Vale Uncle Kevin Buzzacott, fierce advocate for his people and a nuclear free Australia
Green Left , Jim Green, January 8, 2024 Issue 1397
Arabunna Elder Uncle Kevin Buzzacott passed away in Alice Springs on November 29, 2023. A fierce advocate for his people and for a nuclear-free Australia, Kevin will be sorely missed.
Kevin was born in 1946 at Finniss Springs, on Arabunna country in South Australia. As a youngster, he learnt culture, language, how to live off the land and he learnt to work with cattle and horses.
Over the years, Kevin and his family lived in many places including Alice Springs, Tarcoola and Gawler. He worked on the railways for many years.
In 1984, Kevin moved to Port Augusta, where he worked as alcohol and drug worker. In 1985 he moved to Alice Springs where he worked on the successful campaign to stop the Todd River from being dammed. He helped establish the Arrernte Council in Alice Springs and served as an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission regional councillor.
Kevin returned to South Australia in the mid-1990s to protect Arabunna country.
One of his major campaigns was to try to stop the rapacious water take from the Great Artesian Basin by mining company WMC (and later BHP) to supply the Olympic Dam copper/uranium mine at Roxby Downs.
The extraction of around 40 million litres of water has adversely affected the precious Mound Springs on Arabunna country — desert oases supported by the underlying Great Artesian Basin.
Kevin’s campaign might eventually succeed: there are plans to build a desalination plant on Spencer Gulf which could lead to a reduction and possible cessation of the water take from the Great Artesian Basin.
Kevin explained: “I’ve been at this game of calling for justice and peace for 30, maybe 40 years, but what really got me going was when Western Mining Corporation (WMC) set up the Olympic Dam mine. They started doing deals with the government on pastoral leases. So they did deals with S. Kidman & Co. and took up one of their cattle stations, Stuart’s Creek Station, which is on Arabunna land. Because of our native title and ongoing land rights campaigning, we’ve been fighting for these places for a long time. Stuart’s Creek is a very special, sacred place for us, and we’ve been trying to get it back for a long time.
“I thought that just before they bought that place I’d go and protest and camp on it. Also, it is on that station, on the shores of the Lake Eyre, where WMC started taking the sacred water out of the Lake Eyre Basin. That was where they started sucking the life blood out of us. That is where they put their big bore down, right on the shores of the lake. That was a real kick in the guts for me and really got me going.”
……………………………………………………………………….. Protest camp
Kevin set up a protest camp on Arabunna country in March 1999. WMC was among the most viciously racist mining companies in Australia and, true to form, the company tried to have Arabunna Elder Kevin Buzzacott evicted. The protest camp lasted until it was busted up by WMC goons and local police in December 1999.
Kevin initiated court actions against WMC and the federal government. These actions weren’t successful in the courts, but helped draw attention to the issues Kevin was fighting for.
“I did a court action against Hugh Morgan, who was the head of WMC. I charged Hugh Morgan with genocide, trying to flush him out and some of the shareholders. Hugh Morgan is based in Victoria. People in Melbourne deserve to live in a good place, they don’t need to live with these criminals and warmongers. Another court action I did was one I brought against Alexander Downer and Senator Robert Hill for stopping Lake Eyre from becoming a World Heritage site.”
After the protest camp on Arabunna country was busted up, Kevin set up a protest camp at Genocide Corner, outside the SA Governor’s residence in the centre of Kaurna Yerta/Adelaide.
“I had to go to Adelaide for the court case against Hugh Morgan, and when I was there the charges against Hugh Morgan were dismissed. The judge was a pastor in the Lutheran Church, and I asked him to stand down because I believed he had a conflict of interest as his church was a shareholder in the WMC. When he refused to do so I told him to get stuffed, walked out and went straight down to Government House to start a protest. I took banners, and whatever things I had,” Kevin said
“While I was talking to the media I was confronted by the cops. I looked over the road and saw a patch of grass and thought, ‘Bugger it, I’ll make camp and a fire here’. I ended up calling it ‘genocide Corner’, and renamed Adelaide the ‘City of Genocide’. It was on the intersection of King William Street and North Terrace [one of the main intersections in the city] so loads of people were passing by.
