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Jim Green, Online Opinion, 27 Feb 2020, https://onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=20758&page=0
Nuclear power in Australia is prohibited under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999. A review of the EPBC Act is underway and there is a strong push from the nuclear industry to remove the bans. However, federal and state laws banning nuclear power have served Australia well and should be retained.
 Too cheap to meter or too expensive to matter? Laws banning nuclear power has saved Australia from the huge costs associated with failed and failing reactor projects in Europe and North America, such as the Westinghouse project in South Carolina that was abandoned after the expenditure of at least A$13.4 billion. The Westinghouse / South Carolina fiasco could so easily have been replicated in any of Australia’s states or territories if not for the legal bans.
There are many other examples of shocking nuclear costs and cost overruns, including:
* The cost of the two reactors under construction in the US state of Georgia has doubled and now stands at A$20.4‒22.6 billion per reactor.
* The cost of the only reactor under construction in France has nearly quadrupled and now stands at A$20.0 billion. It is 10 years behind schedule.
* The cost of the only reactor under construction in Finland has nearly quadrupled and now stands at A$17.7 billion. It is 10 years behind schedule.
* The cost of the four reactors under construction in the United Arab Emirates has increased from A$7.5 billion per reactor to A$10‒12 billion per reactor.
* In the UK, the estimated cost of the only two reactors under construction is A$25.9 billion per reactor. A decade ago, the estimated cost was almost seven times lower. The UK National Audit Office estimates that taxpayer subsidies for the project will amount to A$58 billion, despite earlier government promises that no taxpayer subsidies would be made available.
Nuclear power has clearly priced itself out of the market and will certainly decline over the coming decades. Indeed the nuclear industry is in crisis ‒ as industry insiders and lobbyists freely acknowledge. Westinghouse ‒ the most experienced reactor builder in the world ‒ filed for bankruptcy in 2017 as a result of catastrophic cost overruns on reactor projects. A growing number of countries are phasing out nuclear power, including Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, Taiwan and South Korea.
Rising power bills: Laws banning nuclear power should be retained because nuclear power could not possibly pass any reasonable economic test. Nuclear power clearly fails the two economic tests set by Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Firstly, nuclear power could not possibly be introduced or maintained without huge taxpayer subsidies. Secondly, nuclear power would undoubtedly result in higher electricity prices.
 Nuclear waste streams: Laws banning nuclear power should be retained because no solution exists to for the safe, long-term management of streams of low-, intermediate- and high-level nuclear wastes. No country has an operating repository for high-level nuclear waste. The United States has a deep underground repository for long-lived intermediate-level waste ‒ the only operating deep underground repository worldwide ‒ but it was closed from 2014‒17 following a chemical explosion in an underground waste barrel. Safety standards and regulatory oversight fell away sharply within the first decade of operation of the U.S. repository ‒ a sobering reminder of the challenge of safely managing dangerous nuclear wastes for tens of thousands of years.
 Too dangerous: The Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters results in the evacuation of over half a million people and economic costs in the hundreds of billions of dollars. In addition to the danger of nuclear reactor meltdowns and fires and chemical explosions, there are other dangers. Doubling nuclear output by the middle of the century would require the construction of 800−900 reactors. These reactors not only become military targets but they would produce over one million tonnes of high-level nuclear waste containing enough plutonium to build over one million nuclear weapons.
 Pre-deployed terrorist targets: Nuclear power plants have been described as pre-deployed terrorist targets and pose a major security threat. This in turn would likely see an increase in policing and security operations and costs and a commensurate impact on civil liberties and public access to information. Other nations in our region may view Australian nuclear aspirations with suspicion and concern given that many aspects of the technology and knowledge-base are the same as those required for nuclear weapons.
Former US Vice President Al Gore summarised the proliferation problem: “For eight years in  the White House, every weapons-proliferation problem we dealt with was connected to a civilian reactor program. And if we ever got to the point where we wanted to use nuclear reactors to back out a lot of coal … then we’d have to put them in so many places we’d run that proliferation risk right off the reasonability scale.”
Too slow: Expanding nuclear power is impractical as a short-term response to climate change. An analysis by Australian economist Prof. John Quiggin concludes that it would be “virtually impossible” to get a nuclear power reactor operating in Australia before 2040. More time would elapse before nuclear power has generated as much as energy as was expended in the construction of the reactor: a University of Sydney report concluded that the energy payback time for nuclear reactors is 6.5‒7 years. Taking into account planning and approvals, construction, and the energy payback time, it would be a quarter of a century or more before nuclear power could even begin to reduce greenhouse emissions in Australia (and then only assuming that nuclear power displaced fossil fuels).
 Too thirsty: Nuclear power is extraordinarily thirsty. A single nuclear power reactor consumes 35‒65 million litres of water per day for cooling.
Water consumption of different energy sources (litres / kWh):
* Nuclear 2.5
* Coal 1.9
* Combined Cycle Gas 0.95
* Solar PV 0.11
* Wind 0.004
Climate change and nuclear hazards: Nuclear power plants are vulnerable to threats which are being exacerbated by climate change. These include dwindling and warming water sources, sea-level rise, storm damage, drought, and jelly-fish swarms. Nuclear engineer David Lochbaum states. “I’ve heard many nuclear proponents say that nuclear power is part of the solution to global warming. It needs to be reversed: You need to solve global warming for nuclear plants to survive.”
 In January 2019, the Climate Council, comprising Australia’s leading climate scientists and other policy experts, issued a policy statement concluding that nuclear power plants “are not appropriate for Australia – and probably never will be”.
By contrast, the REN21 Renewables 2015: Global Status Report states that renewable energy systems “have unique qualities that make them suitable both for reinforcing the resilience of the wider energy infrastructure and for ensuring the provision of energy services under changing climatic conditions.”
 First Nations: Laws banning nuclear power should be retained because the pursuit of a nuclear power industry would almost certainly worsen patterns of disempowerment and dispossession that Australia’s First Nations have experienced ‒ and continue to experience ‒ as a result of nuclear and uranium projects.
To give one example (among many), the National Radioactive Waste Management Act dispossesses and disempowers Traditional Owners in many respects: the nomination of a site for a radioactive waste dump is valid even if Aboriginal owners were not consulted and did not give consent; the Act has sections which nullify State or Territory laws that protect archaeological or heritage values, including those which relate to Indigenous traditions; the Act curtails the application of Commonwealth laws including the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 and the Native Title Act 1993 in the important site-selection stage; and the Native Title Act 1993 is expressly overridden in relation to land acquisition for a radioactive waste dump.
No social license: Laws banning nuclear power should be retained because there is no social license to introduce nuclear power to Australia. Opinion polls find that Australians are overwhelmingly opposed to a nuclear power reactor being built in their local vicinity (10‒28% support, 55‒73% opposition); and opinion polls find that support for renewable energy sources far exceeds support for nuclear power (for example a 2015 IPSOS poll found 72‒87% support for solar and wind power but just 26% support for nuclear power). As the Clean Energy Council noted in its submission to the 2019 federal nuclear inquiry, it would require “a minor miracle” to win community support for nuclear power in Australia.
