South Australian town of Kimba dumping the tourism industry, in favour of nuclear waste dumping?
Paul Waldon Fight To Stop A Nuclear Waste Dump In South Australia– 8 Oct 20
Paul Waldon ponders – on Kimba waste dump, and the risks of nuclear pollution to water
Paul Waldon Fight to stopa nuclear waste dump in South Australia, 8 Oct 20Paul Woldon ponders ” Everybody in South Australia has a right to a say on nuclear waste dumping”
Paul Waldon-Fight to stop a nuclear waste dump in South Australia, 8 Oct 20Trump’s COVID infection shows why it’s time to retire the nuclear football
Trump’s COVID infection shows why it’s time to retire the nuclear football, Bulletin of the Atomic SCientists By Tom Z. Collina, October 6, 2020 President John Kennedy took powerful pain medications. President Richard Nixon was a heavy drinker. President Ronald Reagan had dementia. And now President Donald Trump has the coronavirus. These conditions can significantly impair one’s ability to think clearly. And yet, as president, each had—or, in Trump’s case, still has–the unilateral authority to launch US nuclear weapons within minutes.
President Trump is followed 24/7 by a military aide that carries the “football,” the briefcase that holds all he would need to order the immediate launch of up to 1,000 nuclear weapons, more than enough megatonnage to blow the world back into the stone age. He does not need the approval of Congress or the secretary of defense. Shockingly, there are no checks and balances on this ultimate executive power.
President Trump took the nuclear football with him to Walter Reed Medical Center, where he received treatment for COVID-19. According to Trump’s doctor, the president’s blood oxygen levels had dipped. And this, according to independent health experts, can impair decision-making ability. He is taking dexamethasone, which can cause mood swings and “frank psychotic manifestations.” Yet as far as we know, at no point did the president transfer his powers to the vice president, as allowed under the 25th Amendment.
To state the obvious, we should not entrust nuclear launch authority to someone who is not fully lucid. (Reagan transferred authority temporarily before planned surgery, as did President George W. Bush before a medical procedure that required his sedation.) A nuclear crisis can happen at any time, including at the worst possible time. If such a crisis takes place when a president’s thinking is compromised for any reason, the results could be catastrophic. ……..
If the president or his advisors have reason to believe that Trump’s thinking may be compromised, nuclear launch authority should be transferred to the vice president, Mike Pence. If Pence also gets COVID, the football could then be passed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, President Pro Tempore of the Senate Chuck Grassley, and the secretaries of State, Treasury and Defense, in that order.
But kicking the football down the line does not solve the problem—and in fact shows why the system is broken. Does anyone really believe that the president pro tem of the Senate or the Treasury Secretary has spent much time preparing for nuclear war? And even if they had prepared, the central dilemma remains: All humans are imperfect, and we should not trust the fate of the world to any one person.
The whole concept of giving the president unilateral nuclear authority is built on the false assumption that Russia might launch a surprise first strike. In fact, Russia has never seriously considered a first strike against the United States for a simple reason: It would be national suicide. Both sides have to assume that an attack would provoke an unacceptable nuclear retaliation. Both nations, and much of the rest of the globe, would be obliterated. Starting such a war would be insanity………
It is time to retire the nuclear football. The only thing standing between us and nuclear holocaust is one man with COVID on heavy meds. That is the plan? Ending sole authority is better than entrusting it to any individual. In a vibrant democracy, no one person should have the unchecked power to destroy the world. https://thebulletin.org/2020/10/trumps-covid-infection-shows-why-its-time-to-retire-the-nuclear-football/
Pressure on U.S. Congress to reinstate research on links between nuclear stations and cancer
This is a scientific endeavor which will improve our understanding of cancer, the leading cause of death in California,” the petition states. “It is especially important for women, children, and the human fetus who are much more vulnerable to the biological effects of harmful ionizing radiation.”
More modern studies in Europe have found that children living within 3 miles of nuclear power plants had double the risk of developing acute leukemia as those living farther away, with the peak impact on children ages 2-4.
Activists push Congress to revive probe into links between nuclear plants and cancer
Nuclear Regulatory Commission killed study in 2015 after spending five years and $1.5 million on the effort, Orange County Register, By TERI SFORZA | tsforza@scng.com | October 5, 2020 Scientists and activists were stunned back in 2015 when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission pulled the plug on what was designed to be the best study of cancer near nuclear power plants ever done. Continue reading
Major study finds that renewables lower emissions substantially, and nuclear power does not
Two’s a crowd: Nuclear and renewables don’t mix, https://techxplore.com/news/2020-10-crowd-nuclear-renewables-dont.html by University of Sussex OCTOBER 5, 2020
If countries want to lower emissions as substantially, rapidly and cost-effectively as possible, they should prioritize support for renewables, rather than nuclear power, the findings of a major new energy study concludes.
