Amazon wins contract to store ‘top-secret’ Australian military intelligence
Please note – this article uses the word “cloud” – but this isa a lie
There is no cloud.
What they mean is -acres and acres of dirty great steel canisters, guzzling electricity and water
By defence correspondent Andrew Greene, Thu 4 Jul 2024 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-04/amazon-contract-top-secret-australian-military-intelligence/104057196
In short:
Three data centres will be built in secret locations to host Australia’s military secrets.
Amazon has won the $2 billion contract to store the classified intelligence.
What’s next?
The massive project will roll out over several years, and is expected to create more than 2,000 jobs
American technology giant Amazon will establish a “top-secret” data cloud to store classified Australian military and intelligence information under a $2 billion partnership with the federal government.
Three highly secure data centres will be built in secret locations across the country to support the purpose-built Top Secret (TS) Cloud which will be run by a local subsidiary of Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The massive new project is expected to harness cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technology and scheduled to be in operation by 2027, with the government insisting Australia will have complete sovereignty over the cloud.
Similar data clouds have already been established in the US and UK allowing the sharing of “vast amounts of information”, with intelligence figures highlighting that potential adversaries were also investing heavily in similar technology.
Initially, the government will invest at least $2 billion into the project being run by the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) and AWS, but it’s expected to cost billions more in operating costs over the coming years.
Details of the massive project were first revealed in a speech to an American audience last year by the director-general of national intelligence Andrew Shearer, who emphasised the benefits it presented for collaboration for partner nations.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the project will create 2,000 jobs and “bolster our defence and national intelligence community to ensure they can deliver world-leading protection for our nation”.
“We face a range of complex and serious security challenges and I am incredibly proud of the work our national security agencies undertake on a daily basis to keep Australians safe,” Mr Albanese said
ASD director-general Rachel Noble said the project would provide a “state-of-the-art collaborative space for our intelligence and defence community to store and access top secret data”.
“For ASD, this capability is a vital part of our REDSPICE program which is lifting our intelligence and offensive and defensive cyber capabilities.”
AWS’ managing director in Australia, Iain Rouse, says his company is “uniquely positioned, as a trusted, long-term partner to the Australian government to deliver on this important partnership”.
“This critical national security initiative allows AWS to demonstrate our commitment to not just deliver a fixed set of requirements, but to continuously adapt, enhance and innovate together over the years to come.”
With its nuclear energy policy, Peter Dutton seems to have forgotten the Liberal Party’s core beliefs
Judith Brett, Emeritus Professor of Politics, La Trobe University,6 July 24, https://theconversation.com/with-its-nuclear-energy-policy-peter-dutton-seems-to-have-forgotten-the-liberal-partys-core-beliefs-233444
When Robert Menzies was out of office in 1943, in between prime ministerships, he was thinking about the future of non-Labor politics in wartime Australia. He read Edmund Burke’s book Thought on the Present Discontents. In it, Burke included the now-famous definition of a political party as:
a body of men united in promoting by their joint endeavour the national interest upon some particular principle on which they are all agreed.
For Burke, political parties were legitimate when they were based on shared principles and were committed neither to personal nor sectional interest, but to the interest of the nation as a whole.
Recently, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton announced the Coalition would not have an emissions reduction target for 2030. Instead, it would build seven nuclear power plants to reach zero emissions by 2050.
I have spent much of my research life thinking and writing about the Liberal Party and its predecessors, as well its three most successful leaders: Alfred Deakin, Robert Menzies and John Howard. So I have been running Dutton’s nuclear policies against my understanding of the Liberal party’s core principles.
It’s left me puzzled. Setting aside the many technical questions about the cost and feasibility of the plan, the proposal seems to breach some of those core principles.
Public ownership?
Political parties change and evolve over time, so it’s worth assessing the Liberal Party’s current web page for a contemporary statement of beliefs.
As expected, there are clear statements about the party’s commitment to maximising private sector initiatives. This includes statements like “government should only do those things the private sector cannot”, and “wherever possible government should not compete with an efficient private sector”.
So why is the Liberal Party proposing to build and own nuclear power plants on sites the government doesn’t even own, like Liddell in New South Wales? Or Loy Yang in Victoria where the owner, AGL, has plans already in train to develop low-emission industrial energy hubs?
How would a resort to compulsory acquisition of privately owned sites be justified by a party committed to private enterprise? And what would be the cost of these acquisitions?
Section 51 of the Constitution allows the Commonwealth to acquire property “on just terms from any State or person for any purpose in respect of which the Parliament has power to make laws.” Just terms – that means the property so acquired has to be paid for, by us, the tax payer, and this has to be added to the considerable cost of building the plants.
What about the states?
The state premiers of Queensland, NSW and Victoria oppose the plan, as do some Liberal opposition leaders such as Victoria’s John Pesutto.
Speaking to the Liberal Party Federal Council in June, Dutton said that the Commonwealth can override state laws, so the state premiers won’t be able to stop the plan.
Well it can, but it requires legislation that has to get through a Senate unlikely to be controlled by any future Coalition government. It would also cost a mountain of political capital.
But in terms of principles, how does this sit with the Liberal Party’s long-standing support for the rights of the states within the federation? One of the Liberal Party’s beliefs is that “responsibility should be divided according to federal principles, without the Commonwealth taking advantage of powers it has acquired other than by referendum.”
National interest or political interest?
It seems the policy as announced breaches two of the Liberal party’s core principles:
government should not do what is better left to private enterprise- the Commonwealth should respect state rights
But what of the national interest? The Liberal Party has always claimed it is not a sectional party and so is best able to represent the national interest. This, it says, is in contrast to Labor, with its ties to the unionised working class, and the Country Party turned Nationals which represents farmers, the regions, and increasingly, the miners.
What was most shocking about the Coalition’s plan is that it blithely flirts with sovereign risk and hence with Australia’s national interest. This is completely out of character for the Liberal Party.
Energy infrastructure is a long-term investment. Local and foreign investors are spooked by the collapse of bipartisan commitment to a clean energy transition and reconsidering their investment plans. And if the investment goes, so will the jobs it would have created. How is this in the national interest?
Shadow Minister for Energy Ted O’Brien tried to settle investors down by claiming the Coalition was still committed to renewables as well, but with little detail about the planned mix.
The only one of the Liberal Party’s traditional principles visible in this policy is the one that gives the leader, rather than the party, authority over policy.
But where does this leave the Liberals in federal parliament when their leader’s policy is so fundamentally at odds with their party’s core beliefs? Loyalty to the leader can only go so far. Perhaps Liberal MPs should consult their party’s website to remind themselves of the principles on which they stood for election. It seems in the pursuit of winning political points, political principles are all too easy to forget.
Australia’s ‘carbon budget’ may blow out by 40% under the Coalition’s nuclear energy plan – and that’s the best-case scenario
The Conversation, Sven Teske, Research Director, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney July 2, 2024
The Coalition’s pledge to build seven nuclear reactors, if elected, would represent a huge shift in energy policy for Australia. It also poses serious questions about whether this nation can meet its international climate obligations.
If Australia is to honour the Paris Agreement to limit global average temperature rise to 1.5˚C by mid-century, it can emit about 3 billion tonnes, or gigatonnes, of carbon dioxide (CO₂) over the next 25 years. This remaining allowance is what’s known as our “carbon budget”.
My colleagues and I recently outlined the technological options for Australia to remain within its carbon budget. We did this using a tool we developed over many years, the “One Earth Climate Model”. It’s a detailed study of pathways for various countries to meet the 1.5˚C goal.
So what happens if we feed the Coalition’s nuclear strategy into the model? As I outline below, even if the reactors are built, the negative impact on Australia’s carbon emissions would be huge. Over the next decade, the renewables transition would stall and coal and gas emissions would rise – possibly leading to a 40% blowout in Australia’s carbon budget.
