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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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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Nuclear reactor and steelworks plan once considered for pristine beaches of Jervis Bay
Key points:
- Former PM John Gorton wanted a nuclear reactor built at Jervis Bay in the late 1960s
- The project was delayed when William McMahon became prime minister in 1971
- Then when Gough Whitlam became prime minister, he signed a treaty that ended any plans to make atomic weapons
A steelworks, petrochemical plant and an oil refinery were also slated for the site at Jervis Bay, but what was not announced was a plan to generate weapons-grade plutonium that could have seen Australia become a nuclear power.
Fifty years later, Australia is again mulling over the question of nuclear energy with two separate inquiries underway.
A federal parliamentary committee is investigating the economic, environmental and safety implications of nuclear power in Australia.
In NSW, meanwhile, a committee is looking into overturning a ban on uranium mining and nuclear facilities.
While neither is talking specifics in terms of where nuclear enrichment technology or modern-day facilities like small modular reactors (SMRs) could be located, it has brought to the forefront questions of geography.
Jervis Bay is a Commonwealth territory, located within NSW, but the laws of the Australian Capital Territory apply.
Potential reactor sites
In 2007, in the wake of the Switkowski nuclear energy review under the Howard government, the Australia Institute published a research paper identifying 19 of the most likely reactor sites.
The sites were located across Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, NSW, and the ACT.
It found the most suitable sites were close to major centres of demand and preferably in coastal areas to ensure easy access to water.
Jervis Bay inevitably comes up as a potential reactor location due to its history as the only nuclear power plant to have received serious consideration in Australia.
At the time it was promoted as the first of many.
In February 1970, the Illawarra Mercury proclaimed:
“The power station will be the first of 20 atomic plants costing more than $2,000 million to be built in Australia by 1990.
“The reactor will use 500,000 gallons of sea water a day for cooling purposes.”
That was the blueprint that nearly became a reality.
Shrouded in secrecy
There was a darker side to the Jervis Bay reactor too, with evidence revealed in a 2002 ABC documentary, Fortress Australia, that the 500-megawatt fast breeder reactor was chosen due to its ability to generate weapons-grade plutonium for use in an Australian nuclear weapon
Fortress Australia uncovered secret documents showing how the chairman of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission (AAEC), Phillip Baxter, influenced three Liberal prime ministers (Menzies, Holt and Gorton) to support the project. …..
Associate Professor Wayne Reynolds from the University of Newcastle told ABC podcast The Signal how Gorton pushed for the nuclear power station at Jervis Bay…….”They did the study, they worked out the capability, they had to go negotiate with the British about the technology, then they actually started to build this reactor at Jervis Bay.”
The project was first delayed after William McMahon became prime minister in 1971 and was later put on hold indefinitely, despite efforts to keep the project alive.
As late as March 1975, the Illawarra Mercury was reporting:
“Jervis Bay may still be the site for a nuclear power plant and a possible site for a nuclear-powered submarine base.”
But the horse had bolted.
Any hopes of a nuclear power industry in Australia effectively ended when McMahon lost government to Gough Whitlam’s Labor in December 1972.
Whitlam’s signing of the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty in 1973 also ended any plans by the AAEC to provide Australia with the capacity to manufacture atomic weapons…….
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August 12, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, history, Opposition to nuclear, opposition to nuclear, politics, secrets and lies, weapons and war |
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I guess we’ve got enough nuclear targets for now, anyway
‘Draw a line under it’: PM rules out US missile base in Australia, The Age By Stephanie Peatling, August 5, 2019 Prime Minister Scott Morrison has ruled out the construction of US missile bases in Australia, saying no such request was made at high-level defence and diplomatic talks between the two countries over the weekend.US and Australian officials appeared to leave open the option of a missile base being built in northern Australia as part of a move to counteract an increasingly assertive Chinese presence in the South Pacific at the conclusion of the talks in Sydney on Sunday…….