That’s the finding of new analysis of 123 countries over 25 years by the University of Sussex Business School and the ISM International School of Management which reveals that nuclear energy programs around the world tend not to deliver sufficient carbon emission reductions and so should not be considered an effective low carbon energy source.
Researchers found that unlike renewables, countries around the world with larger scale national nuclear attachments do not tend to show significantly lower carbon emissions—and in poorer countries nuclear programs actually tend to associate with relatively higher emissions.
Published today in Nature Energy, the study reveals that nuclear and renewable energy programs do not tend to co-exist well together in national low-carbon energy systems but instead crowd each other out and limit effectiveness.
Benjmin K Sovacool, Professor of Energy Policy in the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex Business School, said: “The evidence clearly points to nuclear being the least effective of the two broad carbon emissions abatement strategies, and coupled with its tendency not to co-exist well with its renewable alternative, this raises serious doubts about the wisdom of prioritizing investment in nuclear over renewable energy. Countries planning large-scale investments in new nuclear power are risking suppression of greater climate benefits from alternative renewable energy investments.”
The researchers, using World Bank and International Energy Agency data covering 1990-2014, found that nuclear and renewables tend to exhibit lock-ins and path dependencies that crowd each other out, identifying a number of ways in which a combined nuclear and renewable energy mix is incompatible.
These include the configuration of electricity transmission and distribution systems where a grid structure optimized for larger scale centralized power production such as conventional nuclear, will make it more challenging, time-consuming and costly to introduce small-scale distributed renewable power.
Similarly, finance markets, regulatory institutions and employment practices structured around large-scale, base-load, long-lead time construction projects for centralized thermal generating plant are not well designed to also facilitate a multiplicity of much smaller short-term distributed initiatives.
Andy Stirling, Professor of Science and Technology Policy at the University of Sussex Business School, said: “This paper exposes the irrationality of arguing for nuclear investment based on a ‘do everything’ argument. Our findings show not only that nuclear investments around the world tend on balance to be less effective than renewable investments at carbon emissions mitigation, but that tensions between these two strategies can further erode the effectiveness of averting climate disruption.”
The study found that in countries with a high GDP per capita, nuclear electricity production does associate with a small drop in CO2 emissions. But in comparative terms, this drop is smaller than that associated with investments in renewable energy.
And in countries with a low GDP per capita, nuclear electricity production clearly associates with CO2 emissions that tend to be higher.
Patrick Schmid, from the ISM International School of Management München, said: “While it is important to acknowledge the correlative nature of our data analysis, it is astonishing how clear and consistent the results are across different time frames and country sets. In certain large country samples the relationship between renewable electricity and CO2-emissions is up to seven times stronger than the corresponding relationship for nuclear.”
14 million tonnes of plastic on ocean floor ! – CSIRO study
Every drink bottle we buy, face scrub we use and chip packet we finish results in tiny plastics entering the ocean.But where are these tiny micro-plastics, exactly?
Are they floating around on the ocean’s surface, waiting to be scooped up by a surfer?
Or are they stuck in the tummies of turtles or seabirds?
A new study by the CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, has estimated up to 14 million tonnes of micro-plastics have sunk to the bottom of the ocean floor.
The peer-reviewed research, published on Tuesday, is the first global estimate for micro-plastics on the seafloor. Dr Britta Denise Hardesty, team leader with CSIRO’s Oceans and Atmosphere, said 14 million tonnes of micro-plastics was a “huge amount, especially when you think about how tiny all those bits are”.Dr Britta Denise Hardesty, team leader with CSIRO’s Oceans and Atmosphere, said 14 million tonnes of micro-plastics was a “huge amount, especially when you think about how tiny all those bits are”.
But where are these tiny micro-plastics, exactly?
Are they floating around on the ocean’s surface, waiting to be scooped up by a surfer?
Or are they stuck in the tummies of turtles or seabirds?
A new study by the CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, has estimated up to 14 million tonnes of micro-plastics have sunk to the bottom of the ocean floor.
The peer-reviewed research, published on Tuesday, is the first global estimate for micro-plastics on the seafloor.
Dr Britta Denise Hardesty, team leader with CSIRO’s Oceans and Atmosphere, said 14 million tonnes of micro-plastics was a “huge amount, especially when you think about how tiny all those bits are”.
To put it into perspective: Imagine five carrier bags stuffed with plastic dotted along every single metre of coastline around the world, excluding Antarctica
The piles of bags would sit on every Australian beach, along Italy’s Amalfi Coast, around Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay, and all around Canada’s coastlines and beyond.
