Murrumbidgee Council launches survey on establishing nuclear power generator near Coleambally, Darlington Point or Jerilderie
from Greg Phillips -I was wondering if this was a belated April Fool’s joke. Especially since it is an “online survey” with no checks on who votes (as usual I expect it to be overrun by nuclear fanatics pretending to be locals). I think the rate payers in that area will have to pay much more attention to who they let get into the council next time.
30 April 2024 | Oliver Jacques, https://regionriverina.com.au/council-launches-survey-on-establishing-nuclear-power-generator-near-coleambally-darlington-point-or-jerilderie/59543/
Murrumbidgee Council has asked residents of Coleambally, Darlington Point, and Jerilderie to voice their opinions on the idea of establishing a nuclear power generator in their area.
“In an effort to explore diverse energy solutions, the community is invited to participate in an online survey aimed at understanding their appetite for nuclear power,” the council said in a statement.
Nuclear power plants generate electricity by using controlled nuclear chain reactions to heat water and produce steam to power turbines.
Advocates say the plants can generate clean energy without the by-products emitted by fossil fuels, while critics argue nuclear power is expensive, unreliable, possibly unsafe and it produces hazardous waste.
Murrumbidgee Council General Manager John Scarce said the council sought to understand public sentiment regarding the possible integration of nuclear power into the local energy landscape.
Mr Scarce said the concept would be contingent upon dismantling existing renewable energy infrastructure, including solar and wind farms, at the end of their operational life.
“The land would then be reclaimed for agricultural purposes, aligning with sustainability and resource optimisation goals,” he said.
The survey is designed as a precursor to gathering more information on the idea, with a view to undertaking a more formal poll in the future.
Nuclear power is banned in Australia and under current laws, nuclear power stations can’t be built in any state or territory.
At a recent event in Wagga, Essential Energy CEO John Cleland said nuclear energy would remain an important part of the global energy network, but it was an unlikely option for Australia in the near future.
“The lived experience and reality of nuclear is that all new nuclear generation built globally in the last 40 or 50 years has ended up being very expensive,” he said.
“In Australia, we have this wonderful endowment of wind and solar and existing gas reserves and systems that will provide a very robust peaking generation source going forward.
“The economic case for nuclear is challenging but we do need to continue to monitor the evolution of the technology around small-scale modular nuclear reactors because they might in time play a role.”
The Murrumbidgee Council survey can be accessed online at survey monkey and will remain open until 5 pm on 22 May 2024.
Zelensky wants ten more years of US funding
https://www.rt.com/news/596736-ukraine-us-aid-decade/ 29 Apr 24
The Ukrainian leader has said he is working on getting a long-term assistance package from Washington.
The latest US aid package for Kiev, which was only approved by Congress after more than six months of partisan feuding, might be small potatoes compared to what Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has in mind for his biggest benefactor.
Kiev is negotiating with the administration of US President Joe Biden on a long-term agreement that would put Washington on the hook to provide Ukraine with military, economic, and political support for the next decade, Zelensky said on Sunday in his daily video address. Such commitments are needed to ensure Ukraine has the “efficiency in assistance” it needs to stem recent battlefield advances by Russian forces and gain the upper hand, he said.
“We are working to commit to paper concrete levels of support for this year and for the next ten years,” Zelensky said. “It will include military, financial, and political support, as well as what concerns joint production of weapons.”
Ukraine has already signed bilateral security agreements with several NATO members, including the UK, Germany, and France. Zelensky said he wants the long-term deal under negotiation with Washington to be the strongest pact yet.
However, Ukraine’s bilateral agreements with Western countries so far have stopped short of mutual-defense commitments. The deals merely pledge long-term aid, including support in the event of a future attack, and they are not legally binding. The agreement with Berlin, for instance, can be terminated with six months’ notice.
Zelensky said he wants Ukraine’s bilateral pact with Washington to include specific levels of aid. “The agreement should be truly exemplary and reflect the strength of American leadership,” he said.
US lawmakers approved $61 billion in additional aid for Ukraine earlier this month, after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) overrode opposition in his own party to pass the bill with unanimous Democrat support. The Biden administration ran out of funding for Ukraine aid earlier this year, after using up $113 billion in previously approved assistance packages.
Republican lawmakers have argued that Biden is merely prolonging the bloodshed in Ukraine without offering a clear strategy for victory or a peace deal with Russia. A poll released in February showed that nearly 70% of Americans want Biden to push for a negotiated settlement with Moscow, involving compromises on both sides, rather than continuing to fund the conflict.
“History is Calling: Australia and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons”
– Melissa Parke, ICAN International Executive Director, 30 Apr 24 https://icanw.org.au/history-is-calling-report/
“History is Calling: Australia and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons” sets out in detail the case for Australia to join the global majority of nations in supporting the nuclear weapon ban treaty. It outlines Australia’s progress on implementation, the TPNW’s complementarity with other agreements, nuclear safeguards and disarmament architecture, enforcement, universalisation, victim assistance and environmental remediation, Australia and its alliances, and nuclear deterrence theory.
By early 2024, almost half the world’s nations have already joined the TPNW. More will join. And they are getting to serious, practical work implementing the treaty.
Australia is currently the only nuclear-allied state where the governing party has repeatedly committed to sign and ratify the ban treaty. Under governments both Coalition and Labor, Australia has joined every other treaty banning an inhumane, indiscriminate weapon, but not yet this one banning the worst weapons of mass destruction.
Australia must step up and do its part to wind back the looming nuclear danger. Let’s get on the right side of history, not add to the risk of ending it. It’s time Australia joined the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
– Melissa Parke, ICAN International Executive Director
Staggering rise of clean energy in China a wake-up call to Australia – including on nuclear
Given the implications for Australian taxpayers of the massive capital, time and LCOE blowouts of A$50-60bn per nuclear plant, it’s time to call the nuclear debate here for what it is – a politically motivated furphy designed to derail the renewables transition.
Taxpayers have already funded six government nuclear inquiries since 2015 which all concluded nuclear is too slow and too costly.
Nuclear works at scale in China. Here, it is a deliberate distraction by fossil fuel incumbents and politicians on their payroll.
Tim Buckley, Apr 30, 2024, https://reneweconomy.com.au/staggering-rise-of-clean-energy-in-china-a-wake-up-call-to-australia-including-on-nuclear/
China is undergoing a monumental power shift, with the staggering rise of zero-emissions energy positioning the green powerhouse to end new coal power before 2030. This has massive implications for global and Australian decarbonisation.
Climate Energy Finance’s latest report, released this week, modelled China’s electricity system nationally at the annual level through to 2040, evaluating its likely GDP growth trajectory and the resulting energy demand growth, as well as the increased share and hence demand for electricity in the energy mix as China continues to pursue its ‘electrification of everything’ strategy of the last two decades.
CEF forecasts that through to 2040, China will install a world-leading 323GW per annum of solar capacity, 80GW of wind, 1GW of hydropower and 3GW of nuclear.
Sustaining this rate of installation of >400GW pa of zero-emissions additions a year – over six times the total capacity of Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) – would see China achieve its ‘dual carbon’ targets, to peak carbon emissions by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2060, ahead of time.
This in turn opens up the potential for it to revise its emissions reduction pledge to net zero by 2050 or 2055, bringing the behemoth in line with the rest of the developed world.
While China’s total electricity demand will continue to rise through 2040 due to sustained strong economic growth and economy-wide electrification, CEF forecasts that the share of thermal power in total generation will progressively decline, from 70% in 2023 to just 50% by 2030 and potentially to just 30% by 2040. A staggering transformation in under two decades.