Australia has a pathway to 1.5˚C
Earlier this year, my colleagues and I analysed the various ways Australia could reduce emissions in line with the 1.5˚ goal…………………………………………………………………………. more https://theconversation.com/australias-carbon-budget-may-blow-out-by-40-under-the-coalitions-nuclear-energy-plan-and-thats-the-best-case-scenario-233108
Federal Coalition urged to retract claims linking medical technologies to nuclear power plans.
Margaret Beavis, Thursday, July 4, 2024,
Introduction by Croakey: Traditional owners of the Jabiluka uranium site in the Northern Territory are concerned the Federal Opposition’s plans for nuclear energy will increase demand for mining on their land, according to an ABC report.
As Croakey has previously reported, the Coalition’s nuclear plans have also been slammed by health, medical and scientific experts, with particular concerns for impacts upon First Nations peoples’ health and wellbeing.
In the article below, Dr Margaret Beavis OAM, Vice President of the Medical Association for Prevention of War (MAPW), calls on the Opposition to retract “patently false” claims made about a link between nuclear power and radiology, radiotherapy and nuclear medicine, which seek to “misrepresent nuclear medicine for political gain”. She also notes the likely derailing of climate action, and the problems of toxic waste and the potential for accidents and nuclear proliferation.
Meanwhile, Independent MP Dr Monique Ryan has urged Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to call an early election, warning that the Coalition has “recklessly jammed a stick into the spokes of the Australian economy by refusing to reveal a 2030 emissions reduction target and confusing the country with a threadbare nuclear energy announcement”.
Margaret Beavis writes:
The proposal for nuclear power in Australia needs more scrutiny from the public health perspective.
There are three aspects that are particularly problematic.
Firstly, investment in renewables will be damaged, making urgently needed decarbonisation much harder, worsening the very well documented health impacts of climate change.
No-one is pretending nuclear power can be implemented quickly. But for those who feel optimistic, looking at democracies similar to ours demonstrates the reality. The Hinkley Point plan in the United Kingdom, Flamanville in France, and Vogtle and VC Summer (abandoned after spending USD 9 billion) in the United States all have had both massive delays and major cost blowouts.
Slower roll out means even more coal and gas, and all the climate and health impacts that go with that. Compounding these delays will be the need in Australia for legislation at both state and federal level, and our lack of expertise and established workforce.
Secondly, the Coalition claims made about radiology, radiotherapy and nuclear medicine are patently false and deliberately misleading.
A letter sent by Coalition MPs to their constituents last month claimed that: “Nuclear energy already plays a major role in medicine and healthcare, diagnosing and treating thousands of Australians every day.”
We do not have, and have never had, nuclear power in Australia, and nuclear power has no connection to our world class nuclear medicine sector.
Australians will continue to benefit from diagnostic and therapeutic nuclear medicine irrespective of whether Australia’s future is powered by reactors or renewables. Nuclear power is not nuclear medicine, it is not X-Rays, and it is not radiotherapy.
X-Rays and radiotherapy do not use a nuclear reactor at all. Nuclear medicine in Australia – used to diagnose and treat some types of heart disease, thyroid conditions, infections, injuries, and cancers – involves radioactive elements (isotopes) that are made using a small research nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights in NSW.
Lucas Heights cannot and has not produced commercial power. But, like all nuclear reactors, it does produce radioactive waste that remains highly toxic for 10,000 years.
The Coalition also claims, on a website promoting the “need” for nuclear energy in Australia, that: “Research and advancements in radiation technology continue to evolve, providing new and improved methods for both diagnosing and treating diseases…”
False connections
Advancements to improve health outcomes and to reduce the size and risks of radiation exposures will occur whether or not Australia has nuclear power. With renewable energy, nuclear medicine will still exist and advance – our loved ones will still be treated and be cared for.
It’s disappointing that the Coalition has chosen to misrepresent nuclear medicine for political gain, and to make false connections between nuclear power and health.
Finally, it is important to consider the problems of waste and the risk of accidents, attacks and weapons proliferation.
Nuclear power poses significant risks to the health of people and the planet.
It is far from the zero emissions technology its acolytes claim it to be.
As noted, reactor waste is highly toxic for over 10,000 years. It remains globally an unsolved problem. The failure over decades to find a site for Australia’s existing limited amount of intermediate waste illustrates communities’ concerns.
First Nations communities have been repeatedly targeted. They have suffered enough from the impacts of British nuclear testing in the fifties and sixties.
Accidents can and do occur. There have been many near misses and at least 15 accidents risking uncontrolled radioactive release, involving fuel or core damage in Canada, Germany, Japan, Slovakia, the UK, Ukraine and the US.
Attacks on facilities could also cause extensive releases of radiation. A significant radiation release would require major long-term evacuation.
In addition, nuclear power is clearly linked with nuclear proliferation. Tilman Ruff, formerly at the Nossal Institute for Global Health in the School of Population and Global Health at University of Melbourne and co-founder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), wrote in 2019:
South Africa, Pakistan and North Korea have primarily used the HEU (highly enriched uranium) route to build nuclear weapons, India and Israel primarily a plutonium route. All have used facilities and fuel that were ostensibly for peaceful purposes.”
Indeed, the possibility of acquiring nuclear weapons was part of former Australian Prime Minister John Gorton’s reasoning when considering a nuclear power plant at Jervis Bay.
In summary, building nuclear power in Australia will have significant long term adverse public health impacts. Extravagant claims that existing medical technologies and medical advances are somehow linked to plans for nuclear power are plainly wrong.
We urge the Coalition to retract these statements and remove inaccurate information from its marketing materials. We also urge they reconsider this policy, given its major health impacts both locally and globally.
Dr Margaret Beavis OAM is Vice President of the Medical Association for Prevention of War (MAPW) and a former GP who teaches medicine at Melbourne University. She has lectured on nuclear medicine and nuclear waste in Melbourne University’s MPH program.
Coalition parties asked to respond
Croakey has asked Federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and Leader of the Nationals Party David Littleproud for responses to the below questions raised in three articles Croakey has published on the Coalition’s nuclear energy plan.
- Health, medical and scientific experts have rejected your nuclear energy plans as dangerous and a way to delay climate action. What is your response?
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and communities have raised concerns that nuclear energy would harm their health, wellbeing and connection to Country. What is your response?
- Additionally, health professionals have called for the Coalition to retract claims that medical technologies are linked to nuclear power plans. What is your response?
- Will you continue with your nuclear energy plan if local communities oppose reactors?
- How will you manage harms to health by delaying action on climate change and decarbonisation?
- Who will provide disaster insurance (Fukushima clean up estimated at $470-$660 billion)?
If you don’t know, vote ‘No’ to Dutton’s nuclear plan
The CSIRO has investigated this carefully and has produced a detailed report saying that nuclear energy is not feasible. So, too, has Australia’s former chief scientist, Alan Finkel.
The L-NP has rejected both these reports and attacked the credibility of the scientists who prepared them, without offering any details themselves that counter the two reports.
By Craig Hill | 4 July 2024,
OPPOSITION LEADER Peter Dutton still refuses to release any details about how he will introduce nuclear energy into Australia. Therefore let’s look at some details of why it won’t work.
The first clue should be that there are no private investors who have expressed an interest in building a nuclear power plant.
All the energy companies in Australia have rejected nuclear energy as not being feasible and have invested billions of dollars in transitioning to renewables.
Secondly, all nuclear reactors take a long time to build. We wouldn’t be able to have one online until 2040 at the earliest.
You can’t just build them anywhere. Dutton’s plan to build them on the sites of existing coal-fired power plants is ill-informed and reckless.
Existing plants are built near coal mines with underground tunnels prone to subsidence. The soil is also contaminated which has caused changes in the silt layer, increasing the chance of subsidence. The last thing we want is nuclear power plants sinking into the ground.
