Anti wind farm activist appointed to Australian Wind Power Health Review
To direct the review, the NHMRC has created a reference group which also includes two observers….. the second observer is Peter Richard Mitchell, the founder of the Waubra Foundation. , the 77-year-old Mr Mitchell has a long career in the mining and fossil fuel industries Mr Mitchell has used a raft of other arguments to oppose wind farms.
Anti-turbine Activist Given Role as Observer on Australian Wind Power Health Review Desmoblog.com Graham Readfearn, 22 Aug 12, THERE are very few health symptoms these days which anti-wind power activists and suggestible and anxious residents have not at some point blamed on those spinning steel turbine blades.
According to a list compiled by Simon Chapman, the University of Sydney’s Professor of Public Health and much-awarded enemy of the tobacco industry, wind farms have been blamed for more than 180 different symptoms including weak bladders, cancers, weight gain, weight loss, herpes, kidney damage and, in one case, a woman having not one, but five menstrual periods in a single month.
Apparently, wind farms also cause chickens to be hatched with crossed beaks (and eggs being laid without yolks), cats to produce small litters, horses to get club feet and crickets to disappear.
Chapman noted recently at The Conversation that in Australia health complaints about wind farms have been relatively recent, despite some wind farms having been in operation for almost 20 years. In one area, Chapman said complaints had only been made after “a visit to the area by a vocal opponent, spreading anxiety”.
The Australian Government’s National Health and Medical Research Council has begun its second review of the “evidence” for such claims, examining studies and reports from around the world. The agency’s 2010 review looked at a range of issues which anti-wind groups often cite as the causes of symptoms in people living in wind farm areas. These included noise, low frequency sound and infrasound, shadow flicker, blade glint and electromagnetic radiation.
The review concluded that in each case, there was no evidence that wind turbines could have a direct impact on people’s health. The review said it was possible that people were getting annoyed by their sound, but also pointed out that a wind farm with 10 turbines at a distance of 350m was about as loud as a quiet bedroom. People were more likely to be annoyed by the sound if they also didn’t like the look of turbines on the landscape.
However, the review pointed out that “renewable energy generation is associated with few adverse health effects compared with the well documented health burdens of polluting forms of electricity generation”, and then concluded,
This review of the available evidence, including journal articles, surveys, literature reviews and government reports, supports the statement that: There are no direct pathological effects from wind farms and that any potential impact on humans can be minimised by following existing planning guidelines.
Desmogblog (http://s.tt/1lpk2)...
The NHMRC is currently reviewing the scientific literature on wind farms in order to update its public statement, which it hopes to publish by May 2013. Continue reading
Renewable Energy Development Program (REDP) stumbles, with Martin Ferguson in charge
Does Ferguson have it in for Renewables? Climate Spectator, 23 Aug 2012 Tristan Edis Yesterday the Australian National Audit Office provided us with yet another damning indictment on a grant tendering program administered by the Australian government bureaucracy – the Renewable Energy Development Program (REDP).
Energy Minister Martin Ferguson is probably the last person in the current government that you’d want to task with fostering the development of the renewable energy industry. His passion clearly lies more with pulling fossil fuels out of the ground, than keeping them there. Continue reading
Open cut mine at Olympic Dam dead in the water? perhaps just copper extraction now?
Writing on the wall now gospel The Age, August 23, 2012 Malcolm Maiden “…..The decision to defer the Olympic Dam open-cut project was forced by a tightening cost-benefit equation as capital costs rose and commodity prices eased.
BHP said at its announcement that it would investigate ”an alternative, less capital-intensive” open-pit design, and is expected to focus on copper extraction technologies, among other things.
The biggest cost in the project is digging the open-cut quarry. There is no way to significantly downsize project costs without reducing the size of the hole, and the amount of overburden that needs to be removed before the ore body is exposed.
