Policy Meltdown: LNP uranium U-turn bad news for Queensland
22 Oct 12, State government plans to open the door to the uranium industry in Queensland have been condemned by the ACF as irresponsible, ill-considered and in clear breach of pre-election commitments.
Risking nuclear over safe renewables, Independent Australia, 20 Oct 12, Ever since the Fukushima meltdown, nuclear apologists have been in a full spin cycle, culminating in Australia now deciding to risk selling uranium to India, says Ludwig Heinrich. Ever since the Fukushima disaster, there has been a veritable tsunami of articles from nuclear apologists presenting specious arguments for nuclear power. These have increased recently — which seems to be a
campaign to smooth the path of uranium sales to India.
I have written about these pro-nuclear arguments elsewhere but, in sum, it can be said that there is no compelling argument for nuclear power but there are compelling economic, social and moral reasons for avoiding it and
its consequences. Not the least of these being the intergenerational toxicity management. Biblical curses only go unto the 7th generation — nuclear ones go at least twice as long.”……
http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/international/risking-nuclear-over-safe-renewables/
Australian Youth Climate Coalition working for action, and we all should
Carbon age must end or we will, Canberra Times , October 19, 2012, Bob Douglas“…….For now, the climate-change denial industry remains in the ascendancy. National consensus that climate change is the greatest moral challenge of our time rose and fell with Kevin Rudd. Neither side of federal politics now sees it as the cataclysmically important issue that it is. We are much more concerned with Peter Slipper’s texts and Alan Jones’s outbursts.
It would seem that until there is visible electoral expression of concern about these issues, government policy commitments will remain timid and largely ignored by media that are preoccupied with trivia.
The good news is that many Australians are now acting and that the 50,000 strong Australian Youth Climate Coalition is working strategically with politicians on a number of fronts to awaken the dreamers to the reality that the threat is here and now.
The Manning Clark conference heard from former Liberal leader John Hewson, who is leading an international ratings agency that is monitoring the extent to which trillions of dollars of investment and superannuation funds are being used to prop up fossil fuels rather than promote renewable technologies. This is a brilliant strategy to force investors to a reality check on how their funds are being used.
A decisive rejection of fossil fuels and an enthusiastic embrace of renewable energy is our best hope for a future for our grandchildren. This is a moral and not an economic issue http://www.canberratimes.com.au/opinion/carbon-age-must-end-or-we-will-20121018-27tqz.html
Nuclear and coal power enthusiasts confounded – we’re using LESS energy, and fast
Energy producers caught off guard by demand slump, SMH October 19, 2012 Peter Hannam Electricity prices and the power sector have probably never been more in the news. And no wonder.
Households have been slugged by a 50 per cent surge in power prices over the past five years. The arrival of the carbon price in the last few months has intensified the debate and added to the bill shock.
A swarm of government reports – an Energy White Paper, the review of the 20 per cent renewable energy target, and the Senate inquiry into electricity prices – will land in coming weeks, flaring arguments over who is to blame. Analysts will bicker over whether recommended reforms curb or exacerbate industry excesses.
Complicating the debate is a development that has caught the industry completely off guard – the amount of electricity the country uses stopped growing in 2009 and is now shrinking. And the industry and regulators seem very much in the dark about what’s going on… “It’s quite extraordinary what’s happened” to demand, said Professor Mike Sandiford, director of the Melbourne Energy Institute. “The process isaccelerating.”….
: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/energy-producers-caught-off-guard-by-demand-slump-20121019-27utv.html#ixzz29t5NWc3e.
All the way with Gillard and Singh – never mind the danger
PM backs nuclear talks with India, The Age October 18, 2012 Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has praised Julia Gillard’s efforts in reversing Labor’s ban on uranium exports as the two leaders gave the go-ahead to start negotiations on a nuclear safeguards agreement….. Ms Gillard said last night that formal negotiations on a nuclear safeguards agreement, which would allow Australian uranium to be exported to India, “can begin now”. But she has made it clear that it will take a year or two, at least, for any agreement to be finalised, and for exports to begin.