Defence Minister Linda Reynolds also emphatically ruled out any formal request by the United States. …..
Any use of Australian soil as a launch site for intermediate-range missiles would anger Beijing, given that could bring Chinese military installations in the South China sea within range.
US Defence Secretary Mark Esper had earlier canvassed placing conventional intermediate-range missiles “in Asia”, following the collapse last week of the US-Russian Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty, which aimed to limit development of such weapons.
Asked whether Australia might now also be under consideration for basing a conventional version of the weapons, with ranges of 500 to 5500 kilometres, Dr Esper did not give a direct answer…..
But Australia remains open to a US invitation to join a coalition of countries to protect oil tankers and cargo ships from attack by Iran in the Straits of Hormuz……. https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/no-request-has-been-made-linda-reynolds-rules-out-us-missile-base-in-australia-20190805-p52du1.html
August 6, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics international, weapons and war |
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Michael Kirby urges Australia to sign up to nuclear weapon ban treaty, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/05/michael-kirby-urges-australia-to-sign-up-to-nuclear-weapon-ban-treaty
Former high court judge says it’s a fluke the world has avoided nuclear disasters since the second world war and weapons remain a peril
The former high court judge Michael Kirby believes it was a fluke that the world has avoided further nuclear weapons disasters since the second world war and has urged Australia to sign up to a weapon ban treaty.
Kirby will launch a report in Sydney this week from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which calls for Australia to get on board.
Ican, which was founded in Melbourne, won the 2017 Nobel peace prize for leading the campaign for a global ban on nuclear weapons that resulted in a United Nations treaty being adopted in July 2017.
Kirby seized on the 74th anniversaries this week of the US detonating two nuclear bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“That the world has survived seven decades since Hiroshima is more by good luck than effective management and there is no guarantee that it will continue to do so in an environment of proliferating nuclear weapons,” he said.
He acknowledged the nuclear weapons ban treaty was not perfect but “doing nothing is a far greater weakness”.
“Failing to address the challenges of nuclear weapons to humanity, the safety of the planet and the biosphere, highlights the global community’s failure to respond appropriately and effectively to the existential peril of nuclear weapons,” he said.
The nine nuclear powers, including the US, oppose the weapons ban treaty, arguing it could undermine nuclear deterrence.
More than 120 countries voted for the UN treaty and so far 70 have formally signed up and 24 have ratified the agreement. The treaty comes into force once 50 countries have ratified, which is expected in 2020.
Australia is not on the list. The federal government argues the ban treaty would not eliminate a single nuclear weapon. While Australia doesn’t have any nuclear weapons, it relies on “umbrella protection” under the US alliance.
can co-founder Dr Tilman Ruff said it is possible for Australia to keep its security pact with the US but sign the nuclear weapons treaty.
He pointed out 11 of 17 of the US’s regional allies have voted for the treaty’s adoption and three have signed up, including New Zealand.
“For none of those has there been any disruption or fuss with their ongoing military cooperation with the US,” Ruff said.
Ruff said if Australia was to sign up it would have to reconsider any nuclear weapons link to operations at joint facilities such as the satellite surveillance base Pine Gap in central Australia.
The report suggests the relay ground station at Pine Gap’s western compound would have to be closed or the US would have to separate out defensive functions from nuclear war-fighting.
It’s one of multiple redundant channels,” he said. “It’s clear that function of Pine Gap could easily be removed. Clearly this would need to be a negotiation, it would likely involve processes that would take a couple of years but we think that it’s eminently doable,” he said.
The federal Labor conference last December adopted as party policy a binding resolution to sign and ratify the UN treaty to outlaw nuclear weapons.
Anthony Albanese, who prosecuted that case at the conference, has as party leader reaffirmed his commitment.
“I’m a big supporter of nuclear disarmament. It is something that I’ve supported my entire political life,” Albanese told the ABC Insiders program on Sunday.