Now imagine someone pushing those bags into the ocean, and letting them sink into the darkness.
“It’s a confronting amount, and hopefully it provides a reasonable wake-up call,” Dr Hardesty told The New Daily.
“We’re finding them hundreds of kilometres offshore and thousands of metres deep – more micro-plastics than has been found by lots of other studies.”
“Micro-plastics come from the same place as plastics,” Dr Hardesty said, adding “micro just means they’re smaller than 5mm”.
“It’s really just small plastic from single-use items, consumer goods, industry or fishing-related goods, cosmetics, micro-beads, agriculture, aquaculture, household waste, everything.”Many of these tiny plastics end up in our oceans via stormwater drains, sewage systems, sea-based activities, littering, things falling off the backs of trucks, and improper waste management where people intentionally dump rubbish straight into the sea or rivers.
They often end up in the stomachs of marine animals like dolphins or fish, while bigger pieces of plastic can be just as dangerous.
“Masks that have those little straps can tangle the feet and legs of sea birds and things like that,” Dr Hardesty said.
“Rubber gloves might be more likely to look like a jellyfish that could be mistakenly eaten by turtles if they end up in the ocean.”
The World Economic Forum estimates one garbage truck of plastic alone is dumped into the ocean every minute of every day.
It estimates there could be more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050.
The missing piece
Although the CSIRO’s findings are troubling, perhaps what’s more concerning is the answer to the following question: Where is the rest of the missing plastic?
Compared to the tonnes of plastic entering the ocean every day, Dr Hardesty said 14 million tonnes on the ocean floor was “just a drop in the ocean”.
“Where is all the missing plastic? Is it in the stomachs of animals? Is it floating on the surface?” she said.
“I’d say most of it is on our coastlines.”
SCIENTISTS: NUCLEAR ENERGY IS A WASTE OF TIME
Status Quo
It turns out that nuclear energy, which advocates say is a more feasible means of transitioning away from fossil fuels than solar or wind, might not actually be up to the task.
That’s according to research published Monday in the journal Nature Energy, which shows that countries that adopted nuclear energy didn’t actually reduce their carbon emissions a significant amount — but that countries with renewable energy investments did. It’s a compelling case that clean energy initiatives ought to focus on solar and wind, and perhaps skip nuclear as a stepping stone on the road to decarbonization.
Town Ain’t Big Enough
Looking at global data from the years 1990-2014, the University of Sussex science policy researchers also found that nuclear and renewable energy programs don’t play well together, in part since large, centralized nuclear plants require different infrastructure from more distributed solar fields, for example. Since one had a much bigger impact on emissions than the other, the team recommends being strategic.
“This paper exposes the irrationality of arguing for nuclear investment based on a ‘do everything’ argument,” study coauthor Andy Stirling said in a press release.
Least Resistance
With only so much time and money available, study coauthor Benjamin Sovacool argues that spending money on a new nuclear program might effectively block subsequent renewables programs from working and, as a result, continue to emit too much carbon into the air.
“Countries planning large-scale investments in new nuclear power are risking suppression of greater climate benefits from alternative renewable energy investments,” Sovacool said in the release.
Countries that backed renewables over nuclear power have cut more CO2
Countries that backed renewables over nuclear power have cut more CO2, New Scientist . By Adam Vaughan 5 Oct 20 Nations that embraced renewable energy have significantly cut their carbon emissions, but those pursuing nuclear power failed to do so, researchers have found.
Nuclear and renewables are seen as two key ways for governments to decarbonise, but the question of whether one is more effective for tackling climate change hasn’t been fully addressed. With several countries on the brink of deciding whether to back new nuclear plants to meet carbon targets, the answer matters.
To find out, Benjamin Sovacool at the University of Sussex, UK, and his colleagues looked ….. (subscribers only) https://www.newscientist.com/article/2256123-countries-that-backed-renewables-over-nuclear-power-have-cut-more-co2/
The safety of the world requires a nuclear-free planet
Nuclear power: A gargantuan threat, Independent Australia By Karl Grossman | 4 October 2020, At the start of 2020, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds to midnight — the closest to midnight, doomsday, since the clock started in 1947.
There are two gargantuan threats — the climate crisis and nuclear weapons/nuclear power.
The only realistic way to secure a future for the world without nuclear war is for the entire planet to become a nuclear-free zone — no nuclear weapons, no nuclear power. A nuclear-free Earth.
How did India get an atomic bomb in 1974? Canada supplied a reactor and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission provided heavy water for it under the U.S. so-called “Atoms for Peace” program. From the reactor, India got the plutonium for its first nuclear weapon.