This astonishing acceleration of the nation’s energy pivot is reflected in its energy investment trend. China Invested US$890bn in cleantech in 2023, more than double the US as the second largest investor.
China installed 63GW of zero-emissions electricity capacity in the first three months of 2024, as much as the entire NEM of Australia. That represented growth of 35% year-on-year (yoy), building on the 301GW of new zero emissions capacity installed in 2023, which was in turn double the rate of new capacity installs of 2022.
This rate of expansion is both world leading and global energy system-transforming.
Nuclear in China
China also leads the world in deployment of new nuclear energy. The levelised cost of energy (LCOE) of nuclear, at US$70 per megawatt hour (MWh), is half the cost of the US$160/MWh in Europe and US$105/MWh in the US.
This is a key point that Australia’s nuclear proponents fail to appreciate: There are demonstrable financial benefits to the technology in a super-large-scale, centrally-planned economy with a well-entrenched record of deploying complex, dangerous, massively capital-intensive nuclear power plants every year. These conditions do not apply in western economies and are completely out of the question for Australia.
The IEA estimates China can build nuclear power plants at half the capital cost of the US and Europe, and in almost half the time. Australia, on the other hand, has never built a commercial nuclear power plant, as confirmed by the World Nuclear Association.
China currently has 54GW of operable nuclear power reactors, with 31GW of nuclear power reactors under construction, another 45GW in planning and 98GW proposed as of February 2024, with more proposals for new nuclear reactors awaiting approval.
CEF’s Chinese electricity model forecasts China will double its nuclear power plant fleet to 108GW by 2040 to be #1 in the world in terms of total installed capacity, overtaking the US at 100GW.
December 2023 saw the world’s first 4th generation nuclear power plant go into commercial operation, operated by Huaneng Shandong Shidao Bay Nuclear Power. The facility has a modest net capacity of 150MW, but still took a lengthy 11 years to construct after approval in 2012.
In 2011 the National Energy Administration (NEA) announced that China would make nuclear energy the foundation of its electricity generation system in the next “10 to 20 years,” adding as much as 300GW of nuclear capacity over that period.
China has delivered less than a sixth of this target. Post Fukushima China wanted to only install the most modern facilities deploying the latest technology, which they developed themselves, becoming the world leader in this technology as in all zero-emissions technologies of industries of the future..
We forecast China will add 3GW annually of new capacity as part of its all-of-the-above strategy for domestic power generation. We estimate nuclear will rise to 790TWh of annual generation by 2040, representing a national share of 5.0% (vs 433TWh and a 4.9% share in 2023), just a fraction of the 20-25% share targeted a decade ago.
With the massive scaling up of nuclear power capacity in China, the IEA models the real LCOE will fall 10% to US$65/MWh by 2050, vs the 50% decline in solar LCOE to US$25/MWh.
By comparison, the IEA models Chinese coal with carbon capture and storage will rise to US$220/MWh, ten times the cost of solar, and three times the 2050 cost of nuclear, making coal increasingly uneconomic.
In short, nuclear makes sense as part of the zero-emissions energy mix in China given the need to decarbonise at speed.
As for its viability in Australia, there is not a single small scale nuclear reactor (SMR) – the Federal Coalition’s preferred nuclear technology – approved for construction anywhere in the world outside of Russia and China.
This begs the question of whether Opposition Leader and chief nuclear spruiker Peter Dutton is proposing to deploy 4th generation Chinese developed technologies, or antiquated 2nd generation Russian technology, here.
Given the implications for Australian taxpayers of the massive capital, time and LCOE blowouts of A$50-60bn per nuclear plant, it’s time to call the nuclear debate here for what it is – a politically motivated furphy designed to derail the renewables transition.
Taxpayers have already funded six government nuclear inquiries since 2015 which all concluded nuclear is too slow and too costly.
Nuclear works at scale in China. Here, it is a deliberate distraction by fossil fuel incumbents and politicians on their payroll.
Let’s wait till at least one plant is commissioned and the cost of nuclear power plants built somewhere in the west is remotely affordable and proven, and timeframes for deployment make sense as the imperative to decarbonise escalates, and then have a debate about its merits.
Opportunities for Australia
The critical shift in the energy landscape in China that we map toward zero-emissions technology, with coal playing a diminishing back-up role, also has profound significance for Australia – including the inevitable decline in demand for coal in China.
This is a wakeup call for Australia to accelerate the transition of its economy from its historic overdependence on coal exports and diversify its economic base. We should be pivoting now to deploy our natural advantages – our world-leading wealth of critical minerals and strategic metals – to produce value-added energy transition materials for export.
Key to this is enhancing cleantech supply chain partnerships and bi- and multilateral agreements in the Asian region – a central premise of the new Future Made in Australia Act – including with China, the world’s green economic powerhouse.
And while they do nuclear, alongside their accelerating VRE capacity additions, we can be “embodying decarbonisation” in our exports by value-adding our lithium and other critical minerals, producing green iron, and manufacturing energy transition materials such as cleantech using the boundless potential of our superabundant renewable energy.
For this, we also need to be boosting the ambition, speed and scale of our utility and distributed wind and solar rollout, a critical enabler of Australia’s opportunity to reposition the domestic economy as a zero-emissions trade and investment leader in a rapidly transitioning world.
Nuclear has no viable part in this picture.
72 Minutes Until the End of the World?
Carl Sagan’s conclusion is that the enemy is not a foreign nation, it’s the weapons themselves.
The generals that I refer to in that section on the SIOP [Strategic Integrated Operational Plan, the 1960s-era plan for general nuclear war] believed they could fight and win nuclear war, even if it meant killing 600 million people across the globe. That is insane. No one would argue that now.
A new book lays out the frighteningly fast path to nuclear Armageddon.
By KATHY GILSINAN, 04/29/2024 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/29/the-frighteningly-fast-path-to-nuclear-armageddon-00154591
Nuclear war would be bad. Everyone knows this. Most people would probably rather not think through the specifics. But Annie Jacobsen, an author of seven books on sensitive national security topics, wants you to know exactly how bad it would be. Her new book Nuclear War: A Scenario, sketches out a global nuclear war with by-the-minute precision for all of the 72 minutes between the first missile launch and the end of the world. It’s already a bestseller.
It goes without saying that the scenario is fictional, but it is a journalistic work in that the scenario is constructed from dozens of interviews and documentation, some of it newly declassified, as a factual grounding to describe what could happen.
That’s this, in Jacobsen’s telling: A North Korean leader launches an intercontinental ballistic missile at the Pentagon, and then a submarine-launched ballistic missile at a nuclear reactor in California, for reasons beyond the scope of the book except to illustrate what one “mad king” with nuclear weapons could do. A harried president has a mere six minutes to decide on a response, while also being evacuated from the White House and pressured by the military to launch America’s own ICBMs at all 82 North Korean targets relevant to the nation’s nuclear and military forces and leadership. These missiles must fly over Russia, whose leaders spot them, assume their country is under attack (the respective presidents can’t get one another on the phone), and send a salvo back in the other direction, and so on until 72 minutes later three nuclear-armed states have managed to kill billions of people, with the remainder left starving on a poisoned Earth where the sun no longer shines and food no longer grows.
