Australian government’s deceptive labelling of nuclear wastes
Steve Dale Nuclear Fuel Cycle Watch South Australia, 5 Dec 16 What we call “Intermediate” level waste is called “High” level waste (HLW) in the USA, Canada, Japan, France and the UK. This mislabeling is so deceptive, that if it was any other product the ACCC would be sinking their gums into them.
Matt Canavan Australia’s very own Minister For The Coal Industry
Next-generation coal can fill gap, says Matt Canavan, 5 Jan 17
Australia should turn to the next generation of coal-fired power stations to generate more domestic electricity, according to a key federal minister who has gone on the offensive against conservationists who want to end the use of coal…. (subscribers only)
(You can see why I don’t bother to subscribe to this puppet of industry newspaper!)
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/nextgeneration-coal-can-fill-gap-says-matt-canavan/news-story/60877681f71fcad7a7c7960dcf2b9ef4
2016 – Australia’s year of record-breaking extreme weather
Record-breaking extreme weather in Australia in 2016 devastates ecosystems https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jan/05/record-breaking-extreme-weather-in-australia-in-2016-devastates-ecosystems
Bureau of Meteorology’s annual climate statement cites unprecedented bushfires in regions that don’t usually burn and worst coral bleaching on record, Guardian Michael Slezak, 5 Jan 16 Australia’s weather was extreme in 2016, driven by humankind’s burning of fossil fuels as well as a strong El Niño, according to the Bureau of Meteorology’s annual climate statement.
That extreme weather led to devastated ecosystems both on land and in the sea, with unprecedented bushfires in regions that don’t usually burn, the worst coral bleaching on record, and has been attributed as the cause of damage to vast tracts of crucial kelp forests, oyster farms and salmon stocks across southern Australia.
The statement, released on Thursday, said the country as a whole had its fourth-warmest year on record, but locally, Sydney and Darwin broke records for both their hottest maximum temperatures and hottest minimum temperatures.
Hobart had its warmest night on record in 2016 and both Hobart and Brisbane had records for their hottest annual mean temperature fall as well. The hot and dry start to the year sparked bushfires in Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia.
The fires that swept through the Tasmanian world heritage forests were described as the worst crisis those forests faced in decades. The usually damp alpine forests there had been dried out by earlier dry weather and then a huge number of lightning strikes – which are expected to become more common as temperatures rise – burned through forests, killing trees that were hundreds of years old.
While land burned, the sea around Australia broiled. The bureau’s statement said despite the surface temperature of the seas around Australia being consistently high in recent years, 2016 reached a new record temperature, being 0.73C above the 1961-90 average.
Off the coast of Queensland, those record temperatures led to the worst coral bleaching on record, where an estimated 22% of the coral on the entire 2,300km length of the Great Barrier Reef was lost.
In the northern, most remote and most pristine part of the reef, coral was devastated by the unusually warm water, which scientists say will become the norm in fewer than 20 years.
The bureau’s statement also notes that ocean temperatures were at record highs around Tasmania in 2016. The freakishly hot waters there have been attributed as the cause of damage to oyster, salmon and abalone industries, as well as increased stress to kelp forests, already devastated by warmer waters in recent years.
The record hot waters in Tasmania were caused by a strengthened east Australian current, which drags warm waters from the tropics, along the coast of Australia. “This was associated with the longest and most intense marine heatwave on record for the south-east Australian region,” the statement said.
It added: “The pattern of above average temperatures over land and in the oceans reflects the background warming trend. The Australian climate in 2016 was influenced by a combination of natural drivers and anthropogenic climate change.”
The hot temperatures around the country were followed up by unusually wet conditions for much of Australia too.
The bureau said Adelaide had its second-wettest year on record and its wettest since 1992. Sydney, Canberra and Hobart had above average rainfall. But the pattern wasn’t uniform, as Perth and Melbourne were close to average and Darwin and Brisbane were significantly drier than average in 2016.
“Widespread, drought-breaking rains led to flooding in multiple states,” said Neil Plummer from the Bureau of Meteorology. “Even northern Australia saw widespread rainfall, during what is usually the dry season, greening regions that had been in drought for several years.”
