Tim Flannery now sees nuclear power as useless, except for nuclear weapons
Steve Dale Nuclear Fuel Cycle Watch South Australia, 20 Oct 18, I note Tim Flannery’s words in the transcript. Listen to the pod cast below from the 21 minute mark to see how his position regarding nuclear has evolved – he talks about how solar and wind has become so cheap, so quickly, he talks about the Tesla battery, gearless wind turbines, how fantastic that South Australia is now coal free and that the only reason he can see why a country would fund nuclear these days is if they want to develop nuclear weapons...https://www.facebook.com/groups/1021186047913052/?multi_permalinks=2157916570906655&comment_id=2160264634005182¬if_id=1539904501184162¬if_t=feedback_reaction_genericTim Flannery on climate catastrophe and his new book Tim Flannery, head of the Climate Council, weighs in on this week’s IPPC report, the government’s greenhouse emissions report card, and discusses his new book Europe: a natural history https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/tim-flannery/10361616?fbclid=IwAR0fUXgQJAHQ0HcHc30j057P60bpOMikYWKzKZYT3aT7gE5D1qX0BWtaY7M
Genetic effects of nuclear testing in Australia in the 1950s and 60s
UK to probe poisonous genetic legacy of nuclear test ‘guinea pigs’ SMH, By Nick Miller, 19 October 2018 London: The UK government is considering a new study into the health of the children of British veterans used as guinea pigs in its Australian and Pacific nuclear weapons tests, to test fears of a poisonous genetic legacy.
If a link can be found it may form the basis of a claim for compensation from the UK government, despite courts previously turning down such claims from the veterans themselves.
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has told officials in the Ministry of Defence to look at the feasibility of a study into the health and well-being of the children of nuclear test veterans, an MOD spokesman said.
Decades ago, around 22,000 British military personnel witnessed nuclear weapons tests in South Australia, on the Montebello Islands off Western Australia, and on Kiribati’s Christmas Island in the Pacific.
Some felt the heat of the explosion on their backs and were ordered to turn around and observe the mushroom cloud. One veteran told the BBC in February the tests “bowled people over” and left them on the ground screaming. He had watched “another sun hanging in the sky”, dressed only in a t-shirt, shorts and thongs.
“We were guinea pigs,” Bob Fleming, 83, said. He said 16 of his 21 children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren had birth defects or health problems: his youngest daughter has thyroid problems and severe breathing difficulties.
The family believe it is a result of the radiation Mr Fleming was exposed to during the test.
Another veteran, RAF sergeant Roy Kirkland, slept a half a mile from Ground Zero and was ordered to collect dead seabirds from the Christmas Island test site.
The new feasibility study follows a campaign by the Mirrorand Labour deputy leader Tom Watson, who have been pushing for recognition and compensation for the veterans who were exposed to radiation during the tests in the region between 1952 and 1967 – and their families.
In 2007 a study of New Zealand nuclear test veteransfound they had more than double the expected amount of genetic damage for men of the same age – even higher than that detected in workers close to the Chernobyl nuclear accident or involved in the clean-up.
The study by researchers from Massey University found the genetic damage was most likely attributable to the veterans having been on board NZ navy frigates observing nuclear tests at Christmas Island.
In 2014 a study by European researchers found a “significant excess” of infant mortality and congenital illnesses in nuclear test veterans’ children. The veterans’ wives had five times as many stillbirths, and 57 children of veterans had congenital conditions – ten times the rate in the control group and eight times the national average. There were also significantly higher congenital illnesses – and cancer – among the veterans’ grandchildren. The researchers said their results were “highly statistically significant”. …….. https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/uk-to-probe-poisonous-genetic-legacy-of-nuclear-test-guinea-pigs-20181019-p50alz.html
City of Melbourne supports Australia joining UN Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty
The City of Melbourne, birthplace of ICAN, just voted unanimously in support of a motion calling on the Australian government to join the UN #nuclearban treaty! @cityofmelbourne @dfat
Ex-Admiral says nuclear subs are vital for South China Sea
Australia needs a fleet of stealthy nuclear submarines to deal with potential threats in our region, most notably in the South China Sea, a strategic policy report says…. (subscribers only)
Weapons-making corporation, Raytheon hoping for nuclear industry in SouthAustralia?