Some scholars, particularly among those who favor large nuclear arsenals as the best deterrent to being attacked with such weapons ourselves, have criticized some of Jacobsen’s assumptions. The U.S. wouldn’t have to court Russian miscalculation by overflying Russia with ICBMs when it has submarine-launched ballistic missiles in the Pacific. Public sources indicate that the president’s six-minute response window is still about in line with what Ronald Reagan noted with dismay in his memoirs. But that assumes he’s boxed into a “launch on warning” policy, something Jacobsen’s sources characterize as a constraint to move before enemy missiles actually strike, but which government policy documents insist is merely an option and not a mandate. (The president could also just decide, contra the deterrence touchstone of “mutual assured destruction,” not to nuke anybody at all in response.)
The book arrives at a time when the countries with the world’s largest nuclear arsenals, the U.S. and Russia, are violently at odds in Ukraine, a Russian state TV host is calling a Russia/NATO conflict “inevitable,” and the Council on Foreign Relations is gaming out scenarios in case the Russians use tactical nukes in Ukraine. Oh, and Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon than ever before. It’s a fair time to ask Jacobsen’s central question — what if deterrence fails? Even if we’d rather not think about it.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Kathy Gilsinan: The book starts with two missiles out of North Korea and ends with essentially the end of the world 72 minutes later. And the subtitle calls this “a scenario.” Is it a realistic scenario?
Annie Jacobsen: The scenario I chose was pieced together from interviews I did with 46 on-the-record sources and dozens of sources on background, and I ran by them various scenarios to come up with the most plausible scenario that unfolds once it begins. And this is what I came up with. And so far, I haven’t had anyone who actually runs these scenarios for NORAD take issue with the choices that I’ve made and the way in which the decision trees unfold, which makes it all the more frightening.
Gilsinan: Can you walk me through why it would be inevitable that the North Koreans hit us with two and we hit them back with 80?
Jacobsen: Let’s look at the words of General [John] Hyten, former STRATCOM commander, when he did an interview with CNN during former President Donald Trump’s “fire and fury” rhetoric days. And General Hyten said on the record, in a rather “don’t you dare” way, speaking almost directly to North Korea: “If somebody launches a nuclear weapon against us, we launch one back. They launch two, we launch two.”
To drill down a little bit further on that I looked to Dr. Bruce Blair, a former missileer himself. Now he’s deceased, but he became one of the world’s experts on nuclear command and control systems and authority. And he explained in a monograph I cite in the book that it’s far more likely that if North Korea hit the United with one missile, America would send 82 in return. [The monograph, written under the auspices of the anti-nuclear group Global Zero, points to about 80 “aimpoints” relevant to North Korea’s nuclear and other military forces as well as its leadership, but also notes that “graduated and flexible strikes” would be possible. Jacobsen says she relied on other sources to support the assumption the U.S. would attack all the targets.] Everything I did, I linked to an open-source scenario that had been thought through by experts who have dedicated their intellectual prowess to these issues for decades.
Gilsinan: In this scenario, the U.S. responds with ICBMs that have to fly over Russia, with predictable consequences. Why, according to the folks you’ve spoken to, would we risk flying missiles over a nuclear power if we could use submarine-launched missiles from the Pacific Ocean?
Jacobsen: I asked that same question to numerous people, and the most powerful answer came from former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta himself: “There’s not a lot of thought given to who the hell else may be thinking about doing what … at a time like this.”
Gilsinan: Maybe this is the point of the book. I would like very much to believe that STRATCOM is smarter than me and has thought this through ahead of time.
Jacobsen: Part of the terrifying truth about nuclear war, or if a nuclear exchange were to unfold, is the insane time clock that was put on everything from the moment nuclear launch is detected. This is fact. And so is the fact that the president has only six minutes, that’s the rough time to make this decision. And in that time, the Black Book gets opened; he must make a choice from a counterattack list of choices inside the Black Book. Those choices have been thought through for multiple scenarios, but you can’t possibly take into consideration every contingency in real time, which makes so clear to readers exactly how insane the truth is about the unfolding of the scenario. And the unpredictability of it. And for example, one of the few people that actually read the contents of the Black Book and spoke to me about it in general terms so as not to violate security clearances is Ted Postol [a former assistant to the chief of naval operations]. He’s the one who said to me that every decision was a bad decision.
Gilsinan: Why do we think it’s six minutes specifically? I know that’s in Reagan’s memoirs, but why do we think that is still the case?
Continue readingWhy Iran may accelerate its nuclear program, and Israel may be tempted to attack it
Bulletin, By Darya Dolzikova, Matthew Savill | April 26, 2024
On April 19, Israel carried out a strike deep inside Iranian territory, near the city of Isfahan. The attack was apparently in retaliation for a major Iranian drone and missile attack on Israel a few days earlier. This exchange between the two countries—which have historically avoided directly targeting each other’s territories—has raised fears of a potentially serious military escalation in the region.
Israel’s strike was carried out against an Iranian military site located in close proximity to the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center, which hosts nuclear research reactors, a uranium conversion plant, and a fuel production plant, among other facilities. Although the attack did not target Iran’s nuclear facilities directly, earlier reports suggested that Israel was considering such attacks. The Iranian leadership has, in turn, threatened to reconsider its nuclear policy and to advance its program should nuclear sites be attacked.
These events highlight the threat from regional escalation dynamics posed by Iran’s near-threshold nuclear capability, which grants Iran the perception of a certain degree of deterrence—at least against direct US retaliation—while also serving as an understandably tempting target for Israeli attack. As tensions between Israel and Iran have moved away from their traditional proxy nature and manifested as direct strikes against each other’s territories, the urgency of finding a timely and non-military solution to the Iranian nuclear issue has increased.
A tempting target. While the current assessment is that Iran does not possess nuclear weapons, the Islamic Republic maintains a very advanced nuclear program, allowing it to develop a nuclear weapons capability relatively rapidly, should it decide to do so. Iran’s “near-threshold” capability did not deter Israel from undertaking its recent attack. But Iran’s nuclear program is a tempting target for an attack that could have potentially destabilizing ramification: The program is advanced enough to pose a credible risk of rapid weaponization and at a stage when it could still be significantly degraded, albeit at an extremely high cost.
Iran views its nuclear program as a deterrent against direct US strikes on or invasion of its territory, acting as an insurance policy of sorts against invasion following erroneous Western accusations over its nuclear program, ala Iraq in 2003. That’s to say, during an attempted invasion, Iran could quickly produce nuclear weapons……………………………
Israel sees the Iranian nuclear program as an existential threat and has long sought its elimination. For this reason, reports that Israel might have been preparing to target Iranian nuclear sites as retaliation for Iran’s strikes against its territory came as little surprise……………………………………………………………………….
A range of bad options. The possibility of Iranian weaponization and Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites could lead to a serious escalation spiral and, potentially, a wider military conflict in the region……………………………………………………………
Following past instances of Israeli sabotage against the Iranian nuclear program, Tehran has doubled down—rebuilding damaged sites, hardening facilities, and ramping up its nuclear activity. The same is likely to be true should Iranian facilities be targeted directly this time, only to a greater degree. The shift from a proxy conflict between Iran and Israel to a direct engagement will only increase the value Iran places on its nuclear program as a deterrent against further direct attack on its territory and US military intervention. Should Iran assess that its regional proxies and its missile and drone capabilities have been insufficient to deter Israel from conducting direct strikes against its strategically significant nuclear program, Tehran may see the actual weaponization of its nuclear program as the only option left that can guarantee the security of the Iranian regime……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. more https://thebulletin.org/2024/04/why-iran-may-accelerate-its-nuclear-program-and-israel-may-be-tempted-to-attack-it/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=MondayNewsletter04292024&utm_content=NuclearRisk_IranNuclearProgramIsrael_04262024
Biden’s pledge to aid Palestinians is a big, murderous lie
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 29 Apr 24
President Biden claims to be supporting food, water and medical aid to Palestinians now dying in Gaza from disease, starvation as well as being blown to bits by Biden’s 2000 lb. bombs.