Nuclear power plants also need to be built near large freshwater supplies. The water supplies that exist near coal-fired plants are not large enough and are also contaminated.
The ideal place to build nuclear plants would be near large existing dams that supply water for our major cities. I don’t think anybody would be agreeable to the possibility of a nuclear power plant contaminating the water supply.
Also, take into account that nuclear power plants were first built in the USA in 1955. Since then, 255 plants have been built and today, only 60 continue to operate commercially, with the last one going online in 2018. There are no new plants under construction in the USA.
Of the 60 that are operating commercially, only 30 are operating at a profit. After 70 years of nuclear power plant construction, nuclear energy only provides 18.6 per cent of America’s electricity supply.
Compare this to renewable energy which first came online in the USA in 2008. Today, renewable energy is responsible for 21.4 per cent of electricity production in the United States.
Nuclear is on the way out in America and renewables are replacing it. Even the Americans have realised that nuclear energy production is far more expensive than renewables.
The CSIRO has investigated this carefully and has produced a detailed report saying that nuclear energy is not feasible. So, too, has Australia’s former chief scientist, Alan Finkel.
The L-NP has rejected both these reports and attacked the credibility of the scientists who prepared them, without offering any details themselves that counter the two reports.
Best we Forget – Australia’s 70 year old nuclear contamination secrets about to be exposed
by Sue Rabbitt Roff | Jun 28, 2024 https://michaelwest.com.au/best-we-forget-australias-70-year-old-nuclear-contamination-secrets-about-to-be-exposed/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2024-07-04&utm_campaign=Michael+West+Media+Weekly+Update
While Peter Dutton gets headlines for his nuclear fairytale and the Labor Government presses on with its AUKUS submarines, the fallout from nuclear bomb testing in the Pilbara in 1956 finally reaches court. Sue Roff reports from London.
In 1956, on the remote Montebello Islands off Western Australia, an atomic bomb was tested. It was supposed to be no more than 50 kilotons, but in fact measured 98 kilotons, or more than six times the strength of the bomb dropped over Hiroshima in 1945.
Ever since then, Australian and UK Governments have suppressed the facts and denied compensation to the victims. That may finally be about to change.
Three months ago, veterans of Britain’s Cold War radioactive weapons tests formally launched proceedings against the UK Ministry of Defence, alleging negligence in its duty of care to the men themselves and their families before, during and after the tests that began at the Montebellos in 1952.
MWM, “The opening phase seeks the full disclosure by the Ministry of Defence of all records of blood and urine testing conducted during the weapons trials, with compensation sought for MoD negligence and recklessness if they were lost or destroyed.”
At the same time, the veterans have made an offer to resolve their claim through the creation of a Special Tribunal with statutory powers to investigate and compensate if decades of cover-up are established.
A very big bomb
In October 1955, the Director of British atomic and thermonuclear tests in Australia, Professor William Penney, wrote to the Chair of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority about the two detonations that were planned for the Montebello Islands in May and June 1956:
‘Yesterday I think I gave you the impression that the second shot at Montebello will be about 80 K.T. [kilotons]. This is the figure to which we are working as far as health and safety are concerned. We do not know exactly what the yield is going to be because the assembly is very different from anything we have tried before.
We expect that yield will be 40 or 50, but it might just go up to 80 which is the safe upper limit.
In fact, in recent years, it has been listed on the website of ARPANSA [the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency] as 98 kilotons.
The politics
A UK memo found in the UK National Archives that is undated but filed around August 1955, states:
“TESTS IN Montebello ISLANDS (CODE NAME ‘MOSAIC’) 25 7.
“We had agreed with the Australian Government that we would not test thermo-nuclear weapons in Australia, but [Australian Prime Minister] Mr. Menzies has nevertheless agreed to the firings taking place in the Montebello Islands (off the North-West coast of Western Australia), which have already been used before for atomic tests [emphasis added].”“As already explained, the Australians are very sensitive on the question of thermo-nuclear explosions, and although the true character of these tests is understood by the authorities immediately concerned, knowledge of the trials is restricted to a very small circle and no public statement has so far been made; when it is made, it will therefore require very careful handling.”
“Apparently it is still being very carefully handled by government agencies. 70 years after the British atomic and thermonuclear tests started in Australia scores of files held in the Australian National National Archives are marked ‘Not yet examined’. We urgently need to create an independent archive of Australia’s nuclear past.”
The falloutIn Roeboure, some 200km away from the blast, a witness – then seven-year-old John Weiland wrote later of “hearing and feeling the blast before going outside to see the cloud. My mother said she remembers material falling on her. I was in primary school at the time and we all stood out on the verandah to watch the cloud.”
Weiland later wrote to ARPANSA asking “if any testing was done or any follow up done particularly with the 30 or so children of the school. But I was told there was no radiation blown across from the islands.”
In December 1957, eighteen months after the second G2 Operation Mosaic blast at the Montebellos, the five scientific members of the Atomic Weapons Safety Committee (AWSC) appointed by the Australian government published a report titled ‘Radioactive Fallout in Australia from Operation ‘Mosaic’ in The Australian Journal of Science.
without approaching the mainland of Australia.’ However ‘a pronounced stable layer produced a marked bulge on the stem which trapped a small quantity of particulate material and this was spread to the south-east of the Montebello Islands …The more finely suspended material’ or ‘debris’ was dispersed in the first 48 hours …’ although there was light rain over Marble Bar.
Thirty years after this AWSC report, the Royal Commission into British Nuclear Tests in Australia issued its 1987 report after 18 months of hearings around Australia and in London. In relation to Mosaic G2 it reported:“7.4.25 The post-firing winds behaved similarly to those after Gl, i.e. they weakened and then began to blow to the south and east. An analysis of the trajectories of fallout particles showed that fallout at Port Hedland occurred 24 hours after the explosion and consisted of particles that originated from 20,000 feet in the region of the top of the stem and the bottom of the cloud….[RC 270, T24/57).”
“Clearly part of the main cloud did cross the mainland.”
The Royal Commission also concluded, “The Safety Committee communications with the Minister for Supply soon after the second explosion, when it reported that the cloud had not crossed the coast, with the implication that there was no fallout on the mainland, were misleading.”
Nearly forty years later, in January 2024, John Weiland submitted a query to the Talk to A Scientist portal of ARPANSA, asking for information. The unsigned response four days later referred him to Appendices B & C of a 32 year old document attached to the official response. A report, ‘Public Health Impact of Fallout from British Nuclear Tests in Australia, 1952-57, has a diagram annotated ‘Trajectories taken by radioactive clouds across Australia for the nuclear tests in the Mosaic and Antler Series. The main debris clouds from Mosaic Rounds 1 and 2 are not shown as they remained largely over the Indian Ocean, moving to the northeast parallel to the coast.’ (emphasis added).This diagram [ on original) doesn’t correlate with the maps in the Royal Commission Report north of Broome nor those of the AWTSC report in 1957 south of Port Hedland.
I have published extensive archival evidence about the score of coverups that have occurred over the past 70 years.The cover-up
They range from the agreement of Prime Minister Menzies to the progressive testing of hydrogen/thermonuclear devices in preparation for the full assembly in 1957 for the Grapple tests at Christmas Island, including testing less than two months before the start of the 1956 Olympic Games in downwind Melbourne, and Menzies’ hope of getting tactical nuclear weapons for Australia by his collusion.
They also include the submission of ‘sanitised’ health data on Australian test participants to the 1985 Royal Commission into British Nuclear Tests in Australia.I presented my concerns about the role of UK official histories of the tests in a seminar hosted by the Official Historian of the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office by invitation in February 2024.