‘Welcome’ to Steve Ciobo, the new Australian Minister for the Arms Trade
Australia won’t get the nuclear bomb – these are the reasons why not
The real problem is developing a credible, effective nuclear capability is about much more than possessing the bomb itself. Equally critical would be working out how to control and protect the weapon prior to use, and finally, deliver it. Doing this is, perhaps surprisingly, just as difficult – if not more so – than developing the device itself.
let’s look at what it would cost.This is where the extent of the fantasy becomes apparent.
there’s one other final, conclusive, and critical reason that not even our allies will assist an attempt to go nuclear. The truth is now they just don’t view Australia as a stable, mature democracy any more.
The one, conclusive reason why Australia won’t go nuclear, SMH, By Nicholas Stuart, 18 September 2018 There’s a massive, although subterranean, debate going on in the strategic community at the moment – one with huge ramifications. It’s whether Australia should possess its own nuclear deterrent. Continue reading
Defence officials become military lobbyists
| Defence officials turn lobbyists, sometimes weeks after leaving government
Eight former defence figures, most high-ranking, are now lobbyists for military contractors, Guardian, Christopher Knaus, @knausc, 18 Sep 2018 Senior defence officials and military figures are taking paid jobs with firms lobbying for arms manufacturers, sometimes within weeks of leaving their government posts. Guardian Australia has identified eight former military officers or defence bureaucrats, most of whom were high-ranking, who have publicly registered themselves as lobbyists for firms that represent military contractors. But many other defence lobbyists operate largely in secret, either because they work directly for military contractors, or because they simply refuse to put themselves on the lobbyist register, avoiding scrutiny for themselves and their clients without any real repercussion. One recent example of a lobbyist who placed himself on the lobbyist register is Tyson Sara, a former assistant secretary in defence’s naval shipbuilding taskforce, whose role was described as “leading the implementation of the Australian naval shipbuilding plan”. Sara left defence in March and soon after joined lobbying powerhouse Cmax Advisory as its chief operating officer and vice-president for strategy and government. Cmax represents the shipbuilder Navantia Australia, defence contractor Northrop Grumman, and the Israeli weapons manufacturer Rafael Advanced Defense Systems………. Military officers who held a rank above colonel or its equivalent are banned from lobbying for 12 months on “any matter they had official dealings with” during the last year of their employment. Senior executive service officers in the public service face the same cooling-off period. But the lobbying code of conduct, already weak by international standards, is rarely enforced and staff movements are poorly monitored. The code also fails to consider former defence employees who are employed directly by weapons companies, either as in-house lobbyists or senior executives. That means it does not apply to individuals such as Sean Costello, who worked as chief of staff to the then defence minister David Johnston between June 2014 and January 2015, as the government planned its $50bn future submarines program, according to evidence in Senate estimates. Costello left Johnston’s department and two months later became the chief executive of the Australian arm of French submarine manufacturer DCNS, a Senate committee heard. That company, now known as Naval Group, eventually won the submarines contract in 2016. In Senate estimates in 2015 Defence conceded that it was “a fair assumption” that Costello, in his role as chief of staff, would have had access to confidential documents and briefings on the submarine project. Defence said in evidence to the Senate that it provided Johnston’s office with 34 pieces of written advice relating to the submarine project in the time Costello worked in the office, on top of material provided to the minister in a daily briefing pack. ……. Tim Costello, chief advocate for World Vision and the executive director of Micah Australia, said the sheer value of defence contracts meant it was necessary to apply added scrutiny to the sector. “They are so lucrative,” Costello said. “It means that the transparency and accountability must be higher and commensurate with the goldfields they represent of taxpayer dollars.” The Centre Alliance senator Rex Patrick said it was clear the lobbying code needed to be enhanced for former defence personnel. Patrick said senior defence personnel were often exposed to privileged and sensitive information on policy, strategy, and commercial and tender requirements. “While I wouldn’t suggest that this information is shared amongst a lobbyist’s clients, when former officials service their clients, it’s simply not possible to unknow this information when formulating advice,” he said.
