Pro nuke hype hotting up inAustralia
Fairfax newspapers come out today with headlines about Australians wanting nuclear power. In fact, Australian were asked if they thought the Federal Government should “consider” nuclear power. Not quite the same thing as wanting it. Continue reading
AREVA spins nuclear to kids
AREVA never misses an opportunity to get the uranium/nuclear soft sell out to kids.
And, apparently the South Australia Museum and the S.A. govt are right behind them. Continue reading
Uranium industry keeps up is myth about price rising
Fortune-telling thrives in the uranium/nuclear industry.
Faced with the facts of a glut of uranium, a failing commercial nuclear industry – what do they do? Well – just predict a boom – just alittle bit further on…..
Toro looks beyond uranium slump THE AUSTRALIAN Stephen Bell October 05, 2009 Article from: Dow Jones Newswires TORO Energy remains confident its $162 million Wiluna uranium project in Western Australia is economically viable, despite a sustained downturn in uranium prices…………..
Spot prices for the nuclear fuel fell last week to about $US42 ($48) a pound, down from a record high of $US136 in June 2007, prompting media speculation that many Australian uranium mining hopefuls would struggle.
Weak WA govt message to BHP on uranium and aborigines
Christina Macpherson – With BHP Billiton’s poor international track record on care and concern for indigenous peoples, I wouldn’t put much faith in their pious statements to the W.A. govt.
Sure, it’s great that the Ngalia people’s ecological knowledge has been publicly recognised, but there won’t even be a rap over the knuckles if BHP Billiton completely disregards this at the Yeelirrie uranium project. Note the wording of the article below – “…………..…..state Environment Minister Donna Faragher did not order BHP to consult the Ngalia, she made it clear they should..………”
Exposing Ziggy’s spin
Ziggy Switkowski is pretty careful these days, on where he spouts his pro-nuke spin. He doesn’t want demonstrations and hecklers. So, it’s usually to the refined world of corporate Australia. Or at Lucas Heights, where he recently spruiked on the seemingly inevitable move to nuclear power.
Ziggy talks about Australian public pro-nuke opinion, without any evidence to support this. He does not mention cost, nor water use, nor waste disposal.
Ziggy continues to tout nuclear as the solution to global warming, ignoring the factors of nuclear fuel cycle carbon emissions, and the fact that even if it did work, nuclear power would supply only electricity, and would be years too late.
Ziggy prophesies a future of continued unbridled energy consumption while the world is waking up to newer ways, energy conservation, energy efficency, cogeneration. Of course, Ziggy dismisses renewable energy sources, rather as horse and buggy experts might have dismissed the automobile a century ago.
Ziggy Switkowski wants 50 nuclear power plants in Australia
Upping the ante on nuke power
Business Spectator, by Keith Orchsison 22 Sept 09
One of the great quotes from Ziggy Switkowski is that it is never hard to figure out where things are moving; it’s just hard to figure out the timing.Switkowski, chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the head of John Howard’s review of nuclear energy earlier this decade, is quietly increasing his forecast of how many uranium-fuelled power stations will be operating in this country by the middle of the century. Continue reading
A wasteful and very dubious nuclear opinion survey
The news item below is a bit of a worry.
by Christina Macpherson 11 Sept 09 Now why would the govt want to waste our tax money on the nuclear question, just 2 years after it was clearly answered by the voters?
Is the uranium/nuclear lobby is dictating government action here, in the same way that the fossil fuel industries are determining climate change policy?
Survey Project leader Daniela Stehlik may be very well intentioned, but her comments published today do not inspire confidence .
First of all, Stehlik is calling nuclear power the “more emissions-friendly option”. Doesn’t she know about the carbon emissions from the whole nuclear fuel cycle?
Then she says “… with nuclear, Australians can’t tell what it’s like … they haven’t actually seen a plant in operation …. No direct experience” (So, apparently we can’t have a valid opinion?)
Amazingly, Stehlik thinks that internationally, nuclear power is OK with communities. Doesn’t she know about the turmoil in USA and UK over the nuclear’s costs, and wastes.? About the fiasco of France’s new reactors? About the massive anti-nuclear protest in Germany?
