Tony Abbott says ‘no carbon pricing, in any global climate agreement’
Abbott says climate not right for tax Sky News 9 June 14, Prime Minister Tony Abbott says any future global agreement on climate change won’t include carbon pricing.
Mr Abbott is the first Australian prime minister to visit Canada since John Howard in 2006, who arrived just months after Mr Harper’s conservative government was elected. The two prime ministers will meet on Monday, local time, when Mr Abbott will receive an official welcome with military honours in the Canadian capital Ottawa.
But speaking ahead of the meeting, Mr Abbott said the re-elected Mr Harper had succeeded in convincing Canadian voters at the last national poll of the perils of carbon pricing. Stephen Harper and I are like-minded on this,’ Mr Abbott told reporters in Ottawa on Sunday……….
Mr Abbott will next head to New York where he is expected to meet with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and media baron Rupert Murdoch and hold further business and investment talks. http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2014/06/09/abbott-says-climate-not-right-for-tax.html#sthash.ieWrX2ff.dpuf
Tony Abbbott leads Australia’s retreat from international affairs
Tony Abbott’s global retreat, THE SATURDAY PAPER, 7 June 14 SOPHIE MORRIS As the PM sets off to meet world leaders, his government is withdrawing the nation from international affairs. en Tony Abbott meets Barack Obama in Washington late next week, the president of the United States of America will no doubt want to discuss his ambitious emissions reduction plans.
If the prime minister is being honest, he would have to concede that, from July, there is the real prospect that Australia may have no official legislated climate policy.
The new senate looks likely to abolish the carbon tax but there is no certainty it will endorse the Coalition’s proposed alternative, which has been criticised by economists and environmentalists. And it is not just on climate change that Australia is increasingly seen as being out of step with the international community. As Abbott tours the world, declaring Australia “open for business”, his government is pursuing a range of policies – on the environment, foreign aid and refugees – that see it retreating from an international approach.
This is no accident; there has been a conscious shift. Forget about global citizenship. Our foreign policy is now all about regional security and trade, rather than climate change and foreign aid. It’s about projecting national sovereignty and domestically oriented policy – stop the boats, axe the tax, end the debt – onto a global stage…….
In a speech to the Westpoint military academy last week, President Obama said a “spirit of co-operation must energise the global effort to combat climate change”, describing it as a “creeping national security crisis” that would lead to refugee flows, natural disasters, and conflicts over water and food. “That’s why, next year, I intend to make sure America is out front in a global framework to preserve our planet,” he said.
Unless Obama is very persuasive when he meets Abbott, it seems likely Australia will not be joining him at the front of this global effort. More likely, we will be bringing up the rear. http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2014/06/07/tony-abbotts-global-retreat/1402063200#.U5ZrZHJdWil
Tony Abbott shows Australia ‘out of touch’ as he excludes Climate Change from G20 summit in November
Australia should come in from the cold June 6, 2014 The Age As Tony Abbott heads towards the northern hemisphere summer on the next stage of his 12-day round-the-world trip, he might have cause to feel a distinct chilliness, particularly from his hosts in Europe and the United States. The reason is simple: the more the Australian government downplays the critical importance of acknowledging and controlling climate change, the more behind we will be with world opinion and action.
Just look at what has happened over the past week or so…….
as The Age has said, without carbon pricing, the nation lacks a credible policy outline to adapt to and match even modest accelerations in global emission cuts.
Sadly, the Prime Minister’s glib attitude to climate change is entirely predictable. But this does not excuse his consignment to the political freezer of anything that threatens to add to what should be a reasoned and far-reaching debate on what is a world problem.
The latest thing to be popped into the Australian government’s icebox is the potential inclusion of climate change on the agenda at the G20 leaders’ summit in Brisbane in November. ”The focus … will overwhelmingly be our economic security, our financial stabilisation, the importance of private-sector growth,” Mr Abbott said this week, adding that there are other international forums for climate change discussions. Yes, but not ones attended by those world leaders who regard the unchecked progress of global emissions as detrimental to our economic security and financial stability. To restrict, or possibly exclude, climate change from the G20 discussions is short-sighted and counter-productive. Again, it makes Australia look retrograde and out of touch with reality…….http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-age-editorial/australia-should-come-in-from-the-cold-20140605-39lq4.html
Abbott unable to censor Climate Change from G20 and from talks with Obama?