Any nation with a nuclear facility can use plutonium produced in it to construct nuclear arms.
Nuclear technology continues to spread around the world — a recent headline: ‘Trump Administration Spearheads International Push for Nuclear Power.’ Russia, despite Chernobyl, is pushing hard at selling nuclear plants.
Can the atomic genie be put back in the bottle? Anything people have done other people can undo. And the prospect of massive loss of life from nuclear destruction is the best of reasons.
There is a precedent: the outlawing of poison gas after World War I when its terrible impacts were tragically demonstrated, killing 90,000. The Geneva Protocol of 1925 and the Chemicals Weapons Convention of 1933 outlawed chemical warfare and to a large degree the prohibition has held.
There are major regions of the Earth – all of Africa and South America, the South Pacific and others – that are Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones based on the United Nations provision for such zones.
But if we are truly to have a world free of the horrific threat of nuclear arms, the goal needs to be more. A world free of the other side of the nuclear coin – nuclear power –is also necessary.
Radical? Yes, but consider the even more radical alternative: a world where many nations will be able to have nuclear weapons because they have nuclear technology. And the world continuing to try using carrots and sticks to try to stop nuclear proliferation — juggling on the road to nuclear catastrophe…………
It took decades of struggle to make the place where I live – Long Island, New York – nuclear-free. The Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant was stopped and the six to ten more the Long Island Lighting Company wanted to build, prevented. The two reactors at Brookhaven National Laboratory leaking radioactive tritium into its underground water table have been shut down.
On this 50th anniversary of Earth Day, let us strive for the goals of defeating global warming and having all the Earth nuclear-free. These are existential threats that must be overcome.
A version of this article was given as a presentation at the Long Island Earth Day 2020 Program on 21 September.
Karl Grossman is a full professor of journalism at the State University of New York. He is also an award-winning investigative reporter. Click here to go to Karl’s website. https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/nuclear-power-a-gargantuan-threat,14372
Severe floods in Italy and France
A storm which moved overnight across southeastern France, and then northern Italy caused major flooding on both sides of the border, damaging homes, destroying bridges, blocking roads and isolating communities………
Unrelenting rainfall overnight hit levels not seen since 1958 in northern Italy’s Piedmont region, where 630mm (24.8 inches) of rain fell in 24 hours, according to the Italian civil protection agency.
Two brothers were swept away by floodwaters while they were tending animals near the French border. One brother managed to grab onto a tree and was saved, while authorities were searching on the French side for the other brother.
Flooding in France
On the other side of the border, in southeastern France, almost a year’s average rainfall fell in less than 12 hours in the mountainous area surrounding the city of Nice.
Local firefighters said at least eight people were missing, including two firefighters whose vehicle was swept away by water when the road collapsed during a rescue operation. Several dozen people were evacuated from their homes overnight, firefighters said.
The storm, dubbed Alex, ravaged several villages around the city of Nice on the French Riviera. Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi called it the most severe flooding disaster in the area for more than a century after flying over the worst-hit area by helicopter.
“The roads and about 100 houses were swept away or partially destroyed,” he told French news channel BFM……. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/3/one-killed-25-missing-in-severe-floods-in-italy-and-france
Coastal flooding will disproportionately impact 31 million people globally
Coastal flooding will disproportionately impact 31 million people globally
Indiana University researchers analyzed these geographic regions, which include cities like New Orleans, Bangkok, and Shanghai, using a new global dataset to determine how many people live on river deltas, how many are vulnerable to a 100-year storm surge event, and the ability of the deltas to naturally mitigate impacts of climate change.
Climate change responsible for record sea temperature levels, says study
Climate change responsible for record sea temperature levels, says study
Global warming is driving an unprecedented rise in sea temperatures including in the Mediterranean, according to a major new report published by the peer-reviewed Journal of Operational Oceanography
See through the nuclear lobby’s spin and technical jargon
It’s important to bust the pro-nuclear spin, Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere (MAHB), Noel Wauchope | October 1, 2020 ”……………. cutting through the spin, where do we start? The reason that I start with the nuclear industry is that it is utterly symbolic of the lies, the deceptions, that prop up the polluting industries that are ruining the natural world on which we depend.
It is the most dangerous arena of industry lying because its proponents have very successfully put across the idea that only the ”experts” those with technical knowledge of nuclear physics, can have a valid opinion. I think that’s why journalists world-wide are content to simply regurgitate industry handouts as ”news” – often as an excited recitation of a sequence of technical procedures, with detailed technical illustrations. The only bit that is easily understood is the bit where they’ll say that nuclear power is “zero-carbon” “essential to combat climate change”. But is that bit true?
