Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor rejects call for partial lift of nuclear power
 Taylor rejects call for partial lift of nuclear power ban, https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/taylor-rejects-call-for-partial-lift-of-nuclear-power-ban-20191213-p53jsf.html By Mike Foley
December 13, 2019 Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor has poured cold water on calls to partially lift Australia’s moratorium on nuclear power to allow investigation of emerging technologies.
A Coalition-dominated parliamentary inquiry found next-generation technologies such as small modular reactors should be explored by experts for use in Australia. “If we’re serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we can’t simply ignore this zero-emissions baseload technology,”committee chairman and LNP MP Ted O’Brien said. “Australia should say a definite ‘no’ to old nuclear technologies but a conditional ‘yes’ to new and emerging technologies such as small modular reactors.” But Mr Taylor said the government had “no plans” to lift the moratorium, which has been maintained by Labor and Coalition governments since 1998. “Any changes to the moratorium would need bipartisan support and broad community acceptance,” he said. The House of Representatives’ Standing Committee on the Environment And Energy acknowledged public controversy around the nuclear debate in the title of its report – Not without your approval: a way forward for nuclear technology. “Rather than a total and immediate lift of the moratorium, only a partial lift for new and emerging technologies is proposed, subject to the results of a technology assessment and a commitment to community consent as a condition of approval for nuclear facilities,” it said. Labor committee members issued a dissenting report saying there was “no basis” for lifting the prohibition and no need for additional investigations into the science or economics of nuclear energy. Macnamara MP Josh Burns said it was “madness” to consider nuclear power given small reactors were not yet available, renewable energy was becoming cheaper and existing technology would need to be located in populated areas.
The only technology that is available now is the large nuclear reactors, which require an abundance of water to keep the reactors cool. And the only viable water supply is along the coastline,” Mr Burns said. “Australian experts have warned against being the first country to buy new nuclear technology. We don’t have the capability for nuclear energy now. We need to upskill and that comes with serious risk and cost. To do that with technology where we’re not confident in the safety would be negligent.” Australian Conservation Foundation spokesman David Sweeney said lifting the ban would start a “conga line of supplicants to Canberra promising low carbon energy and seeking high public subsidy”. |
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Prudent nuclear ban should remain: ACF
Prudent nuclear ban should remain: ACF, https://www.miragenews.com/prudent-nuclear-ban-should-remain-acf/ 13 Dec 19, Australia’s bipartisan, long standing and prudent prohibition on nuclear energy should remain in force as it stands.
In response to the release of the House of Representatives standing Committee on Environment and Energy’s report into the prerequisites for nuclear energy in Australia, the Australian Conservation Foundation’s (ACF) Nuclear Free Campaigner, Dave Sweeney, said:
“ACF strongly holds that the bipartisan, long standing and prudent prohibition on nuclear energy in Australia should remain in force as it stands.
“From the heartland to the harbour, the terrible drought and bushfires we are experiencing leave no doubt that Australia must quickly transition away from climate-wrecking fuels like coal, oil and gas.
“The Australian Energy Market Operator’s roadmap for the efficient development of the National Electricity Market makes it clear that Australia’s energy transition is heading towards small and large-scale renewables.
“Australia’s long standing, sensible moratorium on nuclear energy, enacted by John Howard, does not preclude discussion or debate on nuclear. There has been plenty of both.
“But while no commercial operator will touch nuclear, the moratorium remains important as it prevents a reckless government pouring public money into this economically and environmentally risky industry.
“Australians know nuclear reactors overseas cost a fortune, take decades to build and come with the possibility of disastrous accidents and the certainty of eternal radioactive waste.
“Cheap, clean, safe reactors don’t exist outside the minds of nuclear true believers. Flirting with nuclear is no basis for a credible national energy policy.
“The climate crisis we are living through is too serious and too urgent to fiddle at the margins with nuclear.
“We need to avoid the distraction of a nuclear cul de sac and take the renewable path.
“Australia’s future is renewable, not radioactive.”
In September a broad coalition of faith, union, environmental, Aboriginal and public health groups, representing millions of Australians, issued a strong statement opposing nuclear power.
Coalition MPs squabble over climate science as Australia burns
, New Daily, Daniel McCulloch 13 Dec 19, Nationals deputy leader Bridget McKenzie has blasted an “irrational” state colleague for daring to link the NSW bushfires to climate change.
Their ugly public stoush has dragged on for several days.
He inflamed the internal spat after suggesting he would rather listen to climate scientists than the federal frontbencher on the effects of global warming.
But Senator McKenzie said “I actually have a science degree – I am one of the few in parliament that does”.
Coalition pushes for nuclear ban to be lifted, Labor says its madness,
Coalition pushes for nuclear ban to be lifted, Labor says its madness, https://reneweconomy.com.au/coalition-pushes-for-nuclear-ban-to-be-lifted-labor-says-its-madness-43980/, Sophie Vorrath, Federal Coalition MPs have called on the Morrison government to lift the ban on nuclear energy and pave the way for “emerging nuclear technologies to be introduced into Australia’s energy mix, despite their enormous expense, huge environmental risks, and as-yet unproven technical status.