Barack Obama’s climate change moves put heat on Tony Abbott The Age, June 3,Mark Kenny Chief political correspondent A dramatic acceleration of America’s response to climate change, including strong caps on coal-fired pollution threatens to expose Australia’s humble 5 per cent emissions reduction target by 2020 as too low and out of step with the rest of the world.
The US move may overshadow the first bilateral talks between Prime Minister Tony Abbott and President Barack Obama to take place in Washington next week. Those talks will cover trade, economic and strategic issues but with climate change again dominating the US political cycle, the environmental challenge is likely to arise.
And that may see Mr Abbott under direct presidential pressure to re-include climate change as a key economic issue on the agenda of the G20 when Australia hosts the premier international economic forum later this year.…….http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/barack-obamas-climate-change-moves-put-heat-on-tony-abbott-20140602-39f0s.html#ixzz33djzH13e
Pacific Island Delegates urge Australia to change climate change policy
Pacific nations urge climate change action, ask Australia for help http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-27/pacific-countries-make-climate-change-appeal/5481050 Australian Network political editor Catherine McGrath 27 May 2014 Songs of the Pacific have been heard at Parliament House as islanders from countries likely to be most at threat from rising sea levels braved the Canberra winter to highlight the issue of climate change.
In traditional dress, the group performed a cultural dance and spoke about their concerns.
When it comes to high tide you can see the tide everywhere it seeps through the whole island. It kills the crops – it kills our traditional root crops.
Maina Talia
The delegates, from Kiribati, Tuvalu and Papua New Guinea, are meeting federal politicians and officials representing the Minister for Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop and Environment Minister Greg Hunt.
They are seeking a cut in carbon emissions and more assistance for their countries’ climate change mitigation.
Kiribati, which is only about two to three metres above sea level, and Tuvalu, at four metres above sea level, are already battling rising sea levels and crop losses.
The delegate from Wewak in PNG says her region in the East Sepik province is also in danger.
Apisaloma Tawati, 19, from Kiribati says the group is taking its campaign to the world.”I am here today to make everyone aware of our hardship and to convince you that we need your help and … you can help us,” he said. “As a youth I am afraid of climate change. I see our land is becoming thinner and thinner. “We live near the coast and we see a lot of things. We saw coastal erosion, the land has been eroded away, sea walls have broken.
“I come to Australia to tell the world of our hardship and our stories back in Kiribati.”Kiribati is enduring a lot of problems due to climate change.”
Delegates urge Australia to change climate change policy
Maina Talia, 29, from Tuvalu wants Australia to rethink its climate change policy. “We are the most vulnerable of the most vulnerable countries,” he said. “Since we don’t have any mountains or rivers, for us to adapt is very difficult. It is a burden to the people of Tuvalu as to how they can adapt. “Now when it comes to high tide you can see the tide everywhere it seeps through the whole island. “It kills the crops – it kills our traditional root crops. “It (the rising sea levels) are just there and we don’t know how that happens but we believe it is climate change.”
Mr Talia says it is important to keep campaigning because people from Tuvalu feel so vulnerable. “It is difficult to determine who is listening and who is not listening,” he said.”I believe they have heard our message so many times but we keep on pushing and advocating for Tuvalu and Kiribati and low lying atolls [so] that leaders of Australia and other industrialised countries will continue to hear our voice.”
Australian uranium companies strongly part of the callous exploitation of poverty-stricken African nations
THE SCRAMBLE FOR URANIUM IN AFRICA http://www.phantomreport.com/the-scramble-for-uranium-in-africa 19 May 14, Africa’s resources are extracted by outsiders, with benefits only reaching the involved non-African mining companies and non-African end-users of the commodity. Africa is the next frontier to meet energy needs. Oil and gas are being exploited as never before, exacerbating conflict in Darfur and Nigeria, social inequality in Angola, and environmental damage in Chad.
At the same time, renewed demand for uranium is being explored on the continent more than at any other time in history.
Yet the continent’s huge potential for renewable energy is not fully being realised. The government of Malawi granted a uranium mining licence to an Australian uranium mining company without having any legislation on the mining, handling and transportation of radioactive materials. Malawi is now home to twelve potential uranium mines.
In Niger mining companies from Australia, Canada, France and other parts of the world are scrambling for licences to explore uranium in a country which is already the world’s sixth producer of uranium. In the Central African Republic (CAR) there is a scramble amongst Chinese, American and French companies which are all interested in mining the Bakouma region.
