As the 2020 Tokyo Olympics draw closer, the Japanese government redoubles its efforts to downplay any radioactive problems to health and safety . Fukushima is the location for the start of the torch relay, and for some Olympic events. But radioactive trash bags are a defining feature of the Fukushima landscape. And Japan now plans to release over a million tonnes of radioactive water into the sea from the Fukushima power plant, as the radioactive water continues to accumulate.
Westinghouse will acquire the Rolls-Royce Civil Nuclear Systems and Services’ 11 locations in Canada, France, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Surplus nuclear power has become an embarrassment. Inflexible baseload power no longer needed.
ARCTIC.Why Arctic glaciers are melting away at an accelerating rate.
Australia’s bushfires still dominate the climate news. Despite helpful rain, as of last Tuesday, 107 fires were still burning.-More extreme heat, and more fires, are predicted. Indeed, as I write, a new bushfire is reported, in Australian Capital Territory.
Still, Australia is far from the only climate story this week. Climate change could unlock new microbes and increase heat-related deaths. Deadly flooding and landslides are striking Brazil. Extreme weather is causing falling iguanas, rise of deadly spiders and swarms of locusts. And, no doubt of prime importance to “sensible” and “corporate” humans, Climate Change could blow up the economy and the banks aren’t ready.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the “Doomsday Clock” to 100 minutes to midnight, its closest to doomsday since it began ticking, due to nuclear proliferation, failure to tackle climate change and “cyber-based disinformation”.
Honeymoon uranium mine might restart this year, and pigs might fly. South Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young slams investment in South Australian uranium mine. Uranium prospects poor, but Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt and Northern Land Council agree on a new mine.
With apologies to Samuel Johnson and “MadMen” – “Nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of the economy going bust ” Now, at the 50th anniversary meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, climate change is the top subject. While poorer countries for a decade or more have suffered extreme droughts, floods -the impacts of global heating, it has taken the extreme wildfires of a rich country, Australia, to make the world’s big business people now sit up and take notice.
The case of Australia is remarkable also, in that the wildfires’ consequences have affected an entire continent.
While the news media is now more awake up to the global heating crisis, thing are pretty quiet on the nuclear scene. The world continues to teeter on the nuclear war brink, and the millennials are apprehensive about this. On January 23rd, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will announce the 2020 time of the Doomsday Clock.
A bit of good news– Dutch Guy Famous for Cleaning Up Pacific Garbage Patch is Now Clearing the World’s Rivers Too
Today, 15 January, there was a ’round table” meeting, (I think in Canberra) of “top scientists” on the urgent need to develop new bushfire adaptation and mitigation techniques.
And guess who’s at the top of the list in these TOP SCIENTISTS ON CLIMATE CHANGE. Why, none other than The Australian Nuclear Technology and Science Organisation, (ANSTO)
Of course, ANSTO is prominent in promoting the lie that nuclear power is the solution to climate change. They’ve put in submissions to parliamentary inquiries, You can bet that they’ve got one in now, to the Victorian Inquiry (submissions close 28 February.) One must admire the timing of the nuclear lobby’s manipulations, and the speed with which they are jumping on the bushfire-fix bandwagon.
After days of denial from Iran, President Rouhani on Saturday admitted to “human error” in bringing down the Boeing 737, and the Guards’ aerospace commander General Amirali Hajizadeh accepted full responsibility. Rouhani agreed with Qatar and Pakistani leaders on de-escalation and dialogue as ‘only solution’ to solve the crisis with US. As Europe tries to preserve the Iran nuclear deal, Donald Trump is currently a bigger headache for Europe than Iran is.
The global importance of Australia’s bushfires – climate impacts wildfires, and wildfires impact climate. The concentration of climate-heating greenhouse gases is at a record high. Nations are not meeting their already inadequate climate commitments, and if Trump is re-elected in 2020, America will continue to lead the way in sabotage of action on climate.
Thousands protest in Sydney and other cities, against govt inaction on climate change. Climate protests in London, Berlin, Madrid, Copenhagen and Stockholm target Australian government.
NUCLEAR. Transporting nuclear wastes from Lucas Heights to Kimba in the age of bushfires. Pyrphoricity – the spontaneous combustion of uranium and other nuclear materials: the unmentioned bushfire danger. When traditional Aboriginal owners are included in the vote, support for Kimba nuclear waste dump drops to 43%. The risk of road closures, nuclear waste transport accidents. Australia should go all-out for renewable energy, not nuclear – Dr Helen Caldicott.
RENEWABLE ENERGY. Wind, solar and batteries to slash emissions and costs in W.A.’s Esperance
One wonders if Donald Trump’s aim is to take the world to the brink of nuclear war, and then to pull back , with himself appearing like the global hero. Trump ordered the drone assassination of an Iranian hero. Iran will now no longer restrict uranium enrichment, part of the 2015 deal limiting the country’s nuclear program in exchange for easing sanctions.
The world is realising how quickly even a rich and ‘developed’ nation, Australia, can be devastated by extreme weather, exacerbated by climate change. Celebrities are donating to bushfire relief. Which is great. I’d like to think that they are equally generous to non-anglophone countries, which suffer even greater climate disasters.
AUSTRALIA
CLIMATE .
Prime Minister and marketing man Scott Morrison is getting a lot of flak for his loyalty to fossil fuel interests, but in my opinion, “ScoMo” will weather this storm. He will use his one great talent, sloganeering, to eventually turn the whole bushfire thing to his advantage, – helped by the Murdoch media -expect lots of ‘feel-good’ stories..