The controversial push comes with the tabling of a 230-page report on Friday, the result of the inquiry into nuclear power called by energy and emissions reduction minister, and ex anti-wind campaigner Angus Taylor.
It was conducted by the Liberal dominated House Standing Committee on the Environment and Energy and chaired by pro-nuclear MP Ted O’Brien. See also: Federal nuclear inquiry report: Loopy lunatics in charge of the asylum
The finding from the Coalition MPs is unsurprising, but it should be noted that it goes against the advice from some of Australia’s foremost energy market authorities, including the Australian Energy Market Operator, who – as part of an expert panel including representatives from the market regulator (AER) and rule maker (AEMC) – told the inquiry that nuclear power just didn’t stack up against firmed renewables.
The nuclear report – entitled Not without your approval – was unveiled by O’Brien on Friday, who said it was “informed” by months of evidence-taking and the assessment of over 300 submissions on the prerequisites for nuclear energy in Australia.
In a statement released with the report, O’Brien urged Australians to “say a definite ‘No’ to old nuclear technologies but a conditional ‘Yes’ to what he called new and emerging technologies such as “small modular reactors,” which the inquiry was told by nearly all experts would not be commercially available for at least a decade.
But the Coalition report largely skated over the costs, and the delays in new technologies, and the projections from AEMO that Australia’s grid could reach 90 per cent renewables by the time that nuclear could be built in Australia, and instead relied on the highly contestable submissions from a group of nuclear proponents and ginger groups.
The focus on small modular reactors, or SMRs, is in line with the advice to the Committee from Ziggy Switkowski, who headed up the Coalition’s last nuclear thought bubble.
In fact, Switkowski told the Committee that the only hope for nuclear in Australia hinged on the future of Small Modular Reactors – which, as Jim Green explains here, are currently “non-existent, overhyped, and obscenely expensive.” The CSIRO and the AEMO agree – at least on the expensive bit.
O’Brien appears to have taken Switkowski’s advice and spun it into something resembling action on climate change, which is a new angle for the federal Coalition.
“If we’re serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we can’t simply ignore this zero-emissions baseload technology,” he said, ignoring AEMO’s and other advice about the potential of emission cuts from renewables, something backed up by the latest government report.
“But we also need to be humble enough to learn lessons from other countries who have gone down this path. It’s as much about getting the technology right as it is about maintaining a social license based on trust and transparency.” No mention of the massive cost blowouts and delays in every other western country that has tried to build new nuclear.
O’Brien said “the Australian people should be at the centre of any approval process, and refer to a separate and possibly self-defeating recommendation of the report, that the partial-lift of the moratorium be subject to a technology assessment and a commitment to community consent as a condition of approval for any nuclear power or nuclear waste disposal facility.
The federal opposition has slammed O’Brien’s recommendation, which it says has been made “despite clear evidence nuclear power is enormously expensive, slow, inflexible, and dangerous to the environment and human health.”
The Committee’s deputy chair, ALP MP Josh Wilson, said O’Brien’s view was not supported by Labor – which has argued in a dissenting report that the pursuit of nuclear power is “madness.”
Senate Inquiry recommends consideration of nuclear energy, but public must approve
Dave Sweeney, 13 Dec 19, A parliamentary committee has released a report into nuclear energy that puts the Australian people at the centre of any approval process for a future nuclear plant. “Nuclear energy should be on the table for consideration as part of our future energy mix”, said Member for Fairfax Ted O’Brien who chairs the House Standing Committee on the Environment and Energy. “Australia should say a definite ‘No’ to old nuclear technologies but a conditional ‘Yes’ to new and emerging technologies such as small modular reactors. “And most importantly,” said Mr O’Brien “the Australian people should be at the centre of any approval process”.