“Four ceremonial fires for peace were lit and, after 21 days, the Adelaide City Council and 50 police came down and arrested me for failing to cease to loiter. It was one of those laws they hadn’t used in a long time, but they used it to clear away all my stuff and my supporters.
“One of the court conditions was that I was not able to walk within the vicinity of Genocide Corner. I was of a mind just to walk straight back there, but I had the Peace Walk from Lake Eyre to Sydney coming up so I had to let that one go.”
The Peace Walk was timed to reach Sydney for the Olympics in September 2000.
“We walked for months, for 3000 kilometres, and all sorts of people from all walks of life joined us. We were carrying the fire for peace and justice. I made sure that we went through lots of different Aboriginal communities. I got a lot of support, but the government also pressured a lot of people not to support me by threatening their jobs and funding. Each place we went to, people took us through their land and we respected each mob.
There were all types of pressure put on people along the way. The cops were nasty and threatened some of the walkers with guns and everything. I visited all the jails along the way from Broken Hill to Dubbo and Bathurst. It was sad to see so many young brothers confined and locked up.
“We went to Canberra and met up with the Tent Embassy mob. A couple of politicians came to meet us and then we all went to Government House to present the Governor-General with a document of peace and justice.
“When we arrived in Sydney for the Olympic Games the Tent Embassy mob had already set up a camp [in Victoria Park], so we joined up with them. We did all sorts of things. We did a re-enactment at the beach where Captain Cook came in. We re-enacted the bad way in which he came with guns and all that and then the next day we did how they should have come.”
Reclaiming totems
In 2002, Kevin reclaimed the Emu and Kangaroo totems from the Australian Coat of Arms hanging outside Parliament House, Canberra………………………………………………………..
In 2004, Kevin participated in the Peace Pilgrimage from the Olympic Dam uranium mine to Hiroshima, Japan.
“During the first walk and then in Sydney we met people from all over and that got everything going. Aboriginal nations from Queensland were saying there should be a walk up the coast to show the world the things they were suffering. Then some people made contact with people in Hiroshima to have a walk from the uranium mine in Roxby to where the bomb was dropped in order to show how all these things are linked. Aboriginal people, Japanese monks, all sorts of people were involved. It started at Roxby and then went to Canberra and then an aeroplane took us to Japan where we walked all over the country. We visited Nagasaki and Hiroshima and met a lot of people who were kids when the bombs were falling. We did talks and took part in a huge ceremony on the anniversary of the bomb being dropped. There were people everywhere and lanterns lit and people crying, it was full on.”
In 2006, Kevin went to Melbourne for the Stolenwealth Games…………………………………………..
And Kevin was back in Melbourne in 2008 for BHP’s Annual General Meeting.
‘Born to be peacemakers’
“BHP have taken over WMC. They now own Olympic Dam and want to make it bigger. Myself and others who want to stop the mine got to be proxies for shareholders, they gave us tickets and we got to go inside on their behalf. I got to speak and I told the people there about the damage they are doing and that they need to stop it immediately.
“Aboriginal people have lived here for more than 40,000 years and cared for this country, but now it’s being turned into a sick and evil place. Myself, and others around this country, were born to be peacemakers.
“We mustn’t be frightened to educate others and fight, but not in a warlike way, to protect the earth and let everything run free. I don’t want to shoot or bomb the people from BHP and the others who are destroying this country because two wrongs don’t make a right. I think if I can help them to wake up to what they are doing then that will be punishment enough.”
Kevin was at the first meeting of the Alliance Against Uranium (later renamed the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance) in 1997 and, for many years, he served as the Alliance’s President.
He actively supported countless campaigns against uranium mining and plans to dump nuclear waste on Aboriginal land. He was at the Beverley uranium mine supporting Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners in May 2000 when SA Police viciously and illegally attacked protesters, children and journalists.
Kevin was at the Lizard’s Revenge protest at Olympic Dam in 2012.
Kevin was awarded Nuclear-Free Future Resistance Award in 2001 by the Nuclear-Free Future Foundation and travelled to Ireland to accept the award. Kevin was awarded the SA Conservation Council’s Jill Hudson Award in 2006.