The pursuit of nuclear power would also require bipartisan political consensus at state and federal levels for several decades. Good luck with that. Currently, there is a bipartisan consensus at the federal level to retain the legal ban. The noisy, ultra-conservative rump of the Coalition is lobbying for nuclear power but their push has been rejected by, amongst others, the federal Liberal Party leadership, the Queensland Liberal-National Party, the SA Liberal government, the Tasmanian Liberal government, the NSW Liberal Premier and environment minister, and even ultra-conservatives such as Nationals Senator Matt Canavan.
 The future is renewable, not radioactive: Laws 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 renewable energy sources and energy efficiency. A December 2019 report by CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator finds that construction costs for nuclear reactors are 2‒8 times higher than costs for wind or solar. Levelised costs for nuclear are 2‒3 times greater per unit of energy produced compared to wind or solar including either 2 hours of battery storage or 6 hours of pumped hydro energy storage.
Australia can do better than fuel higher carbon emissions and unnecessary radioactive risk. We need to embrace the fastest growing global energy sector and become a driver of clean energy thinking and technology and a world leader in renewable energy technology. We can grow the jobs of the future here today. This will provide a just transition for energy sector workers, their families and communities and the certainty to ensure vibrant regional economies and secure sustainable and skilled jobs into the future. Renewable energy is affordable, low risk, clean and popular. Nuclear is not. Our shared energy future is renewable, not radioactive.
More Information
* Don’t Nuke the Climate Australia, www.dont-nuke-the-climate.org.au
* Climate Council, 2019, ‘Nuclear Power Stations are Not Appropriate for Australia – and Probably Never Will Be’, https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/nuclear-power-stations-are-not-appropriate-for-australia-and-probably-never-will-be/
* WISE Nuclear Monitor, 25 June 2016, ‘Nuclear power: No solution to climate change’, https://www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/806/nuclear-power-no-solution-climate-change
Dr. Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia.
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February 27, 2020
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, business, climate change - global warming, politics, safety, wastes, weapons and war |
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PRIME MINISTER’S PINE GAP VISIT RAISES EYEBROWS NT NEWS, 21 Feb 20,
The Prime Minister has made a visit to the secretive Pine Gap military intelligence base raising eyebrows about the potential involvement of the facility in ongoing tensions between the United States and Iran….. (subscribers only)
February 22, 2020
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics international, weapons and war |
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What Happens If Australia Is Hit By A Nuclear Bomb? lifehacker, Jackson Ryan | Feb 16, 2020, “….NUKEMAP provides a few different readouts for each map with colour coded rings :
- The yellow ring is the size of the nuclear fireball
- The red ring denotes the air blast zone where 20 psi of pressure is felt – enough to damage concrete buildings
- The green ring denotes the radiation diameter – within this ring, you would receive a 500 rem radiation dose. That’s enough to kill 65-90% of all exposed within 30 days.
- The grey ring denotes the air blast zone where 5 psi of pressure is felt
- The orange ring is the thermal radiation zone – if you are within this ring you receive third degree burns that extend through the layers of the skin.
The most recent bomb tested by North Korea was reportedly around 50 kilotons. So if we used that as a base, what would the damage from a 50 kiloton nuclear bomb do to:
Sydney
If a nuclear bomb of this size were to drop over the harbour bridge, then the bridge would be completely engulfed by the nuclear fireball. The amount of pressure emanating from the explosion would destroy Luna Park, most of Kirribilli, including the Prime Minister’s residence and the Opera House. Circular Quay would see an extreme amount of damage and radiation. Darling Harbour wouldn’t be subjected to quite the same amount of instantly fatal pressure, but anyone in the area would still be badly injured.
Melbourne
The size of the nuclear fireball would destroy Melbourne’s CBD and the resulting pressure from the explosion would flatten the land around it. Most of the iconic landmarks in Melbourne’s inner city would be gone.
Brisbane
Brisbane City would be engulfed by the fireball and Suncorp Stadium would take a huge hit. Most of the bridges in the area would need to withstand huge pressures and the thermal radiation causing third degree burns would reach out as far as Fortitude Valley, one of the more busy night strips in Brisbane. …..
Adelaide
Adelaide’s CBD would be mostly non-existent, with the fireball engulfing a large portion and the overpressure extending from North to South Terrace. Rundle Mall would be hit hard and you wouldn’t expect Adelaide Oval to remain standing, either. The thermal radiation would extend out as far as the parade in Norwood and almost entirely cover North Adelaide.
Perth
Owing to its place right next to the Swan River, Perth City may not see the same level of immediate fatalities but the destruction would be extensive. The thermal radiation ring would extend from the centre of the CBD out to the Perth Zoo and as far as Lake Monger. The famous Perth Mint would sadly be caught in the 5psi overpressure zone, a space where most buildings collapse.
Canberra
Parliament House as a target, would be completely decimated by the fireball and the 20psi overpressure would flatten everything as far as National Circuit. The National Library, the National Museum and the National Gallery would also likely crumble under the pressure of the air blast. The Australian War Memorial and the Royal Australian Mint would fall just outside the thermal radiation zone.
Hobart
A direct hit on Hobart’s CBD would see a lot of the blast rip across the River Derwent. The fireball would circle most of the city, while the overpressure blast would extend up Elizabeth Street and out to the Salamanca Market. The Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens would receive a huge amount of thermal radiation, which would reach across the Tasman Highway bridge and into Rosny.
Darwin
February 17, 2020
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, weapons and war |
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Nuclear watchdog sniffs wind at Mawson, Mirage News, 14 Feb 20 An ordinary-looking shipping container at Australia’s Mawson research station plays an important role in the global network that polices a ban on nuclear testing.Inside is a high-volume air sampler, one of 80 world-wide, running every day since 2013 to ‘sniff’ the wind for traces of radioactive debris.
The air sampler at Mawson is part of the international monitoring system for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which aims to ensure that no nuclear explosion goes undetected.
The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) is responsible for a total of 21 monitoring stations within Australia and its territories.
Three are in Antarctica – Mawson research station monitors radionuclides in the atmosphere and seismic vibrations in the earth’s crust, and an infrasound facility near Davis research station uses acoustic pressure sensors to detect very low-frequency sound waves in the atmosphere.
A radionuclide is an atom with an unstable nucleus that loses its excess energy by emitting radiation in the form of particles or electromagnetic waves. All chemical elements can exist as radionuclides. They occur naturally or can be produced artificially by nuclear reactors, particle accelerators, or nuclear explosions. ……. https://www.miragenews.com/nuclear-watchdog-sniffs-wind-at-mawson/
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February 15, 2020
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, weapons and war |
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Scrap submarines project before it’s too late says former public service boss, Michael West media, by Jon Stanford | Feb 3, 2020 Australia’s $225 billion SEA 1000 submarine project is so high risk, it would be better for Department of Defence to scrap it and start again, writes former public service chief, Jon Stanford, in the final instalment of his Second Rate Leadership series. In addition to some very serious problems with progress with the SEA 1000 program, there are some more fundamental questions to be addressed in the longer term. The first of these is whether the Attack class will embody the technologies required to be successful in its operations in the mid-2030s and beyond. In other words, will it be fit for purpose? An associated question is around the submarine’s cost effectiveness. The escalating cost of this acquisition means that the opportunity cost is also going up. With the submarines being designed mainly for joint operations with the US Navy, there are also significant risks in the future around whether a continuing US presence can be assumed.