The final outcome is in the hands of the markets and the copper price, but the full-blown open-cut idea may be dead.
http://www.theage.com.au/business/writing-on-the-wall-now-gospel-20120822-24mqf.html#ixzz24PobKbbu
The Olympic Dam uranium project – uneconomic, unnecessary for South Australia
At its peak, the mine was expected to consume more electricity than the city of Adelaide, and 100 Olympic swimming pools worth of fresh water every day.
Olympic Dam was too expensive.
South Australia will be fine. Mining accounts for a relatively small share of South Australia’s overall economy, and only 1 per cent of its employment.
the carbon emissions from Olympic Dam would have dwarfed all the gains in emissions reductions that South Australia has made in renewable energy in recent years
The Olympic Dam Delay Has A Silver Lining New Matilda, By Ben Eltham 23 Aug 12, Why did BHP Billiton halt the Olympic Dam mine? The project was just too expensive. The decision is good news for the South Australian environment, writes Ben Eltham
Picture a hole in the ground four kilometres long and one kilometre deep. Picture a manmade mountain of dirt next to it nearly as high — a mountain of dirt dug from the ground and heaped next to that hole, a new landmark on the South Australian horizon.
Picture a mega-project so large and so thirsty that it would have required a new baseload electricity generator to meet its power needs, and a new desalination plant hundreds of kilometres away on the coast to make the water it required.
Picture a mine so vast, it would have increased the world supply of Uranium by a third.
This was the vast edifice that was to be Olympic Dam — when finished, the largest mine in the world. Continue reading
Tony Abbott’s untruthful performance on ABC TV’s 7.30 Report
Tony Goes The Full Abbott By Newmatilda.com, Ben Eltham, 23 Aug 12, The Opposition Leader let it all hang out on the 7.30 Report last night. Just how loose with the truth did he get? NM looked at the transcript and dug up some answers to the questions raised by the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s complicated relationship with the truth has been on the public record for a long time.
Just over two years ago he admitted in an interview with Kerry O’Brien that “sometimes, in the heat of discussion, you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark, which is one of the reasons why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth is those carefully prepared scripted remarks”.
His various gaffes, withdrawals and evasions are now so numerous they warrant compilation in a handy reference guide.
But in last night’s 7:30 interview with Leigh Sales, the Opposition Leader went “full Abbott”. Nobody should have been surprised, but as he bulldozed one question after another, the extent of the Liberal party’s preference for “truth creation” became clear. This is what an Abbott Prime Ministership will look like — not a cobra strike on the truth, but a python squeeze.
Ben Eltham discusses the closure of BHP’s Olympic Dam project elsewhere at New Matilda today, but here’s an examination of how “loose with the truth” the Opposition leader got at a few key points of last night’s interview….
It’s easy to tune out when Abbott starts to recite his talking points. Julia Gillard is a liar, we can stop the boats, the carbon tax is destroying the economy, people seeking asylum are illegals.
And no, there wasn’t much that was new or unpredictable in Abbott’s performance last night, but the departures from the truth were so numerous and so egregious that they warrant comment.
Leigh Sales’ efforts to hold Abbott to account were admirable, but they didn’t work. To hear the alternative Prime Minister hold out on the very simple question of whether or not it’s legal to seek asylum was a grim portent of what’s to come. It displayed a disdain for the truth, for Sales, and for voters. http://newmatilda.com/2012/08/23/tony-goes-full-abbott
Australia’s radiation protection agency is far too cosy with ANSTO and the nuclear industry
A Homegrown Fukushima, New Matilda, By Jim Green, 23 Aug 2012 “…..In Australia as in Japan, there are patterns of inadequate safety practices stretching back for decades. In Australia as in Japan, whistleblowers have provided a great deal of information about nuclear accidents and safety problems.
If nuclear regulation has been found to be substandard in Japan, it is clearly substandard in Australia. The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) has been compromised from the start. The CEO of ANSTO was allowed to sit on the panel which interviewed applicants for the ARPANSA CEO job when the organisation was created in the late 1990s. ANSTO’s communications manager/spin doctor John Mulcair could only say, “There are two views about that. There’s my view and 
then there’s the official ANSTO view.”