Determined local protests against Adani coal mine
Adani’s Mega Mine in Australia Runs Into Local Protests https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/wgar-news/YhylvDagW10 http://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/OldNewsPage/?Id=9582&Adani%E2%80%99s/Mega/Mine/in/Australia/Runs/Into/Local/Protests Stephen de Tarczynski 2 January 2017:
” … But at a time when global warming is a significant threat to humanity, the Carmichael mine is generating substantial opposition. Since the project was announced in 2010, there have been more than ten appeals and judicial processes against the mine.
“Shani Tager, a campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, is adamant that the coal that Adani wants to dig up must remain in the ground. “It’s a massive amount of coal that they’re talking about exporting, which will be burnt and used and make the problem of global warming even worse,” she says. …
““The Carmichael coal mine will have a domino effect of bad impacts on the reef, from driving the need for port expansion and more dredging and dumping to increasing the risk of shipping accidents on the reef,” says Cherry Muddle from the Australian Marine Conservation Society. …
““If they can’t get the money, they can’t build the mine,” says Murrawah Johnson. … “
Australia’s proponents of nuclear submarines are way behind the times
Nuclear Fuel Cycle Watch South Australia Paul Richards shared a link. 1 Jan 17
Emerging this decade are the many challenges to the whole nuclear industries range of products from; medicine, reactors, weapons
Not to mention the always present 1940s backdoor issue that’s never been solved, that of nuclear waste management
This submarine news makes a joke of our neocon naval purchase, particularly if the goal was to put nuclear reactors into the Shortfin Barracuda Block 1A at some future point
The whole biased process used by those enamoured the nuclear industry is becoming increasingly obvious. Particularly, when this Swedish technological development must have been known about but discarded in favour of the nuclear state, France. Who are a founding member of UN Security Council P5 and who as a group control all nuclear issues globally through the IAEA
Nonetheless, this is a notable problem with all nuclear infrastructure, that is, the slow technological development due to the magnitude of the complex physics difficulties. Issues that are becoming common knowledge and as such widely understood by the public as a secondary downside along with unsolved waste problem
Obsolescence is the biggest problem with all nuclear technology, and the whole industry struggles to survive without sovereign capital funding. Most importantly, because clean alternative technology is rapidly developed and easily recycled.
What is interesting is the catalytic conversion of C02 and water into diesel although in its infancy, has already been trialled as economically viable, as well as being CO2 neutral, and that is before the carbon industry started discounting oil. In all probability, blue or e-diesel will be a good, clean fuel for submarines given the exponential growth in German fuel technology and their incredible technological record as world leaders in catalytic technology
Is it any wonder Germany stepped off the whole nuclear cycle, with such advances rapidly developing, making current nuclear tech look so last century, dated and obsolete?
___________
https://themarketmogul.com/blue-crude-innovative-revolution/
source: the national interest: an American bi-monthly international affairs magazine published by the Center for the National Interest https://www.facebook.com/groups/1021186047913052/
South Australia needs a level playing field for rooftop solar
Dennis Matthews, 1 Jan 17 Australia’s Chief Scientist, Alan Finkel, has recently
drawn attention to a problem in adopting new energy technology.
When home owners consider installing rooftop photovoltaic (PV) electricity generators they are faced with up-front costs.
By comparison, electricity supplied through the grid by large scale electricity generators is provided at no up-front cost to the consumer. The consumer eventually pays the generators’ up-front costs (plus interest) through quarterly bills over a period of several years.
The solution to the problem has been known for several decades – provide a level playing field by having PV up-front costs financed by either an electricity service provider or government with the costs plus interest being recovered over time through the usual quarterly bill.
Such a simple arrangement would not only make rooftop PV competitive (including for rental properties) with grid electricity but would also make energy conservation measures, such as double glazing, more competitive.
Battle Lines Drawn Over Indian Mega Mine
‘Murrawah Johnson, 21, of the Wangan and Jagalingou Family Council,
is among those standing in the way of the huge Carmichael coal mine project
in Australia’s Queensland state.’ http://menafn.com/1095149597/Battle-Lines-Drawn-Over-Indian-Mega-Mine Stephen de Tarczynski | MENAFN Press 30 December 2016:
“‘Our people are the unique people from that country,’ says Murrawah, whose name means ‘rainbow’ in the indigenous Gubbi Gubbi language.
‘That is who we are in our identity, in our culture, in our song and in our dance,’ she adds.
The mine’s estimated average annual carbon emissions of 79 million tonnes are three times those of New Delhi, six times those of Amsterdam and double Tokyo’s average annual emissions.