In regard to the first question, it is very difficult to be able to judge whether the submarines will be fit for purpose if we do not know what that purpose is. Based on comments and submissions to Parliamentary inquiries from former Australian submariners we can be fairly confident that our submarines’ main area of operations (AO) is in the South China Sea, 3,500 nautical miles from base. But once there, we are not told what they do. In Australia at least, the missions the submarines undertake are classified…..
……..In addition, at a whole of life cost of $225 billion, this deterrent, such as it is, has a very high opportunity cost. Two former RAAF Chiefs have recently proposed that the ADF needs to acquire a long-range bomber force. Even if the new American B-21 bomber delivers only half the capability currently being spruiked, the early acquisition of two squadrons – 48 aircraft off the shelf – at a cost of around $50 billion looks an attractive power projection proposition. By comparison, the ability to put one conventional submarine on station “up threat” at any time at an acquisition cost of $80 billion, with associated doubts around its effectiveness and survivability, must be of questionable value……….
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February 3, 2020
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, weapons and war |
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JOHN MENADUE: Tugging our forelock again and again to our dangerous ally. An update, Michael West.com by John Menadue — 30 December 2019 The US has coming calling again. Not an Admiral this time but the Pentecostalist Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. He is whistling us up as a faithful dog to join with the US in tackling the problems which Donald Trump created with Iran and presumably to soften us up to host missiles to protect the US marines and port facilities in Darwin. And Pine Gap. John Menadue reports.
We are being softened up again step by step to support the US military and industrial complex that promotes perpetual war.
The US is the greatest threat to peace in the world. It is an aggressor across the globe. It is the most violent country both at home and abroad. And people know it. The Pew Research Centre found in 2018 that 45% of people surveyed around the world saw “US power and influence as a major threat”.
Retired US Defence, Secretary James (Jim) Mattis, complained that President Trump should show more respect for allies. But the US shows most respect for allies that do what they are told or supinely comply, like Australia. Our PM even gets an invitation to dinner with Trump. Scott Morrison could not contain his eagerness. Our media join in the vicarious thrill of it all.
Apart from brief isolationist periods, the US has been almost perpetually at war; wars that we have been foolishly drawn into. The US has subverted and overthrown numerous governments over two centuries. It has a military and business complex, a “hidden state”, that depends on war for influence and enrichment. It believes in its “manifest destiny” which brings with it an assumed moral superiority which it denies to others. The problems did not start with Trump. They are long-standing and deep rooted.
Unfortunately, many of our political, bureaucratic, business and media “elites” have been so long on an American drip feed that they find it hard to think of a world without an American focus. We had a similar and dependent view of the UK in the past. That ended in tears in Singapore.
Conservatives rail about Chinese influence but they and we are immersed and dominated by all things American, including the Murdoch media. Our media do regard Australia as the 51st American state. Just look at the saturation coverage of the Democrat primaries with the presidential election still 10 months away! Easy and lazy news. I’ts harder and nowhere near as interesting to cover much more important news in Indonesia and Malaysia.
In an earlier article (Is war in the American DNA?), I drew attention to the risks we run in being “joined at the hip” to a country that is almost always at war. The facts are clear. The US has never had a decade without war. Since its founding in 1776, the US has been at war 93% of the time. These wars have extended from its own hemisphere, to the Pacific, to Europe and most recently to the Middle East. The US has launched 201 out of 248 armed conflicts since the end of WWII. In recent decades most of these wars have been unsuccessful. The US maintains 700 military bases or sites around the world including in Australia. In our own region it has massive deployment of hardware and troops in Japan, the ROK and Guam. ….
Despite all the evidence of wars and meddling in other countries’ affairs, the American Imperium continues without serious check or query in America or Australia. ……
The second reason why the American Imperium continues largely unchecked is the power of what President Eisenhower once called the “military and industrial complex” in the US. In 2019, I would add the intelligence community and politicians to that complex who depend heavily on funding from powerful arms manufacturers across the country and the military and civilian personnel in over 4,000 military facilities across the US. Democrats and Republicans both court these wealthy arms suppliers and their employees.
The intelligence community, universities and think-tanks also have a vested interest in the American Imperium.
This complex which co-opts institutions and individuals in Australia, is often called “the hidden state”. It has enormous influence. No US president nor for that matter any Australian prime minister would likely challenge it.
Australia has locked itself into this complex. Our military and defence leaders are heavily dependent on the US Departments of Defence and State, the CIA and the FBI for advice. But it goes beyond advice. The “five eyes” led by the CIA applied pressure to us on 5G as part of a broader campaign to attack almost all things Chinese.We willingly respond and join the US in disasters like Iraq and the Middle East. While the UN General Assembly votes with large majorities to curb nuclear proliferation, we remain locked in to the position of the US and other nuclear powers……
The US military and industrial complex and its associates have a vested interest in America being at war and our defence establishment, Department of Defence, ADF, Australian Strategic Policy Institute and the “Intelligence” community are locked-in American loyalists……
Like many democracies, including our own, money and vested interests are corrupting public life. “Democracy” in the US has been replaced by “Donocracy”, with practically no restrictions on funding of elections and political activity for decades. Vested interests are largely unchecked. House of Representatives electorates are gerrymandered and poor and minority group voters are often excluded from the rolls. The powerful Jewish lobby, supported by fundamentalist Christians, has run US policy off the rails on Israel and the Middle East.
The US has slipped to number 21 as a “flawed democracy” in the Economist’s Intelligence 2016 Democracy Index. (NZ was ranked 4 and Australia 10). It noted that “public confidence in government has slumped to historic lows in the US.” That was before Trump!
Many democracies are in trouble. US democracy is in more trouble than most. There is a pervasive sickness…….
 A major voice in articulating American extremism and the American Imperium is Fox News and Rupert Murdoch who exert their influence not just in America but in its subservient “allies” like Australia. In the media, Fox News supported the invasion of Iraq and is mindless of the terrible consequences. Rupert Murdoch applauded the invasion of Iraq because it would reduce oil prices. Fox and News Corp are leading sceptics on climate change which threatens our planet. In April last year, the New York Times told us that outside the White House, Rupert Murdoch is Trump’s chief adviser. Rupert Murdoch runs political parties as much as media organisations.
But it is not just the destructive role of News Corp in US, UK and Australia. Our media, including the ABC and even SBS, is so derivative. Our media seems to regard Australia as an island parked off New York. We are saturated with news, views, entertainment and sit-coms from the US. It is so pervasive and extensive, we don’t recognize it for its very nature……
A further reason for the continuing US hegemony in Australian attitudes is the galaxy of Australian opinion leaders who have benefitted from American largesse and support – in the media, politics, bureaucracy, business, trade unions, universities and think-tanks. Thousands of influential Australians have been co-opted by US money and support in “dialogues”, study centres and think tanks. The US has nourished agents of influence in Australia for decades. China is a raw beginner in the use of soft power.