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ICAN takes the Nobel peace message to country Australia
ICAN Nobel Peace Prize Ride: On the road to a future free of nuclear weapons https://www.examiner.com.au/story/5631777/on-the-road-to-a-future-free-of-nuclear-arms/?cs=97, Gem Romuld and Lavanya Pant, 7 Sept 18
Cycling through the green hills, surrounded by stately gums and wattle blossoms, it’s hard to believe that nuclear weapons pose a threat to everything we hold dear. Yet nine nations cling to 14,500 nuclear weapons, enough to annihilate our planet many times over.
The risk is real and growing. We know from the Red Cross Red Crescent movement that any use of nuclear weapons would have catastrophic humanitarian consequences and be impossible to respond to. This is something we cannot risk.
Driven by deep concern for the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons, a global majority of nations are taking action.
Chemical and biological weapons have long been outlawed by international treaty.
Last year, 122 nations united to put nuclear weapons in the same legal category. In July, they voted to adopt the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations. This is the first agreement to clearly outlaw nuclear weapons, setting a standard for all nations and providing a legal pathway for their total elimination.
The Australian-founded International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for our role in helping to achieve this treaty.
Regrettably, Australia hasn’t yet signed on to the ban. Our government is a proud signatory to the treaties prohibiting landmines, cluster munitions, biological and chemical weapons, but is resisting signing the nuclear weapon ban treaty. This must change, to reflect the will of the vast majority of Australians who do not want weapons of mass destruction used in their name.
A diverse group of ICAN supporters is cycling the Nobel Peace Prize medal and a giant copy of the nuclear weapon ban treaty from Melbourne to Canberra to share this story with communities, and highlighting the imperative for Australia to join the ban.
We’re sleeping in church halls, sharing potluck dinners with locals and hosting events in Benalla, Albury and Gundagai.
Our journey culminates in Canberra on September 20, the first anniversary of the nuclear weapon ban treaty opening for signature at the UN. We’re hitting the road with our hand-sewn flags, Nobel medal in the backpack, to cycle a little closer to a future free of nuclear weapons.
Gem Romuld is Australian director of ICAN. Lavanya Pant is Nobel Peace Ride co-ordinator.
Australia, New Zealand launch planes to monitor nuclear North Korea
Defence Minister Christopher Pyne on Friday announced the deployment of two Australian AP-3C Orion patrol aircraft in addition to a P-8A Poseidon sent out earlier this year.
A“It is a continuation of our strong stand to deter and disrupt illicit trade and sanctions evasion activities by North Korea and its associated networks,” he said.
The planes will be based out of Japan.
Meanwhile, a New Zealand Air Force Orion P-3K2 would also be carrying out surveillance of international waters in north Asia, New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters announced separately.
“We welcome the recent dialogue North Korea has had with the United States and South Korea,” he said.
“However, until such time as North Korea abides by its international obligations, full implementation of the United Nations Security Council Sanctions resolutions will be essential.”
In particular, the aircraft would be on the look-out for ship-to-ship deliveries that may contravene Security Council resolutions, he said.
The United States has been using sanctions to put pressure on the hermit kingdom to give up its nuclear weapons program.
In August, it announced penalties against two Russian companies over what is said were transfers of refined petroleum to North Korean ships.
Since US President Donald Trump’s high-profile meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un this year, relations between their countries have cooled.