Scott Morrison and the Coalition are fiddling as Australia burns
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Scott Morrison and the Coalition are fiddling as Australia burns On climate action, the Coalition is the party of wreck, defer and obfuscate, the party with a shameful and indefensible record, Guardian Katharine Murphy Political editor, @murpharoo, Tue 10 Dec 2019 “………… Swathes of the country are burning, and we’ve only just entered summer. While Christian Porter was working through his various concessions on religious discrimination on Tuesday, trying to contain blowback from the churches and from colleagues, dot point by dot point, thick smoke was choking Sydney. In Canberra, the heat is also blistering, and the smoke from Braidwood rolls in and out, triggering memories of that traumatic January in 2003 that many of us lived through, our treasured possessions tucked in boxes, babies on hips, sheltering friends displaced from the western suburbs of the city; a city ready to flee, watching a red sky, raining ash and burning cinders, houses on fire, trees on fire. I flew to Brisbane on Sunday. The ground below me was dust for a thousand kilometres and the sky was a milky fog of smoke and heat haze. Dear prime minister. The country is not parched but desiccated, and it is burning like a tinderbox, and people are frightened. They are frightened about today and the terrible business of defending property and saving lives, and they are frightened about whether this is what spring and summer in Australia now looks like as droughts lengthen and deepen, and the fire season extends and intensifies because of climate change – which is what scientists have been trying to tell us all these years, so many times, in so many different ways, experts maligned and mangled in a culture war, pleading to be understood. Fear has accompanied the dry, and the heat and the flames, and that is a difficult and frankly politically unwelcome development for a prime minister who won an election just a few months ago at least in part by telling people to calm down about climate change, because the Coalition had things under control. It wasn’t true of course. That pitch has no basis in fact because the Coalition has done more than any other political party in Australia to frustrate climate action. If anyone is inclined to think wrecking is behaviour of the past, a vestige of Abbottism rather than behaviour of the present, because Morrison is so much more sensible, just remember this very week, in Madrid, Australian officials are making the case we need to use an accounting loophole to meet our Paris target. Far from meeting our 2030 target in a canter, Australia will not meet the target at all unless we invoke carryover credits to carry about half the abatement load. By taking this stance, we not only defer corrective action in our own country that should be happening now, in orderly fashion over this decade, we also validate the inclination of other countries, with higher emissions than us, to hunt for workarounds too. To cut a long story short, we make it less likely that the world will deliver the ambition we need to avert the worst of warming. So let’s be very clear. On climate action, the Coalition is the party of wreck, defer and obfuscate, the party with a shameful and indefensible record, the party that only last year bundled Malcolm Turnbull out of office in part because of a policy idea that might have settled a decade of partisan warfare that the Coalition believes is helpful to its re-election prospects. Morrison pursued an electoral strategy in May of telling voters in the cities the Coalition had climate under control, there was no need for hysterics, while in the regions, out of sight of the metro campaigns, the government weaponised climate change against Labor. So the Coalition in 2019 is the party of placate where necessary and punch on where politically profitable – which feels like the grimmest story of all. It might be grim, but it will remain the model as long at there’s enough voters in enough regional seats either not buying the science, or more worried about their immediate material circumstances than the science, to swing an election in the Coalition’s favour. As long as the status quo delivers a pathway to victory, the climate war in Australia will go on being an artefact of partisan politics rather than a practical problem to be solved. It’s hard, that truth, so hard I flinch. But truth is hard, and it’s past time truth won this argument rather than being obscured in the emoting, and the bobble head ranting, and the posturing, and the dissembling, and the clever strategising. Now by carrying on resolutely while the country burns, and being seen to carry on while things are being managed, Morrison is not avoiding the issue so much as trying to set the tone. The prime minister doesn’t want to validate the rising fear in the community by looking perturbed about the disaster currently in progress, because that obviously makes a lie of the Coalition’s “everything is fine” messaging. He wants to be getting on with ordinary business in full public view, not flapping about with special summits with the premiers just because Turnbull said he should do it on Q&A. …… The obfuscation, the false comfort, the changing of the subject, the head-patting, will keep happening as long as we let it. It will keep happening as long as soft and hard denialism is enabled in mainstream media outlets, as long as journalists prioritise other lines of inquiry over rigorously pursuing accountability on this issue, and as long as Australian voters abdicate responsibility by telling themselves all political parties are as bad as each other so it doesn’t matter who you vote for. The only way things will change is if we choose, as a country, to do something else. To take responsibility. To demand something better. Because, ultimately, this, the future, is on us. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/10/australia-is-burning-like-a-tinderbox-and-the-coalition-wont-acknowledge-voters-rising-fears |
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Community of small rural town Kimba “blown apart” by nuclear waste dump plan
The Australian town divided over hosting the country’s first nuclear waste dump, The small South Australian farming town of Kimba is split in two by the proposal to host Australia’s first permanent nuclear waste facility. Here, SBS News meets residents on both sides of the debate.
The women, who both live with their families on farms, have come to the decision that it is time to move on.
“It used to be such a close-knit community, but it’s blown apart.”
Ms Miller says the debate over the proposal for Kimba to host Australia’s first permanent nuclear waste facility has led to so much community division that some people no longer talk to each other.
“It’s not a nice place to live, you don’t want to go down the street because there are people that shun you and won’t talk to you,” Ms Miller says.
“The whole atmosphere is just really depressing”.
For four years, this small town on the edge of the Australian outback has been at the centre of debate, consultation and planning as a potential site to host the facility.
After promises of 45 ongoing full-time jobs and more than $30 million in federal government money earmarked to flow into town projects if the proposal goes ahead, the community last month voted on whether or not to host the site.
Sixty-two per cent of Kimba residents backed the site going ahead in the ballot run by the Australian Electoral Commission, and 38 per cent voted against it.
The public vote was a key final hurdle to indicate community support for the plan and federal resources minister Matt Canavan is expected to make a decision on which site will host the dump in early 2020.