Representing the victims, Oli Troen adds that “The Veterans previously sought redress through the English Courts, losing in the Supreme Court in 2012 when they could not prove they experienced dosages of radiation exposure. This meant they could not demonstrate their injuries resulted from that exposure.”
Blood tests taken at the time and in the years after presence at a test site are key to proving whether the legacy of rare illnesses, cancer and birth defects reported by the veterans is due to radiation from the nuclear tests and whether the government is culpable and can now be held accountable for their suffering.
A Freedom of Information tribunal has ordered the handing over of the blood tests of veteran and decorated hero Squadron Leader Terry Gledhill, who led ‘sniff planes’ into the mushroom clouds of thermonuclear weapons on sampling missions. This new case seeks to force the government to hand over such records for up to 22,000 UK veterans.
French nuclear giant scraps SMR plans due to soaring costs, will start over
Another Small Modular Nuclear Reactor project goes down the toilet
This time it’s that great nuclear poster boy France that is facing the humiliation and embarrassment of wasting billions on “New Nuclear”
Last time it was the USA with the NuScale fiasco
Giles Parkinson Jul 2, 2024, https://reneweconomy.com.au/french-nuclear-giant-scraps-smr-plans-due-to-soaring-costs-will-start-over/
The French nuclear giant EdF, the government owned company that manages the country’s vast fleet of nuclear power stations, has reportedly scrapped its plans to develop a new design for small nuclear reactors because of fears of soaring costs.
EdF, which is now fully government owned after facing potential bankruptcy due to delays and massive cost over-runs at its latest generation large scale nuclear plants, had reportedly been working on a new design for SMRs for the last four years.
The French investigative outlet L’Informé reported on Monday that EdF had scrapped its new internal SMR design – dubbed Nuward – because of engineering problems and cost overruns. It cited company sources as saying EdF would now partner with other companies to use “simpler” technologies in an attempt to avoid delays and budget overruns.
Reuters confirmed the development, citing an email from a company spokesman that confirmed the program had been abandoned after the basic design had been completed.
“The reorientation consists of developing a design built exclusively from proven technological bricks. It will offer better conditions for success by facilitating technical feasibility,” an EDF spokesperson told Reuters via email.
It’s the latest problem to hit SMR technology, which the federal Coalition wants to roll out in Australia – starting with reactors in South Australia and Western Australia – as part of its goal of keeping coal plants open, building more gas, stopping renewables and putting clean energy hopes on nuclear.
The federal Coalition says it can have the first SMR up and running by 2035, but no SMRs have been built in the western world, and none have even got a licence to be built.
The closest to reach that landmark, the US-based NuScale, abandoned its plans after massive cost overruns and push back from its customers, who refused to pay high prices.
The EdF plans appears to have run into similar problems. Its potential customers, the European energy companies Vattenfall, CEZ and Fortum, wanted guarantees that the SMRs would not have a levelised cost of energy of more than €100 a megawatt hour ($161/MWh) and EdF decided that that was not possible.
It is now not expected to produce its first SMR until the 2030s, at the earliest – even though France is desperate for new reactors to replace its ageing power plants. Because of the costs, it expects to significantly reduce the share of nuclear in its energy mix as it focuses more on large scale solar and offshore wind.
EdF has run into similar problems with its large scale technology. The Flammanville project in France was announced in 2004 with a budget of €3 billion and a deadline of 2012. It is still not in operation and its costs have soared at least four-fold to €13.2 billion.
The Hinkley C project in the UK has been an even bigger disaster. EdF had promised in 2007 that it would be “cooking Christmas turkeys” in England by 2017, at a cost of £9 billion, but is already delayed to 2031 with a spiralling cost of £48 billion when inflation is taken into account, or $A93 billion.
EdF announced another impairment charge of €12.9 billion ($A20.7 billion) from Hinkley earlier this year. It had to be bailed out by the government last year after suffering record losses in 2022 caused by outages at nearly half of its nuclear power plants due to maintenance at its reactors across France.
Tim Buckley, from Climate and Energy Finance, seized on the news and called on Opposition leader Peter Dutton and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien to provide more details of their nuclear plans beyond the one page press release they released last month.
“Come’on guys, how naive do you take the average Australian voter for?” Buckley wrote.
“In your alternate fact world, who do you think will pay for the permanent around 50% increase in Australian energy prices for consumers? Are you really intent on destroying the international competitiveness of Australian industry purely in the service of your fossil fuel funders?”
Numerous cost assessments, particularly by the CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator, have put the cost of nuclear at more than double the cost of wind, solar and storage. But they also point out that first of their kind projects in Australia could cost double that amount, and SMR technology is likely to be even more expensive.
The Coalition has attacked those reports, and the reputation of the CSIRO and AEMO – in concert with a group of so-called “think tanks” and the Murdoch media – but the latest polling from Essential Media suggests that the public might not be buying it.
The poll found that votes believe renewables are the most desirable (59 per cent) and the best for the environment (55 per cent). Nuclear energy was regarded by more as the most expensive (38 per cent versus 35 per cent for renewables).
An overwhelming majority of people aged 18 to 54 thought Peter Dutton’s nuclear energy plan “is just an attempt to extend the life of gas and limit investment in large-scale renewables”, while a majority of those aged over 55 thought the nuclear plan is serious and should be part of the future energy mix, Essential Media’s Peter Lewis wrote.
The federal Coalition has argued that nuclear might be expensive to build, but will deliver cheaper power to consumers. It has not explained how, but it has said that its reactors would be government owned, suggesting that – like France and Ontario – the costs would be borne by taxpayers and the supply of power to customers would be heavily subsidised.
Giles Parkinson is founder and editor of Renew Economy, and is also the founder of One Step Off The Grid and founder/editor of the EV-focused The Driven. He is the co-host of the weekly Energy Insiders Podcast. Giles has been a journalist for more than 40 years and is a former business and deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review. You can find him on LinkedIn and on Twitter.
Coalition nuclear policy leaves traditional owners of Kakadu uranium mine worried
ABC News, By Jane Bardon, 3 July 24
In short:
Kakadu traditional owners are worried the Coalition’s nuclear policy will drive demand for uranium mining on their land at Jabiluka.
Energy Resources of Australia (ERA) and traditional owners have asked the NT and federal governments to decide whether to extend the Jabiluka uranium mining lease.
What’s next?
ERA’s majority shareholder Rio Tinto is worried the Jabiluka lease stoush could drive up the costs of rehabilitating its closed Ranger Uranium Mine.
Mirarr traditional owner Corben Mudjandi is desperate for his spectacular land at Jabiluka to be incorporated into Kakadu National Park, which surrounds it, rather than mined for its uranium.
“Its sacred to us, and it’s a piece of human history, 65,000 years, we want Jabiluka not mined; we want to show people the beauty of nature, and what we call home,” he said.
Mr Mudjandi is worried the federal Coalition’s plan to open nuclear plants if it wins government could drive demand for Jabiluka’s uranium.
The Mirarr are also concerned that almost a year after Energy Resources of Australia (ERA) applied to extend its uranium mining lease over Jabiluka for another decade, the Northern Territory and federal governments have not yet decided whether to reject or approve it.
ERA’s current lease expires on August 11.
“The government are following process, but of course we hope they don’t support the application extension,” Mr Mudjandi said.
Senior Mirarr traditional owner Yvonne Margarula said she was worried that although ERA’s Jabiluka lease agreement enabled traditional owners to veto mining, they felt under constant pressure to change their minds.
“The mining companies might come back asking again and again, it’s annoying them asking more, enough is enough, so I hope the government is going to help us,” she said………………………………..
……………………….Professor of Archaeology at Griffith University Lynley Wallis said the Mirarr had a strong case for Jabiluka to be incorporated into Kakadu instead of mined, because of its 65,000 year-old-evidence of occupation.
“Archaeologically the escarpment that’s encapsulated within the Jabiluka mineral lease is unparalleled,” she said.