There is a revolving door between ANSTO and ARPANSA, further undermining regulatory independence. At times ARPANSA has employed as many as six ex-ANSTO employees, perhaps more. Recent controversies have been complicated by a relationship between an ANSTO employee and an ARPANSA employee.
ARPANSA’s handling of the “clean up” of the Maralinga nuclear test site was its first test and it was a failure. ARPANSA’s handling of ANSTO’s applications to build and operate a new research reactor was problematic in many respect Continue reading
Senator Scott Ludlam addressing Senate on radioactive waste dump plan for Northern Territory
So the federal government is in enormous trouble and I suspect what is in the offing is probably a humiliating backdown. No matter what the outcome of the Federal Court, this is no way to treat the people of the Northern Territory
were pleased to be able to secure an amendment after negotiations with the government, which was also
supported by the coalition, to ensure that no international waste is stored in Australia.
Senator Scott Ludlam addressing the Senate 22 Aug 12, “…The issue I want to address directly is 
the idea that the best way to support economic development and Aboriginal advancement in the Northern Territory—and there seems to be a bizarre and nasty cross-party consensus about this between Labor and the CLP—is to dump radioactive waste on them…..
Directly after the 2007 election, responsibility passed to Martin Ferguson and the Howard agenda continued. It was shameful. The Howard government radioactive waste legislation was described by ALP MPs, in the run-up to the 2007 election, as ‘sordid’—and sordid it is. The idea that the best way to promote economic advancement in the Northern Territory is to post six of the loneliest security guards in the country to guard against people tampering with radioactive waste for the next three centuries absolutely beggars belief. They waved around a $12 million cheque in the community, north of Tennant Creek, which wanted a decent road and some community education support for their kids. That $12 million cheque was dangled in their faces in exchange for hosting what they thought was going to be a rubbish dump. Those were the words that were used—’rubbish dump’. Continue reading
Former South Australian Premier Mike Rann – a uranium legacy in tatters
In the end, they weren’t able to deliver the new jobs, the billions in taxes and the mining boom.
The Olympic Dam expansion is now a genuine “mirage in the desert”…..
How Olympic Dam became a mirage in the desert, Crikey, by Kevin Naughton of InDaily, 23 Aug 12, It’s seven years since an excited Premier Mike Rann and his then-deputy Kevin Foley started briefing media executives about an imminent mining boom. Central to the spruik was BHP’s new estimation of Olympic Dam, the copper, gold and uranium mine in South Australia that it had just bought from Western Mining Corporation……
Ousted by the party’s powerful right wing in July, Rann brokered a deal to hang on until late October, so he could see the amended Olympic Dam Indenture Agreement deal through Parliament, adding to his legacy. That legacy now has a hole in it; on a political scale, larger than the one BHP talked of digging.
In a curious political twist dating back 30 years when the ALP was split over whether the original mine should go ahead, Rann labelled it a “mirage in the desert”. Rann had come to SA in 1977 as an anti-uranium campaigner from New Zealand and scored a job with then-premier Don Dunstan. Dunstan resigned in 1979 and incoming Liberal premier David Tonkin became an advocate for mining in the state’s north, but the numbers in Parliament were tight. Continue reading
Australian government’s negative responses to Julian Assange’s requests for help
DFAT ‘ignored’ Assange requests: lawyer Brisbane Times August 23, 2012 Rory Callinan and Marissa Calligeros Australian authorities appear to have ignored requests by Julian Assange for diplomatic assistance, including a letter sent as recently as 15 days ago, his lawyer said this morning.
Judge Baltasar Garzón Real also revealed key information relating to the rape allegations facing Mr Assange had been kept secret and would be a “big surprise” when the defence team was able to reveal them. The Spanish lawyer, who was addressing an archivist conference in Brisbane today, spent four hours in a briefing with Mr Assange on Sunday discussing his legal strategy. The veteran international lawyer, who ran a case against Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, was critical of Australian authorities for failing to provide consular assistance to Mr Assange.