There are three sites that remain on the shortlist, two near Kimba and the other further north near Hawker, in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges region.
Support for the facility
Grain and livestock farmer Geoff Baldock is a third-generation farmer in the Kimba region. He and his family farm more than 700 hectares of land here and he is preparing to sell off a small slice of that, around two per cent, to the federal government for them to build their nuclear waste facility.
He won’t reveal exactly how much the government is offering to pay for his land but says the offer has been “generous”…..
He hopes the proposal will go ahead and play a vital role in securing the future of the Kimba town, which has been in economic and population decline for a number of years. ……
Opponents of the proposal are deeply distrustful of the federal government and the promises made by politicians and scientists on government-paid salaries. They want independent scientists brought in to the safety assessments of the site. ……
The public vote in the town of Hawker closes on December 12 and the government will make a decision on which site will go ahead with the plan early next year.
But for friends Ms Tiller and Ms Miller it is too late. Their properties are on the market and both families are planning to move elsewhere in South Australia as soon as they can. HTTPS://WWW.SBS.COM.AU/NEWS/THE-AUSTRALIAN-TOWN-DIVIDED-OVER-HOSTING-THE-COUNTRY-S-FIRST-NUCLEAR-WASTE-DUMP?CX_CID=EDM%3ANEWSAM%3A2019&FBCLID=IWAR2B19ZUOG9WHGBO9CVSO_81AOYNXY0R4AFZAJFJW4EJWKMW_N6_B2M01WQ
BHP’s Olympic Dam expansion plan deserves serious attention and scrutiny
10 Dec 19, BHP is formally seeking to expand the Olympic Dam mine in northern South Australia and public comment on the federal EPBC referral – the Olympic Dam Resource Development Strategy – closes today.
Conservation SA, Friends of the Earth Australia and the Australian Conservation Foundation have sent a joint submission to the federal Environment department.
After today’s close of public comment the federal Minister has up to twenty business days to make a decision on the required level of assessment.
We maintain that the Olympic Dam expansion plan deserves serious attention and scrutiny for three key reasons: it involves the long lived and multi-faceted threat of uranium, it proposes to use massive amounts of finite underground water and the company is in trouble globally over the management of mine wastes and residues currently stored in multiple leaking – and sometimes catastrophically failing – tailings dams. BHP has identified and conceded that three of the existing Olympic Dam tailings dams are in the most severe global ‘extreme risk’ category.
The key recommendations from environment groups include:
- That BHP’s Olympic Dam operation be assessed in its entirety with the full range of project impacts subject to public consultation.
At a minimum, EPBC Act responsibilities to protect Matters of NES require that the BHP Olympic Dam Referral must be subject to a public environmental impact assessment process.
- A comprehensive Safety Risk Assessment is needed for all Olympic Dam mine tailings facilities.
- BHP must lodge a Bond to cover 100% of Olympic Dam rehabilitation liabilities.
- BHP must stop the use of evaporation ponds to reduce mortality in protected bird species.
These issues are further explored in detailed project briefing papers linked with the joint groups submission.
David Noonan – the submission author is available to provide further issue background on 0414 519 419
The comments below are attributable to ACF spokesperson Dave Sweeney (0408 317 812):
“As the world’s largest miner BHP has a responsibility to adopt best practise standards to every aspect of its Olympic Dam operation, including transparency, rigour and extent of assessment.
“A federal review when BHP wanted to expand Olympic Dam as an open cut mine earlier this decade made clear recommendations about the need to assess the projects cumulative impacts – this approach must be reflected in the current federal consideration of BHP’s proposal.
“Uranium is a unique mineral and risk and is always contested and contaminating.
“The global uranium price remains depressed after Fukushima and BHP should actively model a project configuration where uranium is not part of Olympic Dam’s mineral products.”
(note: there is direct DFAT confirmation that Australian uranium was inside Fukushima when the reactors failed: Australian uranium fuelled Fukushima’s fallout)
“Any increase in the footprint of Olympic Dam would mean an increase in the complexity and cost of future clean up and rehabilitation.
“Cleaning up a uranium mine is never easy and always costly – BHP must be required to ensure there is the dedicated financial capacity to fund this clean-up work – it cannot be allowed to become a future burden to the SA taxpayer or wider community.
“Existing federal government standards require the Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu to isolate its radioactive tailings for at least 10,000 years. The same standard must be applied at Olympic Dam – especially as BHP has confirmed that three of Olympic Dam’s existing tailings dam are in the global ‘extreme risk’ category. There should be no new pressure on this already compromised tailings management system without comprehensive and independent review.”