And – Stehlik seems to brush off the (?silly) negative connotations of nuclear bombs and nuclear accidents- “it’s in our imagination”!
Oh dear – we are in for a wasteful tax-funded nuke-hype!
Australian govt to bankroll a nuclear opinion survey
Federal funds to test popular opinion on nuclear power
THE AUSTRALIAN : Jamie Walker | September 11, 2009
THE federal government will fund research to test public opinion on nuclear power, Continue reading
Does Australia really have a nuclear future?
Courier Mail By Graham Readfearn
August 26, 2009
TALKING to former nuclear physicist Dr Ziggy Switkowski about nuclear power is akin to having a discussion about an expensive trip to the shops. Continue reading
Nuclear power proposal ridiculed
N-power proposal ridiculed
The Bendigo Advertiser 27/07/2009
Last week the chairman of the Federal Government’s Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Dr Ziggy Switkowski, said Australia was the best-placed country in the world to use nuclear power…………………………..Environmentalists have called his proposal “ridiculous” and unnecessary given the number of renewable, and cleaner, energy options available.
Bendigo Sustainability Group president Karen Corr said Mr Switkowski’s idea was irrelevant.
“It is a ridiculous plan to even be considering nuclear power,” she said.
“There is existing technology now for green energy and nuclearpower is not clean, there are so many problems with it, especially with the waste.”
Ms Corr said any nuclear power plant would take at least 20 years to build, which seemed pointless given that wind and solar projects were already running and could be installed relatively quickly.
Mount Alexander Sustainability Group chairman Jim Norris agreed.
“We are saying no to nuclear power, we do not see it as clean and safe, there are other solutions readily available,” he said.
“Nuclear power generation is not entirely renewable clean energy, mine site to power point energy costs are quite considerable; you have got to dig the uranium out of the ground then store it for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.”
Mr Norris said the CSIRO’s Maine’s Power project was “absolute proof” that Australia did not need to rely on nuclear energy.
“Four major Castlemaine businesses will save between 30 and 40 per cent of their energy usage by means other than nuclear power by the end of 2010,” he said.
N-power proposal ridiculed – Local News – News – General – The Advertiser
A dark dawn: the nuclear age is with us
ON LINE opinion By Jake Lynch – 27 July 2009 “…………………In Australia.. investigative reporting by the Sydney Morning Herald established that Peter Garrett,…. had approved a proposal for a new uranium mine from a “reclusive billionaire” named James Neal Blue. Blue, the paper noted, was “one of the world’s biggest arms dealers” and the supplier, through his company, General Atomics, of the Predator drone aircraft being used in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.The new Four Mile mine, in South Australia, would use the same “acid corrosion technique” to extract uranium from aquifers, environment reporter Ben Cubby wrote, as the nearby Beverley mine, which had recorded 59 separate spills of radioactive material in the past decade.
Cubby didn’t raise the point, but real fears have surfaced, over the same period, that South Australia might run out of water, with its state capital, Adelaide, afflicted by salination and drought. It seemed that the exploitation of a resource with a high market value was taking precedence over the preservation of one with unique life-giving properties…………………..
Time then, perhaps, to dredge up some of the nuances otherwise in danger of being forgotten, but emphasised usefully in two new books, Plutonium: A History of the World’s Most Dangerous Element, by Jeremy Bernstein (Cornell University Press) and In Mortal Hands: A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age, by Stephanie Cooke (Black Inc Books)…………….
…………The element at the heart of humanity’s deadliest weapons is plutonium, and Bernstein describes the science leading to its eventual production in sufficient quantities to manufacture bombs, evoking intrigues, along the way, that crossed the borders of Mitteleuropa, with protagonists fleeing Nazi persecution and heading for points west. Plutonium is a by-product of civil nuclear reactors, and Bernstein ends with a wry commentary on its sheer uselessness for any but military purposes. From the initial laboratory quantities measured in millionths of a gram, the world is now “awash” with the stuff, he says: 155 metric tons in total………………………….
Britain…. still has not settled on one site for the long-term disposal of waste from its existing nuclear plants. The cost, now estimated at well over £70 billion, or about US$120 billion, has been palmed off on the government,…
…Across the Atlantic, the Hanford reactor that produced plutonium for Los Alamos was mothballed long ago, Bernstein notes. The risk from leaks to swimmers and anglers downstream on the Columbia River was hushed up when it was operational, but it now represents a US$10 billion time bomb……………..