In Tanzania the Australian Omega Corp obtained the Mkuju River concessions through its subsidiary, Mantra Resources. Other Australian juniors are represented in Tanzania, including Sabre Resources, Goldstream Mining, Uranex and Deep Yellow.
In Zambia, the Australian Energy Ventures through its subsidiary Africa Energy Resources started drilling the Kariba Valley in May 2008. Another Australian enterprise, Albion Ltd,, is also undertaking exploration.
Australian uranium mining company arousing concern in Greenland
The prospect of a relatively unknown Australian company exploiting massive untapped resources in Greenland deserves a robust public and political debate. It has thus far received nothing in Australia, and little in Denmark and Greenland. In an age of worsening climate change, mining uranium is an arguably unsafe and potentially explosive answer to the problem.
Australian uranium mining in Greenland is tearing the country in half http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/15/australian-uranium-mining-in-greenland-is-tearing-the-country-in-half After Greenland’s prime minister repealed a law on uranium mining, Australian firms are staking out the country for exploitation. Local political opposition is heating up
Antony Loewenstein This is a story about an Australian company you’ve never heard of, operating in a nation that rarely enters the global media: Greenland. It’s a story about the intense search for energy sources in a world that’smoving away from the dirtiest fossil fuels.
>Aleqa Hammond, the prime minister of Greenland, is the first woman to lead this autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark. She also welcomes the financial opportunities from climate change and a melting Arctic Circle.
“I simply refuse to be the victimised people of climate change”, she toldBusiness Week this month. “This time we have other options than just hunting. We have the right now to our own underground.”
In October last year, Hammond pushed legislation through Greenland’s parliament to overturn a 25 year old ban on the extraction of radioactive materials, including uranium, despite countless leading environmental NGOs urging otherwise. It attracted global interest from the rare earth and uranium industries, including from China. Concerns were also raised about Greenland’s ability to manage a toxic substance in the wake of Fukushima and Chernobyl.
The company Greenland Minerals and Energy Limited (GMEL) is based in Perth, Western Australia. This year GMEL announced a major step forward in their plan to open one of the world’s largest uranium mines in southern Greenland, at Kvanefjeld. The mine will also produce fluoride, thorium and other rare earths.There is still significant opposition to the Kvanefjeld project. The Ecological Council, a Danish NGO, organised a conference to discussthe potential contamination risks in March, noting that the mine poses serious risks for the inhabitants of the nearby village, Narsaq. Many locals told the BBC that they worried about pollution and challenges to traditional ways of life if GMEL moved ahead with its plans. Unsurprisingly, Danish green groups have pushed for a continued ban on uranium mining. They claim that rare earth elements can be extracted without uranium mining in Greenland.
This would have been an important but fairly typical contest over resources, but after issues surrounding the ownership and status of Perth-based GMEL were raised in the Greenlandic parliament, the prospects of the Australian firm may be in jeopardy.Late last year, Greenland MP Sara Olsvig (tipped by some as a future prime minister) wrote to the country’s minister of industry and minerals, Jens-Erik Kirkegaard. She demanded details about any and all of GMEL’s shareholders, after Australian media outlets had raised allegations about both the company back in 2009 (here and here) and mining prospector Mihran Shemesian, also known as “Mick Many Names“.
In 2009, Fairfax media claimed that Shemesian controlled more than 20% of GMEL stock. Range Resources, another company tied to Shemesian, had earlier been accused of paying the disputed government of the Puntland State of Somalia, linked to Somali rebels, more than $US6m ($A9.3m) for resource rights to the region. Since then, there have been very few stories about him.
Kirkegaard responded that the government dismissed any concerns about GMEL – “the alleged events all occurred outside Greenland’s jurisdiction” – and claimed that the company didn’t own an exploration license anyway, so there was nothing to worry about. This isn’t quite the case: Greenland Minerals and Energy A/S (GME), the firm granted the licence, is the wholly-owned Greenlandic subsidiary of GMEL.So is “Mick Many Names” Shemesian involved with GMEL? John Mair, the company’s executive director, told me he isn’t “registered as a shareholder”. But he would not guarantee that Shemesian has no involvement with GMEL.