India’s nuclear industry has been fiercely criticised by the country’s auditor-general, who found it was dangerously unsafe, disorganised, and, in many cases, completely unregulated….
Fossil fuels just a back up for wind and solar energy? http://reneweconomy.com.au/2012/fossil-fuels-just-a-back-up-for-wind-and-solar-energy-67271 By Giles Parkinson 18 October 2012 The head of one of the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturers has expressed his surprise at the public debate around health concerns over wind energy in Australia, saying it does not happen elsewhere. Continue reading
BHP to halt Olympic Dam production http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-17/bhp-to-halt-olympic-dam-production/4318000 Oct 17, 2012 BHP Billiton is to shut down its Olympic Dam smelter production for almost a month. The company says a reduction in smelter production had affected mining operations, near outback Roxby Downs in South Australia.
A BHP official said there were some issues with the smelter in the September quarter, which affected the throughput.
The outage for the December quarter would be for maintenance to address this.
BHP Billiton revealed back in August it would defer any expansion of the uranium, copper and gold mine due to market conditions. It wants the SA Government to extend its indenture agreement for the proposed expansion until October 2016.
Fossil fuels just a back up for wind and solar energy? http://reneweconomy.com.au/2012/fossil-fuels-just-a-back-up-for-wind-and-solar-energy-67271 By Giles Parkinson 18 October 2012 The head of one of the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturers has expressed his surprise at the public debate around health concerns over wind energy in Australia, saying it does not happen elsewhere. Continue reading
An Australian visitor to Japan reflects on the impact of Fukushima
If nuclear power was safe, practical and cost-effective, I’d be all for it.
the downsides of the nuclear power industry are both numerous and severe.
It amazes me that we continue to participate in such a dangerous industry, even if only as suppliers of the raw materials.
Japan highlights risks of nuclear energy NT News, KRIS KEOGH | October 16th, 2012 I RECENTLY got back from visiting Japan. It’s an exciting place to be; a land of contrasts, both hi-tech and traditional all at once….. Wherever I travelled, the resulting nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant was something still very clearly in the mind of nearly everyone I met. Continue reading
Please Watch Youtube: Shame of Australia selling uranium to India
Please watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz2_KE0w7eQ&feature=youtu.be
Dear Indian journalist and media colleagues,
I am writing to you from Australia where we are concerned that our Prime Minister Julia Gillard is breaking with a 40 year precedent and selling uranium to India, a nuclear weapon state who has neither signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation treaty or the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty.
We are concerned that selling uranium to India will fuel military and nuclear tensions in SE Asia. We are concerned that India, like Australia is being obliged to sign up to the American military alliance to isolate China, also a nuclear state, to push China further into a corner from where it might be tempted to lash out over a border dispute. Continuing dialogue should be the order of the day, not isolationism and an expanding nuclear programme on India’s part.
Continuing instability in the region could quickly escalate to nuclear war. We note ongoing border tensions between India and China since the border war of the 1960’s. We are concerned that Pakistan, a nuclear weapons state and India have periodic clashes which can only worsen with population growth and shrinking natural resources due to ongoing climate change crises.
As ordinary Australian citizens who feel disenfranchised like the people of Kudankalum, we ask: Why is Australia throwing gasoline onto the already lit nuclear fires of the world by providing uranium to India’s expanding nuclear power programme thus freeing India to use its own uranium for the production of more nuclear weapons? Can we trust the non signatory state of India to not use Australian uranium for weapons manufacture when we see how the Central government treats its own people?
We feel shame that our Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, particularly being a Labour party Prime Minister has forsaken the old but solid values of the Australian Labor party which stood for and represented the cause for world peace, for speaking out on behalf of the people, not multi national corporations. Julia Gillard is selling us out. Both the Australian people and Mother Earth. That is just not cricket!