But he knows full well Israel is violation his February 8th directive requiring assurances from Israel that it’s not using U.S. military aid to violate human rights law. Israel’s ongoing genocide of 2,300,000 Palestinians there puts Israel about as far from required compliance with Biden’s edict as the two sides of the Grand Canyon.
Biden’s February 8th directive states that Israel “will facilitate and not arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.”
But Israel is not only blocking most aid from alleviating starvation and disease in Gaza, It’s using Biden’s bombs to attack Palestinian and foreign humanitarian workers from delivering that aid. When it comes to impeding, Israel know what works. Its already killed one American aid worker.
Biden knows this but maintains the fantasy, sadly swallowed whole by many of his reelection supporters, that he’s doing ‘everything he can to aid the staving, disease ridden Palestinians.’
’ Truth is he’s doing everything he can to enable Israel’s grotesque removal of the Palestinians from their Gaza land coveted by Israel.
He’s even conspiring with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to derail the impending indictment of Netanyahu by the International Criminal Court. The indictment is expected this week unless the Netanyahu-Biden genocide tag team can prevent it.
President Biden has bigger problems that losing tens of millions of his 2020 voters, sealing his reelection defeat, by his enabling of Israeli genocide. He may end up a fellow indicted war criminal with Benjamin Netanyahu in the dock at The Hague.
The conservative charity group figures driving the opposition leader’s pivot to nuclear energy
Dutton and O’Brien are also brazenly using the AUKUS defence agreement to bolster the case for civilian nuclear power reactors. Under AUKUS, Australia will get submarines powered by small nuclear reactors. As part of the agreement, signed by the Albanese government, Australia is responsible for disposing of the nuclear waste from the subs. That means Australia will be obliged to develop a responsible nuclear waste system. The nuclear lobby hopes this will help overcome popular resistance to a civilian nuclear waste dump in Australia.
Dutton’s nuclear power plants . The conservative charity group figures driving the opposition leader’s pivot to nuclear energy
By Marian Wilkinson, The Monthly, May 24
Five charity group figures driving the opposition leader’s pivot to nuclear energy
When Lesley Hughes agreed to lead a nocturnal wildlife tour at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo in August last year, she didn’t quite realise what she was letting herself in for. As the distinguished professor of biology explained the perils facing the animal kingdom from climate change, a disparate group of movers and shakers nodded with polite enthusiasm – among them, National Party leader David Littleproud, Liberal Party climate and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien, and Larry Anthony, the head of a lobbying firm known for pushing fossil fuel clients.
This was not the professor’s natural milieu, but, like many of the guests at the splendid harbourside function centre that wintry evening, Hughes was there to win hearts and minds in the fight to save the planet. It was the opening night of the International Climate Conference hosted by the Coalition for Conservation, an enterprising conservative charity with deep roots in the Liberal and National parties. One of its aims is to reach out to environmentalists, renewable energy experts and climate scientists to garner support for Coalition members backing the goal of getting Australia to net zero emissions.
C4C, as it’s known, had gathered an impressive line-up of speakers, including the man who led the successful 2021 United Nations Climate Change Summit in Glasgow, former United Kingdom minister Sir Alok Sharma, and His Excellency Abdulla Al Subousi, ambassador for the United Arab Emirates, whose nation was set to host the next UN climate summit in Dubai.
But as the guests tucked into the opening night dinner, one speaker sounded a jarring partisan note: C4C’s influential patron, Trevor St Baker, couldn’t resist taking a swipe at the Albanese government’s renewable energy policy. St Baker’s intervention was telling. The Queensland rich-lister was close to C4C’s chairman, Larry Anthony, a former National Party president. For years, he had employed Anthony’s lobby shop, SAS Consulting, back when he was in the coal-fired power business. Now St Baker was investing in the energy transition – electric vehicle charging and battery technology – but his passion project was nuclear energy and, in particular, introducing the idea of small modular nuclear reactors to Australia.
While St Baker’s presence was a surprise to some C4C supporters that night, his ideas on nuclear energy were about to hit the zeitgeist. He and his partners in a small nuclear consultancy, SMR Nuclear Technology, were riding the new wave of global enthusiasm for nuclear energy. Influential players, from former Microsoft boss Bill Gates to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, were spruiking small and micro modular reactors as a game-changer that would help the world reach net zero emissions by 2050. In climate circles it was dubbed the “tech bro” culture, as next-generation nuclear attracted bullish headlines, and billions in private investment and government grants
The C4C climate conference was dotted with speakers enthusiastic about bringing nuclear power to Australia, few more so than the opposition’s spokesman, O’Brien. The line-up was a clear signal that the C4C charity had pivoted towards its patron’s pro-nuclear position. More importantly, it reflected the big nuclear shift by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. In a headline-making speech a few weeks earlier, Dutton had attacked what he called “renewable zealotry”, saying that if Albanese wanted to phase out coal and gas, the only feasible and proven technology to back up renewable energy was “next-generation nuclear technologies”. Specifically, Dutton pushed the idea of small modular reactors (SMRs) and micro modular reactors (MMRs).
Dutton is now releasing more details on the opposition’s “coal to nuclear” power plans, which he argues can deliver cheaper electricity and new jobs in regions where ageing coal generators will be forced to close. So far, the plans bear a striking resemblance to a policy Trevor St Baker and SMR Nuclear Technology have been advocating for several years, in evidence and submissions to federal and state parliamentary committees, in think tanks and in energy forums. These describe in voluminous detail how small modular nuclear reactors are less costly to build than the big nuclear plants, safer and more flexible, allowing them to be sited at old coal plants already connected to the electricity grid.
Just how influential St Baker and his partners have been in the opposition’s nuclear switch is unclear. Dutton’s move to nuclear has been slammed by critics………………………………………………………
Whatever the economics of the opposition’s nuclear plan, there is no doubt about its political impact. It has reignited the partisan climate wars in Australia. Since first signalling their nuclear plans in 2022, Dutton and O’Brien have kept up a relentless attack on the Albanese government over what they call its reckless “renewables only” energy plan, blaming it for driving up household energy prices, threatening energy security, de-industrialising Australia and trampling the rights of farmers.
Professor Hughes is watching the divisive nuclear debate unfold with dismay. A director of the Climate Council, Hughes has been a lead author with the UN’s chief scientific advisory panel, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and now sits on the federal government’s Climate Change Authority advising on its emissions reduction targets. “In my opinion, given the lack of any economic rationale for nuclear, one can only conclude that it’s a distraction to allow the fossil fuel industry to keep operating with business as usual,” she says.
Despite Dutton and O’Brien’s bullish optimism, their nuclear pivot is a big political gamble. While a rash of polls suggests support for nuclear energy is growing in Australia, some also show most Australians still don’t want a reactor in their own region, let alone a nuclear waste dump. Even Queensland’s Liberal National Party leader, David Crisafulli, has ruled out any plan to replace the state’s old coal-fired power stations with small nuclear reactors, saying it can’t happen without bipartisan support. The issue also threatens the fragile truce in the Liberal Party over climate change policy. The party’s most vocal renewable energy advocate, former New South Wales energy minister Matt Kean, has launched a stinging attack against the policy push. “I am not opposed to nuclear power,” he tells me. “I was state energy minister for five years. If nuclear power was a viable pathway to net zero, I would have done it. But it did not stack up – economically, environmentally or engineering-wise.”