Kevin was awarded the Australian Conservation Foundation’s Peter Rawlinson Award in 2007 for two decades of work highlighting the impacts of uranium mining and promoting a nuclear free Australia.
ACF Executive Director Don Henry said: “Kevin is a cultural practitioner, an activist, an advocate and an educator. He has travelled tirelessly, talking to groups large and small about the impacts of uranium mining and the threats posed by the nuclear industry. Kevin has had a profound impact on the lives of many people – especially young people – with his many tours and ‘on-country’ events. For many young activists ‘Uncle Kev’ is truly an unsung hero and, against the current pro-nuclear tide, his is a very important struggle and story.”
Kevin participated in many of the Radioactive Exposure Tours run by Friends of the Earth. We camped at the ‘Old Lake’ (Lake Eyre) and generations of young activists learnt first-hand about the impacts of the Olympic Dam mine on country and culture.
Kevin’s partner Margret Gilchrist passed on Kevin’s final message when he returned to Alice Springs with his health failing: “Keep that old fire burning; don’t stop til we’ve won; Lake Eyre for World Heritage.”
[Kevin’s funeral service can be viewed online and many videos featuring Kevin can be found at Cinemata and YouTube. Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth.]
Karina’s father went blind at Emu Field. Now, she’s fighting for a treaty on nuclear weapons.
The Yankunytjatjara Anangu woman talked about the devastating effect the testing had on her family, including the loss of her father.
Karina Lester knows the fallout nuclear weapons can cause.
Her father, the late Yami Lester, went blind as a young man after the British tested atomic weapons in Emu Field.
“The scars are still felt on our Country,” said Ms Lester, a Yankunytjatjara Anangu woman from north-west South Australia.
“And the scars are still evident on our people.”
A group of Australian atomic survivors and relatives visited Canberra on Wednesday to speak with government decision-makers about their experiences of the British nuclear testing program in WA and SA.
They are calling on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
In 1953 the British initiated a program of nuclear testing in Australia at the Montebello Islands, off the coast of WA and in Emu Field in South Australia.
Two years later, the British government announced a larger site for the tests at Maralinga.
Ms Lester carries her family’s stories about the impacts of the tests on her people.
“I had a grandmother of mine needing to dig a grave to bury her parents because soon after the radiation fallout, the elderly people started to suffer and die,” she said.
“My father never saw me or my children.
“It’s all because of a decision by governments of the day to say ‘That is no man’s country, go and test your bombs’.
“It’s been a huge, painful journey for us but it’s such an important story that needs to be told.”
Maxine Goodwin is the daughter of an Australian nuclear veteran who became ill as a result of his involvement in the first atomic test in WA.
“Signing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is a significant step towards addressing the harm experienced by individuals and communities,” she said.
In October 1953 when the British detonated the Totem I and II nuclear bombs at Emu Field, Yankunytjatjara, Antikarinya and Pitjantjatjara woman June Lennon was only a few months old.
Her family witnessed the tests and have suffered from ill-health since.
“The government didn’t tell the truth about the nuclear testing program,” she said.
“There were so many lies. They didn’t tell people what they were doing.”
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons Australia director Gem Romuld said it was important for policy makers to hear stories firsthand.
“Nuclear survivors are experts on the devastating humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons,” she said.
“Australia’s experience with nuclear weapons testing is a powerful motivation to join the nuclear weapon ban treaty.”
The delegation will be in Canberra on Wednesday and Thursday to meet parliamentarians, including Foreign Minister Penny Wong and speak at an event hosted by the Parliamentary Friends of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
A free press, a free Julian Assange – would be the best gift for the world
Australian government using a loophole to evade international non-proliferation treaties, to get nuclear submarines?
“interesting interpretation” that the government would try to qualify for an exemption from the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspection regime by claiming military submarines, which will be fuelled with weapons grade uranium, are for peaceful purposes.”
Labor questions whether nuclear subs breach international law, AFR, Andrew Tillett, Political correspondent, 30 Nov 21, Labor MPs have raised concerns about Australia breaching its non-proliferation obligations under the Morrison government’s plan to acquire nuclear-powered submarines from Britain and the United States.