Mr Garzón said the Australian Government’s response to requests for assistance had been “entirely negative”. Continue reading
OLympic Dam uranium mine expansion a financial white elephant despite government help
BHP cans Olympic Dam expansion Financial Review 22 AUG 2012 JAMIE FREED, MATHEW DUNCKLEY AND GEMMA DALEY BHP Billiton has confirmed it is not proceeding with a planned $US20 billion expansion of its Olympic Dam copper-uranium mine in South Australia as it reported its first annual profit fall in three years. As foreshadowed by The Australian Financial Review, the world’s largest miner said sluggish market conditions including subdued commodity prices and higher capital costs had triggered the decision and it would hold talks with the South Australian government in the coming months over the project.
BHP will take a $US346 million writedown on the project in the 2012 financial year……
Before BHP’s announcment, Prime Minister Julia Gillard was asked during question time in Parliament to guarantee the outlook of the project.
“We have legislated carbon pricing so BHP when they are making those decisions can do it against a backdrop of certainty,” she said.
“But in fact, the uncertainty for BHP and Olympic Dam, the uncertainty for every business in this country comes from the destructive negativity of the Leader of the Opposition and his reckless attempt to roll back every economic reform that makes sense for this country and will build our prosperity.”
BHP has been working on plans to expand Olympic Dam as an open pit since the $9.2 billion acquisition of WMC Resources in 2005, which was championed internally by its now chief executive Marius Kloppers……BHP has environmental approvals in place for a much smaller expansion of the existing underground operation to 350,000 tonnes of copper production a year but Mr Mackenzie indicated it had done very little work on that option relative to the open pit.
Expanding the underground mine, at a potential cost of $US2 billion to $US3 billion, could make building an open pit more difficult in the future.
Mr Kloppers is likely to come under pressure from investors over the large amount of spending to date on the open pit concept.
BHP last year approved $US1.2 billion of pre-commitment capital for the project and likely spent hundreds of millions of dollars prior to that on studies of the expansion over the last seven years.
However, one analyst noted that spending on drilling and metallurgical studies along with some surface infrastructure could still be applied to an underground expansion…..Credit Suisse analyst Paul McTaggart has calculated the project has only a 10 per cent internal rate of return based on long-term prices, which is lower than the 15 per cent typically targeted by BHP. He does not expect it would be free cash-flow positive until 2021 if approved this year.
The project has suffered from rising capital costs amid a stronger Australian dollar and higher input and labour costs and a weaker outlook for the key byproduct, uranium….. http://afr.com/p/markets/market_wrap/bhp_confirms_olympic_dam_expansion_ePeUWL4Wd1ZVrTW75RWleO
Australia’s inadequate nuclear safety culture
A Homegrown Fukushima, New Matilda, By Jim Green, 23 Aug 2012 Japan’s parliament said the Fukushima disaster was “made in Japan” but inadequate safety practices and regulation proliferate in Australia’s nuclear industry.
Jim Green on the nuclear danger closer to home…… The chair of the Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission , Kiyoshi Kurokawa, states in the foreword to the report that “…this was a disaster ‘Made in Japan.’” But the serious, protracted problems with the nuclear industry’s culture in Japan have parallels in Australia. The uranium industry provides plenty of examples; here the focus is on the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), which operates the Lucas Heights nuclear research reactor site south of Sydney. Continue reading
BHP scraps plans for Olympic Dam gigantic new uranium mine
BHP cancels $30 billion Olympic Dam expansion near Roxby Downs in South Australia Outback Business Writer Meredith Booth AdelaideNow August 22, 2012 BHP Billiton has shelved its $30 billion Olympic Dam expansion and will go back to the drawing board to find a cheaper alternative….
.. However, BHP chief executive Marius Kloppers today insisted market conditions, subdued commodity prices and higher capital costs led to the decision, which has been the subject of speculation within several months.