Kean was speaking shortly after he resigned from his role as ambassador for the C4C environmental charity. In his frank resignation letter, he told C4C’s chair, Larry Anthony, that he saw the advocacy for nuclear power “as an attempt to delay and defer responsible and decisive action on climate change in a way that seems to drive up power prices in NSW by delaying renewables”.
Kean sees Anthony and St Baker as having an outsize influence on the charity’s shift to a pro-nuclear position. St Baker is a powerful business figure in Dutton’s home state. He’s long been a political donor to the Queensland LNP and to the state’s Labor Party. His support for nuclear power is no secret.
Talacko denies either St Baker or Anthony influenced the charity’s position on nuclear energy. “Our exploration of this technology was thorough and impartial, and our support for nuclear energy is not influenced by political agendas nor tied to financial backing from the nuclear industry,” she tells me by email. But she also says she didn’t know her charity’s key patron was a director and major shareholder of SMR Nuclear Technology. “I was not aware of Trevor’s position at this organization.”
For well over a year, C4C has played a critical role in supporting and promoting the Coalition’s push on nuclear energy. In early 2023, Talacko joined Ted O’Brien on a nuclear fact-finding trip to the United States and Canada. O’Brien’s trip was funded in part by one of C4C’s donors – which one he doesn’t say. The group was briefed by corporate executives and government officials on a range of small and medium modular nuclear reactor projects. O’Brien says Talacko returned from the trip convinced “nuclear should be part of a balanced mix”. Talacko posted O’Brien’s upbeat story about their briefings on the C4C website. None of the projects O’Brien wrote about was commercially operating. Indeed one, a much-anticipated small nuclear project in Idaho run by American company NuScale, collapsed months later because of major blowouts in costs. That was despite getting almost $1 billion in US government support. NuScale’s chief executive was blunt about the project’s future prospects, telling Bloomberg, “Once you’re on a dead horse, you dismount quickly. That’s where we are here.”
Neither O’Brien nor Talacko’s enthusiasm for next-gen nuclear was dented by what happened to NuScale. Quite the reverse. Just weeks after the collapse, in November 2023, C4C funded a delegation of Coalition MPs, as well as Talacko, to attend the UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai, COP28. O’Brien had been invited to address a meeting that the World Nuclear Association, the global nuclear lobby, was hosting with C4C at the summit. The C4C delegation included Liberal senators Andrew Bragg and Dean Smith, the Nationals’ Senate leader Bridget McKenzie, deputy leader Perin Davey and shadow trade minister Kevin Hogan, and Larry Anthony.
………………………….. the COP declaration was a triumph for the nuclear lobby, and O’Brien vowed the Coalition would sign up to the nuclear partnership if it was re-elected. Talacko posted a glowing account on C4C’s website. …………………..
But turning the heady nuclear promises in Dubai into a credible climate policy at home is proving a daunting challenge for the opposition. The first hurdle it faces is the law. Federal environment and nuclear safety laws effectively ban civilian nuclear power generation in Australia. Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland also have specific laws prohibiting it.
Overturning these laws has long been on the wish list of business lobbies such as the Minerals Council of Australia, as well as the National Party and senior Liberals, but it remains politically fraught. O’Brien admits there was no chance of it happening in this parliament.
Even Bob Pritchard thinks overturning the laws will be tough. And he worries that if Dutton goes to an election pledging to change the laws and loses, it will put the nuclear industry in Australia back years.
The opposition’s immediate problem is the lack of “social licence” for nuclear power in Australia. A majority of us are still anxious that nuclear reactors and their waste are not safe to live with. O’Brien, with help from C4C and other pro-nuclear lobby groups, is working hard to turn this around. Barely a week goes by now without an event with a panel of experts talking up nuclear energy’s role in getting to net zero emissions.
Dutton and O’Brien are also brazenly using the AUKUS defence agreement to bolster the case for civilian nuclear power reactors. Under AUKUS, Australia will get submarines powered by small nuclear reactors. As part of the agreement, signed by the Albanese government, Australia is responsible for disposing of the nuclear waste from the subs. That means Australia will be obliged to develop a responsible nuclear waste system. The nuclear lobby hopes this will help overcome popular resistance to a civilian nuclear waste dump in Australia.
It’s no coincidence Dutton recently met with executives from Rolls Royce last month to talk about nuclear power. Under AUKUS, the British company will supply the small reactors for Australia’s nuclear submarines. Rolls Royce is also trying to rapidly develop small modular reactors for civilian nuclear power with the backing of millions of dollars in UK government grants.
Veteran anti-nuclear campaigner Dave Sweeney, from the Australian Conservation Foundation, sees AUKUS as the best leg-up for the nuclear lobby in Australia for decades.
“Despite years of lobbying from the mining sector, and from pro-nuclear advocates, there has been no success in gaining a social licence for the technology in Australia,” Sweeney tells me. “But they see AUKUS as the thin edge of the wedge – the way they will expand nuclear from a defence relationship to get domestic acceptance and integration of nuclear technology and nuclear power in Australia.”
Sweeney is convinced Dutton’s nuclear plans have little chance of success. “I think that they will have their work cut out,” he says, “but there is no question that this is a very serious, systematic and resourced attempt by the pro-nuclear voices.” Like many activists who spent years campaigning on climate change, Sweeney believes the overriding aim of Dutton’s nuclear shift is political. “It unites techno-modernist Liberals with the renewable-recalcitrant Nationals in one policy framework. And it also continues business as usual – it’s no challenge to the fossil fuel interests to talk about nuclear.”………………………………………………………………………..
When the politicians returned to Canberra in February, the drums were once again beating in the climate wars. On the lawn in front of Parliament House, the “Rally Against Reckless Renewables” was in full swing. The National Party’s Barnaby Joyce was firing up the crowd of several hundred farmers and anti-renewable activists telling them, “You’re the army! This is the start!”
Joyce’s performance enraged Dr Matt Edwards, a prominent Australian solar scientist now working for Adani Solar, owned by the giant Indian power company. Edwards was also the vice chair of C4C, but he’d clearly had enough. He belted out a stinging op-ed for the Australian Financial Review laying into Joyce and what he called “the remnants of the Coalition now taking an uninspired punt on nuclear”. Edwards bluntly dismissed the opposition’s plan to replace ailing coal plants with nuclear, saying, “given high costs, long lead times and lack of investor appetite for nuclear, it is easy to cynically imagine that these plans might be used to justify extending the life of fossil generation while we wait for an atomic revolution that never comes”.
The fallout was immediate. C4C’s chairman and chief executive were furious. Dr Edwards resigned from the board. Just one more casualty in the latest round of the climate wars.
Marian Wilkinson is a multi-award-winning journalist and author. Her latest book is The Carbon Club. https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2024/may/marian-wilkinson/dutton-s-nuclear-power-plants#mtr
Gen Z Just Might Save The World
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, APR 28, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/gen-z-just-might-save-the-world?r=cqey&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true—
Kids are taking over university campuses around the world for the noblest possible reason anyone could do such a thing in 2024. There are so many reasons to feel pessimistic, but Gen Z’s fierce opposition to the Gaza genocide is a massive reason to have hope for the future.
I talk all the time here about the need for a collective awakening and revolution in order to turn this disaster of a civilization around, but it could turn out that what ends up saving humankind is as mundane as a superior generation of humans emerging out of the information age and replacing inferior generations who’ve been far more indoctrinated by mass media propaganda.