How long will Australian denial of US policies continue? When will some of us stand up? When will our humiliation end?……. https://www.michaelwest.com.au/john-menadue-us-alliance-more-likely-to-get-us-into-trouble-than-out/
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December 30, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, religion and ethics, weapons and war |
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Dave Sweeney talks Nobel Prize and working against nuclear weapons https://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/country-living/dave-sweeney-talks-nobel-prize-and-working-against-nuclear-weapons/news-story/02bae8fda0306529842b5e19bad835c2
A Nobel Prize winner who grew up on a farm has dedicated his life to one of humanity’s most important causes.
DAVE Sweeney’s story starts out like so many rural kids.
Growing up on a grazing property, east of Melbourne, he wanted to be a farmer, but his Dad wanted his son to achieve more skills.
So Dave dutifully got a degree, and a range of jobs, including as a teacher.
But then he went one better and got a Nobel Peace Prize.
It was two years ago that Dave was one of the founding members of ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, who travelled to Norway to receive the globally significant gong, which puts him in the same company as Mother Therese and Nelson Mandela.
“I didn’t actually go on the stage with the King of Norway,” the 57-year-old says.
“But I was in Norway for five days, for the formal reception, with the king and trumpets blowing, and a big party afterwards.”
It speaks volumes about Dave that he and his colleagues don’t run around promoting the fact they are Australia’s only Nobel Peace Prize winners.
Instead, he continues to knuckle down and get on with the job that won the prize in the first place.
“I don’t really talk about it much, only when people ask or I’m doing a presentation,” says Dave, who still speaks with a farmer’s easygoing attitude.
“I don’t have a T-shirt saying ‘Nobel winner’ or a screen saver.
“Winning hasn’t changed my daily life, but there’s been a sense of ‘the stuff this guy has been banging on about forever is actually important’ and ‘these people have done a significant thing’. It’s validation and it opens new doors to keep the momentum going.”
Working between his homes in Melbourne and South Gippsland’s Phillip Island, Dave is currently lobbying councils — including, most recently, Benalla — to get on board and pressure the Australian Government to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
He says the ICAN Cities appeal is an initiative that is seeking to build a wider recognition of and support for the UN treaty. At its most basic, a council passes a version of a model resolution and writes to the prime minister and foreign minister urging them to support it.
“Other councils get more engaged — some have asked ICAN speakers to attend council and community events, profiled the issue and initiative on the websites and newsletters, flown an ICAN/Nobel flag from the town hall, hosted displays about ICAN and the issue in their libraries, commissioned murals and public artworks,” he said.
“There is much that can and could be done and it really depends on the people and place.
“An important part of the local government initiative, and of ICAN’s wider work, is that it is non-partisan. We don’t seek to score points – we want to make one: that there are no winners in a nuclear war.”
Since 1996 Dave has been the nuclear-free campaigner at the Australian Conservation Foundation, working to stop uranium mining and promote the responsible handling of radioactive waste.
His role also includes working to stop nuclear weapons. That’s how, in 2006, he was one of the voluntary founding members who met over a cup of tea and beer to nut out a strategy, which the following year led to the creation of ICAN.
Today, ICAN has spread to more than 500 groups in more than 100 countries, with its headquarters in Geneva.
According to the Nobel committee, ICAN was awarded the world’s most significant prize for “its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its groundbreaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons”.
“Often the deck feels stacked against us, that we can’t get a break and it’s not always fair. But this was awarded to a group of people who are not powerful or rich,” Dave says.
“It’s humbling and important recognition.”
He says just this year the Federal Government announced an inquiry into the nuclear energy industry, while in both NSW and Victoria there are pushes to examine the sector.
Dave says these are all under the guise of stopping climate change, even though science and industry are unanimous that renewables are the cheapest, fastest and easiest way to supply all our power needs.
“When you use a uranium fuel rod in a nuclear reactor you get a guaranteed three years of low- carbon electricity, and when you take the fuel rod out you get a guaranteed 100,000 years of toxic waste, which is poisonous to human life and the environment,” he says.
“There is a very poor risk-to- reward ratio.”
Yet despite setbacks, there are also breakthroughs.
He says just last week the Federal Environment Minister and the Northern Territory Government agreed with mining companies to transition out of uranium mining in Kakadu.
Dave says following Japan’s Fukushima disaster, the market for nuclear energy had dropped.
“In 2000, 22 per cent of global electricity came from nuclear energy, now it’s 11 per cent.
“Nuclear power is enormously expensive and slow. It would take 20 years to build a reactor in Australia and cost at least $20 billion.”
Dave says being raised in a rural farming family gave him a strong sense of the importance of social justice and caring.
“Mum and Dad were always decent, community-minded people. Mum would cut the sandwiches for the local emergency services and Dad would visit the sick,” he says.
“Even if I’d preferred to stay at home, it was always emphasised to me to put in.
“It’s a privilege to live in this country and so you give back, even if it’s something modest.”
He studied politics and literature, became a teacher, and later became an adviser at Oxfam, before former Prime Minister John Howard’s decision to mine uranium in Kakadu steered him into nuclear campaigning at ACF.
Given Dave has been campaigning on these globally-critical issues for more than two decades, what advice does he have for the younger generation, especially with the documented rise of eco-anxiety?
“I say to young people these problems aren’t of their making, so don’t feel guilt, otherwise you can’t get out of bed in the morning. But they do feel some responsibility and agency,” he says.
“Light a candle, say a prayer, put a sign saying ‘nuclear-free zone’ on your local school, do an act of kindness or a directed act of anger, write a letter to your council, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister saying we should ratify the Treaty.
“Yes, individual actions are small, but when you add the next action and the next and the next they really make a difference. Each action matters.”
November 14, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, weapons and war |
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Australia’s hypocrisy on nuclear weapons cannot continue Canberra Times, Gem Romuld, 18 Oct 19, “……..Then-Prime Minister Turnbull refrained
from congratulating ICAN for the first Australian-born Nobel Peace Prize. While a childish move, this only served to highlight the government’s discomfort with the treaty and its clear challenge to Australia’s position on nuclear weapons. As the signatures and ratifications continue to stack up and the treaty nears entry-into-force, this challenge persists.
Australia professes to support a world free of nuclear weapons while simultaneously claiming reliance on the US nuclear arsenal for protection. This tenuous notion of security through nuclear weapons has long-served the nuclear-armed, to the detriment of all others.
The ban treaty outlaws the use and threat of use of nuclear weapons in all circumstances, strengthening the norm of abolition. To join the prohibition on nuclear weapons, as we have joined the prohibitions on other indiscriminate, inhumane weapons, Australia must quit playing enabler for the US arsenal. Our alliance with the US can and must exclude cooperation and support for the potential use of nuclear weapons.