Federal Nuclear Inquiry Report expected this week
 Report due on nuclear power industry, Canberra Times, Paul Osborne, 9 Dec 19, A report looking into the potential for nuclear power in Australia is expected to be released later this week. The parliamentary environment and energy committee was tasked by Energy Minister Angus Taylor in August to examine the potential for nuclear power. Mr Taylor told the committee the moratorium on nuclear energy would remain, but he wanted some “sensible” advice on economic, environmental and safety implications. The inquiry received evidence on the potential for micro-reactors – some as small as five megawatts – and even floating nuclear power stations which are being developed in Russia……. Environment groups said there were huge health, environmental and financial risks from a nuclear industry, which would also need massive taxpayer subsidies. They warned suggestions of small modular reactors were a pipedream and the nuclear waste storage problem had not yet been solved…… It is understood the committee is aiming to table the report in parliament by the end of the week, but no formal release date has been set. https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6534160/report-due-on-nuclear-power-industry/ |
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Australia on fire. Scott Morrison under fire over bushfire emergency
‘Australians are paying the price’: Scott Morrison under fire over bushfire emergency, The unprecedented severity of Australia’s bushfire season is igniting calls for stronger action in response to the climate emergency. SBS, BY TOM STAYNER , 9 Dec 19, As Australia burns, public concern over the need for greater action against the devastating bushfire season and climate change is igniting.
Dozens of bushfires continue to burn across the nation’s east coast with the effects of these blazes ranging from razed homes on the frontlines to smoke choking metropolitan centres.
The fire season has captured international attention with media outlets from the New York Times to the BBC drawing attention to criticism against the Morrison government’s inaction on climate change.
The Climate Council has also laid fresh blame on the Federal government, accusing it of being “out of touch” with the action Australians are demanding.
“It is irresponsible not to connect the dots – it is absolutely clear … that climate change is exacerbating dangerous bushfire conditions,” the Climate Council’s Dr Martin Rice told SBS News.
“Australia must act on climate change it must join the global collective effort – we’re falling woefully behind and Australians are paying the price.”…..
The Department of Environment and Energy released the “Australia’s emissions projections 2019” report on Sunday citing the nation would exceed its 2030 Paris target by 16 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
But Dr Rice said the numbers point to a “dodgy accounting” trick through using “carry-over” credits to reach the commitment, symptomatic of a failure to respond to the “escalating climate crisis”.
“Australia is on the frontline of the escalating crisis, now is not the time to cut corners on climate,” he said.
“We need to actually prepare our emergency services and our fire services and our community for the escalating threats.”…..
More than 90 fires were burning across NSW alone on Sunday evening and there are fears of worsening conditions when temperatures soar later this week.
Amid these conditions, Labor has again urged Mr Morrison to hold an urgent COAG meeting to prepare Australia for the bushfire season.
“We can see, smell and feel the changing climate but our Government says we’re only imagining it,” Opposition leader Anthony Albanese said over the weekend…..
[Morrison] has faced criticism for not meeting with a group of ex-fire chiefs, at the centre of a petition signed by more than 100,000 Australians which calls for a national emergency summit…..
Climate change is Australia’s labyrinth without an exit’
The horrific fire conditions have spawned international headlines about Australia’s response with the New York Times writing the fires revealed “once again” that Australia’s “pragmatism stops at climate change”.
The outlet cited political spats over climate changes and the link to bushfires including Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack’s jibe against “raving inner-city lunatics”, The Greens.
“Climate change is Australia’s labyrinth without an exit, where its pragmatism disappears,” the New York Times wrote.
One of those Greens, Senator Sarah Hanson-Young again took aim at Mr Morrison this weekend over his government’s response.
“Our nation is our fire,” she said.
“Australians deserve better than politicians with their heads in the sand.” HTTPS://WWW.SBS.COM.AU/NEWS/AUSTRALIANS-ARE-PAYING-THE-PRICE-SCOTT-MORRISON-UNDER-FIRE-OVER-BUSHFIRE-EMERGENCY
Hypocrisy of Australian Labor Party on climate change
The ALP remains far more worried about looking like it is attacking people who work in coalmines than getting on the front foot on climate change.
It is 2019 and the leader of the ALP is now repeating lines about our exports of coals that Tony Abbott used.
The ALP cannot afford to play games on this issue. You can’t say climate change is real and then ensure your messaging is about protecting coal.
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The Coalition isn’t being honest about the climate crisis. But neither is Labor https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2019/dec/10/the-coalition-isnt-being-honest-about-the-climate-crisis-but-neither-is-labor, Greg Jericho @GrogsGamut Tue 10 Dec 2019
Of course we need to think about those who will be affected by mine closures, but cripes, we’re all affected by climate change. In the weekend I flew up to Sydney to attend a conference held by the Chifley Research Centre, the ALP’s thinktank. As the plane approached Sydney, the site of the fire front in the Blue Mountains was stomach-churning. And then I got to experience the air quality of Sydney that has become news around the world.Upon returning to Canberra, I discovered a wind change had meant the nation’s capital was now enveloped in a haze of smoke – and expected to be so for the rest of the week. This, I need not tell you, is not normal. Because of climate change, areas of south-eastern Australia are going to be drier and hotter, the times for doing preventative hazard reduction burning will shrink, and as a result our fire seasons will become longer, and the fires will become more intense. This is due to one thing – climate change. The only way to prevent this is to reduce our emissions and to pressure the rest of the world to reduce emissions as well. We are not doing either of those things. Continue reading |
Peter Garrett urges Labor to reconnect with environmental movement, warns ‘true believers are dying’
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Peter Garrett urges Labor to reconnect with environmental movement, warns ‘true believers are dying’, Brisbane Times, By Rob Harris
December 7, 2019, Midnight Oil frontman and environmental campaigner Peter Garrett has urged Labor to stare down the “self interest” within its ranks and commit to ambitious plans to avoid the “catastrophe” of climate change.