“The Wangan and Jagalingou, numbering up to 500 people, regard the Carmichael coal mine
as a threat to their very existence and have repeatedly rejected the advances of Adani Mining,
the company behind the project.
The traditional owners argue the mine would destroy their land, which ‘means that our story is then destroyed. And we as a people and our identity, as well,’
Murrawah, a spokesperson for her people’s Family Council, told IPS. … “
Former Liberal leader Peter Reith now a lobbyist for nuclear related company Bechtel
Dan Monceaux Nuclear Fuel Cycle Watch South Australia, December 2016
His current book lists just two clients: Bechtel Infrastructure (Australia) Pty Ltd and G4S Custodial Services Pty Ltd.
Internationally, Bechtel has worked on a variety of substantial projects in the nuclear fuel cycle. Examples include:
Advanced Mixed Waste, Idaho, USA
Chernobyl Shelter and Confinement, Ukraine
Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station, Ohio, USA
Hanford Waste Treatment Plant, Washington, USA
Horizon Wylfa Newydd, Isle of Anglesey, Wales, UK
Reagan Test Site, Marshall Islands
Savannah River Remediation, South Carolina, USA
Sellafield Pile Fuel Cladding Silo Retrieval, England
U.S. Nuclear Security Enterprise, Texas and Tennessee, USA
Uranium Processing Facility, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA
Watts Bar Completion, Tennessee, USA
Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, Nevada, USA http://www.dpc.sa.gov.au/documents/rendition/B18707
Australian government plays dirty tricks with language on High Level nuclear Wastes (HLW)
Steve Dale Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA, 27 Dec 16
UK government avoids the question on nuclear waste going to Aboriginal land
Radioactive Waste:Written question – 46886
Margaret Henry Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA
HERE IS THE ANSWER –
“There is a very small quantity of Australian owned radioactive waste currently stored in the UK. We anticipate that this will be returned to Australia in due course in line with contractual commitments. The location of any storage and disposal facilities for this waste will be a matter for the Australian authorities.
Any shipment of radioactive material out of the UK will comply with all relevant international laws and use ships which meet national and international requirements.” https://www.facebook.com/groups/344452605899556/
Bob Hawke spruiking nuclear power again – to an unreceptive audience
Bob Hawke pushes nuclear power at Woodford Folk Festival north of Brisbane BY MEGAN KINNINMENT ABC NEWS WED DEC 28 Former prime minister Bob Hawke’s assertion that nuclear power is the salvation for a planet ravaged by global warming divided the crowd at the Woodford Folk Festival, north of Brisbane today. But it was his assertion that Australia should take on the world’s nuclear waste that had the crowd most worked up, prompting several calls of “no thanks” from the audience.
Last night, pop singer Paul Kelly said Mr Hawke was a hard act to follow after he had the crowd singing along to Waltzing Matilda at the festival’s opening ceremony.
But today’s address under the big top did not meet with universal acclaim.
“The time has come when we’ve got to think big if we’re going to face the big issues of our time,” Mr Hawke told those assembled.
“We’re going to have to be prepared to think about changes that are quite radical.”
That comment was greeted with a round of applause.
Then he began to elaborate, advocating nuclear power.
“Nuclear power would be a win for the environment and an essential part of the attacking that must be made on this grievous and dangerous global warming,” he said.
“It would be a win for the global environment and a win for Australia.”…..Mr Hawke said Australia would benefit financially from the transaction and could use profits towards ending Indigenous poverty. http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-28/we-must-embrace-nuclear-power-bob-hawke-divides-audience/8151346?pfmredir=sm
British and Australian governments wash their hands of radioactive contamination of Aboriginal lands
Bronwyn Lucas Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA, 30 Dec 16 I heard that the British did an absolutely appalling job of cleanup at Maralinga … it was hardly worth the effort, as I understand it. I heard stories of hot winds blowing, dust everywhere, a cursory undertaking. One would think we still had Menzies at the helm. The Dark Side is in this together … if we think our government is taking care of us, I’d say to think again.Margaret Henry Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA, 30 Dec 16 In the UK parliament in January 2016, they were asked if the Government will issue an apology to the indigenous people of Australia for British nuclear tests carried out on their land in the 1950s and 1960s.