“There are hundreds of rock shelter sites, almost all of which have paintings in them, of which are incredibly well preserved, and then there are amazing objects that have been cached in those rock shelters, ceremonial wooden objects, grinding stones, spear points and scrapers.
………. the lease agreement includes a traditional owner right to veto mining……………
Lynley Wallis said the Jabiluka mining lease did not provide adequate protection.
“While a company holds a mineral lease over Jabiluka it is possible for them to apply to develop the resources in that land, and any development would pose imminent threat to the cultural sites that are within the lease,” she said.
While some of ERA’s minority shareholders want to keep the Jabiluka lease, which they estimate is worth $50 billion, its majority shareholder Rio Tinto does not.
Jabiluka is ERA’s only potentially valuable asset, but Rio Tinto estimates the rehabilitation costs would be much more than potential profits.
The cost of ERA’s rehabilitation of its neighbouring closed Ranger Uranium Mine on the Mirarr’s land has now blown out to more than $2.5 billion.
ERA is expected to run out of funds by September, and Rio Tinto has promised to fund Ranger’s rehabilitation.
But the ABC understands Rio Tinto is concerned ERA’s application to extend the Jabiluka lease is worrying Mirarr traditional owners so much, that they could delay further agreements needed on how the Ranger mine rehabilitation continues, adding to the project’s soaring costs.
Dave Sweeney, the Australian Conversation Foundation’s nuclear policy spokesman, has called on both governments to end the prospect of mining at Jabiluka.
“ERA are not making any money,” he said.
“They should be focused on getting the assured financial capacity on delivering on their legal obligations rather than appeasing minority shareholders in a fanciful push for a project that will never happen, but increases pressure on traditional owners who’ve had too much for too long.”
A spokesman for the federal Resources Minister Madeleine King said it was up to the NT government whether to renew ERA’s lease.
The spokesman said when Ms King provides her advice to NT government, she would “consider information about Jabiluka in good faith and with appropriate consultation”.
The NT Mining Minister Mark Monaghan would not explain why his government had not made a decision on the lease.
“We’re not delaying the decision, the decision is going through what is a process,” he said.
NT Opposition leader Lia Finocchiaro has backed ERA’s argument on why the lease should continue.
“Importantly that maintains the veto rights for the Mirarr people which we believe continues to be a very important right for them to have,” she said. worried
The nuclear and renewable myths that mainstream media can’t be bothered challenging
Mark Diesendorf, Jul 4, 2024, https://reneweconomy.com.au/the-nuclear-and-renewable-myths-that-mainstream-media-cant-be-bothered-challenging/
Nuclear energy proponents are attempting to discredit renewable energy and promote nuclear energy and fossil gas in its place. This article refutes several myths they are disseminating that are receiving little or no challenge in the mainstream media.
Myth: Renewables cannot supply 100% electricity
Denmark, South Australia and Scotland already obtain 88, 74 and 62 per cent of their respective annual electricity generations from renewables, mostly wind. Scotland actually supplies 113 per cent of its electricity consumption from renewables; the difference between its generation and consumption is exported by transmission line.
All three jurisdictions have achieved this with relatively small amounts of hydroelectricity, zero in South Australia. Given the political will, all three could reach 100% net renewables generation by 2030, as indeed two northern states of Germany have already done. The ‘net’ means that they trade some electricity with neighbours but on average will be at 100% renewables.
Computer simulations by several research groups – using real hourly wind, solar and demand data spanning several years – show that the Australian electricity system could be run entirely on renewable energy, with the main contributions coming from solar and wind. System reliability for 100% renewables will be maintained by a combination of storage, building excess generating capacity for wind and solar (which is cheap), key transmission links, and demand management encouraged by transparent pricing.
Storage to fill infrequent troughs in generation from the variable renewable sources will comprise existing hydro, pumped hydro (mostly small-scale and off-river), and batteries. Geographic dispersion of renewables will also assist managing the variability of wind and solar. For the possibility of rare, extended periods of Dunkelflaute (literally ‘dark doldrums’), gas turbines with stores of biofuels or green hydrogen could be kept in reserve as insurance.
Myth: Gas can fill the gap until nuclear is constructed
As a fuel for electricity generation, fossil gas in eastern Australia is many times more expensive per kilowatt-hour than coal. It is only used for fuelling gas turbines for meeting the peaks in demand and helping to fill troughs. For this purpose, it contributes about 5% of Australia’s annual electricity generation. But, as storage expands, fossil gas will become redundant in the electricity system.
The fact that baseload gas-fired electricity continues temporarily in Western Australia and South Australia is the result of peculiar histories that will not be repeated. Unlike the eastern states, WA has a Domestic Gas Reservation Policy that insulates customers from the high export prices of gas.
However, most new gas supplies would have to come from high-cost unconventional sources. South Australia’s ancient, struggling, baseload, gas-fired power station, Torrens Island, produces expensive electricity. It will be closed in 2026 and replaced with renewables and batteries.
Myth: Nuclear energy can co-exist with large contributions from renewables
This myth has two refutations:
- Nuclear is too inflexible in operation to be a good partner for variable wind and solar. Its very high capital cost necessitates running it constantly, not just during periods of low sun or wind. Its output can only be ramped up and down slowly, and it’s expensive to do that.
- On current growth trends of renewables, there will be no room for nuclear energy in South Australia, Victoria or NSW. The 2022 shares of renewables in total electricity generation in each of these states were 74%, 37% and 33% respectively.
Rapid growth from these levels is likely. It’s already too late for nuclear in SA. Provided the growth of renewables is not deliberately suppressed in NSW and Victoria, these states too could reach 100% renewables before the first nuclear power station comes online.
As transportation and combustion heating will be electrified, demand for electricity could double by 2050. This might offer generating space for nuclear in the 2040s in Queensland (23% renewables in 2022) and Western Australia (20% renewables in 2022). However, the cost barrier would remain.
Myth: There is insufficient land for wind and solar
The claim by nuclear proponents that wind and solar have “vast land footprints” is misleading. Although a wind farm can span a large area, its turbines, access road and substation occupy a tiny fraction of that area, typically about 2%.
Most wind farms are built on land that was previously cleared for agriculture and are compatible with all forms of agriculture. Off-shore wind occupies no land.
Solar farms are increasingly being built sufficiently high off the ground to allow sheep to graze beneath them, providing welcome shade. This practice, known as agrivoltaics, provides additional farm revenue, which is especially valuable during droughts. Rooftop solar occupies no land.
Myth: The longer lifetime of nuclear reactors hasn’t been taken into account
The levelised cost of energy method – used by CSIRO, AEMO, Lazard and others – is the standard way of comparing electricity generation technologies that perform similar functions.
It permits the comparison of coal, nuclear and firmed renewables. It takes account automatically of the different lifetimes of different technologies.
Myth: We need baseload power stations
The recent claim that nuclear energy is not very expensive “when we consider value” is just a variant of the old, discredited claim that we need baseload power stations, i.e. those that operate 24/7 at maximum power output for most of the time.
The renewable system, including storage, delivers the same reliability, and hence the same value, as the traditional system based on a mix of baseload and peak-load power stations.
When a nuclear power reactor breaks down, it can be useless for weeks or months. For a conventional large reactor rated at 1000 to 1600 megawatts, the impact of breakdown on electricity supply can be disastrous.
Big nuclear needs big back-up, which is expensive. Small modular reactors do not exist––not one is commercially available or likely to be in the foreseeable future.
Concluding remarks
We do not need expensive, dangerous nuclear power, or expensive, polluting fossil gas. A nuclear scenario would inevitably involve the irrational suppression of renewables.
The ban on nuclear power should be maintained because nuclear never competes in a so-called ‘free market’. Renewables – solar, wind and existing hydro – together with energy efficiency, can supply all Australia’s electricity.
