
Cameco has written off the entire value of its Kintyre project in Western Australia: a C$238 million write-down in 2016 following a C$168 million write-down in December 2012. Several other mines have been subject to production slowdowns or suspension, the company plans to sell its two uranium mines in the US (if it can find a buyer), and CEO Tim Gitzel said in February 2017 that Cameco is “very far from requiring any new greenfield uranium projects”.
Cameco is currently embroiled in a court case, accused of illegal profit-shifting by the Canada Revenue Agency using subsidiaries in Switzerland and Barbados. If Cameco is found guilty, it may have to back-pay taxes amounting to C$2.1 billion.
Finally, the report includes a table listing many of Cameco’s accidents and controversies since 1981 ‒ leaks and spills, the promotion of dangerous radiation junk science (in WA and elsewhere), appalling treatment of indigenous people, systemic and sometimes deliberate safety failures and breaches, etc………
Explaining the uranium market’s malaise There are numerous reasons why the uranium market is likely to remain depressed for the foreseeable future. The most important are briefly discussed here.
1. Nuclear power is unlikely to expand…..
2. Uranium is plentiful. …..
3. Stockpiles (inventories) are massive and still growing…….
May 5, 2017
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The Global Uranium Industry & Cameco’s Troubled History May 2017 Jim Green − Friends of the Earth, Australia http://tinyurl.com/cameco-may-2017
“…….. Kintyre (70% Cameco / 30% Mitsubishi) The Martu Aboriginal people have fought against this proposed uranium mine since the 1980s. The deposit sits between two branches of a creek called Yantikutji which is connected to a complex network of surface and groundwater systems. It is also in an area that was cut out of the Karlamilyi National Park, WA’s biggest National Park. Kintyre is home to 28 rare, endangered and threatened species. The project would include an open pit 1.5 km long, 1.5 km wide, it would use 3.5 million litres of water a day and leave behind 7.2 million tonnes of radioactive mine waste over the life of the project.
In June 2016, Martu Traditional Owners led a 140 km, week-long walk to protest against Cameco’s proposed uranium mine at Kintyre. Aboriginal Traditional Owners are concerned the project will affect their water supplies as well as 28 threatened species in the Karlamilyi National Park.
Joining the protest walk was Anohni, the Academy Award-nominated musician from Antony and the Johnsons. She said: “It’s a huge landscape – it’s a really majestic place. It’s really hard to put a finger on it but there’s a sense of presence and integrity and patience, dignity and perseverance and intense intuitive wisdom that this particular community of people have. There is almost an unbroken connection to the land – they haven’t been radically disrupted. They are very impressive people – it’s humbling to be around these women. In many regards, I think the guys who run Cameco are desolate souls, desolate souls with no home, with no connection to land, with no connection to country.” www.ccwa.org.au/kintyre
Yeelirrie (100% Cameco) Yeelirrie in the local Wongutha Aboriginal language means ‘place of death’. The local community has fought against mining at Yeelirrie for over 40 years. There was a trial mine in the 1970s which was poorly managed: the site was abandoned, unfenced and unsigned with a shallow open pit and tailings left behind. The project would include a 9 km long, 1 km wide open pit, it would use 8.7 million litres of water a day and leave behind 36 million tonnes of radioactive mine waste over the life of the mine. There are many cultural heritage sites under threat from this proposal. The project was rejected by the Western Australian Environmental Protection Agency in 2016 because of the threat that 11 species of underground microfauna would become extinct. The WA Environment Minister ignored the EPA advice and approved the project anyway. www.ccwa.org.au/yeelirrie
May 5, 2017
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aboriginal issues, Opposition to nuclear, reference, uranium, Western Australia |
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Antinuclear 