Mair is proud of the Kvanefjed project, where “risks can be appropriately mitigated”. GMEL was “working with Greenland to help establish a secure and viable economy that will help sustain their increasing political independence,” he told me, adding that he was “optimistic” GMEL would be granted a mining license in the foreseeable future because “we have much local community support in Greenland”.A key shareholder in GMEL is Perth-based geologist Greg Barnes, founder and CEO of Tanbreez. He told me by phone from Singapore that he has personally invested $40m towards mining possibilities in Greenland. He says he has known Shemesian for 30 years and “has heard that he has a 50% share in GMEL and I’ve heard that he has 0%. I have no relationship with him.”
But in December last year he told Grønlandsposten, a Greenlandic newspaper that, “he and Shemesian could probably fire GMEL’s board if they wanted to”. He told me that this referred to the make-up of GMEL many years ago – not today.
“[Greenland] is the size of Western Australia but it has no mines”, he said. “In Western Australia an application for mining would take three months but in Greenland it takes years.” A vast part of Greenland has been “staked out by a number of Perth companies.” Barnes isn’t concerned about climate change “because it didn’t really show up in places like Greenland apart from some ice sheets reducing”.
There is another view. Niels Henrik Hooge is a Danish consultant who works with green NGOs. He’s been at the forefront of the campaign against uranium mining in Greenland. He says to me that the people of Greenland are “split down the middle regarding the repeal of the [uranium] ban.”
Hooge explains that the “mineral authorities” have fed the public disinformation over the last years but the tide may be turning, with growing concerns over environmental effects and the leftist party Inuit Ataqatigiit pledging to roll back the repeal if it wins back power.
The prospect of a relatively unknown Australian company exploiting massive untapped resources in Greenland deserves a robust public and political debate. It has thus far received nothing in Australia, and little in Denmark and Greenland. In an age of worsening climate change, mining uranium is an arguably unsafe and potentially explosive answer to the problem.
Marshall Islands deplores Australia’s backward steps on climate change
Australia risks ‘going backwards’ on climate change and straining Pacific ties Marshall Islands foreign minister says ‘it is as if our big brother doesn’t understand us’ theguardian.com, Monday 5 May 2014 17 John Vidal Australia risks going “backwards” on climate change, straining relations with small Pacific island states that are being hit by unusually powerful storms, floods, droughts and massive tides, according to the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands.
“Australia has always been our friend but the change in their government last year has resulted in problems,” said Tony de Brum on a visit to London to address British and other countries’ economic and political leaders about the physical plight that Pacific states such as the Marshall Islands find themselves in.
“We are having difficulty understanding Australia’s climate change policies and their new environmental regime. We don’t understand what they are thinking. We worry that the change in their policy may result in movement backwards.”
Australia’s Coalition government is trying to repeal carbon pricing in favour of a grants system for businesses to lower their emissions. Repeated independent analysis has shown its Direct Action plan is unlikely to achieve its target of a 5% cut on emissions by 2020, based on 2000 levels.
The Coalition has also set about abolishing climate change agencies, slashed staff numbers at the Department of the Environment and declined to send a minister to international climate talks.
Small island states around the Pacific are sending Australia the same message about climate change, according to De Brum. “Australia has always been generous,” he said. “But it is as if our big brother doesn’t understand us. The same message is going to Australia from other countries in the Pacific forum. Little brother is saying, ‘Big brother should get up and smell the flowers.’ ”
Scattered across 2m square kilometres of ocean, the Marshalls have all experienced extremes linked to climate change in the past year, he said. “We have had major drought in the north, floods in the south, seawater intrusion of groundwater, and thousands of people displaced by a king tide. That is the reality. What does Australia not understand?”
Pacific states including Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshalls are suffering at the present level of emissions, he said, making the prospect of future sea level rises and more powerful cyclones frightening.
“Some islands and atolls are already disappearing. One, called Enebok … is now underwater. Yet 20 years ago it had coconut palms and houses. At the moment we are [able to move] people around the islands. But any prudent leader would always have evacuation at the back of their mind.”
Climate change and the lack of cash to invest in renewable energy technologies, such as ocean thermal energy conversion, is now putting a brake on development, he said…… http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/05/australia-risks-going-backwards-on-climate-change-and-straining-pacific-ties
Australia deliberately prevented a nuclear-free Pacific treaty, to obey USA’s interests
Declassified documents from the National Archives of Australia, including the 1985 Cabinet minute about the SPNFZ Treaty, show clearly that Australia designed the treaty to protect US interests in the Pacific, including the deployment of nuclear-armed warships and the testing of nuclear missiles.