Mark Diesendorf is Honorary Associate Professor at the Environment & Society Group in the School of Humanities & Languages and Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture at UNSW. First published in Pearls and Irritations. Republished with permission of the author.
Why Julian Assange couldn’t outrun the Espionage Act
the grave threat the Espionage Act poses to journalism and the First Amendment
SOTT, Jordan Howell The FIRE, Wed, 26 Jun 2024
Julian Assange spent seven years in self-exile in London’s Ecuadorian Embassy avoiding arrest, and five more in prison, for publishing classified documents on WikiLeaks.
Julian Assange is a free man, and one of the most contentious press freedom controversies in living memory may finally be coming to a close.
The WikiLeaks founder reached a plea deal with the Department of Justice on Monday after spending five years in an English prison fighting extradition to the United States. Federal officials sought to charge Assange with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national security information under the Espionage Act of 1917.
Assange and WikiLeaks shocked the world in 2010 by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret military documents and diplomatic cables related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were leaked by Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. Months later, Assange was on the run and Manning was in jail.
Assange claimed that by receiving and publishing confidential information, what he did was no different than the type of routine news reporting that journalists around the world engage in every day. As the Supreme Court ruled in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), better known as “The Pentagon Papers” case, publishing leaked documents is protected under the First Amendment.
FIRE has long opposed use of the Espionage Act to curtail the rights of journalists to source information. And in December 2022, FIRE signed an open letter organized by the Committee to Protect Journalists along with 20 other civil liberties groups calling on the federal government to drop its charges against Assange.
“We are united . . . in our view that the criminal case against him poses a grave threat to press freedom both in the United States and abroad,” we argued. “[J]ournalists routinely engage in much of the conduct described in the indictment: speaking with sources, asking for clarification or more documentation, and receiving and publishing official secrets. News organizations frequently and necessarily publish classified information in order to inform the public of matters of profound public significance.”
Assange’s 12 year ordeal, including seven years in self-exile in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London before his arrest and imprisonment, underscores the continued threat that the century-old Espionage Act still poses to civil liberties today — and not just in the United States. Assange is not a U.S. citizen, nor was he ever a resident. But because of modern extradition treaties, there were few places in the world where he could travel to escape the Act’s reach,
Under the terms of Monday’s deal, Assange pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to 62 months incarceration, but with credit for time served, according to documents filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.
Ultimately, freedom of the press is what was at stake with the government’s case against Assange. It was never only about him. The precedent that would have been set by his extradition and trial would have sent a chilling message to journalists across the country and the world: You can run, but you can’t hide from the Espionage Act.
What is the Espionage Act?……………………………………………………………………………………….Based on the Defense Secrets Act of 1911, the Espionage Act of 1917 included much stiffer penalties — including the death penalty — for sharing secret or confidential information or otherwise interfering with the operations of the U.S. military.
The Espionage Act made it a crime to obtain information regarding national defense “with intent or reason to believe” that doing so would hurt the U.S. or to advantage another country. While subsequent amendments and court decisions have refined its language and scope, its core purpose remains the same.
Espionage Act and the Supreme Court
The law was immediately controversial because its use was not limited to actual acts of espionage. Rather, the Espionage Act allowed the government to clamp down on anyone who opposed the war effort.
In Schenck v. United States, in 1919, the Supreme Court upheld the conspiracy conviction against socialist Charles Schenck under the Espionage Act for distributing anti-war leaflets that urged people to boycott the draft.
The problem with the Court’s ruling in Schenck, as subsequent decisions would affirm, is that Schenk’s speech was not calling for violence or even civil disobedience. Rather, his speech was precisely the kind of political expression that decades of subsequent Supreme Court decisions would ultimately uphold. Numerous convictions under the Espionage Act would make their way to the Court, including that of socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs, who was arrested for giving a speech opposing the war.
Since then, one of the most nefarious uses of the Espionage Act has been to silence journalists. At least insofar as publishing the leaked documents on the Wikileaks website, what Assange did was little different than what The New York Times and The Washington Post did in 1971 when they published and reported on thousands of pages from a classified report about the war in Vietnam.
……………………………………….As the Supreme Court has ruled, freedom of the press is a foundational principle, enshrined in the Bill of Rights. And though Julian Assange is finally free, FIRE continues to have serious concerns about the grave threat the Espionage Act poses to journalism and the First Amendment. https://www.sott.net/article/492768-Why-Julian-Assange-couldnt-outrun-the-Espionage-Act
When it comes to power, solar is about to leave nuclear and everything else in the shade
In Australia, solar is pushing down prices
Australia’s energy market operator says record generation from grid-scale renewables and rooftop solar is pushing down wholesale electricity prices.
Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University July 2, 2024 https://theconversation.com/when-it-comes-to-power-solar-is-about-to-leave-nuclear-and-everything-else-in-the-shade-233644
Opposition leader Peter Dutton might have been hoping for an endorsement from economists for his plan to take Australian nuclear.
He shouldn’t expect one from The Economist.
The Economist is a British weekly news magazine that has reported on economic thinking and served as a place for economists to exchange views since 1843.
By chance, just three days after Dutton announced plans for seven nuclear reactors he said would usher in a new era of economic prosperity for Australia, The Economist produced a special issue, titled Dawn of the Solar Age.
Whereas nuclear power is barely growing, and is shrinking as a proportion of global power output, The Economist reported solar power is growing so quickly it is set to become the biggest source of electricity on the planet by the mid-2030s.
By the 2040s – within this next generation – it could be the world’s largest source of energy of any kind, overtaking fossil fuels like coal and oil.
Solar’s off-the-charts global growth
Installed solar capacity is doubling every three years, meaning it has grown tenfold in the past ten years. The Economist says the next tenfold increase will be the equivalent of multiplying the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors by eight, in less time than it usually takes to build one of them.
To give an idea of the standing start the industry has grown from, The Economist reports that in 2004 it took the world an entire year to install one gigawatt of solar capacity (about enough to power a small city). This year, that’s expected to happen every day.
Energy experts didn’t see it coming. The Economist includes a chart showing that every single forecast the International Energy Agency has made for the growth of the growth of solar since 2009 has been wrong. What the agency said would take 20 years happened in only six.
The forecasts closest to the mark were made by Greenpeace – “environmentalists poo-pooed for zealotry and economic illiteracy” – but even those forecasts turned out to be woefully short of what actually happened.
And the cost of solar cells has been plunging in the way that costs usually do when emerging technologies become mainstream.
The Economist describes the process this way:
As the cumulative production of a manufactured good increases, costs go down. As costs go down, demand goes up. As demand goes up, production increases – and costs go down further.
Normally, this can’t continue. In earlier energy transitions – from wood to coal, coal to oil, and oil to gas – it became increasingly expensive to find fuel.
But the main ingredient in solar cells (apart from energy) is sand, for the silicon and the glass. This is not only the case in China, which makes the bulk of the world’s solar cells, but also in India, which is short of power, blessed by sun and sand, and which is manufacturing and installing solar cells at a prodigious rate.
Solar easy, batteries more difficult
Batteries are more difficult. They are needed to make solar useful after dark and they require so-called critical minerals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt (which Australia has in abundance).
But the efficiency of batteries is soaring and the price is plummeting, meaning that on one estimate the cost of a kilowatt-hour of battery storage has fallen by 99% over the past 30 years.
In the United States, plans are being drawn up to use batteries to transport solar energy as well as store it. Why build high-voltage transmission cables when you can use train carriages full of batteries to move power from the remote sunny places that collect it to the cities that need it?
Solar’s step change
The International Energy Agency is suddenly optimistic. Its latest assessment released in January says last year saw a “step change” in renewable power, driven by China’s adoption of solar. In 2023, China installed as much solar capacity as the entire world did in 2022.