Parliament’s Treaties Committee has begun a snap inquiry into the first element under the AUKUS deal, an agreement between the three countries to allow the sharing of highly classified nuclear technology with Australian officials.
The nuclear agreement also covers training opportunities for Australian submariners and technicians with the British and American programs.
Under the AUKUS pact, the government will acquire up to eight nuclear-powered submarines, promising they will be built in Adelaide. The first is due to be delivered sometime before 2040.
The government is adamant the nuclear submarine deal will not be a precursor to acquiring nuclear weapons.
The inquiry is due to report by December 17 but at its first hearing on Monday, Labor MP Josh Wilson highlighted significant uncertainty over the government’s plan to use a loophole in the international nuclear safety regime, which had never been used before, to acquire the submarines.
Mr Wilson and fellow Labor MP Peter Khalil grilled officials from the Defence, Foreign Affairs and Attorney-General’s departments over how Australia could acquire nuclear-powered submarines while still complying with its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
Training ‘needs to start now’
Mr Wilson said it was an “interesting interpretation” that the government would try to qualify for an exemption from the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspection regime by claiming military submarines, which will be fuelled with weapons grade uranium, are for peaceful purposes.
“If it was determined that was acceptable, we will have broken new ground in weakening the existing non-proliferation regime,” Mr Wilson observed……….. https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/questions-over-whether-nuclear-subs-breach-international-law-20211129-p59d0h
Maralinga nuclear bomb tests – British and Australian governments’ callous cruelty to First Nations people.
Australia’s Chernobyl: The British carried out nuclear tests on Indigenous land. It will never heal. https://www.mamamia.com.au/maralinga-nuclear-testing/ CHELSEA MCLAUGHLIN, JULY 5, 2021 For tens of thousands of years, the Aṉangu people lived on the warm, red earth of their country.
The land provided them with food, water and shelter as they travelled around an area we now know as outback Far North South Australia.
But after colonisation, they were moved off their land: forcibly removed, sent into missions across the region and displaced by train lines linking Australia’s east and west that impacted their water supply.
Much of the information around the tests was highly classified, and some information remains so.
For tens of thousands of years, the Aṉangu people lived on the warm, red earth of their country.
The land provided them with food, water and shelter as they travelled around an area we now know as outback Far North South Australia.
But after colonisation, they were moved off their land: forcibly removed, sent into missions across the region and displaced by train lines linking Australia’s east and west that impacted their water supply.
Much of the information around the tests was highly classified, and some information remains so.
Thirty per cent of the British and Australian servicemen who were exposed during these tests died of cancer, though a Royal Commission in 1984 was not able to reach a conclusion linking their health issues directly to the blasts.
Similarly, many locals died prematurely, went blind and suffered from illness that may have been linked to radiation.
British nuclear scientists, wanting to determine the long-term effects of the tests on Australia and its citizens, ordered the testing of dead Australian infants and children for radiation contamination.
Between 1957 and 1978 in hospitals around Australia, bones were secretly removed from 21,830 bodies. They were reduced to ash and sent away to be analysed for the presence of Strontium 90, a radioactive isotope produced by nuclear fission.
Unsurprisingly, none of the First Nations people of the region were told about the tests and many of the bones were taken without permission.
Associate professor Liz Tynan, the author of Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga Story, told Mamamia‘s The Quicky First Nations people were still in the area during the periods of testing, and this led to disastrous consequences.
Tynan said the Milpuddie family – Charlie, Edie, two kids and their dogs – were found by British service personnel in 1957, camped on the crater left by the bomb Marcoo soon after it had been detonated.
They were rounded up and most of the family, not Edie, but most of them, were given showers. Edie didn’t wish to have a shower,” Tynan explained.
“They were tested for radioactivity and the geiger counters did detect radioactivity, particularly on the young boy Henry. Anyway, there were rather insensitively treated I suppose, given showers, had clothes put on them and then take off down south to a mission.”
Their dogs were shot in front of them. Edie was pregnant at the time, and she later lost her child.
“It was a tragic story and indicative of the callous approach to Indigenous people that was displayed by both the British government and their officials that were conducting the tests, and by the Australian government as well,” Tynan said.
Following the testing, many Aṉangu people returned to the area, but the lands that had previously sustained and protected them were now poison.