International legal experts, including Don Rothwell, professor of international law at the Australian National University, have raised concerns that uranium sales to India would breach Australia’s obligations under the treaty. Rothwell has prepared a legal opinion stating that the SPNFZ Treaty prohibits members from selling uranium to countries that do not accept full-scope nuclear safeguards under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
This is consistent with past Australian government policy.
Delaying The Nuclear-Free Zone In The Pacific http://concernedyapcitizens.wordpress.com/2014/04/23/pacific-islands-report-delaying-the-nuclear-free-zone-in-the-pacific/ By Nic Maclellan At the height of the nuclear arms race between the United States and Soviet Union, a treaty to create a South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone, or SPNFZ, was opened for signature on Hiroshima Day, 6 August 1985, at the Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Rarotonga.
Twenty-eight years after it was signed on that day by Australia, New Zealand and island nations, the United States still hasn’t ratified its protocols, in spite of a request from president Barack Obama to the US Senate more than two years ago.
Next week, as Forum leaders gather in the Marshall Islands – site of sixty-seven US nuclear tests at Bikini and Enewetak Atolls – the US government will be eager to keep nuclear issues off the agenda, as it has been since the Treaty was first mooted. Declassified documents from the National Archives of Australia, and US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks, highlight longstanding opposition in Canberra and Washington to a comprehensive nuclear-free zone that might hamper US nuclear deployments in the Pacific.
The Forum meeting, and the US Senate’s continued stalling, coincide with on-going concerns that Australia’s decision to sell uranium to India threatens to breach Australian treaty obligations. As Conservative Australian governments in the 1960s debated the acquisition of nuclear weapons and purchased aircraft capable of delivering nuclear strikes in Southeast Asia, the labour movement across the region proposed a nuclear free zone designed to ban the bomb in this part of the world. The SPNFZ Treaty was finally negotiated in the 1980s after decades of campaigning by unions, Pacific churches and the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement. Continue reading
Australian government’s unseemly haste in selling uranium to volatile Middle East region
Robb Fast-Tracks UAE Uranium Deal https://newmatilda.com/2014/04/23/robb-fast-tracks-uae-uranium-dea By Dave Sweeney, 23 April 14 The Federal Government has signed another uranium export deal with a dubious overseas partner – and without inspecting the country’s facilities. We need an independent inquiry, writes Dave Sweeney
In a move that marks the first time Australia uranium would be sold to the Middle East, Trade Minister Andrew Robb is fast-tracking a nuclear cooperation agreement with the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Last week hesigned a new treaty in Dubai worth 800 tonnes of Uranium a year from 2020. But in doing so, the Minister is treating our Parliament as little more than a radioactive rubber stamp.
The foundation for these sales was laid by former foreign minister and airline food critic Bob Carr, who signed the initial agreement with the UAE — a country with a secretive, unelected government situated in one of the world’s most insecure regions.
Consequently, the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties recently recommended that prior to any ratification of the sales plan, the International Atomic Energy Agency undertake physical inspections of UAE facilities.
But the Federal Government’s failure to take this or any other prudent step, in favour of providing “certainty” to the ailing uranium sector shows it has confused the commercial interest of Australia’s small, high-risk low-return uranium sector with our national interest. Uranium is a small contributor to Australian export revenue and employment, but when it comes to global impact and risk Australian uranium is playing in the major league. The Australian Conservation Foundation has used industry data to examine the sustained gap between the sector’s promise and performance.
The report, Yellowcake Fever: Exposing the Uranium Industry’s Economic Myths, highlights the urgent need for an independent cost-benefit analysis and a comprehensive and transparent assessment of Australia’s uranium trade. The sector’s employment contribution is tiny: the World Nuclear Association estimates there are less than 1800 jobs in Australia’s entire uranium industry, representing just 0.015 per cent of Australian jobs. From 2002 to 2011, uranium sales averaged $627 million annually and accounted for only 0.29 per cent of all national export revenue: small beer, but with a big hangover.
Why sell to the UAE? The seven emirates, including Abu Dhabi and Dubai, have one of the least participatory political systems in the world. In 2012, more than 50 human rights activists in the UAE were rounded up and detained without charge following calls for political reform. The Human Rights Watch 2013 world Report describes a worsening human rights situation in the country, with labour rights a particular issue.