“We want to be a part of bringing the world with us. The fact is that over a period of time, issues like landmines and chemical weapons and other weapons have been outlawed, but nuclear weapons, the most catastrophic and damaging that can exist, still remain.”
In government ranks only Liberal MP Warren Entsch and Nationals MP Ken O’Dowd have publicly backed Australia joining the weapon ban treaty. Meanwhile, Australian foreign affairs minister Marise Payne and defence minister Linda Reynolds met with US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and defence secretary Mark Esper in Sydney on Sunday for annual talks.
Epser flagged on Saturday he supported placing ground-launched, intermediate-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific region in the short term.
Asked if northern Australia could be a potential site, he declined to speculate, saying the US deployed systems globally with friends and allies with consent and respect for sovereignty.
“We make decisions based on mutual benefit to each of the countries,” he said.
The US scrapped a nuclear arms pact with Russia on Friday. Both countries have pointed fingers at each other for violating the 1988 intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty.
August 6, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics international, weapons and war |
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Counting the costs of an ‘independent nuclear deterrent’ The Strategist
Some would argue that the 1962 Cuban missile crisis was such a time. However, Khrushchev backed down not for fear of massive US retaliation but because he realised, only just in time, that the biggest danger came from losing control of his own deployed nuclear-armed forces who might start a war the USSR didn’t want.
It’s also significant that US nuclear weapons were irrelevant in the Vietnam War, in which Australia was deeply involved with its largest military commitment since World War II.
Furthermore, and more recently, the risk of nuclear war through miscalculation, mistake or malfunction has, if anything, increased ……
—the UK has decided to continue with its ‘independent nuclear deterrent’ into the 2060s at an estimated cost of around £150 billion.
However, for all the enormous expenditure, the UK Trident is not independent. In reality, the US—which leases its missiles to the UK from a common US pool, and whose technical design and support for every part of the weapon system to target and launch them is critical—can frustrate the UK from using Trident if it disapproves. So, unlike France, the UK has opted for nuclear dependence on the US.
A force of four nuclear-armed ballistic-missile-equipped nuclear-powered submarines (SSBNs) is required to maintain one continuously on patrol. In addition, to maintain its independence from the US, Australia, like France, would need to design and manufacture its own missiles and associated space-launch system, warheads, specialised satellite navigation, targeting and communications systems. And for that it would need to acquire nuclear submarine design, build, operation and maintenance skills. The UK’s decision to rely upon the US for all of that has predictably resulted in a heavy political as well as still onerous financial cost.
Then there’s the need for a nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN), plus at least one surface ship and maritime patrol aircraft to protect the deployed SSBN. Experience shows that at least six SSNs are required to have one always available for this task. Keeping one UK SSBN continuously at sea and undetected places huge and growing strains on a now very depleted and imbalanced navy.
In fact, the cost of maintaining a UK ‘deterrent’ has led to the hollowing out of all the UK’s conventional armed forces to the point where it cannot deter, let alone respond effectively to, aggression against the homeland. ……
Australia, with no nuclear propulsion or missile experience to build on, must either be dependent on US technology and support, or embark on an even more costly all-Australian project. I would urge those who advocate either of these approaches to take a long, hard look at the counterproductive effect that sustaining the four UK Trident submarines has had on the defence of the homeland. Simply put, it has denied our armed services, especially the navy, the equipment and personnel they need to meet the wide variety of today’s actual threats……..https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/counting-the-costs-of-an-independent-nuclear-deterrent/
August 1, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, weapons and war |
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Going Nuclear in the Antipodes: Australia’s megadeath complex, Online Opinion By Binoy Kampmark – , 10 July 2019 The antipodes has had a fraught relationship with the nuclear option. At the distant ends of the earth, New Zealand took a stand against the death complex, assuming the forefront of restricting the deployment of nuclear assets in its proximity. This drove Australia bonkers with moral envy and strategic fury. The New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament and Arms Control Act 1987 made the country a nuclear and biological weapons-free area. It was a thumbing, defiant gesture against the United States, but what is sometimes forgotten is that it was also a statement to other powers – including France – who might venture to experiment and test their weapons in the Pacific environs. ………
As Anglo-American retainer and policing authority of the Pacific, Australia has had sporadic flirts with the nuclear option, one shadowing the creation of the Australian National University, the Woomera Rocket Range and the Snowy Mountains hydro-electricity scheme. Australian territory had been used, and abused, by British forces keen to test Albion’s own acquisition of an atomic option. The Maralinga atomic weapons test range remains a poisoned reminder of that period, but was hoped to be a prelude to establishing an independent Australia nuclear force. Cooperation with Britain was to be key, and Australian defence spending, including the acquisition of 24 pricey F-111 fighter bombers from the US in the 1960s, was premised on a deliverable nuclear capability.