A diplomatic visit by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to North Korea was cancelled last month, with Mr Trump citing a lack of progress on denuclearisation.
New Zealand’s government recently agreed to replace its ageing fleet of six surveillance aircraft with four high-tech Boeing P-8A Poseidons.
Analysts said the purchase signalled New Zealand’s willingness to keep in touch with traditional allies such as the United States and Australia and showed its seriousness about military deployments in the region.
Cyclists start 900km journey to Canberra, with Nobel Peace Prize and aim to end nuclear weapons
Nobel Peace Ride: Cyclists carry medal to Canberra, urging end to nuclear weapons, A group of cyclists have set off from Melbourne, bound for Canberra to deliver a message to Australia’s new Foreign Minister on banning nuclear weapons. 2 Sept 18 , SBS News, By Biwa Kwan, Twenty cyclists have begun a 900km journey to Canberra from Melbourne.
Australian War Memorial: Stop accepting funding from weapon-makers
The Australian War Memorial increasingly seeks and accepts sponsorships from the world’s largest multinational weapon manufacturers. These companies reap enormous profits from war; for them, ongoing warfare leads to greater business success. They have no place in a memorial to our war dead.
PETITION To: Australian War Memorial Director and Council
From: [Your Name]
To the Director and Council of the Australian War Memorial:
We are horrified to learn of AWM sponsorships from weapons manufacturers.
It is unacceptable that:
• Every visitor to the AWM is greeted by an illuminated screen featuring the corporate logos of these companies.
• The ‘BAE Systems Theatre’ is actively promoted for hire, thus marketing Britain’s biggest weapons maker. BAE Systems is a major military supplier to Saudi Arabia, a country known to sponsor terrorism, and which is currently committing atrocities against civilians in Yemen. BAE has been the subject of multiple corruption investigations, including for its dealings with Saudi Arabia.
• You have a three-year partnership deal with Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest weapons manufacturer, which also has a history of corruption. The deal includes assistance with commemorating the centenary of Armistice Day. During World War 1, the weapons industry made huge profits as Australians and others were slaughtered in unprecedented numbers.
We also note many other multinational weapons companies are sponsors and donors, including Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and Thales.
We would not accept cigarette or alcohol company sponsorship of hospital wards. It is totally inappropriate for weapons makers to sponsor our national War Memorial.
The Australian War Memorial should be a place of genuine commemoration and learning. Vested interests in warfare are incompatible with both of these goals. All funding from weapons companies should cease.
Radioactive sheep in Australia add evidence about Israeli nuclear bomb test
Radioactive sheep shed light on secret nuclear weapons test, https://nypost.com/2018/08/14/radioactive-sheep-shed-light-on-secret-nuclear-weapons-test/ Christopher Carbone, Fox News, August 14, 2018 Newly discovered data from radioactive sheep provides strong evidence that a mysterious “double flash” detected almost 39 years ago near a remote island group was a nuclear explosion.
Ever since the flash was observed by a US Vela satellite orbiting above Earth in September 1979, there’s been speculation that it was produced by a nuclear weapon test by Israel. International researchers in the journal Science & Global Security analyzed previously unpublished results of radiation testing at a US lab of thyroid organs from sheep in southeastern Australia in order to make their determination.
The flash was located in the area of Marion and Prince Edward islands, which are in the South Indian Ocean about halfway between Africa and Antarctica.
“A new publication sheds further light on the Vela Incident of 1979,” said Professor Nick Wilson of Otago University at Wellington, who highlighted the findings but was not involved with the study itself. “[The research] adds to the evidence base that this was an illegal nuclear weapons test, very likely to have been conducted by Israel with assistance from the apartheid regime in South Africa.”
Wilson, an epidemiologist and member of the Australia-based Medical Association for the Prevention of War, said the test would have violated the Limited Test Ban Treaty signed in 1963, and urged the United Nations to mount a full inquiry.