Warning that the suburbs of western Sydney and Melbourne are being “crucified on the altar of inaction” and regional and rural communities were “hostage to climate damage”, the former Labor minister said the party’s true believers are “dying out” and a younger generation of voters will be “more radical and less forgiving” if it fails to act. Speaking to Labor’s Environmental Action Network on Saturday night, Mr Garrett took direct aim at former colleague Joel Fitzgibbon and “some in the CFMEU”, who he accused of deliberately undermining the party and “not committed to the challenge” of reducing emissions. “The natural world is under siege. The threat we face is literally existential,” Mr Garrett told the gathering of about 100 people at the Keg and Brew Hotel in Sydney’s Surry Hills. “We are surrounded by fires, force-fed by a super hot spring. Our cities and towns are blanketed with smoke and the sun has gone out, it’s hard to breathe.” Labor has engaged in a fierce internal debate since its shock election loss on May 18 with Mr Fitzgibbon, the agriculture and resources spokesman, arguing the ALP should offer “a political and policy settlement” on climate policy to make a 28 per cent reduction in emissions the target by 2030. Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has signalled Labor’s future climate policy platform will be focused on jobs in the low-emissions energy sector. Mr Garrett said progressive politics must realise the world was “witnessing a tectonic shift” in the climate and its faith was waning in established institutions. “Our times do not call for ‘business as usual’ politics,” Mr Garrett said. Labor must face down self-interest and sectional interest, whether from some in business, or some in the CFMEU, or from individual members who eschew reality and are not committed to the challenge, and indeed in the case of the shadow minister for Agriculture and Resources Joel Fitzgibbon, deliberately undermine the party whilst still holding their position.” …….. https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/federal/peter-garrett-urges-labor-to-reconnect-with-environmental-movement-warns-true-believers-are-dying-20191206-p53hqe.htm |
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Why Australia must retain its nuclear bans: Dr Jim Green explains to Senate Nuclear Inquiry.
REPORT ON PROCEEDINGS BEFORE STANDING COMMITTEE ON STATE DEVELOPMENT URANIUM MINING AND NUCLEAR FACILITIES (PROHIBITIONS) REPEAL BILL 2019 At Macquarie Room, Parliament House, Sydney, on Monday 11 November 2019
PRESENT The Hon. Taylor Martin (Chair) The Hon. Mark Banasiak The Hon. Mark Buttigieg The Hon. Wes Fang The Hon. Scott Farlow The Hon. Mark Latham The Hon. Natasha Maclaren-Jones The Hon. Mick Veitch (Deputy Chair) JIM GREEN, National Anti-Nuclear Campaigner, Friends of the Earth Australia, affirmed and examined DAVE SWEENEY, Nuclear Policy Analyst, Australian Conservation Foundation, affirmed and examined CHRIS GAMBIAN, Chief Executive, Nature Conservation Council of NSW, sworn and examined Monday, 11 November 2019 Legislative Council Page 30
The CHAIR: Would anyone like to begin by making an opening statement?
Dr GREEN: Yes, we all would, with your permission. I am going to speak about nuclear power. Dave will speak about uranium, and Chris will speak about New South Wales energy issues—opportunities, road blocks and so on. I am going to quickly run through issues canvassed in our joint submission, and in particular the reasons why we believe that State and Federal bans against nuclear power should be retained.
The first one is that those bans have saved Australia and saved New South 
Wales from the catastrophic cost over-runs with every reactor project in Western Europe and the United States over the past decade. It is a sad truth that every one of those reactor projects is at least A$10 billion over budget. That’s $10 billion—with a ‘B’. It is hard to believe that but it is true. Perhaps the most catastrophic of all those catastrophic projects was in South Carolina, where they have had to abandon a reactor project mid-stream, having already spent over A$13 billion.
Nuclear power could not possibly pass any reasonable economic tests, and it certainly would not pass the tests set by Prime Minister Scott Morrison. It 
could not possibly be introduced or maintained without massive taxpayer subsidies. There are a couple of examples. Hitachi has recently walked away from a project in Wales in the United Kingdom, despite the offer of staggering, unprecedented subsidies. Also in the UK, the lifetime subsidies for the Hinkley Point project alone—a 3.2 gigawatt project—are estimated by the European Union to be A$55 billion for a two-reactor project. Other credible estimates put those lifetime subsidies at A$91 billion. These are extraordinary figures. I know it is hard to believe but it is all documented.
