Greens pick anti-nuclear candidate to challenge Treasurer Josh Fraudenberg

Greens pick anti-nuclear candidate to take on Frydenberg,  The Age,  By Annika Smethurst, September 17, 2021 Melbourne lawyer and activist Piers Mitchem has spent years researching global efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and now he wants Josh Frydenberg’s job.

Days after the Morrison government unveiled plans for a new fleet of nuclear-powered submarines, the Greens will announce on Saturday that Mr Mitchem is its candidate for Kooyong – the seat in Melbourne’s affluent, leafy eastern suburbs held by the federal Treasurer.

………. Speaking to The Age ahead of the Greens announcement, Mr Mitchem described the Morrison government’s decision to purchase a new fleet of nuclear submarines as “a deeply, deeply worrying announcement” that could have profound implications for nuclear proliferation globally.

“The risk is that other countries, who have much stronger incentives to build nuclear weapons than Australia does, would rely on this precedent as a pretext for developing their own nuclear capabilities,” he told The Age.

“These submarines are likely to run on highly enriched uranium [HEU] – the same grade of uranium used in nuclear weapons – which would shatter a decades-long practice of non-nuclear states refraining from using HEU for military activities.

“Many Australians would also rightly be concerned at the prospect of these nuclear reactors floating in the harbours of their capital cities at any given time.”

Mirroring the party’s election strategy in the neighbouring seat of Higgins, the Greens will try and convince the well-heeled voters of Kooyong, which includes the suburbs of Hawthorn, Kew, Balwyn, Canterbury and Camberwell, that the Morrison government is beholden to the National Party, particularly on climate policies.

The Greens campaign is expected to focus on the return of Barnaby Joyce as the minor party tries to convince more progressive Liberal Party supporters voters to reject the Coalition.

In a direct attack on Mr Frydenberg as Treasurer, the Greens will also campaign on JobKeeper payments paid to big businesses during the pandemic which Mr Mitchem described as “one of the most unforgivable policy failures in the history of this country”…….

Greens leader Adam Bandt accused Mr Frydenberg, who suffered a sizeable swing at the 2019 election, of failing to deliver on climate change promises made during the last election……https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/greens-pick-anti-nuclear-candidate-to-take-on-frydenberg-20210917-p58snj.html

September 19, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics | Leave a comment

Australia’s anti-nuclear movement ready for a big battle.

Anti-nuke campaigners prepare for a new battle,  Mark Ludlow and Julie Hare, AFR Sep 16, 2021 ,

Veterans of the protest movement of the 1970s and 1980s are appalled at the Morrison government’s decision to sign up for nuclear-powered submarines, saying it is a slippery slope towards a nuclear energy industry in Australia.

Former Australian Greens leader Bob Brown, who first campaigned against nuclear warships visiting Tasmania in the 1970s, said the Australian public had been blindsided by the move.

Former Greens Leader Bob Brown says there will be a groundswell of opposition to nuclear submarines. Dominic Lorrimer.

“I think it’s very cowardly what the government’s done,” Dr Brown told The Australian Financial Review. “It’s made a decision without reference to the public, knowing the public would oppose it.

“In some ways, nuclear submarines are worse than nuclear power stations because the public gets no say. There has been no public consultation on this announcement.”

The government’s new defence deal with the United States and Britain was announced early on Thursday morning, with nuclear submarines expected to be made in Adelaide in the next 15 to 20 years.

Dr Brown, who was leader of the Australian Greens between 2005 and 2012, said supporters of a nuclear energy industry would use the submarine deal to once again push their cause, especially as Australia moves away from fossil fuels such as coal and gas.

‘There is a big stoush coming’

But he warned environmental and anti-nuclear campaigners would be re-energised by the decision, which would match any battles to fight uranium mining or radioactive waste dumps in the 1980s.

“Australia is not putting its toe in, but jumping into this. There is no dividing line. I think there will be enormous opposition to this. There is a big stoush coming,” he said.

“What are the people of Balmoral in Sydney going to think about nuclear

submarines parking at the bottom of their street? Or, indeed, everybody in Sydney.”

Dr Brown, who fasted for a week in 1976 on top of Mount Wellington in Hobart in protest against the arrival of the nuclear-powered warship USS Enterprise, called on capital cities to ban the new subs from docking.

The Nuclear Disarmament Party was at its most active in the 1980s, rallying against uranium mining and nuclear testing in the Pacific.

The party contested seven federal elections between 1984 and 2007, electing Jo Vallentine as a senator for Western Australia in 1984. (She later defected to the Greens).