ANSWER-
“In 1968, Australia signed an agreement with the UK confirming that the clean-up of all test sites had been completed satisfactorily. As announced to the House on 10 December 1993,(Official Report, column 421), the Government agreed to make an ex gratia payment of £20 million to the Federal Government of Australia as a contribution to the cost of the further clean-up of the Maralinga site. A copy of the note giving effect to this agreement was placed in the Library of the House. The note also records that the Government of Australia indemnified the Government of the UK against claims from Australian nationals or residents. The Government now regards the matter as closed.” https://www.facebook.com/groups/344452605899556/
Australia must stop undermining the nuclear disarmament process
To realise the full significance of this, consider the fact that other weapons of mass destruction – chemical weapons, biological weapons, landmines, cluster bombs – have all been prohibited by their respective treaties, and the threats posed by these weapons dramatically reduced as a result. But for nuclear weapons, which literally threaten life on Earth, there is currently no equivalent.
One might have expected that our Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, who likes spruiking Australia’s commitment to a “rules-based international order”, would welcome the imminent closure of this legal anomaly. On the contrary, however, Australia has been leading the charge to undermine the process.
Australia claims that the ban treaty process has not taken into account the security needs of “all nations” (for which read the US), a curious claim given that our ally stands out as more vulnerable than most to a nuclear weapons attack. In any event, is she really suggesting that the security needs claimed by the nine nuclear-armed nations outweigh the right of the other 187 of us to be rid of this diabolical threat?
That’s a bit like cutting President Bashar al-Assad some slack over his alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria because he has “security needs”. Weapons of mass destruction are not somehow more acceptable because a handful of nations claim that they, and only they, must have them. But, the ban treaty critics say, nuclear weapons are different, and the countries with the weapons will just thumb their collective noses at it.
Not according to a letter in October from the US mission to NATO to its European allies, urging that they oppose the treaty. With an air of desperation to sabotage the whole thing, the US stated that efforts to delegitimise nuclear weapons are at odds with its policy of nuclear deterrence, including extended deterrence for its allies (such as NATO members and Australia). Further, horror of horrors, it “could make it impossible to undertake nuclear planning or training”. Well, yes, that’s the general idea, to delegitimise every aspect of nuclear weapons possession and planning; and all indications are that that goal will be achieved, regardless of who signs the treaty. So much for the toothless tiger notion.
Nevertheless, Australia presses on with its defence of US nuclear weapons, including their possible use on our behalf, not veering from its chosen “progressive” approach to disarmament. This consists of a number of steps that have progressed more slowly over decades than a drunken snail.
The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has languished since it was completed in 1996, with little prospect of ever coming into force, and the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty has been moribund for even longer. In other words, we are told that a stagnant business-as-usual agenda is the way to go, even as 15,000-plus nuclear weapons – 1800 of them still on hair-trigger alert – continue to threaten human suffering of the most grotesque proportions, and all warnings point to increasing risk of their use.
Australia will have to decide very quickly whether we support the majority of nations that have come to their senses and are about to outlaw nuclear weapons, or the Trumps and Putins of this world with their chilling Cold War-style ravings. For a nation that boasts commitment to a “rules-based international order”, the choice hardly seems difficult.
The reality of moving one big step closer to stigmatising, prohibiting and eliminating the most destructive, inhumane, indiscriminate devices ever created is cause for celebration. However, there is another cause for celebration, and that is the capacity of civil society – without which the nuclear weapons ban would not be happening – to mobilise, organise, work with supportive governments and set the agenda for a better world. As the politics of violence, division and hatred loom large on many fronts, such capacity is desperately needed for the huge challenges ahead.
Dr Sue Wareham is a board member of ICAN (Australia), the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
Australia’s responsibility to face up to its radioactive wastes produced at Lucas Heights
Storing the reprocessed nuclear fuel that is to come back from France at Lucas Heights seems the best of a poor set of alternatives.
We are stuck with highly radioactive material for which we are responsible. Like all countries with nuclear reactors, we should not have produced it in the first place until safe storage technology existed.
Radioactive game of passing the parcel http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/politics/radioactive-game-of-passing-the-parcel-20120523-1z582.html#ixzz1vp20gX9X Richard Broinowski May 24, 2012 Reports indicate France is soon to return reprocessed nuclear waste generated at Lucas Heights to Australia. The federal nuclear agency says the waste is ”intermediate level”, small in volume, and to be stored temporarily at Lucas Heights.
These assurances are misleading in all three respects: the volume of the waste, its toxicity, and its future disposal.