We still don’t know the truth impact of the bombs at Maralinga, as well as nearby Emu Fields and the Montebello Islands off the coast of Western Australia.
“The South Australian Department of Health commissioned a fairly extensive study, [but] that study was hampered by the fact there was no base-line data from which to understand the general health of the population before the tests,” Tynan said.
The study did show an increase in various cancers, but most of the findings were inconclusive due to a lack of information. Indigenous Australians were not counted in the census at the time and there was very little known about the health of the populations.
In 1964, a limited cleanup of the Maralinga site, named ‘Operation Hercules’, took place.
A year after a 1966 survey into the level of contamination at the site, a second clean-up titled ‘Operation Brumby’ filled 21 pits with contaminated equipment and covered them with 650 tonnes of concrete.
Tynan said it was later found the survey data was drastically wrong, and the contamination was 10 times worse than thought.
It wasn’t until decades later, with the help whistleblowers and scientists, that the government began to realise the true, horrifying extent of the damage done to the land at Maralinga.
Under an agreement between the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia in 1995, another clean-up took place. And while this was more thorough than the previous, it still came with issues.
Whistleblower Alan Parkinson, who wrote the 2007 book Maralinga: Australia’s Nuclear Waste Cover-up, exposed the unsatisfactory methods.
The plan had been to treat several thousand tonnes of debris contaminated with plutonium by a process called situ vitrification. Against the advice of Parkinson, the government extended the contract of the project manager, even though that company had no knowledge of the complex process of vitrification.
Parkinson was let go from the project.
The government and the project manager then embarked on a hybrid scheme in which some pits would be exhumed and others treated by vitrification. After successfully treating 12 pits, the 13th exploded and severely damaged the equipment. The government then cancelled the vitrification and simply exhumed the remaining pits, placed the debris in a shallow pit and covered it with clean soil.
Parkinson told The Quicky another, complete clean-up of Maralinga could take place, but it was unlikely because of the cost and the courage it would take to admit the previous attempts were insufficient.
Around the same time as the 90s clean up was the Australian government push for a nuclear waste dump to be located nearby.
Fearing even further poisoning of their country, First Nations woman Eileen Wani Wingfield co-founded the Coober Pedy Women’s Council to campaign against the proposal.
The plan was eventually abandoned, but has popped up again in many forms over the decades. Currently, the Coalition is amending a bill that could see a site set up near Kimba.
Glen Wingfield, Eileen’s son, has spent his life working and learning from his parents’ tireless campaign for protection of their country.
The theme of NAIDOC Week 2021 is Heal Country! but as Wingfield told The Quicky, much of the Aṉangu lands in and around Maralinga are beyond healing.
“A lot of the Aboriginal communities that live in and around that area, they just will not and do not go back near that country. I think that’s a word, healing, that we can’t use in the same sentence with that area.”
Tynan agreed, saying there are parts of the area that will be uninhabitable for a quarter of a million years.
“There are parts of the site that you can’t go to, that are still very dangerous,” she said.
“The real problem at Maralinga was the plutonium which was detonated in a series of trials… The particular type of plutonium they used, plutonium 239, has a half-life of 21,400 years which takes hundreds of thousands of years for that radioactivity to diminish.”
Wingfield said the broken connection between these people and their lands is “just downright disgraceful and horrible”.
“No amount of conversation will ever cover what’s been done for people in and around. The lasting effects of health issues on people have been passed through people who were there to generational abnormalities… I think when you talk compensation and stuff, I don’t think we’ll ever get close.”
An international tribute to nuclear-free warrior, Dr Helen Caldicott
My Six Mentors, “…….Helen Caldicott, MD, by Mary Olson, Gender and Radiation Impact Project, 1 January 20121
Helen Caldicott deserves a much greater place in our histories of the Cold War and ending the USA / USSR arms race than she generally gets. This is, perhaps, because she is powerful and a woman. A pediatrician, who in the 1970’s would not tolerate the radioactive fallout she and her patients were suffering from nuclear weapons tests in Australia, Helen and her family came to the USA. She and another physician named Ira Helfand revived what had been a local Boston organization of physicians and created a Nobel Prize winning organization called Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), which later participated in the creation of another Nobel Prize winning group, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). These two along with hundreds of other organizations committed to peace and nuclear disarmament formed the International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) which has helped to create the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (see http://icanw.org/the-treaty ) and also won the Nobel Prize (2017).