It attracted star candidate and Midnight Oil lead singer Peter Garrett in 1984. He polled 9.6 per cent in NSW but was unsuccessful in winning a Senate seat…………

Queensland Conservation Council director Dave Copeman said the nuclear submarine announcement was “trading a bad idea for something worse” and could set a dangerous precedent.

“Australians don’t want nuclear power in Australia. It’s unsafe, expensive, uninsurable and creates radioactive waste that has 10,000-plus-year half-lives,” Mr Copeman said.

“While the Prime Minister said the announcement ‘does not signal a move towards domestic nuclear power’, seriously concerning questions remain, like how and where the radioactive nuclear waste from these submarines will be managed and stored.”

The QCC called on the Palaszczuk government to ban nuclear power and mining in Queensland.

The trilateral deal to build nuclear-powered submarines in Adelaide will increase Australia’s risk factor as a terrorist target, could prove to be a slippery slope towards the acquisition of nuclear weapons and will be viewed with hostility by other countries in the region, according to a leading expert on nuclear non-proliferation.

Tilman Ruff, who co-founded the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, said there is a global movement to reduce the amount highly enriched uranium in circulation which, if it falls into the wrong hands, could be repurposed for nuclear weapons.

Dr Ruff, from Melbourne University, said the submarines to be constructed in Australia were based on old technology that was developed in the US in the 1950s and which had been shared with the UK in 1958.

“This is very old technology. The US has undertaken a pretty significant global effort over several administrations to try and reduce the amount of highly enriched uranium in civilian applications around the world,” Dr Ruff said.

Currently, are 174 nuclear ships and submarines in service across the world, he said.

“It has significant implications for Australia. It will be viewed with great hostility and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a sharp rebuke from China and also raised the potential for a significant change in our relationship with New Zealand,” Dr Ruff said.

“But I fear might be a kind of slippery slope towards Australia potentially acquiring nuclear weapons itself.”

He said the best way Australia could clearly and unambiguously signal that it would not go down this path would be to become a signatory to the treaty on prohibition of nuclear weapons.   https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/anti-nuke-campaigners-prepare-for-new-battle-20210916-p58s99

September 18, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics | Leave a comment

Nuclear submarine deal – the start of Morrison’s election campaign

Wrong way, go back on nuclear subs  https://www.miragenews.com/wrong-way-go-back-on-nuclear-subs-634420/ 17 Sep 21,

The Greens have slammed the Morrison Government for upping its assault on lutruwita/Tasmania’s oceans and waterways.

As stated by Greens Senator for lutruwita/Tasmania, and Greens spokesperson for Healthy Oceans, Peter Whish-Wilson:

“Make no mistake today’s announcement is the unofficial start of Scott Morrison’s election campaign.

This is clearly sabre-rattling, preparing Australia for a khaki election and designed to be a distraction from the fact this Government is plagued with scandal and corruption.

“Short on detail but deeply concerning in its intent; building nuclear submarines in a new alliance with the US is a major provocation that ups the ante in a regional arms race and makes all Australians less safe. This in particularly risks the health of our oceans and coastal communities.

lutruwita/Tasmania’s oceans have been under constant attack from this Government.

“The last thing we want is dangerous nuclear reactors lurking off our coastlines.

“This is the contempt the Liberals hold for Tasmanian communities: they want to blast our oceans with seismic testing, expand oil and gas drilling in Bass Strait, pollute our waterways with fish farm expansion, and now they want to expose our oceans to floating nuclear reactors.

“The potential for accidents is significant, as has been shown recently with hundreds of safety issues reported in Scotland, and the European Union found that further research was needed on the impact of radiation on oceanic ecosystems resulting from nuclear submarines.

“A nuclear submarine accident off any coastline could spell disaster for the thousands of Tasmanians and Australians whose livelihoods depend on our fisheries and healthy oceans.

“The Greens are a party of peace and non-violence and have a long history of opposing nuclear submarines and nuclear energy projects. We simply won’t let this stand.”

September 18, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics | Leave a comment

Nuclear good, batteries bad: Morrison’s subs deal is thin edge of wedge

The Coalition’s attitude to batteries has been hostile and ignorant. There’s no reason to believe its consideration of submarine propulsion technology has been any more adult. The post Nuclear good, batteries bad: Morrison’s subs deal is thin edge of wedge appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Nuclear good, batteries bad: Morrison’s subs deal is thin edge of wedge — RenewEconomy https://reneweconomy.com.au/nuclear-good-batteries-bad-morrisons-subs-deal-is-thin-edge-of-wedge/

Dr. Jim Green 17 September 2021  A 2019, a federal government-dominated parliamentary committee released a report on nuclear power titled ‘Not without your approval’. The report emphasised that nuclear power would not be pursued without community support.