Scott Morrison’s condescending call for “patience” and “calm” on bushfires and climate change. Murdoch media: The Australian, Herald Sun and Courier Mail downplay bushfire news. The Institute of Public Affairs has poisoned climate discussion in Australia. How the Murdoch media murdered Australia’s climate policy.
In all the propaganda for a nuclear waste dump in Kimba, South Australia, there was no mention of bushfire risks. An extraordinary omission, don’t you think?
The whole bizarre plan to trek the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor wastes some1700km by land, or even longer by sea, would entail trucking highly radioactive (they call it intermediate) wastes through forest areas, towns, ports, to what used to be an agricultural area.
The nuclear industry touts itself as the cure for climate change. In reality,it is the other way around. For Australia especially, climate change, bushfires, water shortages – make every aspect of the nuclear industry ever more dangerous.
The Lucas Heights nuclear reactor itself is uncomfortably close to the bushfires. But nobody’s talking about that. That reactor shoud be shutdown, and no more wastes produced.
I am struggling to find good news – news that would be fitting for this festive week. Well, I guess that “bad” news is pretty much the definition of news, anyway. As most people are behaving reasonably and decently, and many things are going well – that’s not noteworthy: then the unusual, the bad thing is, by definition, “news”.
On a positive note, Dr Helen Caldicott reminds us that although the nuclear-weapons nations are poised for ecocidal war, the path to peace is still possible;
The United States of America urgently needs to rise to its full moral and spiritual height and lead the world to sanity and survival. I know this is possible because, in the 1980s, millions of wonderful people rose up nationally and internationally to end the nuclear arms race and to end the Cold War.
This, then, is the sound template upon which we must act.
On the climate front, my own country, Australia, is afire, with bushfires in every state. Australia is a “test case”- the continent most vulnerable to global heating, but also with a pretty much climate denialist government, lackeys of the coal industry.
AUSTRALIA
In the media – the big events have been a rich mens’ yacht race, and cricket. And – Sydney’s to have a great fireworks night on 31st December; they hope it will be visible through the smoke haze -oh well!
‘Climate Emergency’ – the phrase that elicits anger and outrage. Thousands of Koalas Feared Dead in Australia Fires; Much Koala Habitat Already Destroyed By Deforestation.
Diogenes went around Athens in daytime, with a lighted lantern. He was looking for an honest man. He’d have an even harder time of it in Australian government circles.
We have a Prime Minister who is either stupid or dishonest. Presumably Scott Morrison is not stupid. It does take a certain rat cunning to weasel your way to the top, by ingratiating yourself with fossil fuel producers and religious bigots. I suppose the same goes for his self-serving underlings – Angus Taylor, Josh Frydenberg, Sussan Ley, and the rest of the pathetic Liberal Coalition pack.
I had thought that John Howard was our worst ever Prime Minister – he managed to do a lot to undermine workers’ rights, etc. Then we had Abbott – nasty , but fortunately achieved little. Poor old Malcolm Turnbull sold his climate-believing soul to get to be PM.
But Scott Morrison takes the cake. He will be remembered for his prevention of real action on climate change. Perhaps vilified by the next and later generations- for his Panglossian attitudes to global heating – his rubbish about staying calm and praying for rain. I wonder what his little daughters will think, one day, when they’re older, and things are even worse.
(at left – Dr Pangloss –“Everything for the best, in the best of all possible worlds“)
Australia has stuffed up its opportunity to lead on clean energy, and to plan and work to adapt to extreme weather, to save its one big river system, to work for a clean, safe economy.
The nuclear lobby is working quietly away to get nuclear power accepted as “green”, thus getting not only ‘respectability’, but also hefty financial advantages. They’re having minor success in Europe. The European Union’s sustainable finance debate was bogged down in the question of including nuclear power. It ended up with a weak inclusion of nuclear power as a “sustainable activity’, but it still has to be agreed by the European Parliament, which has insisted on its “no” to nuclear.
CLIMATE Prime Minister Scott Morrison is on holidays overseas, as fires burn across Australia. Australians are reminded of the tourism slogan that Morrison created – #wherethebloodyhellareyou?
Against the background of all the disturbing climate news, it’s a bit of a shock to learn the lengths of duplicity to which politicians will go, to prevent climate action.
And, on the nuclear scene, duplicity of a different kind. I hate to use that tawdry phrase “fake news”, but that’s what it was, a false report of a nuclear explosion in the South China Sea.
A Labour government in UK would revive Wylfa nuclear power project. UK Labour touts ‘green industrial revolution’, BUT INCLUDES NUCLEAR POWER AS “GREEN”!
Inspectors find 41 cracks in the grounds of Fukushima nuclear plant: local media. Nuclear regulator says cost-cutting culture creating mistakes, delays at Fukushima plant. To Make the Olympics Look Good Japanese Government Wants Evacuees To Return To Fukushima. Fukushima to Become Solar, Wind Hub Using Farmland Tainted by Radiation.
This is a bit more boring than usual, as, apart from the Australian bushfires, not many climate and nuclear events have been in the news this week.
A new book brings the nuclear and climate threats together in a scary warning. In The Plutocene: Blueprints for a post-Anthropocene Greenhouse Earth, Andrew Glikson considers a future scenario where nuclear war, radioactive pollution, and global heating combine to produce a new era. He urges a range of tactics to avert this gloomy future.
Antinuclear 