In the civil domain, the “nuclear renaissance” now underway creates a lucrative market for uranium suppliers like Australia, but, she observes, also multiplies the risk, of both accidents and proliferation.
A dark dawn: the nuclear age is with us – On Line Opinion – 27/7/2009
Fairfax News has conflict of interest in reporting on nuclear power
Becruz by Robert Vose 25 July 09The Chairman of the Board for Fairfax Media Limited is Mr Ron Walker. Ron Walker was also one of the three owners of a company that aimed to build Australia’s first nuclear power station:
Herald Sun Michael Harvey February 28, 2007
JOHN Howard has admitted he had known of a private bid by a Liberal powerbroker to build Australia’s first nuclear power station since the middle of last year.
Mr Howard received a phone call from businessman Ron Walker about the time the Federal Government established its expert investigation into the viability of nuclear power.
Mr Walker told the Prime Minister he was registering a private company interested in nuclear power…
The Herald Sun revealed yesterday that Mr Walker joined forces with fellow business chiefs Hugh Morgan and Robert Champion de Crespigny to establish a private company called Australian Nuclear Energy Pty Ltd.
If Fairfax newspapers such as The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald are starting up a campaign to subtly promote nuclear power – through these pretend allegorical stories of the last couple of days – THEY NEED TO DECLARE A POSSIBLE CONFLICT OF INTEREST!!!!
These nuclear power puff pieces do not constitute rational debate. They do not look at the options for energy systems that could replace coal power stations. The writing style even suggests that the authors are embarrassed to have to present these kinds of positions in their writing.
……………………….If editors and the board are pushing the nuclear power wheelburrow they need to declare their interests in nuclear power.
Becrux » Blog Archive » Why is Fairfax Promoting nuclear power?
Nuclear power is a feminist issue
by Noel Wauchope 21 July 09
Thirty years ago, along with others, I argued that NUCLEAR is a feminist issue, and Women’s Electoral Lobby put in a detailed anti-uranium submission to the Australian federal government.
Nothing has changed.
1. The uranium/nuclear industry is still a Big Boys’ Club
– providing the ultimate phallic symbol – the nuclear missile, – toys for the boys
– providing exorbitantly paid jobs for the corporate boys, and for their tunnel-vision “experts”
– providing short-term dangerous jobs for tough boys.
2. Cancer is on the increase, especially breast cancer. The research goes towards cure – which is fine, but where’s the research into the causes and prevention of breast cancer . (Women are conned into thinking that “detection = prevention”)
Women bear the load of caring for those who suffer and die from leukaemia, breast cancer, lung cancer, – as well as of birth abnormalities. Meanwhile the establishment carefully attributes these to “genetic factors” – or vaguely to “unknown” factors.
The nuclear issue is still a feminist issue.
In every survey, more women than men are opposed to this industry.
But then – if they speak out – the “experts” dismiss women’s views – they are too “emotional”
Still – those surveys are a bit of a nuisance for the uranium/nuclear lobby – they are working hard now, to get women on side with them.
Selling the “resource boom”, (especially uranium) to women
Resources industry seeks more women
ABC News 20 July 09 By Maria HatzakisThe Queensland Resources Council (QRC) says the industry will not be able to achieve the growth it wants without recruiting more women……………….
QRC chief executive officer Michael Roche says female workers are needed to take up trade roles and careers in engineering and environmental sciences.
“The industry will be in a recovery phase very, very quickly and we know we’ll need thousands more people to service the sort of growth that is being planned in the industry and we can’t do it just by relying on the blokes,” he said.
Resources industry seeks more women – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Martin Ferguson Minister for the Uranium Lobby
The Bulletin 21 July 09
“The Labor Party changed its policy at the 2007 national conference,” Mr Ferguson said.“There is no limit on the number of uranium mines in Australia.“I simply adopt the view it’s only a matter of time and there will be uranium mining in Queensland.”
Ferguson hails next wave of mining growth | Local News | Rockhampton Morning Bulletin
1 This month
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
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