Australia’s first research reactor, the high flux Australian reactor, went critical in January 1958. It was fuelled by highly enriched bomb-grade American uranium. Although small compared with power
reactors, it discharged 37 spent fuel rods a year, each containing the same weapons-grade uranium, plutonium and fission products as its big brothers.
By 2002, it had produced 1665 such rods. Some were sent to Britain and the US for reprocessing. But by 2003, four metric tonnes remained in temporary storage at Lucas Heights
When political pressure forced Britain to cease reprocessing in Scotland, Australia’s nuclear agency arranged with the French company COGEMA to reprocess the rods. Australia is legally bound to take the
lot back – plus, one assumes, the separated plutonium and uranium-235. The problem is there is no agreed permanent place in Australia to put it.
In 2007 the old reactor was decommissioned and replaced by one designed by the Argentine company INVAP. Before construction began, the government stipulated a high-level waste site was to be identified
and a feasibility study completed. No site was found and the stipulation was modified to a strategy for disposal.
The situation becomes more complicated. Argentina initially agreed to take back the spent fuel rods from the reactor for reprocessing, returning the waste to Australia and keeping the weapons-grade uranium-235 and plutonium-239 under full-scope international safeguards. But its officials asserted such reprocessing was in violation of Argentina’s constitution. Australian officials appear not to be worried because they say the reactor has a storage pool with capacity for nine years’ worth of spent fuel rods. A solution, they imply, will turn up.
But like the rapidly filling storage ponds at all civil reactors around the world, this is a short-term solution. The problem of ultimate disposal of irradiated fuel continues unresolved. Australia does not even have a designated repository for low-level nuclear waste such as contaminated clothing and discarded radio pharmaceutical equipment from hospitals.
In 2002, three possible low-level sites were identified in South Australia. But the sites were judged too risky because an errant missile could land on the dump, scattering radioactive debris in all
directions. The state’s then premier, Mike Rann, strenuously opposed it. South Australia, he declared, would not become Australia’s ”nuclear waste state”.
Nor, according to their premiers, would any other Australian state. Australians seem complacent about exporting uranium but become unsettled about storing its end products here, even waste generated by
our reactors.
By February 2010, the only site still under consideration as a nuclear waste dump was Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory, where the federal government can overrule the Legislative Assembly in Darwin.
But deciding on Muckaty was controversial. First, although a small group of traditional owners of the land supported the decision, a greater number opposed it. They launched a case in the Federal Court opposing it.
Second, the site is meant to take low- and intermediate-level waste. But intermediate waste is a narrow definition based on calorific output. If heat is dissipated, runs the argument, high-level waste
becomes intermediate. But whatever its temperature, the waste still contains all the fission byproducts and actinides of high-level waste.
Storing the reprocessed nuclear fuel that is to come back from France at Lucas Heights seems the best of a poor set of alternatives. There are at least suitable storage facilities and chemists and physicists
who know how to handle the material.
But what Australia needs urgently is a solution. We are stuck with highly radioactive material for which we are responsible. Like all countries with nuclear reactors, we should not have produced it in the first place until safe storage technology existed.
Australian government OK about dealing with corrupt firms – whether coal or nuclear
DCNS Opens New Australia-Based Office to Support Country’s Submarine Replacement Project http://blog.executivebiz.com/2016/12/dcns-opens-new-australia-based-office-to-support-countrys-submarine-replacement-project/on: December 22, 2016 France-based naval shipbuilder DCNS has established a new headquarters for its Australian subsidiary that will design the future submarine of Australia’s navy as part of an intergovernmental agreement between the two countries.
DCNS said Wednesday its Adelaide Future Submarine Facility is scheduled to begin operations in early 2017 and will support activities such as the transfer of technology from France to Australia, development of a supply chain and design of a shipyard in Adelaide.
“This facility, and our local Adelaide workforce starting with 50 people in 2017, marks the beginning of our relationship as part of the community,” said Herve Guillou, DCNS Group chairman and global CEO.
The Australian government selected DCNS in April to provide design services for the country’s estimated $38.7 billion SEA 1000 Future Submarine Program.
Marise Payne and Jean-Yves Le Drian, respective defense ministers of Australia and France have signed an agreement that establishes a framework for the two countries on the development of the Australian navy’s fleet of submarines.
1 This month.
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
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
19 May – Webinar- Webinar: No Nuclear Weapons in Australia
Start: 2026-05-19 18:00:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
End: 2026-05-19 19:30:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
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 