The researchers conclude that iodine-131, which is an unstable radioactive form of the element iodine found in the thyroids of some Australian sheep, “would be consistent with them having grazed in the path of a potential radioactive fallout plume from a [Sept. 22, 1979] low-yield nuclear test in the Southern Indian Ocean.”
Thyroid samples from sheep killed in Melbourne were regularly sent to the US for testing — monthly in 1979 but also in the 1950s and 1980s, researchers say.
According to a report in the New Zealand Herald, the sheep had been grazing in an area hit by rain four days after the flash incident was observed, which would have been in the downwind path from the suspected explosion site.
Researchers also said the detection of a “hydroacoustic signal” from underwater listening devices at the time is another piece of evidence pointing to a nuclear test.
Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of a nuclear program, dismissed the claim that it was responsible for the 1979 incident.
srael’s ambassador to New Zealand, Itzhak Gerberg, told the Herald, when asked if Israel was responsible for the explosion: “Simply a ridiculous assumption that does not hold water.”
However, the country’s former Knesset speaker, Avrum Burg, told a conference in 2013 that “Israel has nuclear and chemical weapons” and called for public discussion.
Commenting on the findings, US nuclear weapons expert Leonard Weiss of Stanford University said in the online Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that the “important” new evidence “removes virtually all doubt” that the flash was a small-yield nuclear explosion.
Weiss added that there was “growing circumstantial evidence” that it was conducted by Israel.
“Israel was the only country that had the technical ability and policy motivation to carry out such a clandestine test,” he said.
Australia’s nuclear testing before the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne should be a red flag for Fukushima in 2020
Part time tutor in Medical Education, University of Dundee
The scheduling of Tokyo 2020 Olympic events at Fukushima is being seen as a public relations exercise to dampen fears over continuing radioactivity from the reactor explosion that followed the massive earthquake six years ago.
It brings to mind the British atomic bomb tests in Australia that continued until a month before the opening of the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne – despite the known dangers of fallout travelling from the testing site at Maralinga to cities in the east. And it reminds us of the collusion between scientists and politicians – British and Australian – to cover up the flawed decision-making that led to continued testing until the eve of the Games.
Australia’s prime minister Robert Menzies agreed to atomic testing in December 1949. Ten months earlier, Melbourne had secured the 1956 Olympics even though the equestrian events would have to be held in Stockholm because of Australia’s strict horse quarantine regimes.
The equestrians were well out of it. Large areas of grazing land – and therefore the food supplies of major cities such as Melbourne – were covered with a light layer of radiation fallout from the six atomic bombs detonated by Britain during the six months prior to the November 1956 opening of the Games. Four of these were conducted in the eight weeks running up to the big event, 1,000 miles due west of Melbourne at Maralinga.
Bombs and games
In the 25 years I have been researching the British atomic tests in Australia, I have found only two mentions of the proximity of the Games to the atomic tests. Not even the Royal Commission into the tests in 1985 addressed the known hazards of radioactive fallout for the athletes and spectators or those who lived in the wide corridor of the radioactive plumes travelling east.
At the time, the approaching Olympics were referred to only once in the Melbourne press in relation to the atomic tests, in August 1956. It is known that D-notices from the government “requesting” editors to refrain from publishing information about certain defence and security matters were issued.
The official history of the tests by British nuclear historian Lorna Arnold, published by the UK government in 1987 and no longer in print, reports tests director William Penney signalling concern only once, in late September 1956:
Am studying arrangements firings but not easy. Have Olympic Games in mind but still believe weather will not continue bad.
This official history doesn’t comment on the implications. And nowhere in the 1985 Royal Commission report is there any reference to the opening of the Olympics, just one month and a day after the fourth test took place 1,000 miles away.