But now, the government has secretly decided that Australia will acquire nuclear submarines, with or without your approval, and any consultation will be tokenistic. This is the DAD ‒ Decide, Announce, Defend ‒ approach which is the antithesis of good government.

We only need to go back to the 2016 decision to purchase French-designed submarines to see how poor decisions can be made even when tens of billions of taxpayers’ dollars are at stake.

Rex Patrick ‒ a South Australian Senator and former submariner ‒ said: “The main question about @ScottMorrisonMP’s nuclear sub announcement is simple. Why should we expect his ministers and defence bureaucrats to do any better with this deal than their previous procurement disasters? No grounds for confidence there.”

Despite the government’s secrecy and obstinacy, the plan for nuclear subs could easily collapse for any number of reasons including economics (eight nuclear subs will cost north of A$100 billion, and decommissioning and waste management could cost just as much), the availability of comparable or superior options, and public and political opposition.

Alternatives

Because the internal discussions and international negotiations have been secret, we have no way of knowing whether alternative options have been properly considered. These include the options of building fewer submarines (or none at all), and advanced lithium-ion battery technology.

The Coalition’s attitude towards batteries for energy storage has been hostile and ignorant, and there’s no reason to believe that consideration of advanced battery submarine propulsion has been any more adult.

A majority of Coalition MPs support repeal of federal laws banning nuclear power even though it is vastly more expensive than renewables ‒ and significantly more expensive than renewables plus backup stored power.

Put this all together in the mind of defence minister Peter Dutton and it’s a culture war: nuclear good, batteries bad, own the Libs.

Simplistic, ideological thinking appears to go beyond the Coalition culture warriors. I’m told by the author of a book on Australian submarines that “there’s a phenomenon I refer to as “nuclear zealotry” which seems to be alive and well in parts of the Australian submarine community”.

Nuclear power

All countries operating nuclear submarines ‒ the five ‘declared’ weapons states plus India ‒ have both nuclear power and weapons.

Then Defence Minister Christopher Pyne noted that in 2019 that Australia would be the only country in the world with nuclear submarines but no domestic nuclear industry to back them up. Hence the earlier preference for non-nuclear subs.

Building a domestic nuclear industry to support nuclear submarines would be astronomically expensive and problematic in other respects.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison insisted that the nuclear submarine proposal won’t translate into a push for nuclear power plants in Australia. But within hours of the AUKUS announcement, the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) called for the repeal of laws banning nuclear power in Australia ‒ laws which might need to be amended to accommodate nuclear subs.

“Now that Australia is acquiring nuclear submarines which use small reactors, there is no reason why Australia should not be considering SMRs [small modular reactors] for civilian use,” the MCA said, adding that SMRs “will provide some of the cheapest zero emission 24/7 power available.”

Even by the standards of the pro-coal, pro-nuclear, anti-renewables MCA, that’s a grotesque lie. Power from SMRs would be far more expensive than that from conventional nuclear ‒ which is far more expensive than renewables.

Hence the paucity of investment in SMRs and the insistence of would-be developers that taxpayers should shoulder the risk.

The far-right culture warriors will argue that it is absurd to pursue submarine reactors but not land-based reactors for power generation. They will argue that it is absurd to pursue military reactors but not civil reactors.

Sane Coalition MPs understand that nuclear power is hopelessly uneconomic and a political non-starter. Their patience and resilience will be tested as the nuclear culture wars drag on and on.

Nuclear weapons

Does the government secretly want to bring Australia closer to a nuclear weapons capability via a nuclear submarine program? Does that partly explain why the Morrison government refuses to sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and has actively undermined the Treaty at every step? (In the late 1960s, John Gorton’s government actively pursued a nuclear power program and Gorton later acknowledged a hidden weapons agenda. Gorton opposed Australia signing the UN’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.)

Nuclear submarines would certainly bring Australia closer to a nuclear weapons capability, whether or not that is part of the plan. At a minimum, staff trained for a nuclear submarine program could later find themselves working on a weapons program.

The northern suburbs of Adelaide would become Australia’s second hub of nuclear expertise along with the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation’s research reactor site south of Sydney. (ANSTO’s predecessor, the Australian Atomic Energy Commission, was heavily involved in the push for nuclear weapons in the 1960s.)