We are particularly concerned that the ordinary people of India are not being listened to by their Central Government in Delhi. We note with rising concern the continuing repression of peaceful disobedience by the villagers surrounding Kudankalum NPP. We follow what’s happening there with disbelief given the protesters and their leaders are committed to the principles on non violence as espoused by your very own charismatic leader himself, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi which lead to the birth of the Indian nation.
We read in very limited news reports in Australia about the shooting of two native fishermen from the Kudankalum area by police. We read with concern that religious tolerance is no longer a respected right of Indian people with the contemptuous urinating on the statue of the Virgin Mary by police in the St Lourdes church after police had lathi charged the peaceful protestors which included women and children. We read of the isolation of the village of Idinthakakarai from water, electricity and food supplies noting that this is a village of peaceful fisher folk with a large population of children.
How can a government that calls itself ‘democratic’ treat its own people like this? Our Prime Minister Gillard claims Australia can sell uranium to India even though it is not a signatory to the Non Proliferation treaty because India is a modern democracy which respects the rights of its people. This seems contradicted by the evidence on the ground.
We feel the real concerns of the people of the Kudankalum region that the two nearing completion power plants could turn into another Fukushima. As ordinary Australians who have no say in what our Government does, we feel real shame to discover all five reactors at Fukushima were fuelled by Australian uranium – confirmed in the Australian Parliament.
We note that the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 hit that very southern most coast of India where the power plants are built at sea level. We note that an independent assessment of the safety factors operating for the Kudankalum power plant assess that in the event of a nuclear core meltdown or interruption to the regular grid electricity supply to cool the reactors, there is only two days supply of fresh water on site to cool the nuclear cores. Scientific consensus says there should be a minimum of 10 days water supply on standby guaranteed at ALL times. It was the lack of backup generators and cooling water on hand that lead to the nuclear meltdown in technologically sophisticated Japan at the Fukushima reactors.
Our movement has made this clip to highlight the issues when PM Singh and PM Gillard meet to sign this deal Oct 16th. We believe it is an Unholy Alliance which agitates against world peace and the future of this planet.
Yours sincerely,
Australian Spokeswoman for
A Nuclear Free Planet.
Senator Scott Ludlam speaks in Parliament about Australian Nuclear Free Alliance.
This industry is on the way out—not simply because of its internal contradictions and the disastrous toll it inflicts on host communities everywhere it touches down, but because of the extraordinary, selfless and tireless work of the campaigners that I was privileged to spend a few brief days with in Alice Springs. I hope that we have some better news by the time ANFA reconvenes this time next year.
Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (19:37): I rise tonight to make some brief remarks about an event 
that occurred this past weekend just outside Alice Springs: the 15th meeting of the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance. It is the 15th anniversary.
The first one occurred in 1997, in the same town in Alice Springs, and the spur for that meeting was also the event that I suppose first got me properly involved in politics. The Jabiluka uranium mine was being proposed and seriously progressed by mining company ERA, at that time owned by North Ltd. A campaign led by strong Aboriginal women in Kakadu—which is a theme I will return to in a moment—called for help from around the country to fend off the activities of a predatory mining company which had the full support of the Howard federal government, which had only been in office for a year or two, and the Northern Territory government.
It was a profoundly important experience for me as a young person to get involved with that campaign, to realise that I was stepping out of what I thought was purely an environmental campaign into a land rights battle led by strong Aboriginal women. Continue reading
Greens leader Christine Milne works for lower electricity prices with renewable energy
Milne thinks the government is hopelessly conflicted about energy policy, particularly with Martin Ferguson at the helm
of the energy portfolio.