During John Gorton’s short stint as prime minister in the late 1960s, rudimentary efforts were made at Jervis Bay to develop what would have been a reactor capable of generating plutonium under the broad aegis of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission. Gorton’s premiership ended in 1971; Australia slid back into the sheltering comforts of Washington’s unverifiable nuclear umbrella.
The influential chairman of the AAEC, Philip Baxter, who held the reins between 1956 and 1972 with a passion for secrecy, never gave up his dream of encouraging the production of weapons grade plutonium. It led historian Ann Moyal
to reflect on the “problems and danger of closed government”, with nuclear policy framed “through the influence of one powerful administrator surrounded by largely silent men”.
Nuclear weapons have a habit of inducing the worst of human traits. Envy, fear, and pride tend to coagulate, producing a nerdish disposition that tolerates mass murder in the name of faux strategy. With the boisterous emergence of China, Australian academics and security hacks have been bitten by the nuclear bug. In 2018, Stephan Frühling, Associate Dean of the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University
fantasised about adorning the Australian coastline with tactical, short-range nuclear weapons.
……….Other
authors who claim to be doyens of Australian strategic thinking also fear the seize-the-prize intentions of the Yellow Peril and a half-hearted Uncle Sam keen to look away from “the Indo-Pacific and its allies.” Paul Dibb, Richard Brabin-Smith and Brendan Sargeant, all with ANU affiliations,
call for “a radically new defence policy,” which might be read as a terror of the US imperium in retreat. For Dibb, Australia “should aim for greater defence self-reliance.” This would involve “developing a Defence Force capable of denying our approaches to a well-armed adversary capable of engaging us in sustained high-intensity conflict.” ………
Not wishing to be left off the increasingly crowded nuclear wagon, Australia’s long standing commentator on China, Hugh White, has also put his oar in, building up the pro-nuclear argument in what he calls a “difficult and uncomfortable” question. ………
Then comes the issue of a nuclear capability, previously unneeded given the pillowing comforts of the US umbrella, underpinned by the assurance that Washington was “the primary power in Asia”. White shows more consideration than other nuclear groupies in acknowledging the existential dangers. Acquiring such weapons would come at a Mephistophelian cost. “It would make us less secure in some ways, that’s why in some ways I think it’s appalling.”
The nuclear call doing the rounds in Canberra is a bit of old man’s bravado, and a glowering approach to the non-proliferation thrust of the current international regime.
Should Australia embark on a nuclear program, it is bound to coalescence a range of otherwise divided interests across the country. It will also thrill other nuclear aspirants excoriated for daring to obtain such an option. The mullahs in Iran will crow, North Korea will be reassured, and states in the Asian-Pacific may well reconsider their benign status. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=20398
July 13, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, weapons and war |
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 Nuclear weapons? Australia has no way to build them, even if we wanted to Heiko Timmers
https://theconversation.com/nuclear-weapons-australia-has-no-way-to-build-them-even-if-we-wanted-to-120075 Associate Professor of Physics, UNSWJuly 10, 2019 In his latest book, strategist and defence analyst Hugh White has gone nuclear, triggering a debate about whether Australia should develop and maintain its own nuclear arsenal.But developing and sustaining modern nuclear weapons requires a certain combination of technologies and industries that Australia simply does not have. In fact, it may be safely estimated on the basis of approval and construction times for nuclear power reactors in other western countries that it would take some 20 years to establish such capabilities in the present legal and economic environment.