Helen herself is a powerful communicator and will move audiences at a level that can change the course of someone’s life and work. She followed her own destiny to winning meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev, President of the Soviet Union, where she educated him about Nuclear Winter and the fact that nuclear is not a war that anyone can win. She also met with President Reagan in the era and diagnosing early-stage dementia… Her ability to bring the reality of the world to these men, and reality of these men to the world set her aside, in a class by herself—and was an enormous contribution to us all.
I first met Helen in the body of her Cold War block-buster book “Nuclear Madness.” I was in the midst of an existential crisis that could have become an even bigger health crisis. After college I needed a job (not yet a career) because I was broke, broken up from my first “true” love, and far from home. I got a job as a research assistant in a lab at a prestigious medical school; it was 1984.
Within 2 weeks, I was inadvertently contaminated with radioactivity (without my knowledge) by carelessness of a lab-mate. The radioactive material, Phosphorus-32 is used in research to trace biochemical activity in living organisms. This type of radioactivity is not deeply penetrating, so there was some reason not to panic, however the I was exposed continuously for over a week, and I also found radioactivity at home– my toothbrush was “hot”—so I had also had some level of internal exposure. I was terrified. The lab used concentrations of the tracer thousands of times higher than is typical.
The institution told me there was no danger, but because I was upset, they helped me transfer to a different job. No accident report was filed, and in the midst of transition, my radiation detection badge was never processed. It is not possible to know the dimensions of my exposure—I began having symptoms that were not normal for me. Many people, including some family members told me I was imagining things. No one in my circle understood how terrified I was.
I was fortunate that Helen had already written “Nuclear Madness”—the first edition came out in 1978, just before the March 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown in Harrisburg PA—an event that propelled the book into multiple printings including a Bantam Paperback edition that I found. It turned out that 7 years later I helped Helen to revise and update the same text for the 1994 WW Norton edition. It was Helen’s deep commitment to truth, to speaking and writing that truth, to empowering people to take action for good. Helen’s words accurately described radiation and its potential for harm, and in my panic about the unknown, this calmed me.
Every other authority I had encountered was trying to tell me there was no problem—when I knew they had no right to dismiss what had happened to me. I am quite certain that had I remained alone with my fear, despair, and confusion my panic would have resulted in behaviors that would have compounded any harm bodily from that radioactive contamination. Reading Helen’s work let me know there was at least one woman walking the Earth who did know what I was going through… it made it possible for me to choose recovery and walk away from a legal battle that would have forced me to maintain, hold and prove a myself a victim. Instead, following in Helen’s wake, I chose Peaceful Warrior. Thank you Helen! : ……….. https://www.genderandradiation.org/blog/2020/12/31/my-six-mentors
315 nuclear bombs and ongoing suffering: the shameful history of nuclear testing in Australia and the Pacific
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315 nuclear bombs and ongoing suffering: the shameful history of nuclear testing in Australia and the Pacific, https://theconversation.com/315-nuclear-bombs-and-ongoing-suffering-the-shameful-history-of-nuclear-testing-in-australia-and-the-pacific-148909, Tilman Ruff, Associate Professor, Education and Learning Unit, Nossal Institute for Global Health, School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Dimity Hawkins, PhD Candidate, Swinburne University of Technology
November 3, 2020 The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons received its 50th ratification on October 24, and will therefore come into force in January 2021. A historic development, this new international law will ban the possession, development, testing, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons.Unfortunately the nuclear powers — the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea — haven’t signed on to the treaty. As such, they are not immediately obliged to help victims and remediate contaminated environments, but others party to the treaty do have these obligations. The shifting norms around this will hopefully put ongoing pressure on nuclear testing countries to open records and to cooperate with accountability measures. For the people of the Pacific region, particularly those who bore the brunt of nuclear weapons testing during the 20th century, it will bring a new opportunity for their voices to be heard on the long-term costs of nuclear violence. The treaty is the first to enshrine enduring commitments to addressing their needs. From 1946, around 315 nuclear tests were carried out in the Pacific by the US, Britain and France. These nations’ largest ever nuclear tests took place on colonised lands and oceans, from Australia to the Marshall Islands, Kiribati to French Polynesia.