The other economic test set by Prime Minister Morrison is that nuclear power would need to reduce electricity prices, and clearly it would do no such thing. It would clearly increase electricity prices. Legislation banning nuclear power should also be retained because of the lack of a social licence, and in particular numerous polls over the past 10 years have found that only 20 per cent to 28 
per cent of Australians would support living in the near vicinity of a nuclear power plant. As the Clean Energy Council put it, in its submission to this inquiry, it would require “a minor miracle” to win community support for nuclear power in Australia.
There is a lot more that could be said about nuclear economics and I am happy to field questions on that issue. There is plenty of information in our joint submission and in the separate Friends of the Earth submission dealing specifically with small modular reactors. There is one point that I would particularly like to make to the committee and to the secretariat, which is that there is an excellent critique of some of the claims made by nuclear lobbyists, both to this inquiry and to the Federal inquiry. This article neatly corrects and debunks those claims. The article is by Giles Parkinson. It was published at reneweconomy.com.au on 23 October. It is called, “Why the nuclear lobby makes stuff up about cost of wind and solar”. Our joint submission also does some of that work— debunking highly questionable claims made by nuclear lobbyists about nuclear economics. In particular I would draw your attention to sections 3.5 and 3.6 of our joint submission.
The next issues is that we believe legal prohibition should be retained because the pursuit of a nuclear industry would almost certainly worsen patterns of disempowerment and dispossession experienced by Australia’s First Nations. To give just one example of that, the National Radioactive Waste Management Act dispossessed and disempowers traditional owners in many different ways. To list one of many, the Act states that the nomination of a site for a radioactive waste dump is valid even if Aboriginal owners were not consulted and did not give consent. I would ask this Committee to consider recommending that those appalling and indefensible clauses of the National Radioactive Waste Management Act be repealed.
Legislation banning nuclear power should also be retained because no-one could have any confidence that satisfactory solutions could be found for waste streams. Globally, no country has a repository for high-level nuclear waste. There is one deep underground repository for long-lived intermediate level waste in the United States. It was set up in the late nineties. Almost as soon as it was set up, safety standards and layers of regulatory oversight were peeled away, and those failures led to a chemical explosion in an underground waste barrel, which shut the repository down for three years. Direct and indirect costs amounted to about $3 billion. The thing that I really want to focus on there is that safety standards and regulatory standards fell away straight away—and you are dealing with plutonium, with a half life of 24,000 years. We need to safely manage this waste for millennia; they failed to safely manage it for one single decade.
I want to make a quick point on wastage of another sort. That is that nuclear 
power reactors are voracious consumers of water. A single reactor typically consumes 50 million litres of cooling water every single day. Their water intake pipes are slaughter houses for fish and other marine creatures. Arguably, the best way to destroy a local fishery is to build a nuclear power plant nearby. This is just considering routine operations of a nuclear power plant. In the case of Fukushima, that disaster has crippled and almost killed the local fishing industry. Currently fishers in the region are fighting plans to dump vast amounts of contaminated water into the ocean surrounding the nuclear plant.
I have one final point. Legislation banning nuclear power should be retained because the introduction of nuclear power would delay and undermine the development of effective economic energy and climate policies based on renewables and energy efficiency. A December 2018 report by CSIRO and AEMO found that the cost of power from small modular reactors would be more than twice as expensive as power from wind and solar PV, even with some storage costs included. CSIRO and AEMO are about to release another report, which firms up that conclusion and also considers the costs of a higher degree of storage attached to renewables. They have canvassed the findings of that report. They find that, even with a considerable amount of storage factored in, renewables are still far cheaper than nuclear, comparable to the costs of existing fossil fuels and are almost certain to become cheaper than fossil fuels because of the clear cost trajectory of renewables and storage.
So nuclear simply is not even in this debate. There has been a big spat about the CSIRO and AEMO costings with respect to small modular reactors. Their costing is $16,000 per kilowatt of installed capacity, and the nuclear lobbyists are furious with that and strongly contesting it. What I would say is that if you average the cost of small modular reactors, which are actually under construction in China, Russia and Argentina, that average is higher than the figure given by CSIRO and AEMO. Also, if you look at the reactors being built in the United States—the large reactors—one again, the CSIRO and AEMO figure for nuclear is lower than the real-world cost for reactors that are actually under construction in the US. So the CSIRO and AEMO figure is entirely defensible. In conclusion I quote the senior vice-president of Exelon, which is the largest nuclear company in the United States, who said:
I don’t think we’re building any more nuclear plants in the United States. I don’t think it’s ever going to happen … They are too expensive to construct …
That is in the US where they have a vast amount of infrastructure and expertise but nuclear has clearly priced itself out of the market. The calculations in Australia would certainly be worse because we do not have that infrastructure, we do not have that expertise and we are blessed with renewable energy resources. As the Climate Council, comprising Australia’s leading climate scientists, puts it, nuclear power reactors “are not appropriate for Australia—and probably never will be.” I will leave it there.