Since the wild treaty-negotiating, prize-winning ride of 2017, the nuclear disarmament terrain has indelibly changed. To date, 79 nations have signed and 32 have ratified the treaty, with dozens of countries progressing their ratifications. The treaty will enter into force after the 50th ratification, certain within the next couple of years. Campaigns are growing in nuclear-armed and “nuclear-endorsing” states, word of the Treaty is spreading and the demand to sign and ratify is escalating.
Financial institutions are divesting from nuclear weapon producers, citing the treaty as their reason for doing so even though it has yet to enter into force. These include ABP, the largest Dutch pension fund, and Norway’s trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund. Cities and towns are declaring their support for the treaty, including Paris, Berlin, Geneva, Washington DC, Toronto, Sydney and Melbourne.
The Australian Medical Association, Australian Red Cross and dozens of civil society organisations have directly called on Australia to join the treaty. Close to 200 of our state and federal parliamentarians have pledged to pursue this goal, and the Australian Labor Party has committed to sign and ratify in government.
It’s inevitable that Australia joins the prohibition on nuclear weapons. As other nuclear arms control agreements languish or collapse, we don’t have the luxury of waiting for the offenders to lead us out of the silo. With close to 14,000 nuclear weapons held between 9 nations, our world is armed to the brink. Further, let us not be distracted by the voices querying a domestic nuclear arsenal, we’ve already foresworn this dangerous pursuit under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone. Nuclear weapons are never a legitimate means of defence.
This year’s Nobel Peace Laureate, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, has been rewarded for formalising a peace agreement between Ethiopia and Eritrea. For ICAN, the Nobel Peace Prize served a directive upon all nations to sit up and pay attention to the fresh 10-page nuclear weapon ban treaty. We know that we’re up against powerful nations, a lucrative industry and deeply entrenched modes of thinking. The real prize will be the total elimination of nuclear weapons, and we have the tools to get there. It’s up to all people, civil society and governments to turn the tide of history. Our collective security depends on it.
November 2, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics international, weapons and war |
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Submarines may be switched to nuclear, says navy vice admiral, Australia’s navy chief says it’s possible the country’s future submarine fleet could eventually switch to nuclear power.
Vice Admiral Mike Noonan has opened an international maritime conference in Sydney, where he says defence is keeping a close eye on emerging technologies.
By Andrew Greene on AM 9 Oct 19, Australia’s navy chief says it’s possible the country’s future submarine fleet could eventually switch to nuclear power.
Vice Admiral Mike Noonan has opened an international maritime conference in Sydney, where he says defence is keeping a close eye on emerging technologies.
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/am/submarines-may-be-switched-to-nuclear,-says-navy-vice-admiral/11584988
October 10, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, weapons and war |
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Nuclear subs idea worth floating
JOHN BIRKLER and ROBERT MURPHY THE AUSTRALIAN, SEPTEMBER 30, 2019
It has been debated in some quarters for years that Australia should operate and maintain nuclear-propelled attack submarines. …….
This prospect raises two significant policy issues for Australia. The first is whether the commonwealth can operate and maintain nuclear submarines in a sovereign environment that has no civilian nuclear power industry to supply the nuclear-trained staffs, as well as build and maintain the infrastructure that is necessary. The second is whether Australia is prepared to establish an indemnification and regulatory environment that would be critical to safely and effectively operate and maintain nuclear vessels for 50 years. …….
A unique aspect of such submarines is the enormous amount of energy stored in their reactor cores.
Built, operated, and maintained properly, this energy is released in a controlled manner over a long period.
A sudden, uncontrolled release of this energy could be catastrophic, not only to the submarine, but to people and property nearby.
Given that private insurance typically does not cover nuclear risks, an effective scheme to indemnify possible victims of a nuclear accident could be critical. Without such an indemnity scheme, companies might be unwilling to provide components and services to maintain and operate propulsion plants.
As Australian policymakers and the public debate the nuclear submarine option for the Royal Australian Navy, it could be valuable for them to broaden their understanding of what it would take to establish:
• A sovereign and robust industrial capability to operate and maintain submarines equipped with mobile nuclear power propulsion plants;
• A rigorous regulatory scheme to ensure mobile power reactors are safely built, tested, operated, maintained and deactivated;
• An indemnity scheme to cover third-party liabilities in the event of a “nuclear” incident;
• Training and development paths for regulators, engineers, operators and maintainers; and
• Facilities necessary to service nuclear-powered submarines……. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/nuclear-subs-idea-worth-floating/news-story/61c003a41e9303ca7883561983da90ac
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September 30, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics, weapons and war |
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Australia’s arms deals ignoring ‘gross violations of human rights’, ex-defence official says https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/sep/08/australias-arms-deals-ignoring-gross-violations-of-human-rights-ex-defence-official-says?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=soc_568&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1567888161
Defence department says it provides export permits only if satisfied that the weapons will not be used in breach of international law Ben Doherty, 8 Sept 19, A former secretary of the Australian defence department says the country cannot justify selling weapons to militaries involved in the five-year war in Yemen, which now stand “accused of gross violations of human rights and likely war crimes by the UN”.
And the Australian co-author of the just-released United Nations report into human rights atrocities in Yemen has said governments that sell weapons to belligerent countries are responsible for prolonging the conflict and contributing to immense humanitarian suffering.
The report found that the conflict had been plagued by human rights abuses, including hospitals being bombed, civilians being deliberately targeted by shelling and sniper fire, civilian populations being deliberately starved, medical supplies being blocked, rape, murder, enforced disappearances, torture, and children being forced to fight.
Australia is one of several countries that sell weapons to those that are part of the Saudi-led Coalition in conflict with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. The Australian government says it imposes strict controls on exports to ensure they are not used in the Yemeni conflict.
But the former secretary of the department of defence Paul Barratt told Guardian Australia that regardless of whether Australian-made weapons were crossing the border into Yemen, “the fact remains that Australia now has a national policy which seeks and facilitates weapons sales with countries that stand accused of gross violations of human rights and likely war crimes”.
“When did this particular trade in arms become official Australian policy? Even if we are successfully legally tiptoeing around the Arms Trade Treaty, such deals surely cannot be acceptable on moral or ethical grounds,” Barratt said. “As a country that routinely asks other countries to abide by the rules-based international order, it would seem hypocritical, at best, that Australia is now willing to … make a profit from, weapons sales to nations that are openly flouting this international order.”
Melissa Parke, the former federal MP for Fremantle, was one of three UN-appointed experts to compile its report on Yemen.
The report said hospitals had been bombed, civilians attacked and starvation used as a tactic of war, and alleged that there had been a “collective failure” from the international community to intervene in the five-year war to reduce the suffering of civilians; rather, support from international actors had prolonged the conflict. The public report detailed a list of the key military, political participants in the conflict. A confidential list of those most likely to be complicit in war crimes has been sent to the UN.
Parke said Yemeni civilians had “borne the brunt” of a brutal conflict that was being exacerbated by international indifference, and material support from some governments.
September 8, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics, politics international, religion and ethics, weapons and war |
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New nuclear arms race brings higher risk of global catastrophe, The New Daily, Quentin Dempster@QuentinDempster 2 Sept 19The world is at its highest risk of a global catastrophe in decades, thanks to an unpredictable resumption in the nuclear arms race.