“He is totally pro-fossil fuels, he has never embraced the renewable energy revolution
Christine Milne’s Plan For Renewables New Matilda, By Ben Eltham. 9 Oct 12, Christine Milne says Martin Ferguson isn’t part of the drive for a clean energy future. In an exclusive interview with NM, Milne discusses how she’ll strive to keep energy efficient, renewable and affordable….I’m here to interview Milne about energy for New Matilda’s Future Shock series. Actually, I had hoped to interview Energy Minister Martin Ferguson and Opposition energy spokesman Ian Macfarlane as well, but neither agreed. Continue reading
91 Year Old Prisoner of War Hero, Tom Uren, launches Hiroshima Exhibition
He had spent three years as a prisoner of the Japanese, forced to work on the Burma-Thai death railway before being shipped to Japan to labour in copper and lead smelters. He was in a camp at Omura, about 60 kilometres from Nagasaki, when the sky discoloured.
”As I got to understand nuclear war and the nuclear industry I realised the dropping of those bombs on Japan was a crime against humanity,” he says.
he will bring his anti-nuclear message to Melbourne tomorrow when he launches Hiroshima, assembled by the
Hiroshima-Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Exhibition Abroad at the Gasworks Arts Park in Albert Park
At 91, peacemaker still fights nuclear threat The Age October 8, 2012 Tony Wright National affairs editor TOM Uren is 91 now, but he retains a vivid memory of the sky turning crimson when the ”Fat Man” atomic bomb exploded over the Japanese city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. ”I’ve seen the most beautiful sunsets in the Northern Territory, but
this was a magnification of one of those sunsets by about 20 times,” he says.
Mr Uren had no idea that he was witnessing the second use of an atomic bomb in world warfare, or that it killed 39,000 people instantly and wounded another 25,000, with many more to perish of blast burns and radiation exposure. Continue reading
Australian anti nuclear activists meet in Alice Springs
Waste dump to top agenda at anti-nuclear forum http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-05/waste-dump-to-top-agenda-at-anti-nuclear-forum/4297944 By Ruby Jones and Allyson Horn Oct 5, 2012 More than 100 anti-nuclear activists from around the country are gathering in Alice Springs for the annual conference of the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance.
Nat Wasley from the Alliance says one of the big issues that will be discussed is the proposed nuclear dump at Muckaty Station near Tennant Creek. She says the Alliance will use the conference to devise its action plan for the next year.
“We know that the uranium industry is toxic at every stage of the nuclear chain from uranium exploration to nuclear waste, nuclear reactors and of course nuclear weapons as well,” she said.
“So it’s a chance for us to meet face-to-face, plan what we’re going to do for the year ahead and then put those plans into action.
“This annual gathering is really important for people to … share their experiences and what happens when the company comes out to speak to traditional owners and also strategise how to work across the many thousands of kilometres that people live to come together and stand united against this industry.”
Australian youth marching for a sustainable renewable energy future
Long walk with Australian Youth Climate Coalition in support of renewable energy http://northern-district-times.whereilive.com.au/news/story/long-walk-with-australian-youth-climate-coalition-in-support-of-renewable-energy/ 6 OCT 12 TWO YOUNG ADULTS FROM EPPING ARE THINKING WITH THEIR FEET WHEN IT COMES TO CLIMATE CHANGE. Cameron Wheatley, from 1st Epping Rover Scouts, and Georgia Munro, from the Australian Youth Climate Coalition in Epping, have walked 325km from Port Augusta to Adelaide to show support for renewable energy in South Australia.
“Current coal, gas and oil energy reliance is not sustainable and is a great threat to Australian jobs, health and our beautiful natural wonders,” Ms Munro said.
Joined by 100 other walkers, Mr Wheatley and Ms Munro have been calling for Port Augusta’s coal stations to be replaced with Australia’s first solar thermal plant.
The walk is part of the “Repower Port Augusta” campaign that is in favour of solar energy rather than a gas pipeline through the town.
“I would like to see Australia rally behind the problems of sustainability and climate change in a positive manner,” Mr Wheatley said.
“There are real opportunities to embrace jobs in new and expanding sustainable industries, and solve the difficult problems we face.”
1 This month
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
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 