The planned uranium sale treaty doesn’t take into account local human rights issues, political changes or broader social upheavals in one of the world’s most volatile regions. It states that the agreement “shall remain in force for an initial period of thirty years and upon expiry of this initial period shall be renewed automatically for successive thirty year periods”. If this is advanced Australia would be locked in. As Greens Senator Scott Ludlam said, the Federal Government should “take a deep breath” and ask “do they really want to be selling uranium into the Middle East at the moment?”
Despite the Federal Government’s repeated insistence that the uranium must and will only be used for peaceful purposes, there is clear evidence that international nuclear safeguards are stressed, under-resourced and effectively impossible to police. To simply state that Australian uranium will not be misused is dangerously naïve.
In the shadow of Fukushima — a continuing nuclear crisis directly fuelled by Australian uranium — we need policy based on evidence. Instead of fast-tracking irresponsible uranium sales to the UAE and India — or continuing to provide nuclear fuel to nuclear weapon states — we urgently need an independent assessment of the full impacts of Australia’s radioactive and risky uranium trade.
British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto and uranium deaths in Africa
Uranium kills in Namibia http://www.news24.com/Columnists/AndreasSpath/Uranium-kills-in-Namibia-20140422 2014-04-22 Andreas Wilson-Späth
That uranium is a radioactive and toxic substance with potentially lethal impacts on the people who dig it out of the ground is generally glossed over by those among us who argue for nuclear power as a clean, green, safe and sustainable source of electricity.
Along with other intractable problems faced by the atomic energy industry – like its propensity to lay to waste entire landscapes if and when things go wrong and the fact that we still don’t have a long-term solution for storing its noxious waste products – this is not in dispute. It’s merely a matter of unintended side-effects. Collateral damage.
For uranium miners in Namibia, however, their occupation in proximity to the metal has much more first-hand and personal consequences. A report soon to be released by Earthlife Namibia and the Labour Resource and Research Institute argues that long-time workers at the Rössing uranium mine are routinely exposed to unhealthy working conditions, radiation and dust.
The survey of current and former Rössing employees suggests that an anomalous number of them are dying of cancer and other mysteriously unexplained illnesses caused by their working conditions.
Rössing, which is located in central Namibia and employs over 1500 people, is majority owned (69%) by British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto. The next biggest shareholders of the mine are the government of Iran (10%) and our own Industrial Development Corporation (10%).
Rio Tinto officials have consistently denied that they’re to blame for any harm, insisting that their operations at Rössing and elsewhere, including their copper, gold, coal, bauxite, iron ore and diamond mines around the world, are well monitored and run ethically, for the benefit of local communities, respecting human rights and protecting the environment.
But a closer look at the multinational’s global operations reveals that Rio Tinto isn’t quite as squeaky clean as they would like us to believe:
• At the end of last year, radioactive and acidic slurry spilled from a uranium processing tank at Rössing. Two weeks later the damaged rubber lining of a similar tank at the company’s Ranger mine in Australia’s Northern Territory leaked more than a million litres of the stuff.
• In 2013, 33 miners perished when a tunnel collapsed at Rio Tinto’s Grasberg gold and copper mine in Indonesia – the largest portion of the total of 41 deaths at their global operations during that year which international trade union IndustriAll claims the company should have done more to prevent.
• Locals have blamed the Grasberg mine for pollution affecting the environment and population.
• In Madagascar, activists have accused Rio Tinto of “land grabbing and environmental devastation”.
• A lawsuit has been filed against Rio Tinto’s Bingham Canyon mine in the US state of Utah for five-year breaches in air pollution regulations. The organisations that brought the case claim, that on some days the dust from the mine has a similar “effect on people who are consistently outdoors” as “smoking a pack of cigarettes a day”
• In Mongolia, indigenous nomadic herders have raised concerns that an expansion of Rio Tinto’s Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine in the Gobi desert would threaten the integrity of the local ecosystem along with their access to fresh water.
Of course Rio Tinto also made over $1 billion in profits last year. I guess in the minds of the company’s executives that justifies the occasional mishap.
– Andreas is a freelance writer with a PhD in geochemistry. Follow him on Twitter:@Andreas_Spath
Australia’s very misplaced enthusiasm for Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs)
Strange time to suggest a LEGO nuclear future for Australia , Independent Australia, Noel Wauchope 21 April 2014, By 2022, Australia could have many “Lego-like” small nuclear reactors in operation, dotted about the nation. This is being proposed now, not just by the long-term fervent believers in Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), but in formal submissions to the coming Energy White Paper.