“As we finalised the details of the project … it became clear that the right decision for the company and its shareholders was to continue studies to develop a less capital-intensive option to replace the underground mine at Olympic Dam,” Mr Kloppers said…….
The mine would have become the world’s biggest open cut copper and uranium mine at six kilometres long and one kilometre deep.
The news came as BHP Billiton announced a 21 per cent fall in annual profit of $US17.1 billion…… Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis said BHP had made a decision based on international factors.
“South Australia unfortunately, even though we did everything right … forces outside of our control took over,” he said.“These resources aren’t going anywhere .
New South Wales Uranium Free Charter gathers political strength
The waste from any uranium mining in NSW would remain dangerous long after the O’Farrell government is gone from Macquarie Street.
Rather than promoting the unsafe uranium sector the government should building an energy future that is renewable, not radioactive
(Map: yellow shows area where uranium exploration could occur)
Nuke South Wales? http://www.onlineopinion.com.
au/view.asp?article=14007 By Natalie Wasley and Pepe Clarke -, 20 August 2012 Earlier this year, in a sharp break with a long standing and bi-partisan ban, the NSW Government announced it would allow uranium exploration across the state. This abrupt reversal of a 26-year prohibition came without warning or consultation and against the backdrop of the global nuclear industry reeling from the continuing
Fukushima disaster.
At the time, Premier O’Farrell cited the narrowly won ALP national conference vote allowing uranium sales to India as rationale for the policy change, but outside of cabinet responses ranged from wariness to outright hostility.
The decision to allow uranium exploration was – and is – fiercely opposed by NSW Labor and the Greens. Speaking against the move in both state parliament and a recent public meeting, Shadow Environment Minister Luke Foley captured the strength of this resistance: “As long as I am in public life I will argue against this dangerous industry
Civil society and community groups are increasing both the light and the heat on the Premier’s atomic ambitions including through this week’s launch of a NSW Uranium Free Charter in Sydney. The Charter highlights the dangers of the nuclear industry,calls on government to rule out uranium mining in New South Wales and has already gathered strong support state and national trade unions, environment groups, public health and student organisations. (see attached and
www.nccnsw.org.au/uranium ).
The Charter signals the start of a new campaign to keep NSW free from uranium mining and promises to increasingly locate this controversial mineral on the state political radar . Continue reading
Nazi taunt for Julian Assange’s mother on Melbourne’s 3AW radio
Assange’s mother subjected to Nazi taunts The Age August 19, 2012 – Julian Assange’s mother has hung up the phone on a Melbourne radio host after he taunted her with a Nazi slogan when she backed out of an interview.
Christine Assange was due to speak to 3AW’s Sunday morning show about her son, the founder of whistleblower website WikiLeaks, and his successful appeal for asylum in Ecuador.
But she changed her mind after hearing how co-host John-Michael Howson had treated a previous guest.
“I won’t be doing an interview with you because you’re acting like a pig,” Ms Assange said. Howson responded by screaming on air: “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!”
Ms Assange then hung up the phone…… http://www.theage.com.au/national/assanges-mother-subjected-to-nazi-taunts-20120819-24g2f.html
Poor economic prospects for uranium mining, but Tony Abbott pledges his troth to it again
BHP Olympic Dam expansion vital to SA: Abbott Business Spectator, 20 Aug 2012 The
proposed Olympic Dam mine expansion is vital to the economic future of South Australia, but the only way to make it happen is to abolish mining taxes, federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has told a state Liberal conference…
.. BHP Billiton has until the end of the year to give the $30 billion expansion the final go-ahead or face the need to renegotiate approvals with the state government.
There is growing concern that global economic conditions will force the company to put its plans on hold, but South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill says he cannot see any justification for granting the mining giants an extension to their agreement.
Mr Abbott said the mine expansion was being threatened by the federal government’s new mining taxes.
“The very best we can say of the Olympic Dam expansion is it is on a knife edge,” he said… http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Olympic-Dam-expansion-vital-to-SA-Abbott-XA4UZ?opendocument&src=rss
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