The 1984 report of the Expert Committee on the review of Data on Atmospheric Fallout Arising from British Nuclear Tests in Australia found that the methodology used to estimate the numbers of people who might have been harmed by this fallout at fewer than 10 was inappropriate. And it concluded that if the dose calculations were confined to the communities in the path of the fallout and not merged with the total Australian population “such an exercise would generate results several orders of magnitude higher than those based on conventional philosophy”. There was no mention of the Olympic Games.
Neither Prime Minister Menzies nor his cabinet ever referred publicly to what had been known from the outset – that the British atomic tests in Australia would almost coincide with the Melbourne Olympics. The tests and the Games were planned simultaneously through the first half of the 1950s.
In May 1955, 18 months before the Olympics were due to start, Howard Beale, the Australian minister for supply, announced the building of “the Los Alamos of the British Commonwealth” (a nuclear test site in New Mexico) at Maralinga, promising that “tests would only take place in meteorological conditions which would carry radioactive clouds harmlessly away into the desert”.
An Atomic Weapons Tests Safety Committee was formed by the Australians but was closely controlled by physicist Professor Ernest Titterton, the only Englishman on the panel. The 1985 Royal Commission stated explicitly that the AWTSC was complicit in the firing of atomic detonations in weather conditions that they knew could carry radioactive fallout a thousand miles from Maralinga to eastern cities such as Melbourne.
Hazards of radioactivity
Professor Titterton, who had recently been appointed to a chair in nuclear physics at the Australian National University after working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, and at Aldermaston in England, explained why the atomic devices were being tested in Australia:
Because of the hazards from the radioactivity which follows atomic weapons explosions, the tests are best carried out in isolated regions – usually a desert area … Most of the radioactivity produced in the explosion is carried up in the mushroom cloud and drifts downward under atmospheric airstreams. But particular material in this cloud slowly settles to the ground and may render an area dangerously radioactive out to distances ranging between 50 and several hundred miles … It would therefore be hazardous to explode even the smallest weapons in the UK, and it was natural for the mother country to seek test sites elsewhere in the Commonwealth.
The AWTSC published two scientific papers in 1957 and 1958 which flat out denied that any dangerous levels of radioactivity reached the eastern states. But their measurements relied on a very sparse scattering of sticky paper monitors – rolls of gummed film set out to catch particles of fallout – even though these could be washed off by rain.
Despite their clear denials in these papers, meteorological records show that prior to the Games there was rain in Melbourne which could have deposited radioactivity on the ground.
The AWTSC papers included maps purporting to show the plumes of radioactive fallout travelling north and west from Maralinga in the South Australian desert. The Royal Commission published expanded maps (see page 292) based on the AWTSC’s own data and found the fallout pattern to be much wider and more complex. The Australian scientist Hedley Marston’s study of radioactivity uptake in animals showed a far more significant covering of fallout on a wide swathe of Australian grazing land than indicated by the sticky paper samples of the AWTSC.
The 1985 Royal Commission report into British Nuclear Tests in Australia discussed many of these issues, but never in relation to the proximity and timing of the 1956 Olympic Games. Sixty years later, are we seeing the same denial of known hazards six years after the reactor explosion at Fukushima?
Senator Rex Patrick questions the government’s big submarine spend-up
Was this much too expensive choice made because these submarines could easily be converted to nuclear submarines?
THIRTY BILLION DOLLARS OF QUESTIONS
Australia’s Future Submarine program could blow out by billions, Senator Rex Patrick warns
This week I revealed in Parliament that the Coalition Government’s choice of the French submarine builder as the preferred partner for the Navy’s Future Submarine will cost taxpayers $30 billion more than the price offered by the unsuccessful German builder.
The Government is refusing to explain the difference in cost.
We’re talking a whopping $30 BILLION. That’s $30 billion that could have been better spent on other defence projects or even health, education and/or infrastructure. I will be pursuing this further.
Here is my question to the Defence Minister this week.
You can also read more here: https://rex.centrealliance.org.au/…/releases/thirty-billion/.
1 This month
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
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