Northeastern University brought in the police to break up a pro-Palestine demonstration, claiming antisemitic slurs and hate speech were being used by the demonstrators, but witnesses say it was actually pro-Israel counter-demonstrators who’d been shouting the antisemitic slogans, and a video confirms this. The pro-Israel agitators got some 100 demonstrators arrested by standing near them and shouting “Kill the Jews”, but they themselves were not arrested.
Whoever got this on video is a goddamn hero. Now nobody can deny that this has been happening. https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1784389687798366610
I keep seeing people expressing bafflement at the way Biden keeps alienating his base by shamelessly perpetuating the human butchery in Gaza. Doesn’t he care about getting re-elected?, they ask.
No, Biden does not care whether he gets re-elected, and neither do his empire manager handlers. What matters to them is advancing imperial interests in the middle east, not winning some pretend political puppet show that only exists to entertain and divert the common riff raff. They will happily lose the election and hand the genocidal baton off to Trump and his empire manager handlers who support all the same agendas as Biden’s.
Biden loses literally nothing of material relevance by being a one-term president, so there’d be no reason for him to step back from all the agreements he’s made with the inner workings of the empire to get him where he’s at now even if he wanted to.
❖
One of the weirdest things happening right now is how empire managers and propagandists are claiming these campus protests are being fueled by foreign influence from evil regimes, even as the Israeli PM openly influences state governments to crack down on those protests.
Biden loses literally nothing of material relevance by being a one-term president, so there’d be no reason for him to step back from all the agreements he’s made with the inner workings of the empire to get him where he’s at now even if he wanted to.
If you’ve been shocked by the lies and propaganda your government and your media have been churning out about Gaza, it would probably be a good idea to take another look at what they’ve been telling you about Ukraine too. And Russia, China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and Yemen while you’re at it.
The New York Times has a new Pentagon press release disguised as news reporting titled “A New Pacific Arsenal to Counter China,” subtitled “With missiles, submarines and alliances, the Biden administration has built a presence in the region to rein in Beijing’s expansionist goals.”
It’s exactly what it sounds like: it describes the US empire’s military encirclement of China, but frames it as a defensive action to counter “Beijing’s expansionist goals” rather than the extreme act of aggression and military expansionism that it actually is. If China started surrounding the US with war machinery like this it would be World War Three instantaneously.
One of the dumbest things the imperial media ask us to believe is that the US empire is surrounding its #1 geopolitical rival with war machinery for defensive purposes, in response to “expansionist goals” by that rival who has zero war machinery anywhere near the United States.
❖
So many of the awesome anti-imperialists I follow and admire got their start years ago supporting Palestinian rights. Israel-Palestine is like a gateway drug for anti-imperialism and anti-war activism for a lot of westerners, because the issue is so mainstream-adjacent due to the west’s intimacy with the Israeli state.
The Gaza genocide is going to give rise to a real antiwar movement in the west if the empire managers can’t find a way to stomp it out. Which is why they’re trying so hard to do exactly that — but their attempts thus far have been pathetic failures, and have only made things worse for them.
❖
One of the weirdest things happening right now is how empire managers and propagandists are claiming these campus protests are being fueled by foreign influence from evil regimes, even as the Israeli PM openly influences state governments to crack down on those protests.
Protesters in Taiwan demand closure of nuclear power plants
https://www.euronews.com/video/2024/04/27/watch-protesters-in-taiwan-demand-closure-of-nuclear-power-plants Protesters in Taiwan demand closure of nuclear power plants. The
demonstration was against legislators extending the use of Maanshan Nuclear
Power Plant, also known as the “Third Nuclear Powerplant.” Protestors
braved the rain dressed in coats and straw hats, as speakers played the
nuclear leak alarm message. Taiwan currently has four nuclear power plants,
with the first and second in the process of decommissioning, a third one
still in use and a fourth whose construction was suspended in April 2014.
Euronews 27th April 2024
The astonishing growth of renewable energy
Renewable energy is taking over the world!
Energy Revolutions, DAVID TOKE, APR 26, 2024
As I say in my forthcoming book. Energy Revolutions, Profiteering versus Democracy’ (PlutoPress): ‘if recent growth trends in renewable energy continue, then sustainable renewable energy sources (mostly wind and solar PV) will make up 100 per cent of world energy consumption (all energy, not just electricity) by the year 2050. ……..Based on trends over the last ten years, nuclear power would be projected to supply only around 3 per cent of world energy in 2050. There is a consistent trend in the last ten years of world growth in renewable energy (mostly wind and solar power) of 12.6 per cent per year…….By contrast, the total primary energy consumption (that is, all energy, not just electricity) is showing an average growth of 1.4 per cent per year over the previous ten years’ This is shown in a Table below [on original] taken from my Energy Revolutions book:
Nuclear power hardly needs to be included in such charts, since their contribution to world energy by 2050 is likely to be negligible. See the chart below, [on original] also taken from my forthcoming book Energy Revolutions
Nuclear power is actually declining as a proportion of total energy consumed in the world. This is because the amount of energy supplied by electricity is rapidly increasing whilst the volume of nuclear production is static. Increasingly the new electricity supplies are coming from renewable energy sources. Despite the ritualistic pronouncements from the nuclear industry about an imminent upsurge in nuclear power through a new ‘renaissance’ (which has been supposed to be happening for the last 20 years) renewables are triumphing.
Oil and gas corporations like Exxon produce their own fantasy pronoucements about how use of natural gas will increase in the future. Not only are renewables dominating deployments of electricity generation capacity, but the market for fossil fuels is being eaten away as electrification spreads through the world economy. Transport will become dominated by electric vehicles, electric trains and eventually also electric planes. Heating will be increasingly provided by electrically powered heat pumps.
As strong as they are, fossil fuel and nuclear interests cannot stop the renewables takeover. Sure, they can slow it down to an extent by misinformation about renewable energy and technologies like EVs and heat pumps, but green energy will win in the end. That is because there is an unbeatable combination of grassroots energy activists campaigning for renewable energy and also because renewable energy and renewable-friendly technologies are developing so fast! https://davidtoke.substack.com/p/the-astonishing-growth-of-renewable
Nuclear and associated news this week
Some bits of good news – High Seas Treaty: EU votes to ratify landmark international law to protect oceans. ‘I want to tackle it in a big way’: Meet the Nigerian women spearheading solar projects
TOP STORIES.
Gen Z Just Might Save The World – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXs9LMrwDpA
Bankers upgrade Lockheed stock after Iran strikes at Israel.
New civil nuclear programmes crossing over into military nuclear programmes.
Nuclear-waste dams threaten Central Asia heartland– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExuDrRYHmDE
How much will the UK’s new nuclear submarines really cost? -ALSO AT more https://nuclear-news.net/2024/04/28/2-a-how-much-will-the-uks-new-nuclear-submarines-really-cost/
Climate. Tens of thousands evacuated from massive China floods. Europe baked in ‘extreme heat stress’ pushing temperatures to record highs. Heatwave in India: TV host faints during live broadcast as swaths of country reel from sweltering temperatures.
Noel’s notes. Japan – the return of the “Nuclear Village“? Ukraine war – the changing face of weaponry. The failed social species – Homo-not-sapiens-at-all. Oh it’s a great time to be an American – with shares in “Defense” companies!
AUSTRALIA. Dutton’s atomic bet threatens Coalition chain reaction over climate. Dutton’s nuclear policy backfires. ‘A little awkward’: Coalition faces internal tension over nuclear plans . Dutton’s plan to save Australia with nuclear comes undone when you look between the brushstrokes. The conservative charity group figures driving the opposition leader’s pivot to nuclear energy. National Party threatens to tear up wind and solar contracts as nuclear misinformation swings polls. Nationals’ nuclear climate policy puts Australia’s Paris deal in doubt. US bases including Pine Gap saw Australia put on nuclear alert, but no-one told Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.