The impacts of these tests are still being felt today. All nuclear tests cause harm Studies of nuclear test workers and exposed nearby communities around the world consistently show adverse health effects, especially increased risks of cancer. The total number of global cancer deaths as a result of atmospheric nuclear test explosions has been estimated at between 2 million and 2.4 million, even though these studies used radiation risk estimates that are now dated and likely underestimated the risk. The number of additional non-fatal cancer cases caused by test explosions is similar. As confirmed in a large recent study of nuclear industry workers in France, the UK and US, the numbers of radiation-related deaths due to other diseases, such as heart attacks and strokes, is also likely to be similar. Britain conducted 12 nuclear test explosions in Australia between 1952 and 1957, and hundreds of minor trials of radioactive and toxic materials for bomb development up to 1963. These caused untold health problems for local Aboriginal people who were at the highest risk of radiation. Many of them were not properly evacuated, and some were not informed at all. We may never know the full impact of these explosions because in many cases, as the Royal Commission report on British Nuclear Tests in Australia found in 1985: “the resources allocated for Aboriginal welfare and safety were ludicrous, amounting to nothing more than a token gesture”. But we can listen to the survivors.
His daughter, Karina Lester, is an ambassador for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons in Australia, and continues to be driven by her family’s experience. She writes: For decades now my family have campaigned and spoken up against the harms of nuclear weapons because of their firsthand experience of the British nuclear tests […] Many Aboriginal people suffered from the British nuclear tests that took place in the 1950s and 1960s and many are still suffering from the impacts today. More than 16,000 Australian workers were also exposed. A key government-funded study belatedly followed these veterans over an 18-year period from 1982. Despite the difficulties of conducting a study decades later with incomplete data, it found they had 23% higher rates of cancer and 18% more deaths from cancers than the general population. An additional health impact in Pacific island countries is the toxic disease “ciguatera”, caused by certain microscopic plankton at the base of the marine food chain, which thrive on damaged coral. Their toxins concentrate up the food chain, especially in fish, and cause illness and occasional deaths in people who eat them. In the Marshall Islands, Kiritimati and French Polynesia, outbreaks of the disease among locals have been associated with coral damage caused by nuclear test explosions and the extensive military and shipping infrastructure supporting them. Pacific survivors of nuclear testing haven’t been focused solely on addressing their own considerable needs for justice and care; they’ve been powerful advocates that no one should suffer as they have ever again, and have worked tirelessly for the eradication of nuclear weapons. It’s no surprise independent Pacific island nations are strong supporters of the new treaty, accounting for ten of the first 50 ratifications. Negligence and little accountabilitySome nations that have undertaken nuclear tests have provided some care and compensation for their nuclear test workers; only the US has made some provisions for people exposed, though only for mainland US residents downwind of the Nevada Test Site. No testing nation has extended any such arrangement beyond its own shores to the colonised and minority peoples it put in harm’s way. Nor has any testing nation made fully publicly available its records of the history, conduct and effects of its nuclear tests on exposed populations and the environment. These nations have also been negligent by quickly abandoning former test sites. There has been inadequate clean-up and little or none of the long-term environmental monitoring needed to detect radioactive leakage from underground test sites into groundwater, soil and air. One example among many is the Runit concrete dome in the Marshall Islands, which holds nuclear waste from US testing in the 1940s and 50s. It’s increasingly inundated by rising sea levels, and is leaking radioactive material. The treaty provides a light in a dark time. It contains the only internationally agreed framework for all nations to verifiably eliminate nuclear weapons. It’s our fervent hope the treaty will mark the increasingly urgent beginning of the end of nuclear weapons. It is our determined expectation that our country will step up. Australia has not yet ratified the treaty, but the bitter legacy of nuclear testing across our country and region should spur us to join this new global effort. |
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A mixed blessing – the sudden departure of Australia’s nuclear high priest, Dr Adi Paterson
I am reminded of Hilaire Belloc’s advice to the young – ”Always keep a hold of Nurse, for fear of 
finding something worse”.