Opting for nuclear weapons also fails to consider the global implications of Australia abandoning its almost 50-year stance against nuclear proliferation.
The first step: nuclear power generation
White argues quite rightly that China may eventually overtake the US in terms of its industrial production and military reach. Speculating that this could entail a strategic withdrawal of the US from the western Pacific, he suggests Australia might find itself without the American defence umbrella to deter Chinese influence, or worse.
But Australia would struggle to replace its long and successful alliance with the US with a limited nuclear deterrence capability. Even ignoring the issues generally involved in adopting new defence capabilities – evident in the many problems hindering Australia’s efforts to replace its ageing submarine fleet – the idea is fanciful given our current stance on nuclear energy.
Nuclear power reactors, uranium enrichment plants, missile technology and high-tech electronics manufacturing would all be essential to support truly independent efforts to develop a compact nuclear weapon that could be delivered by missile from a submarine and kept in a permanent state of readiness.
Neither power reactors nor enrichment facilities exist in Australia today, despite some pioneering research in both areas in the past.
Australia’s missile development and high-tech electronics sectors, meanwhile, are in catch-up mode or in their infancy due to years of economic reliance on mining, tourism and services. Advancing and establishing nuclear industries for the sole purpose of developing a nuclear weapons program would neither be practically nor economically viable.
Political will for nuclear energy?
The only way such industries could be developed realistically would be if Australia added nuclear power to its suite of power generation technologies.
Of course, Australia has large uranium deposits and a well-established uranium mining and export industry. And there appears to be increasing public support for nuclear power. A recent survey found that 44% of Australians support nuclear power plants, up four points since the question was last asked in 2015. Other polls indicate support might even be higher.
A well-developed nuclear power industry would eventually give Australia almost all the necessary technologies, personnel and materials to make and maintain a nuclear weapon. This includes, in particular, the ability to enrich uranium and breed plutonium.
But herein lies the problem. Even if the public did eventually support a nuclear energy program, it remains unclear whether the necessary political will would be there.
Legally, the Howard government banned domestic nuclear power plantsin the late 1990s – an act that would now need to be overturned by parliament.
In 2006, the federal government commissioned an inquiry led by Ziggy Switkowski into the future feasibility of nuclear power generation in Australia. The final report found that nuclear energy would be 20-50% more expensive than coal without carbon pricing. It also said a nuclear power industry would take between 10 and 15 years to establish.
Recently, Energy Minister Angus Taylor said the Morrison government was open to reversing the country’s nuclear energy ban, but only if there was a “clear business case” to do so. With the current widespread availability of cheaper, renewable energies in Australia, this makes the economics of nuclear power generation less convincing.
Lastly, in order to ensure true self-reliance, a delivery option for a nuclear weapon would have to be developed without purchasing technologies from other countries, such as the US. This would be incredibly costly and difficult to do.
When it comes to this sort of missile technology and high-tech electronics manufacturing, Australia is currently not leading in research and development.
Australia’s long-time stance against nuclear weapons
Even though Australia is not in a position to contemplate nuclear weapons due to its technological and industrial limitations, there are moral arguments against pursuing such a goal that should be considered carefully.
The country has been at the forefront of the international non-proliferation movement, ratifying both the UN Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1973 and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1998.
A 2018 poll also showed that 78.9% of Australians supported joining the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, while only 7.7% were opposed.
Australians should remind themselves that these treaties have greatly contributed to peace and security in the world. Abandoning such longstanding principles of its foreign policy, which are aimed at creating a better, more peaceful world, would be an implosion of Australian character of massive proportions.
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July 11, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, weapons and war |
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Antinuclear 