Will the Morrison government insist on some degree of technology transfer as part of the submarine negotiations, such that Australia develops some degree of nuclear reactor manufacturing capability? That will be a test of the government’s true intentions, but of course the negotiations will be conducted in secret and the rest of us can only speculate.

Will Australia’s pursuit of nuclear subs encourage other countries to do the same? Will Indonesia take steps to move closer to a nuclear weapons capability as Australia deliberately or inadvertently does the same? If so, Indonesia will likely seek to acquire nuclear subs or nuclear power or both.

Uranium enrichment

Most nuclear subs use highly-enriched uranium (HEU) fuel. The use of HEU fuel in nuclear subs is a huge problem, accounting for a majority of the non-weapons use of HEU.

So, will Australia insist on the use of low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel ‒ which is still problematic since it presumes the existence and operation of enrichment plants, but is preferable since LEU cannot be used directly in weapons? If so, what are the implications for submarine performance, reactor lifespan and refuelling requirements, etc.? Or will we contribute to the proliferation of HEU?

There will be another push for uranium enrichment in Australia. In the mid-2000s, then Prime Minister John Howard likened uranium enrichment to value-adding to the wool industry ‒ an absurd comparison since enrichment provides a direct pathway to fissile material for weapons, in the form of HEU.

Australia’s involvement in enrichment R&D began in 1965 with the ‘Whistle Project‘ in the basement of Building 21 at Lucas Heights. Those in the know were supposed to whistle as they walked past Building 21 and say nothing about the enrichment work.

The government claims that the pursuit of nuclear-powered subs won’t undermine the UN’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But a decade ago, Australia colluded with the US to take a sledgehammer to the NPT by allowing nuclear trade with (and uranium sales to) India, a violation of the NPT principle of prohibiting nuclear trade with non-NPT states.

And even if the NPT is not further weakened by the pursuit of nuclear-powered subs, immense damage can be and often is done within the framework of the NPT. The proliferation of HEU is a case in point.

Nuclear waste

The government has been silent about disposal of the high-level and intermediate-level nuclear waste generated by a nuclear submarine program.

No country in the world has a repository for high-level nuclear waste. The only deep underground nuclear waste repository in the world ‒ the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in the US, for disposal of long-lived intermediate-level nuclear waste ‒ was shut down from 2014 to 2017 following a chemical explosion in a waste barrel, with costs estimated at $2 billion.

Waste from a nuclear submarine program would be dumped on Aboriginal land, as is the case with the federal government’s current plan to dump Australia’s nuclear waste at Kimba in SA despite the unanimous opposition of Barngarla Traditional Owners.

It speaks volumes about the crude racism of the federal and SA Coalition governments that they are prepared to ignore unanimous Aboriginal opposition to a nuclear dump.

The federal government even fought to exclude Traditional Owners from a so-called ‘community survey’. SA Labor’s policy is that Traditional Owners should have a right of veto over any proposed nuclear facility including a nuclear waste dump.

The high-level and long-lived intermediate-level nuclear waste generated by nuclear submarines would cost many billions of dollars to dispose of, based on cost estimates overseas.

For example, the cost estimate for a high-level nuclear waste repository in France is A$40 billion. The US government estimates that to build a high-level nuclear waste repository and operate it for 150 years would cost A$130 billion.

The South Australian Nuclear Fuel Royal Commission estimated a cost of A$145 billion over 120 years for construction, operation and decommissioning of a high-level nuclear waste repository.

It is highly unlikely that the government has considered these massive long-term costs in its secret deliberations. Submarine decommissioning is also likely to be an expensive and potentially dangerous nightmare for future generations to grapple with.

September 18, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics | Leave a comment

Minerals Council quick to see nuclear submarines as step to nuclear Australia

The nuclear option: will submarines be a Trojan Horse for reactors?  Crikey,  KISHOR NAPIER-RAMAN SEP 17, 2021
The PM has said the deal doesn’t mean nuclear reactors for Australia, but many Coalition MPs want the moratorium on nuclear power to end.

Scott Morrison tried to be very clear yesterday: Australia’s nuclear submarines would not be a Trojan Horse for a military or civilian nuclear program. That didn’t stop his announcement making people excited.

Within hours, the Minerals Council of Australia’s CEO Tania Constable called the move “an incredible opportunity for Australia’s economy”. “Now that Australia is acquiring nuclear submarines which use small reactors, there is no reason why Australia should not be considering small modular reactors for civilian use,” she said……. (subscribers only) https://www.crikey.com.au/2021/09/17/will-submarines-be-a-trojan-horse-for-reactors/

September 18, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics | Leave a comment