Any doubt about nuclear power fixing climate change is not explored, because, after all, the society at large, including the journalists, do not understand nuclear physics. They might know a bit about history, ecology, biology, radiation effects, sociology, economics, indigenous rights, conflict resolution, – but hey, that’s all soft stuff and doesn’t matter.
The lying began with the very conception of the nuclear monster. First, the idea that it’s OK for war attacks to focus on massacring civilians – this reached its greatest acceptance with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then came that first big factual lie, that this bombing was necessary to end the war. This comfortable belief has been refuted by many recent studies that indicate that the real motive was to intimidate the Russians and that Japan was already set to surrender, anyway. The persecution of Wilfred Burchett, and the suppression of his reporting, set off the deception that the effects of ionizing radiation are not all that bad, really.
The next lie, again a very comforting belief, is that this new horror could be turned into something really good – nuclear reactors, safe, cheap, electricity – a peaceful purpose.
It was never safe. You just ignore the cancers among the uranium mining communities, and nuclear workers. You ignore the many radiological and nuclear accidents and messes, even the big ones – Chalk River, Rocky Flats, Windscale, Soviet ice-breaker Lenin, Mayak, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Tomsk, Hanford, Fukushima. The risk of terrorism, using nuclear materials, is ever-present.
It was never cheap. You just ignore the costs of the health and environmental damage due to uranium mining, and to the many accidents. The insurance industry understands this, which is why laws like the Price Anderson Act are there, to make sure that the tax-payer cops the costs of nuclear accidents. You just don’t count the costs of disposing of the virtually eternal radioactive wastes, including dead reactors, and the necessary security involved.
It was never peaceful. The prime purpose of nuclear reactors was to produce that novel element – plutonium, for nuclear weapons. Every country that now has nuclear weapons began that process by getting “peaceful” nuclear power. We must wonder why Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, with abundant oil and sunshine resources, are so keen to get nuclear power. Today, the nuclear industry no longer makes the pretense that there is no connection between commercial and military reactors. and indeed, calls for government subsidy because of its role in national security. It is particularly worrying that the media enthuses over space research, while the USA and other nuclear nations are planning for nuclear-powered weapons in space.
When it comes to global heating, it’s a terrible shame that the media keeps on buying the nuclear deception about this. Even if nuclear power were ”zero-carbon” – there would have to be thousands of reactors, (millions of small ones) operating very quickly, to have any effect. But global heating is happening too fast for that. “Zero carbon” is also nonsense when you consider the whole nuclear fuel chain – those many operations that go on from uranium mining through to the building and operation of nuclear waste dumps.
Nuclear medicine is becoming somewhat of a fig leaf on the industry. It still has its role. But, non-nuclear technologies – cyclotrons are coming into operation, and produce the medical radioisotopes far more conveniently, and near hospitals, close to the point of use.
The nuclear lobby’s most questionable deception, which was shown in its glossy propaganda film “Pandora’s Promise”, is that the world needs endless energy use, for the world’s expanding human population. Indeed, we learn that nuclear is needed to set up colonies on Mars when we’ve mucked up this planet.
Not that the nuclear lobby is the only one advocating endless energy use. Some renewable energy advocates have this same idea. It’s an idea tied to our mistaken culture of growth.
During this period of pandemic economic paralysis, and despite all the suffering, many people have the chance to reflect on the world’s rather perilous situation. Many citizen scientists, citizen journalists, are asking the necessary questions. We need to be aware, to bust through, the vested interests, the jargon, the lies, that keep us hooked to the growth paradigm. There is no better spin bubble to bust than the nuclear one. https://mahb.stanford.edu/blog/its-important-to-bust-the-pro-nuclear-spin/
The climate crisis is heating up nights faster than days in many parts of the world
Global heating warming up ‘nights faster than days’
Effect seen across much of world will have profound consequences, warn scientists . https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/01/global-heating-warming-up-nights-faster-than-days Damian Carrington Environment editor @dpcarrington, Thu 1 Oct 2020 09. The climate crisis is heating up nights faster than days in many parts of the world, according to the first worldwide assessment of how global heating is differently affecting days and nights.
The findings have “profound consequences” for wildlife and their ability to adapt to the climate emergency, the researchers said, and for the ability of people to cool off at night during dangerous heatwaves.
The scientists compared the rises in daytime and night-time temperatures over the 35 years up to 2017. Global heating is increasing both, but they found that over more than half of the world’s land there was a difference of at least 0.25C between the day and night rises.
In two-thirds of those places, nights were warming faster than the days, Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
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