Last month, the Department of Industry’s submission to the Energy White Paper pitched Small Modular Reactors as an energy solution for isolated areas in Australia, where there is no access to the electricity grid.
The Energy Policy Institute of Australia (EPI) agreed in its submission, suggesting in its submission small modular reactors (SMRs) are particularly suitable for use in mines and towns in remote locations around Australia.
The BHP-funded Grattan Institute’s submission envisages a string of these little nuclear reactors, connected to the grid, along Australia’s Eastern coast.
Keith Orchison reports on the Grattan Institute submission:
‘The Abbott government is being told that now is the time to flick the switch to “technology neutral,” opening the way for nuclear options.’
Orchison described the advantages of SMRs as ‘Lego-like’.
Why now?
In 2014, it was becoming clear that Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) were not likely to become an operational reality for many decades — and perhaps never.
America was the pioneer of small reactor design in the 1970s. Again recently, Westinghouse and Babcock and Wilcox have been the leaders in designing and developing SMRs.
But in 2014, the bottom has fallen out of these projects………..
It should be noted that nowhere in [the original article about China, does the author] Chen mention “small” reactors. However, Australian proponents of ‘small’ reactors welcomed this article, as the Thorium Small Nuclear Reactor is the favourite type proposed for Australia from all 15 possible small designs.
So, while we’re being told that China is racing ahead in the scramble to get these wonderful SMRs, in fact, China has been very much encouraged and helped into this by the U.S. Department of Energy.
This is understandable, seeing that for China it is a government project, with no required expectation of being commercially viable.
In their enthusiasm for China’s thorium nuclear project, writers neglected to mention the sobering points that Stephen Chen made in his South China Morning Post article, such as:
- ‘Researchers working on the project said they were under unprecedented ‘war-like’ pressure to succeed and some of the technical challenges they faced were difficult, if not impossible to solve.’
- ‘… opposition from sections of the Chinese public.’
- ‘… technical difficulties – the molten salt produces highly corrosive chemicals that could damage the reactor.’
- ‘The power plant would also have to operate at extremely high temperatures, raising concerns about safety. In addition, researchers have limited knowledge of how to use thorium.’
- ‘… engineering difficulties .…The thorium reactors would need years, if not decades, to overcome the corrosion issue.’
- ‘These projects are beautiful to scientists, but nightmarish to engineers.’……….
Australia’s SMR enthusiasts discount the known problems of SMRs. Some brief reminders from the September 2013 report, from the United States’ Institute for Energy and Environmental Research:
- ‘Economics: $90 billion manufacturing order book could be required for mass production of SMRs …the industry’s forecast of relatively inexpensive individual SMRs is predicated on major orders and assembly line production.’
- ‘SMRs will lose the economies of scale of large reactors.’
- ‘SMRs could reduce some safety risks but also create new ones.’
- ‘It breaks, you bought it: no thought is evident on how to handle SMR recalls.’
- Not a proliferation solution. ‘The use of enriched uranium or plutonium in thorium fuel has proliferation implications.’
- Not a waste solution: ‘The fission of thorium creates long-lived fission products like technetium-99 (half-life over 200,000 years).’
- Ongoing technical problems. ……….http://www.independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/strange-timing-to-suggest-a-lego-nuclear-future-for-australia,6404
Australia to co-operate with United Arab Emirates in nuclear-related activities
Australia hopes to lure Emirati students to its institutions while selling uranium to the UAE The National, Caline Malek
April 17, 2014 ABU DHABI Higher education and nuclear power are areas in which the UAE and Australia will start collaborating.
During a visit to the UAE this week by Andrew Robb, Australia’s trade and investment minister, an agreement was signed with Sheikh Hamdan bin Mubarak, the Minister for Higher Education. The countries will collaborate on vocational education, training and research cooperation in higher education……..
Mr Robb said the UAE was investing in infrastructure and restructuring its economy, creating opportunities in sectors where Australia had a proven track record.
He also met senior ministers to advocate for a resumption of negotiations for a free trade agreement with the GCC.
“I [used] my visit to set out the Australian government’s trade and investment agenda, to emphasise that Australia is open for business and that we are committed to deepening our economic engagement with the region,” he said.
Australia will also begin to export uranium to the UAE for its nuclear power plants.