NUCLEAR ISSUES
| CIVIL LIBERTIES. The McCarthyist Attack on Gaza Protests Threatens Free Thought for All. | ECONOMICS. Price tag for Poland’s first nuclear plant may reach $37bn. Nuclear Power’s Lethal, Larcenous End Game. Rolls Royce scales back plans to build nuclear factories in UK. |
ENERGY. The astonishing growth of renewable energy.
ENVIRONMENT. Unstable nuclear-waste dams threaten fertile Central Asia heartland. Indian Nuclear Sites Impact South Tibetan Plateau Radioactivity. Chernobyl – the Cloud Lingers On.
ETHICS and RELIGION. Zionism Is In Its Flop Era. Acknowledging the Horrors of Gaza—Without Wanting to End Them.
EVENTS. National Not-the-Nuclear-Lobby Returns to Parliament Hill, Ottawa. www.uraniumfilmfestival.org / https://uraniumfilmfestival.org/en/usacanada-2024-program / https://uraniumfilmfestival.org/…/2024_las_vegas…
| HEALTH. Nuclear test campaigner demands access to medical files. | MEDIA. Cruelty of Language — The New York Times’ Leaked Gaza Memo. Inside Fukushima’s red zone: Eerie pictures show abandoned schools, hospitals and shopping malls frozen in time 13 years after .nuclear disaster in Japan | OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR . Nuclear-Free Future Awards unite unsung heroes. No Drones Over Gaza Or Anywhere! |
PLUTONIUM. NNSA Delays Urgent Research on Plutonium “Pit” Aging But Spends Billions on Nuclear Weapons Bomb Core
POLITICS. Biden signs $95bn aid bill to be sent ‘right away’ – for wars in Ukraine, Israel, and provocations in Taiwan.
Now is the Time for All Good Men and Women to Come to the Aid of Our Country USA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTP-W9VoFKA
War Parties, the Peace Candidate, and the November Election. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxDYqMTjA9U
Iran says nuclear weapons have no place in its nuclear doctrine.
Where are France’s nuclear reactors and what is planned for more?
Scottish National Party and UK Government in row over cost of nuclear dumping grounds. Popular UK holiday park to close, as Sizewell C nuclear project takes over
Japan city assembly OKs request for nuclear waste site survey.
Saudi Arabia is set to witness major developments in nuclear sector: IAEA chief Rafael Grossi.
| POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. Patrick Lawrence: The Impotence of Antony Blinken. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MHtQ9CF_-s&t=218s | PROTESTS. Protesters in Taiwan demand closure of nuclear power plants. | SAFETY. Paul Dorfman: “In Ukraine or the Middle East, the risk of a nuclear accident is real” –ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2024/04/24/2-b1-paul-dorfman-in-ukraine-or-the-middle-east-the-risk-of-a-nuclear-accident-is-real/ Nuclear: In Flamanville, the EPR farce continues.Chernobyl campaigner Adi Roche warns of global nuclear threat as power plant attacked in Ukraine. Thirty-eight years on, lessons from Chernobyl. Grim nuclear anniversary: Zaporizhzhia must not repeat Chornobyl. IAEA clears Japanese reactor for 60-year lifetime. |
TECHNOLOGY. Problems delay Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor restart.
The former rail chief now minding the (construction) gap at Sizewell. ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2024/04/29/2-b1-the-former-rail-chief-now-minding-the-construction-gap-at-sizewell/
WASTES. Scotland could be hit ‘with £22bn nuclear clean-up bill’ ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2024/04/26/2-b1-scotland-could-be-hit-with-22bn-nuclear-clean-up-bill/
Nuclear waste storage facility told to take action after breach. Plutonium.
The long path of plutonium: A new map charts contamination at thousands of sites, miles from Los Alamos National Laboratory
| WAR and CONFLICT. Israeli Strikes in Rafah Kill 22, Including 18 Children. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OdABlkwi6M&t=67s Russia: West military support for Ukraine could lead to confrontation between world’s nuclear powers. North Korea’s Kim Jong Un Oversees Simulated ‘Nuclear Counterattack’. Why Iran may accelerate its nuclear program, and Israel may be tempted to attack it. | WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES. U.S. Senate Passes $95 Billion Foreign Military Aid Bill. The US secretly sent long-range ATACMS to Ukraine — and Kyiv used them. Three Cheers for Our Red, White, and Blue War Profiteers. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Applaud $95 Billion Supplemental Arms Package. US nuclear weapons in Poland would be priority military target – Moscow. Russia-Ukraine war: EU ministers fail to pledge Patriot systems to Ukraine at key meeting – as it happened. Macron ready to ‘open debate’ on nuclear European defence. Polish president: Poland ready to deploy allied nuclear weapons on its territory. “Fiscally conservative” Congressman Sean Casten votes to squander $95 billion to further destroy Ukraine, enable genocide in Gaza, provoke military confrontation with China, |
Ukraine war – the changing face of weaponry
I mused today on the lovely words of the lovely war-mongering Australian Minister for Defence – Richard Marles. He’s nearly as good as that USA smarm master Antony Blinken – in choosing the nicest words to cover nasty stuff.
Today he was talking about Australia sending $millions to Ukraine – for:
uncrewed aerial systems air-to-ground precision munitions spurring on competition among Western nations to harness technology and drive down the equipment’s production cost.
All these weasel words sort of obscure the reality that one big goal is to support the American, Australian, and even Israeli weapons companies. Yes – Israel. In February, the Israeli company Elbit Systems received a A$917 million contract from the Australian Defence Department.
The other goal is to be part of American militarism and its experimental work in Ukraine.
You see – the beauty of the Ukraine war, for America, is that there should be no American lives at risk. Tough about the Ukrainian lives, (and of course the thousands more Russian soldiers’ lives don’t count).
But this is a sort of experimental interim-type war – between having troops of soldiers getting killed and just having heaps of civilians getting killed, (and seeing if America can win by having no persons at risk in it).
World War 1 was the classic – the ultimate war for killing soldiers. – estimated 9.7 million and also 10 million civilians
World War 2 an even bigger killer of soldiers – 20 million, but also 40 million civilians – an “improvement” in killing civilians.
The “in-between” wars – Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan – have still been a mixture of killing soldiers and civilians – but especially with the Afghanistan war – the emphasis shifted towards drone killings, with the officer directing the killing from the distant comfort of an office in USA.
So – getting back to the lovely Marles – he avoided words like “drones” and “missiles” – thus sort of obscuring the fact that Australian weapons are headed right into Russian territory as part of an American long distance attack. Of course, it is called defence – though it is not at all clear that Australia is under military threat from Russia.
Anyway, Ukraine is a good practise ground for deploying weapons that can kill civilians of another country. The weapons-makers are getting better and better at this. The Biden administration last month secretly shipped long-range missiles to Ukraine. The newest 1$billion package will include additional long-range ATACMS. Nuclear weapons might be deployed in Poland. Biden administration’s $850 billion defense budget request for fiscal year 2025 includes $69 billion for nuclear weapons.
It’s all great fun. USA will be able to more or less comfortably fight another country (? China) without putting any “boots on the ground”, (except perhaps a few Taiwanese boots – but after all, they’re not even being worn by white feet, so – no matter, really)
The only fly in the ointment is that American militarism is causing a reaction in other countries. They have populations and leaders who feel that they will have to reciprocate. And they too have gee-whiz clever men with little-boy minds who devise killing machines.