Among other sycophantic tributes, Dr Adi Paterson is lauded for encouraging women into the nuclear industry.
Adi Paterson spent several years in South Africa, trying to establish Small Nuclear Reactors. It turned out to be Tan expensive and useless exercise. Then he came to Australia, with the same dream. He quietly signed Australia up to the Framework Agreement for International Collaboration on Research and Development of Generation IV Nuclear Energy Systems, without any consultation, discussion in Parliament (which rubber-stamped this later).
He quietly organised Australia’s participation with China in developing small nuclear reactors.
He rubbished renewable energy at a solar conference.
He went to Kimba to do propaganda for the nuclear waste dump plan, but admitted that there was no economic benefit in the low level waste dump, so the intermediate level waste was the real intention.
Leadership changes at ANSTO, Statement from the ANSTO Chair: Dr Annabelle Bennett 9 Sep 20, Dr Adi Paterson has resigned as CEO of ANSTO slightly ahead of time of his term. He has decided to take a period of leave before formally finishing. ……..
Mr Shaun Jenkinson will continue as acting CEO, while the Board undertakes a global search for a permanent CEO. https://www.ansto.gov.au/news/leadership-changes-at-ansto?fbclid=IwAR0cLOwne84D7XJP9UGwrf1aVAxyXgStAB6502zPYUgsqxdbjUuyUR3MYjo
Adrian “Adi” Paterson is a South African scientist and engineer best known for his work on Pebble Bed modular reactor research and development. He was appointed CEO of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) in 2009
He emigrated to Australia in 2008 and was appointed Chief Executive Officer at ANSTO in March 2009.
Regina McKenzie comments on Felicity Wright’s submission about the National Radioactive WAste Dump
Regina McKenzie It not only aged me, but I have a horrible sickness due to the horrible stress and the personal attacks , this will stay with me, might even be the cause to blow my candle out, I watch Kimba with a sad heart, knowing all the heartache and the tremendous weight on the people’s back , Felicity Flowerdew that’s a strong letter from a strong woman, who I am proud to say is my friend https://www.facebook.com/groups/1314655315214929/4288145791199185/?comment_id=4290354100978354¬if_id=1589981324123690¬if_t=group_comment
NUCLEAR WASTE DEBATE DIVIDING COMMUNITIES
NUCLEAR WASTE DEBATE DIVIDING COMMUNITIES Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA The Transcontinental November 06, 2019, My name is Ken McKenzie. The Flinders Ranges and Port Augusta have always been my home. I now reside in Flinders House in Quorn.
I wish to say that the radioactive waste dump being proposed for our region is going to be very dangerous for all of us and for generations to come if it is allowed to go ahead.
This is something for all South Australians both black and white to be involved in as it will have an effect one way or another on every one of us.
The area where they want to put this dump is on my tribal land. My ancestors are buried here.
The area also holds a huge connection to our women as this is their land overall. The government do not listen when we say we don’t want it.
The earthquakes and flooding stories told to me in our language goes back into time itself.
This is not the place for a radioactive waste dump. If the Lord doesn’t come down in the next few years, this is going to be a threat to all of us and our future generations to come.
I am also very concerned for people over at Kimba who are going thru the same grief that’s happening to us and my family over here.
The money the government are throwing at us, trying to get us to forfeit our land is insulting and disrespectful to us all.
They have divided my family and our communities, and now we hear that without the much more dangerous intermediate radioactive waste being dumped here as well, that there is hardly any value to the community for putting it here.
Why didn’t they tell the communities all this in the first place. We didn’t want it four years ago and we certainly don’t want it now.
This whole process needs to be scrapped and the government needs to look at a new way to get people to ever trust them again.
1.This month.
14 May Industrial Decarbonisation Summit
Sydney Get involved at eec.org.au/summit-registration
15- 16 May Sydney – EEC National Conference Efficiency Electrification Decarbonisation more https://eec.my.canva.site/eecnc24
The video on Palestine that got Yanis Varoufakis BANNED from Germany
Keep U.S. military expansion out of Australia
Petition EN5543 – Call for termination of the US-Australia Force Posture Agreement
Antinuclear 