Veteran defence and security analyst Brian Toohey has warned that talk of war between the West, and China and Russia, along with brinkmanship with North Korea and Iran, has escalated the conditions that can lead to catastrophic accidents and mistakes.
Adding to the potential for disastrous nuclear consequences, Mr Toohey’s latest book – to be published this week – reveals that “many missile control systems can now be hit by a wide range of previously unknown cyber-warfare tools available to terrorists, hoaxers and governments”.
Mr Toohey’s book, Secret – The Making of Australia’s Security State, outlines a terrifying situation where nuclear weapons continue to exist in massive numbers………
Australia is complicit
Mr Toohey said Australia continued to rely on the US “nuclear umbrella” and was directly complicit in the US nuclear program through the Pine Gap and North West Cape intelligence and communications bases linked to US submarines tasked to detect and destroy Russian and Chinese nuclear-armed submarines.
Coalition governments in Australia had declined to push for nuclear disarmament, with former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull refusing to support a 2017 United Nations resolution to establish a legally binding treaty prohibiting the development or possession of nuclear weapons.
The Turnbull government refused to congratulate ICAN after it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2017.
Mr Turnbull later declared that Australia and the US were “joined at the hip”.
The Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons concluded in 1996 that “the proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used – accidentally or by decision – defies credibility”.
The only complete defence was the elimination of nuclear weapons with a strong international verification regime to convince the existing nuclear powers to disarm.
Calls for Australia to join the race
Current calls for Australia to consider a nuclear arms capability for its submarines to deter an invasion from China re-emerged from strategic think tanks and academics.
“It is doubtful if China’s relatively small nuclear forces could survive a US attack. The US has a total of 6550 warheads –1350 deployed on long-range missiles and bombers – compared to China’s total of 280,” Mr Toohey writes.
“Ever since George W Bush unilaterally abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the US has deployed conventional missiles on ships and land that can destroy nuclear-armed ballistic missiles.”
“Its attack submarines can track and sink China’s four ballistic-missile submarines. This means China must expand its nuclear forces to ensure that enough retaliatory missiles would survive to deter a first strike”.
Quentin Dempster is a Walkley Award-winning journalist, author and broadcaster. He is a veteran of the ABC newsroom. He was awarded an Order of Australia in 1992 for services to journalism nuclear-arms-race/
September 3, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics, weapons and war |
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The push for an Aussie bomb It took former PM John Gorton almost three decades to finally come clean on his ambitions for Australia to have a nuclear bomb. THE AUSTRALIAN, By TOM GILLING 30 Aug 19,
In December 9, 1966, the Australian Government signed a public agreement with the US to build what both countries described as a “Joint Defence Space Research Facility” at Pine Gap, just outside Alice Springs. The carefully misleading agreement expressed the two countries’ mutual desire “to co-operate further in effective defence and for the preservation of peace and security”.
Officially, Pine Gap was a collaboration between the Australian Department of Defence and the Pentagon’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, but the latter was a red herring meant to conceal the real power at Pine Gap: the Central Intelligence Agency….the truth was that the Joint Defence Space Research Facility was joint in name only and its purpose was not (and never would be) “research”. It was a spy station designed to collect signals from US surveillance satellites in geosynchronous orbit over the equator. ……
The building of an experimental reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney’s south was supposed to be the first step in a nuclear program that within a decade would see the development of full-scale nuclear power reactors. ……
During the 1950s Australian defence chiefs lobbied vigorously for an Australian bomb. When it became clear that the prime minister, Robert Menzies, had reservations, they went behind his back. Menzies did agree, however, to let Britain test its nuclear weapons in Australia — a decision, according to historian Jacques Hymans, taken “almost single-handedly… without consulting his Cabinet and without requesting any quid pro quo, not even access to technical data necessary for the Australian government to assess the effects of the tests on humans and the environment”……….
Gorton’s political reservations about the non-proliferation treaty masked a deeper fear: that signing the treaty might cause Australia’s nascent atomic energy industry to be “frozen in a primitive state”. Gorton and the head of Australia’s Atomic Energy Commission, Philip Baxter, were both committed to pursuing the development of an Australian bomb. Scientists at the AEC worked with government officials to draw up cost and time estimates for atomic and hydrogen bomb programs. According to the historian Hymans, they outlined two possible programs: a power reactor program capable of producing enough weapons- grade plutonium for 30 fission weapons (A-bombs) per year; and a uranium enrichment program capable of producing enough uranium-235 for at least 10 thermonuclear weapons (H-bombs) per year. The A-bomb plan was costed at what was considered to be an “affordable” $144 million and was thought to be feasible in no more than seven to 10 years. The H-bomb plan was costed at $184 million over a similar period.
Aware of opposition to any talk of an “Aussie bomb”, Gorton carefully played down the military aspect and argued instead for the economic benefits of a nuclear power program. ………
a US mission did visit Canberra at the end of April 1968. Officials from the AEC had impressed the US visitors with “the confidence of their ability to manufacture a nuclear weapon and desire to be in a position to do so on very short notice”.
The Australian officials, they said, had “studied the draft NPT [non-proliferation treaty] most thoroughly… the political rationalisation of these officials was that Australia needed to be in a position to manufacture nuclear weapons rapidly if India and Japan were to go nuclear… the Australian officials indicated they could not even contemplate signing the NPT if it were not for an interpretation which would enable the deployment of nuclear weapons belonging to an ally on Australian soil.”
Eighteen months after Rusk’s fractious visit to Canberra, Gorton called a general election. He declared his commitment to a nuclear-powered (if not a nuclear-armed) Australia, announcing that “the time for this nation to enter the atomic age has now arrived” and laying out his scheme for a 500-megawatt nuclear power plant to be built at Jervis Bay, on NSW’s south coast. While the defence benefits of such a reactor were unspoken, there was no mistaking the military potential of the plutonium it would be producing.
The Jervis Bay reactor never got off the drawing board, although planning reached an advanced stage. Detailed specifications were put out to tender and there was broad agreement over a British bid to build a heavy-water reactor. A Cabinet submission was in the pipeline when Gorton lost the confidence of the party room and was replaced by William McMahon, a nuclear sceptic who moved quickly to defer the project.
It would be another 28 years before Gorton finally came clean on the link between the reactor and his ambition for Australia to have nuclear weapons. . In 1999 he told a Sydney newspaper that “we were interested in this thing because it could provide electricity to everybody and… if you decided later on, it could make an atomic bomb”. Gorton did not identify who he meant by “we” (although Philip Baxter was almost certainly among them) but Gorton and those who shared his nuclear ambitions were unable to win over the doubters in his own government.
Australia signed the non-proliferation treaty in 1970 but even as it did so it was clear that Gorton had no intention of ratifying the treaty. Australia would not ratify it until 1973, and then only after McMahon’s Coalition government had lost power to Gough Whitlam’s Labor Party. As well as ratifying the treaty, the Whitlam government cancelled the Jervis Bay project that had been in limbo since McMahon became prime minister. And with that, Whitlam effectively ended Australia’s quixotic bid to become a nuclear power.