Australia burns, as government leaders choose not to discuss this
Leading scientists condemn political inaction on climate change as Australia ‘literally burns
Climate experts ‘bewildered’ by government ‘burying their heads in the sand’, and say bushfires on Australia’s east coast should be a ‘wake-up call’, Lisa Cox, Sat 7 Dec 2019 , Leading scientists have expressed concern about the lack of focus on the climate crisis as bushfires rage across New South Wales and Queensland, saying it should be a “wake-up call” for the government.
Climate experts who spoke to Guardian Australia said they were “bewildered” the emergency had grabbed little attention during the final parliamentary sitting week for the year, which was instead taken up by the repeal of medevac laws, a restructure of the public service, and energy minister Angus Taylor’s run-in with the American author Naomi Wolf.
Escalating conditions on Thursday and Friday led to dozens of out-of-control bushfires, including in the NSW’s Hawkesbury region, where a fire at Gospers Mountain merged with two other blazes burning in the lower Hunter on Friday.
Sydney has been blanketed with a thick smoke haze that health officials said had led to a 25% increase in people presenting in emergency departments for asthma and breathing problems.
Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist with the University of NSW’s Climate Change Research Centre, said she was “surprised, bewildered, concerned” that the emergency had prompted little discussion from political leaders this week.
“Here we are in the worst bushfire season we’ve ever seen, the biggest drought we’ve ever had, Sydney surrounded by smoke, and we’ve not heard boo out of a politician addressing climate change,” she said.
“They dismissed it from the outset and haven’t come back to it since.
“They’re burying their heads in the sand while the world is literally burning around them and that’s the scary thing. It’s only going to get worse.” Continue reading
Fire? What fire? It’s business as usual in Morrison’s Canberra bubble
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Fire? What fire? It’s business as usual in Morrison’s Canberra bubble, SMH, Peter Hartcher, Political and international editor for The Sydney Morning Herald, December 7, 2019, Subtitles are supposed to help you make sense of what you’re seeing but can’t quite understand. Like a foreign language film. But if you saw the subtitles to Federal Parliament’s final question time of 2019, the flow of text only made it more incomprehensible.
The politicians talked about a great many things. But if you watched it on TV, the subtitles were about only one. As Labor cycled through its list of grievances against the government, and the government rehashed its self-congratulatory talking points, the news crawl across the bottom of the screen announced a non-stop series of fire alerts. Did the two worlds connect? At no point in an hour-and-a-quarter did the politicians discuss the most obvious and pressing concern for most of the people they represent. The disconnect was emblematic of the week. Indeed, it’s an emerging motif of the Morrison government. There is no emerging crisis so big that the government cannot find a way to look past it. Australia, parched, baking, burning, is heading into an anxious Christmas and a joyless new year. The Prime Minister sends his best wishes but he wants to get on with talking about his real priorities. The final showcase moment for Parliament for the year only managed to showcase political self-absorption. It’s understandable that the bushfires weren’t a feature of question time. Question time is customarily a clash over highly political differences, and neither party wanted to politicise fires. It’s just that it was all business as usual in Parliament. As if there were no accelerating national emergency. The disconnect is that it’s not business as usual for the rest of Australia…….. The government, having campaigned for re-election on a minimalist platform, wants to govern with a minimalist agenda. It seeks to deliver its promised agenda to its “base”, while ignoring other demands unless — and until — they become politically overwhelming. The fires are a national emergency. They are an invitation to national leadership. And, therefore, they are an opportunity for Morrison to look beyond the 30 to 40 per cent of voters who constitute his “base” to making common cause with the other 60 to 70 per cent of the community. Besides, even “quiet Australians” are increasingly anxious ones. …… The entire pyro-hydro complex of problems and solutions does lead, inevitably, to that most delicate political question of climate change mitigation. Morrison will have to brace his party to deal squarely with this, too. At the moment, he is in frozen immobility on this because he does not want to upset the internal Coalition truce on climate and coal. This will require of him active management. It will test his skills. But this is all big and bold and demanding and, above all, risky. It’s far from the minimalist and incrementalist prime ministership that Morrison has kept to so far. More likely, he’ll just continue to preside over an unfolding disaster armed only with grudging, inadequate responses and an unending list of excuses and talking points. …… We don’t need subtitles to explain the subtext. The country is in crisis and the national government is in denial. …https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/fire-what-fire-it-s-business-as-usual-in-morrison-s-canberra-bubble-20191206-p53hom.html |
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1 This month
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
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
19 May – Webinar- Webinar: No Nuclear Weapons in Australia
Start: 2026-05-19 18:00:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
End: 2026-05-19 19:30:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
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 