It is truly a vicious circle. There’s a lack of leaders with wisdom. But no shortage of the mealy-mouthed Marles and Blinkens who make it sound as if everything is OK.
Dutton’s nuclear policy backfires
Mike Seccombe The Saturday Paper, 27 Apr 24
This much can be said for Colin Boyce: he is not one of the federal Coalition’s nuclear nimbys. He would, if necessary, agree to have a nuclear power station in his electorate…………………………………………………..
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s announcement on March 12 that the Coalition would “shortly” announce about six sites across the country where nuclear reactors could be built forced the issue. Dutton’s plan would put them in places where coal-fired power stations were closing down.
The promised announcement of potential nuclear sites has been pushed progressively further into the future. Initially it was expected within a couple of weeks, then before the federal budget on May 14. Last Sunday, on the ABC’s Insiders program, Dutton would not commit to a pre-budget announcement, improbably blaming the recent stabbing incidents in Sydney for the delay.
On Tuesday this week, Nationals leader David Littleproud told Sky News the Coalition parties were “not going to be bullied into putting this at any time line, but you will see it before the election”.
Whenever the announcement does eventually come, Boyce’s central Queensland electorate, Flynn, is likely to be on the list.
Boyce’s acceptance of nuclear power in his electorate is not so much an endorsement of the policy being pushed by his leaders as an acceptance that he has no other choice.
Flynn, twice the size of Tasmania and dotted with coalmines and gas wells, produces vast amounts of energy, most of which is shipped overseas.
………………………………………………………………….. Boyce says, probably correctly, “ there will be no coal-firedpower stations in Queensland operational after 2035”.
He is not happy about that and is even less happy that the state opposition supported the government’s legislated target, for he has never accepted the need to stop burning fossil fuels.
Before his election to federal parliament, Boyce served five years in the Queensland parliament, representing the coal seat of Callide. There, he argued for the construction of more coal-fired power stations. He denied the reality of human-induced climate change.
Opposition to fossil fuels, he told state parliament on June 17, 2021, was “driven by the mind-numbing, eco-Marxist Millennials and upper middle-class ‘wokes’ who have been indoctrinated with some quasi-religious belief that coal is bad and carbon dioxide is poisoning the planet”.
……………………………………………………………………. Even within the Coalition’s ranks there are some who see the move as being at least as much an attempt to address a political problem as to address the climate crisis, although most will not say so publicly.
Bridget Archer will, however. The Tasmanian MP – one among a much-depleted cohort of moderate Liberals after the 2022 election – issued a warning to her colleagues via the pages of the Nine newspapers last month that nuclear energy should not be put forward as an alternative to wind and solar.
“There is no point even having a nuclear discussion if you don’t accept a need to decarbonise, to transition away from coal and gas,” she said. “There only is a case for nuclear if there is a fairly rapid transition to large-scale renewables, otherwise why are you doing it?”
She then answered her own question: “I think part of the reason for having the discussion is to keep people in the tent on net zero.”
Others privately assess the motivations of the federal Coalition leadership more harshly. They suggest it’s not primarily about getting nuclear up but about slowing the transition to wind and solar and thereby extending the life of fossil fuels in power generation.
Certainly, the chances of getting the federal parliament to greenlight a domestic nuclear industry are remote. For about 25 years, nuclear power has been prohibited by law in Australia, and it was the Howard Coalition government that banned it, under a 1998 deal with the Greens to get other legislation through the Senate.
Given the ever-growing proclivity of Australian electors to give their votes to progressive independent candidates and Greens, there is a good chance neither major party will win majority government at the next election. Even if the Coalition did win the House of Representatives, it almost certainly would not gain a majority in the Senate. Unless Labor recanted on its vehement opposition to nuclear power, Dutton’s plan would fall at the first hurdle.
……………………………………. the available evidence suggests even those members of the federal Coalition parties who publicly spruik the Dutton policy lack the courage of their convictions.
Last month, shortly after Dutton made his big announcement, reporters for the Nine papers contacted a dozen of them.
“Twelve opposition MPs have publicly backed lifting the moratorium on nuclear power in Australia but will not commit to hosting a nuclear power plant in their own electorate,” their story began
……………………………………………….. Two points. First, the Coalition plan no longer involves small modular nuclear reactors, but instead would rely on building traditional large plants. Second, the polling to which Littleproud referred actually showed a lot of people were woefully misinformed about the cost of nuclear power.
When asked to rank sources of energy “in terms of total cost including infrastructure and household price”, 40 per cent of respondents thought solar and wind power were the most expensive, compared with 36 per cent who thought nuclear was, and 24 who picked coal and gas. Fully one third of respondents thought nuclear was the cheapest option.
They are spectacularly wrong. According to the most recent GenCost report – the annual collaboration between the Australian science agency CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) – SMRs are by far the most expensive way of generating electricity. The “levelised cost” of power from an SMR would be $382 to $636 per megawatt hour, while solar and wind would cost between $91 and $130 per MWh.
The Dutton response was to attack the experts. He claimed GenCost underestimated the cost of renewables because it did not include expenditure on the transmission infrastructure required to integrate them into the grid.
This was untrue, as the report’s authors promptly made clear. Dutton was undeterred, however, which in turn saw the chief executive of the CSIRO, Douglas Hilton, release an open letter defending the importance of independent scientific endeavour.
Last Tuesday, the same day as Littleproud went on Sky News and maintained the falsehood that nuclear power was cheaper than wind and solar, another report was released, further confirming more wind and solar energy was simultaneously lowering both prices and emissions from the electricity sector.
The quarterly Energy Dynamics report from the energy market operator showed that in the first three months of this year, renewables provided 39 per cent of power in the east coast power grid, almost 2 per cent more than in the corresponding period last year.
……………………………..“We are increasingly seeing renewable energy records being set which is a good thing for Australian consumers as it is key in driving prices down and NEM [National Electricity Market] emissions intensity to new record lows,” AEMO’s executive general manager of reform delivery, Violette Mouchaileh, said in a media release accompanying the report…………………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2024/04/27/duttons-nuclear-policy-backfires
How much will the UK’s new nuclear submarines really cost?
The terrible truth is that nobody knows how much this will cost.
25th April
What does it cost, and how many jobs does it actually create? This is
especially important now with the next generation of nuclear-powered
submarines, the “Dreadnought” class, starting construction.
When the UK Government announced the programme to replace the current Valiant class
boats, the cost they announced in Parliament, £31 billion, was to build
four submarines.
This is as disingenuous as announcing the cost of a
revamped NHS as the cost to build four hospitals. The total cost of
ownership over the projected 30-year lifespan is much larger.
We have reached a figure of over £600bn. Shocking? Indeed. Surprising? Compared to
what, the HS2 rail link? The terrible truth is that nobody knows how much
this will cost. The annual report of the government’s own
“Infrastructure and Projects” authority has a lot of bad news,
including a “red” score for the development of the Dreadnought boats’
new engines. In short, this means it can’t be done. Sounds expensive.
The National 25th April 2024
https://www.thenational.scot/politics/24277002.much-will-uks-new-nuclear-submarines-really-cost
1 This month.
Australians deserve the truth
about
AUKUS – https://aukuspublicinquiry.com/
30 July – WEBINAR (Free) – Is Nuclear Power the Solution to Climate Change? https://my.acaw.org.au/event/acaw-is-nuclear-power-the-solution-to-climate-change
18:30 – 19:45 ACST
19:00 – 20:15 AEST
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 