Australia never got its own bomb, although as late as 1984 the foreign minister, Bill Hayden, could still speak about Australian nuclear research providing the country with the potential for nuclear weapons. The Morrison Government is unlikely to let the nuclear genie out of the bottle, with a spokesperson from the Department of Defence telling The Weekend Australian Magazine that “Australia stands by its Non-Proliferation Treaty pledge, as a non-nuclear weapon state, not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons”. ….. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/gorton-and-the-bomb-australias-nuclear-ambitions/news-story/00787e322a41d2ff37a146c86a739f02
August 31, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, history, politics, secrets and lies, weapons and war |
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 Is the push for nuclear power a covertpush for nuclear weapons? https://reneweconomy.com.au/is-the-push-for-nuclear-power-a-covert-push-for-nuclear-weapons-95422/ Mark Diesendorf & Richard Broinowski, 26 August 2019 
A recent push for nuclear power in Australia has been promoted by the usual public advocates and amplified by the Murdoch press.The arguments are predictable both in their optimism and inaccuracy: nuclear power reactors are claimed to be safe and cheaper than electricity generation from wind and sun; new generation mini-reactors are claimed to be even cheaper and safer and can be adapted to power a factory or a town.
Australia has uranium, and can easily acquire the technology.
Advocates for nuclear power are calling for ‘informed’ public debate to quell public fear about nuclear power. In reality, informed public debate has been going on for some time. The latest iteration was the South Australian Royal Commission of 2015-16, which found that “nuclear power would not be commercially viable to supply baseload electricity to the South Australian subregion of the NEM from 2030 (being the earliest date for its possible introduction).”
But advocates are not deterred, claiming, despite the evidence to the contrary, that nuclear power is cheaper and cleaner than other forms of electricity generation.
The fact is that electricity from new wind and solar farms is much cheaper than from nuclear power stations. According to the multinational investment consultancy, Lazard,the costs of energy from on-shore wind farms in the USA are in the range 29-56 USD per megawatt-hour (US$/MWh), from solar farms 36-46 US$/MWh and from conventional nuclear 112-189 US$/MWh.
In Australia, the CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator have jointly found that the cost of a wind or solar farm in 2020 will be approximately half of that from new coal-fired power stations, and about one-fifth of that from nuclear power in the form of the non-commercial small modular reactors currently being promoted by nuclear enthusiasts.
Adding sufficient storage to solar and wind to provide equivalent dependability of supply to base-load coal and nuclear will lift the cost of wind and solar in 2020 to equivalence with new coal, but nuclear is still at least 2.5 times the cost of wind and solar.
In 2019 the German Institute for Economic Research found that of 674 nuclear reactors built for electricity generation since 1951, all suffered significant financial losses. The (weighted) average net present value was around minus 4.8 billion Euros. The Institute concluded that “nuclear energy has always been unprofitable in the private economy”. So why were 674 reactors built around the world, and why do nuclear advocates want more?
One motivation has been to facilitate the covert development of nuclear weapons. It is well documented (e.g. here and here) that India, North Korea, Pakistan and South Africa all used civil nuclear power to assist their respective covert developments of nuclear weapons, while the UKused its first generation nuclear power stations to supplement weapons-grade plutonium it produced in military reactors.
Other countries began, then discontinued, nuclear weapons programs based on civil nuclear technology: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Libya, South Korea, Taiwan (twice) and possibly Algeria. Iran is currently engaged in that process.
Today, the UK government is offering to pay the developers of the proposed Hinkley C nuclear power station approximately double the wholesale price of electricity, increasing with inflation, for 35 years.
Andy Stirling and Phil Johnstone from the Science Policy Research Unit at University of Sussex speculate that this huge subsidy is motivated by the wish to keep the nuclear industrial sector technically capable of servicing submarine reactors that carry UK’s Trident nuclear missile delivery system.
There are two main pathways to nuclear explosives –either by enriching uranium in the isotope U235 or extracting plutonium Pu239 from spent reactor fuel.At various times Australia has flirted with both. In the 1960s, under the Gorton government, Australia started to build a nuclear power station at Jervis Bay with the purpose of producing electricity for the grid and Pu239 for nuclear weapons.
The program was abandoned by the Liberal Party when it feared its ambition to acquire nuclear weapons would become known and result in an electoral liability. Another attempt, secretly to enrich uranium, was made between 1965 and the early 1980s by the then Australian Atomic Energy Commission (now the Australian Nuclear Science & Technology Organisation –ANSTO).
Australia ratified the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in 1973 and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1998, but in the early 2000s pressure was again exerted on the government by elements in the foreign policy and security establishment to revive a nuclear weapons program.
In a 2007 article “Creative and uncomfortable policy choices ahead”, Martine Letts, then Deputy Director of the Lowy Institute, concluded that “a thorough nuclear policy review should also consider which strategic circumstances might lead to Australia’s revisiting the nuclear weapons option”.
The same year, Robyn Lim, a former Acting Head of Intelligence in the Office of National Assessment wrote that “ [we] live in an uncertain world, and must avoid having our uranium enrichment options closed off”.
In 2009, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute joined the discussion, with a report by Rod Lyon, director of its Strategy and International Program. He was quoted on the ABC and in the Canberra Times(15/12/2009) as saying ‘nuclear hedging’– maintaining or appearing to maintain capabilities to acquire nuclear weapons in a relatively short time – would be prudent, a capability available within 10 or 15 years.
More recent advocates have included Hugh White, who in a 2019 article in Quarterly Essay, reopened discussion on whether Australia should have its own nuclear deterrent. His concern was stimulated by indications that the USA was developing a more isolationist foreign policy. Defence strategist Paul Dibb has recommended that ‘Australia should at least be looking at options and lead times’.
Peter Layton, a retired RAAF Group Captain who taught at the US National Defense University, expressed concern in a Lowy Institute article about the costs of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems and recommended that Australia should seek to acquire US or British nuclear weapons.
Stephen Fruehling, an academic in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at ANU, considered the possibility of developing nuclear weapons to create a defensive moat around the country to deter invasion by sea. He favoured the uranium enrichment pathway to the nuclear explosive.
Meanwhile, supporters of nuclear power for Australia are becoming more vocal. They include the Federal Minister for Energy & Emissions Reduction, Angus Taylor, the Institute of Public Affairs, the Business Council of Australia and several members of the Coalition Government – all supported by the Murdoch media (especially The Australian). None has yet publicly advocated the development of nuclear weapons.
Building a nuclear power station used to be an effective cover for a nuclear weapons program. Today, however, with renewable electricity from wind and solar PV being so much cheaper than nuclear electricity, the credibility of nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels has become very low.
Furthermore, a global over-capacity in uranium enrichment since nuclear electricity generation peaked in 2006 makes uranium enrichment for an Australian nuclear program even less credible. In the words of Rod Lyon, an Australian enrichment capability would also be a strategic signal. This is also the view of John Carlson, former Director-General of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office.