The world is on track to install more renewable capacity over the next five years than has ever been installed over the past 100 years, something the agency says still won’t be enough to get to net-zero emissions by 2050.
That would need renewables capacity to triple over the next five years, instead of more than doubling.
Oxford University energy specialist Rupert Way has modelled a “fast transition” scenario, in which the costs of solar and other new technologies keep falling as they have been rather than as the International Energy Agency expects.
He finds that by 2060, solar will be by far the world’s biggest source of energy, exceeding wind and green hydrogen and leaving nuclear with an infinitesimally tiny role.
In Australia, solar is pushing down prices
Australia’s energy market operator says record generation from grid-scale renewables and rooftop solar is pushing down wholesale electricity prices.
South Australia and Tasmania are the states that rely on renewables the most. They are the two states with the lowest wholesale electricity prices outside Victoria, whose prices are very low because of its reliance on brown coal.
It is price – rather than the environment – that most interests The Economist. It says when the price of something gets low people use much, much more of it.
As energy gets really copious and all but free, it will be used for things we can’t even imagine today. The Economist said to bet against that is to bet against capitalism.
The State Failed to Break Assange
Julian Assange has not been freed, passive voice, the beneficiary of decisions taken by the American and British judiciaries — and almost certainly in the Biden regime’s upper reaches. Julian Assange has achieved his freedom, actively. Even during the darkest moments of his years under house arrest, in asylum at Ecuador’s London embassy, and at Belmarsh, he never surrendered his sovereignty. He remained ever the captain of his soul, and never did he allow his captors entry onto his ship.
SCHEERPOST, JULY 1, 2024 Patrick Lawrence
After apparently lengthy negotiations via Julian Assange’s attorneys, the WikiLeaks founder agreed to plead guilty to one felony charge of illegally obtaining and publishing U.S. government documents of various kinds — many standing as evidence of war crimes and human rights abuses, others exposing the Democratic Party’s corruptions during the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Assange was sentenced Wednesday to a term of five years and two months, precisely the time he spent at Belmarsh, the maximum-security prison in southeast London. It was from Belmarsh that Assange fought requests for his extradition to the U.S., where he would have faced multiple charges and a lengthy sentence under the 1917 Espionage Act. When he departed for Australia at the conclusion of the proceeding in Saipan, the largest of the Northern Marianas and also the capital city, he became a free man for the first time in 14 years, counting from his time under house arrest in 2010.
Let us take the utmost care with our diction at this surprising and welcome turn. This will enable us to fathom the moment clearly.
Julian Assange has not been freed, passive voice, the beneficiary of decisions taken by the American and British judiciaries — and almost certainly in the Biden regime’s upper reaches. Julian Assange has achieved his freedom, actively. Even during the darkest moments of his years under house arrest, in asylum at Ecuador’s London embassy, and at Belmarsh, he never surrendered his sovereignty. He remained ever the captain of his soul, and never did he allow his captors entry onto his ship.
It was for this, most fundamentally, that Assange has suffered these past years, especially the five he spent in a cell at Belmarsh. The project was precisely to destroy his sovereignty, to break him one way or another, and he refused to break. His will — and I simply cannot imagine the awesome muscularity of it — has seen him through to victory.
When news of his impending freedom arrived with us last Monday evening, I reacted without hesitation, “It is not a bad deal. Everyone knows the truth and worth of what Assange did. Nothing lost. A good man’s life hung in the balance — this a gain.”
“Everyone” seems already an overestimation, but I will get to this in a moment.
Among the curious details of Assange’s plea is the choice of the federal courthouse in the Northern Marianas, a U.S. possession, for the denouement of his case. Assange’s legal team requested this peculiar location, let us not miss. It is remote from the U.S. mainland but close to his native Australia. There are two things to surmise from this, I think.
One, it is likely Assange’s attorneys thought it a very bad idea for their client to set foot on American soil anywhere near the court in Washington’s environs where cases of this kind, national-security cases, are customarily tried — tried before jurors drawn from a pool well populated with active and retired national security operatives, bureaucrats and assorted apparatchiks.
That the locale for the final settlement was negotiated away from the District Court of Eastern Virginia indicates that Assange’s lawyers remained mistrustful of U.S. assurances of a fair treatment under the law even while their talks proceeded.
Two, and the larger point here, moving the case to so out-of-the-way a courtroom indicated that Assange and his legal defense almost certainly had considerable leverage in determining the terms under which he achieved his freedom. This tells us something important about the years Assange spent at Belmarsh subjected to disgracefully punitive conditions and the circus various judges, Vanessa Baraitser high among them, made of the British courts.
I have long assumed, as many others may have, that the Biden regime and its predecessor simply did not want Assange extradited because it did not want to take up a trial that would more or less automatically lead to a sentence of 170 years. Too potentially messy, too politically risky, too harsh a light on this administration’s hypocrisies in the matter of press freedom and its indifference to, if not its approval of, the British authorities’ inhumane treatment of a man whose organization exposed war crimes.
How else to explain the lengthy delays in the London courts these past five years? And I cannot but think with something close to conviction that the corporate press in America, chiefly The New York Times, had some modest voice in the decision to negotiate a plea that reflects to some extent the Assange side’s terms?
The Times has avoided serious reporting of the Assange case for years. Embarrassing it would have been for the paper to report proceedings in Eastern Virginia, as it would have been obliged to do. We all remember that The Times made full use of WikiLeaks releases until, in April 2017, Mike Pompeo denounced Assange as “a state actor of Russia.” It was at that point Washington turned frontally against the organization and its founder, and the corporate press dutifully followed the lead of Trump’s egregious secretary of state.
The Biden regime has managed at last to drop a hot potato, but it is a stretch to assume it has not burned its fingers. As others have remarked, it could have vacated its case entirely and, indeed, gone so far as to offer Assange compensation for his suffering while facing unjust charges.
That would have marked a dramatic redemption. Instead, it leaves the door still wide open to pursuing cases such as Assange’s whenever a reporter’s truths are similarly inconvenient. This is self-inflicted damage atop years of self-inflicted damage, in my read. The Biden government’s exit from this case more or less mutilates any claim it will henceforth assert to respect press freedom and First Amendment rights.
Sheer Endurance
I measure the magnitude of Julian Assange’s triumph not in passing political terms, although the politics of his achievement of freedom are important. I view it in more personal terms. His greatest victory lies in the strength and sheer endurance he summoned and consistently displayed as the machinery of two sovereign states attempted to destroy him.
Several years ago, readers will recall, Nils Melzer testified in Baraitser’s court that Assange’s treatment met official definitions of psychological and physical torture. Not long after the U.N.’s special rapporteur on torture gave his testimony, I began an essay on the Assange case for Raritan, the cultural and political journal. It came to me as I wrote “Assange Behind Glass,” which I reproduce here from my web site archives, that we had to see it in the context of the “total domination” Hannah Arendt explored in The Origins of Totalitarianism, her look back, in 1951, at the horrors of the 20th century’s first half. “Its intent is to strip humanity of all identity and individuation,” I wrote of Arendt’s theme. And from her text:……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
…………….Are there undisclosed codicils attaching to the Assange’s camp’s plea agreement? Will his professional activities henceforth be curtailed by agreement? These are inevitable questions, even if one does not care to pose them. The answers are unclear and may never be clear. Out of respect and admiration for a man who has just won his freedom after paying a very high price in his fight for it, I leave these matters to him and those around him. https://scheerpost.com/2024/07/01/patrick-lawrence-the-state-failed-to-break-assange/
Dutton’s Nuclear ‘Thuggery’ Will Heat Up Debate And Energy Prices, But It Won’t Cool The Climate
An uncooperative Senate could block Dutton’s nuclear power plans, but could not stop him expanding and prolonging the use of fossil fuels and derailing the renewable energy transition.