The Nuclear Cooperation Agreement was signed in July 2012 but was ratified and came into force only on Monday. It could lead to the export to the UAE of up to 800 tonnes of uranium a year by the end of the decade. “The agreement should now pave the way for separate commercial agreements between potential Australian uranium suppliers and the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation,” said Mr Kang. “The [first exports] are subject to the timeline for the construction of the UAE’s nuclear power plants, but I understand the first of these plants is scheduled for completion in 2017.”
Under the agreement, Australia will supply uranium for use in the UAE’s developing civil nuclear power programme and cooperate in nuclear-related activities, such as safeguards, security, safety and science.
“The agreement has been secured because Australia is a reliable supplier of uranium and the UAE is a responsible user of nuclear energy for civilian purposes,” said Mr Robb, who met Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, the Foreign Minister, this week in Abu Dhabi.
“This will open up a new long-term market for Australian uranium producers.”……….Sheikh Abdullah said the ratification of the agreement would offer more opportunities for collaboration between the Government and private sectors of both countries. He said this falls in line with the UAE’s policy of developing its peaceful nuclear energy programme in collaboration with other countries that shared the same commitment.
Hamad Alkaabi, the UAE’s permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the agreement constituted a governmental framework for cooperation in nuclear activities between both countries……..http://www.thenational.ae/uae/australia-hopes-to-lure-emirati-students-to-its-institutions-while-selling-uranium-to-the-uae
Austtralia’s hypocrisy. Government knows full well that Israel has nuclear weapons
Australia still denies Israel’s open secret of a nuclear arsenal, SMH, April 15, 2014 Phillip Dorling
Secret government files reveal that Australian governments, diplomats and spies have known for more than 30 years that Israel has an arsenal of nuclear weapons, while continuing to deny any knowledge of its existence to the point of misleading Parliament.
Previously secret diplomatic files declassified by the National Archives reveal a longstanding policy to turn a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Last week the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade again declined to comment on whether the Australian government thinks Israel is an undeclared nuclear weapons state.
Foreign Affairs Department briefing papers prepared for former Labor foreign minister Bill Hayden in 1987 state that ”intelligence assessments are that Israel has a small arsenal of nuclear weapons (possibly about 20). Israel’s technological capabilities would enable it confidently to deploy such weapons without recourse to a nuclear test.”
Mr Hayden and Dr Blix were talking against the backdrop of the treason trial of Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear technician who in 1986 disclosed detailed evidence of Israel’s nuclear weapons production. The Foreign Affairs Department advised Mr Hayden to publicly deny knowledge of Israel’s nuclear weapons capabilities. Mr Hayden told Parliament on September 17, 1987: ”We have no information to corroborate these allegations.”
However, Foreign Affairs’ files, declassified in response to applications by Fairfax Media, reveal that Australia had been monitoring Israel’s nuclear program from its beginnings in the 1950s………
Australian policy remains unchanged, with the Abbott government deciding last October not to support a UN General Assembly resolution on nuclear proliferation in the Middle East – 169 countries voted for the resolution. Only five – the US, Israel, Canada, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia – voted against. Australia abstained……..http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/australia-still-denies-israels-open-secret-of-a-nuclear-arsenal-20140414-36nr4.html
Australia to work with United Arab Emirates in developing nuclear technology
| UAE declares launch of nuclear energy cooperation deal with Australia | |||
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ABU DHABI, April 14 (KUNA) — The United Arab Emirates said on Monday that an agreement on the use of nuclear energy for peaceful means signed with Australia in 2012 has come into force.
The announcement was made in an official statement published on state news agency, WAM, which mentioned that the decision for the move was made during a meeting between Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan and Australia’s visiting Minister of Trade and Investment Andrew Robb. The Emirati foreign minister said that enacting the agreement will “provide broader opportunities for cooperation between state institutions and businesses operating in the nuclear energy field.”…….. According to the report, the discussions also touched upon enhancing existing economic and trade ties, and encouraging joint investments.
Sheikh Abdullah went on to stress the importance of exchanged visits in supporting bilateral cooperation and assessing the levels development and growth in each of the two countries…… The Australian minister, for his part, commended the level of cooperation between the two sides, emphasising the need to further these ties.
He also noted to the high reputation the UAE has managed to make for itself on the international scene, through providing a lucrative location for international businesses. (end) asa.sd http://www.kuna.net.kw/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=2372272&language=en |
1 This month.
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