If Australia follows the nuclear path, it provides our neighbours – especially Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia – with an incentive to follow. The proliferation of nuclear power in South East Asia
would signal the start of a regional nuclear arms race, making the neighbourhood less safe than ever.
Dr Mark Diesendorf, a renewable energy researcher, was trained as a physicist and is currently Honorary Associate Professor at UNSW Sydney.
Richard Broinowski is a former Australian diplomat and immediate past president of the New South Wales branch of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. He is the author of ‘Fact or Fission? The truth about Australia’s nuclear ambitions’,and ‘Fallout from Fukushima’.
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August 26, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics, weapons and war |
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. Australia’s AUSMIN invitations: clean the driveway, wash the dishes. Again https://www.johnmenadue.com/michael-mckinley-australias-ausmin-invitations-clean-the-driveway-wash-the-dishes-again/ 9 August 2019
In the course of the current AUSMIN talks Australia has once again been invited, by the United States, to assume a role for which it is well, indeed over-qualified for – namely to provide janitorial services in the aftermath of a series of strategic debacles by the US itself. Serial prodigality and recklessness are to be rewarded with serial subservience and indulgence. It’s a tradition.
Amid declarations of the “unbreakable” nature” of the alliance relationship Defense Secretary Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper made it clear that both an Australia contribution to a joint coalition of naval forces to protect merchant shipping from attacks by Iran, and Australia’s support for US decisions to scrap the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) and deploy weapons once banned by the INF should be forthcoming.
On such matters wherein William Butler Yeats got it right when he wrote that excessive love, leading to needless debasement, and finally to bewilderment becomes a sacrifice so overpowering that it can “make a stone of the heart.”
But, of course, I speak of people historically informed and critically aware of whom there appear too few, or none with voice, at these talks.
If there were, some (at least) murmurings might have been heard to the effect that the current Iran-Straits of Hormuz crisis is principally the result of a White House anti-diplomatic vandalism. By extension, supporting the US is, essentially, to validate a threat to international peace and security.
More positively, declining to contribute to the US-led coalition would, if followed over time on similar occasions, establish a long overdue threshold reflecting Australia’s national interest, responsible international citizenship, and a reminder to the US that it must reform. Wishful thinking? OK – is the preference, then, to be a janitor?
When approval is finally announced, as it almost certainly will be, it will come dressed, as it always does, in the many coloured costume-of-the-day festooned with the many medals of past defeats and the usual claims whereby necessity – the need to serve “the national interest,” and preserve “the international rules-based order” has determined the commitment.
Little thought will be given to the consequences of failure, or what victory would be like. Iran is not a country that will stand for endless bullying and immiseration; it has no substantial navy to persist in ship seizures, but it has capabilities in the form of mines that would make passage in the gulf significantly hazardous to a level at which shipping is uninsurable.
What throws this situation into shadow are three unaddressed (in Australia, anyway) dimensions of US global strategy which go to the heart of the defence of Australia, its alliance with the United States in general and Pine Gap in particular, and the immediate Asia-Pacific region: (1) the explicit context of US strategic decisions, (2) the rationale for scrapping the INF, and (3), the subsequent deployment statements of the once proscribed weapons and others as well which, in combination, imply a renewed US attraction to nuclear war-fighting.
The first should have been a primary concern even before the Trump Administration but it has become unavoidable since its advent and the reported “serious, long-term preparations to restructure the US economy to fight a war with a “peer” adversary [Russia and/or China] entailing radical changes to American economic, social and political life” as detailed in a Pentagon document of October 2018.
This document, moreover, is consistent with a stream of reports, exercises, deployments, weapons developments and bellicose statements by high-level military and civilian personnel which exhibit, in brief, a disposition to war, in parallel with the relegation of diplomacy to an irrelevance beyond its cosmetic utility.
Such a frame of mind easily accounts for the US withdrawal from the INF. Ostensibly this was mandated by Russia’s (possibly not deliberate) breach of the Treaty with the development and very limited deployment of the of the 9M729 missile and, secondarily, the fact that the INF did not include China.
To be understood here is that constituencies in the Pentagon and the Congress had been working assiduously for years to wreck the treaty. More significantly still, the US was also quite possibly in breach of the treaty by installing an Aegis Ashore Missile Defense System at Deveselu air base in Romania (with another planned for Poland).
If we add to this the US initiative to modernise its nuclear arsenal by installing the burst-height compensating super-fuze – which effectively triples the killing power of its ballistic missiles – which, although outside the scope of the INF Treaty, relates in a fundamental way to strategic stability.
As described by three of America’s most respected weapons analysts (Hans M. Kristensen, Matthew McKinzie, and Theodore Postol) in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists the situation is one the US has developed “the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.”
Without entering into a ping-pong match of accusation and rationalisation, expert arms control opinion in both Russia and the United States is in agreement that, even if Russia’s 9M729 was in breach of the treaty, the nature and magnitude of the breach in no way justified US withdrawal, nor its obscenely rapid leap into deploying a range of previously prohibited, and other weapons, in Asia.
[Equally, if the non-inclusion of China in the INF Treaty was a grievance, then surely there was an obligation to initiate a round of arms control or disarmament negotiations which addressed the dangers arising from the proliferation of intermediate range missiles].
Instead, what we have witnessed in recent days is a speed of decisions and deployments relating to previously proscribed weapons that suggests a deeply guilty past during the writ of the INF treaty.
These must be seen in the context of the new inventory of nuclear weapons – inter alia so-called “mini-nukes” – in the lingua franca of the discourse, these are not “mega-destructive, but smaller, “tactical,” and “low/variable yield;” others are described as “earth-penetrating / “bunker-busters” (also “low yield). And all will be joined by a suite of hypersonic missiles- described by its patrons as “fast, effective, precise and [currently] unstoppable.”
In time, China, Russia, and the US will all have them in their respective orders of battle. An arms race is as close to inevitable as a political cause-effect chain can be.
Three Conclusions: First, the nuclear developments in favour of the United States tempt not only a first strike (the US emphatically maintains this option) but also the notion of a winnable nuclear war. The speed and destructive power of the hypersonics underline a first strike decision; warning time will be negligible and the “dictum use it or lose it” will be dogma. By hosting the US facilities at Pine Gap, Australia is inextricably involved in this deadly evolution.
Second, the just-completed AUSMIN talks, therefore, are to be seen as another episode in the ongoing grooming process by the US. It has plans for Australia.
Third, realising the country’s enhanced target status, the Australian government will no doubt call for a missile defence system – perhaps the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD); indeed, two former Prime Ministers (Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott) have already done so. Such a costly acquisition would be entirely consistent with currently defined defence priorities and strategic logic, both determined in Washington.
On the other hand, a decision to recognise Australia’s unnecessary transit into the deeper shadows of war by refusing to match America’s irresponsibility with Australia’s own irresponsibility would follow the logic of truly defined national interest articulated by a government engaged with its own people and region.
Michael McKinley is a member of the Emeritus Faculty, The Australian National University
August 13, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics international, weapons and war |
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Antinuclear 