Only voters can do that.
Jim Green on July 2, 2024, https://newmatilda.com/2024/07/02/duttons-nuclear-thuggery-will-heat-up-debate-and-energy-prices-but-it-wont-cool-the-climate/
Bullying your way to nuclear power might play out well in the Liberal-National Party room, but it’s unlikely to win favour with the states, or the punters, writes Dr Jim Green.
Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull famously described Coalition leader Peter Dutton as a “thug”. That description appears particularly apt in Dutton’s nuclear power plans.
The Coalition’s nuclear project is opposed by state Labor governments in each of the five states being targeted. Victoria, NSW and Queensland have laws banning nuclear power. The Labor governments in SA and WA may follow suit if they think state legislation will give them some legal protection, or political advantage. Or both.
Could a Dutton Coalition government override state laws banning nuclear power? Anne Twomey, a Sydney University Professor Emerita with lengthy experience teaching and practising in constitutional law, argues that states probably could not prevent the Commonwealth establishing a nuclear power plant, nor could they prevent necessary associated operations such as transmission lines and nuclear waste transport.
Would a Dutton Coalition government attempt to override state opposition to nuclear power plants? Almost certainly it would. Nationals leader David Littleproud said in March that “if the Australian people vote for us that’s a fair indication to premiers that they should get out of the way”.
Coalition and Labor federal governments have pursued attempts to impose a national nuclear waste dump in SA and the NT despite state/territory laws banning such facilities. Those attempts have all failed, largely due to community opposition led by affected Traditional Owners.
Legal challenges helped stop three of the four proposed nuclear dump sites — Woomera (SA) under the Howard government; Muckaty (NT) under the Abbott government; and Kimba (SA) under the Morrison and Albanese governments. But the legal difficulties could have been overcome if the government of the day was ruthless enough and wasn’t suffering too much political pain because of its racist, undemocratic thuggery.
No doubt a Dutton Coalition government would ignore the wishes of Traditional Owners and Native Title holders opposed to the construction of a nuclear reactor on their country. They would be stripped of their land rights and heritage protections, as has been the case with nuclear waste dump proposals.
Compulsory acquisition
What about the companies who own the sites being targeted by the Coalition for nuclear power plants, and who have their own multi-billion dollar plans to develop their own clean energy industrial hubs based around renewables. According to energy minister Chris Bowen, six of the owners of the seven targeted sites have ruled out agreeing to nuclear power reactors on their land.
Dutton hasn’t bothered to consult these companies, but he has sought legal advice. This is what he said: “We will work with the companies, the owners of the sites. If we find a situation where we apply a national interest test and we require that site to be part of the national grid, then the legal advice that we have is that the Commonwealth has ample power to compulsorily acquire that with ample compensation.”
The Coalition also hasn’t bothered to consult communities around the sites targeted for nuclear reactors. And, like state governments and the owners of the targeted sites, opposition from local communities will be overridden.
Nationals deputy leader Perin Davey made the mistake of saying that the Coalition would not impose nuclear power plants on communities that were adamantly opposed. Davey was corrected by Littleproud, who said: “She is not correct and we made this very clear. Peter Dutton and David Littleproud as part of a Coalition government are prepared to make the tough decisions in the national interest.”
Likewise, Dutton said: “Perin I think made a mistake yesterday as everybody does from time to time…. We’ve identified the seven locations and we believe it’s in the community’s interests and the national interest to proceed.”
Democracy is for wimps, apparently, and for traitors who oppose the ‘national interest’ as Comrades Dutton and Littleproud see it.
All this stands in stark contrast to a 2019 parliamentary inquiry led by current shadow energy minister Ted O’Brien. The Committee’s report was titled ‘Not without your approval: a way forward for nuclear technology in Australia’.
Announcing the release of the parliamentary report, O’Brien said in 2019 that a future government should only proceed with nuclear power on the condition that it make “a commitment to community consent as a condition of approval for any nuclear power or nuclear waste disposal facility”. He also waffled on about “maintaining a social license based on trust and transparency” and putting the Australian people “at the centre of any approval process”.
That was then, this is now. The ‘national interest’ is at stake.
Prof. Anne Twomey notes that the Dutton government would need to get legislation through Parliament, including the Senate, both to repeal federal laws banning nuclear power and also “to provide any necessary legal support and protection for a nuclear power industry in Australia”.
An uncooperative Senate could block Dutton’s nuclear power plans, but could not stop him expanding and prolonging the use of fossil fuels and derailing the renewable energy transition. Only voters can do that.
South Australia
Here in SA, we’ll get one or more nuclear power reactors in SA whether we like it or not and whether or not we need the additional power supply. SA has gone from 1 percent renewable electricity supply to 74 percent over the past 16 years and the government aims to reach 100 percent net renewables by 2027.
While there’s doubt about the 2027 timeline, it’s a safe bet we’ll reach 100 percent net renewables by the time a nuclear reactor could possibly begin generating electricity 20-plus years from now.
The Northern Power Station near Port Augusta, one of the seven sites targeted by the Coalition, was shut down in 2016 and the region has since become a renewables hub. Are Dutton and O’Brien unaware of these developments? Are they planning a renewables-to-nuclear transition for SA? It’s difficult to see their non-negotiable plan for a nuclear power plant in SA as anything other than an ill-conceived, uncosted thought bubble.
The Coalition insists that nuclear power would reduce power bills. But there’s no evidence to support that claim, and plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise. The claim isn’t supported by CSIRO’s ‘GenCost’ report; or in a recent report prepared for the Clean Energy Council by Egis, a leading global consulting, construction and engineering firm; or in a recent report on small modular reactors by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis; or in the latest economic analysis released by investment firm Lazard.
SA Premier Peter Malinauskas isn’t convinced about the Coalition’s economic claims either, saying: “Every single objective, independent analysis that has looked at this has said nuclear power would make power more expensive in Australia rather than cheaper. Why we would impose that burden on power consumers in our country is completely beyond me.”
* Dr Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and co-author of a new report released by the Australian Conservation Foundation, ‘Power Games: Assessing coal to nuclear proposals in Australia’.
“They just fit in with what we do:” Farmers reap rewards as they play host to wind and solar
ReNewEconomy Liv Casben, Jun 29, 2024
Renewables in agriculture are gaining momentum across the nation as Australia pushes to reach its net-zero emissions target by 2050.
Australia’s energy market operator has declared renewables as the most cost-effective way of reaching net-zero targets in the grid, but just how much of the load will be carried by the farming sector remains unclear.
Across pockets of the nation, farmers are already doing their bit to reduce their carbon footprint.
“Anecdotally, we have seen a huge increase in farmers seeking renewables projects as farmers seek to increase the productivity of their farms,” Farmers for Climate Action’s Natalie Collard told AAP.
“Renewables offer drought-proof income, and drought-proof income keeps farms going through the toughest of times.”
The Lee family has farmed at Glenrowan West for 150 years, but for the past three years they’ve also added solar to the mix.
A German-based company leases the land from the Lees and maintains the solar panels, which run alongside the sheep farming operation.
“The lessee basically runs it just as another paddock, the sheep go in just as they would under any other farming operation,” Gayle Lee said. “We haven’t found there to be any noticeable loss of production.”
……………………………………………………. Karin Stark, who will host the annual Renewables in Agriculture conference in Toowoomba next week, says consultation is key to farmers playing a “critical role” in the renewables transition and keeping everyone happy…………… more https://reneweconomy.com.au/they-just-fit-in-with-what-we-do-farmers-reap-rewards-as-they-play-host-to-wind-and-solar/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0qML5s3XgsQ3EZd5pJl15CdGXQ60-BC3TLkIVpcaWkgLsBSarHkHoPUYI_aem_OC5kzgz0cTiwWtnLVva56A
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 
