This week in nuclear news
Some bits of good news. Some welcome news, in UK Government support for energy saving. Some Good News About Corals and Climate Change The UK’s first hospital-owned solar farm shows how renewables could be a way out of reliance on fossil fuels.. The Good News About Renewable Energy.
I’ve read so much on the Ukraine crisis. For an overview of that situation, Charles Freeman, former USA diplomat, is the best source. His interview is long. ”USA fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian’‘. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vxufUeqnuc I think I’m the only one to transcribe it. (that took me hours!). But I recommend that you persist with it. It is worth 100 other commentaries on Ukraine.
AUSTRALIA.
Scott Morrison has no plan for the economic growth that would be needed to pay for all his touted ”Defence – Security” stuff. Australian Nuclear Free Alliance (ANFA) statement March 2022. Friends of the Earth Australia’s Submission to Environment Minister calls out the dishonesty in the proposal for a national nuclear waste dump at Kimba, South Australia. Australian Radioactive Waste Agency – a couple of English nuclear waste officials conning the Australian public?
Thousands of hectares approved for projects that made koalas homeless.
Wilful ignorance . Blaming war and deadly floods on climate change activists .
‘Our dams are full’: northern NSW and south-east Queensland again brace for floods as heavy rain looms. Fears for more ’life-threatening’ floods in NSW. True impact of floods on animal populations remains unknown
‘We’d never touch it if we knew’: Farmer locked in carbon credit scheme backs inquiry into ‘rort’. Taylor’s office spent $1 billion on ‘sham’ carbon projects .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R8u11MDIjs Australian media – paid to distract you from the really important news – Michael West reports. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep2LConoNkg
INTERNATIONAL
Ukraine war shows nuclear deterrence doesn’t work; we need disarmament — IPPNW peace and health blog. Dalai Lama, Other Nobel Winners Demand Explicit Vow Not to Use Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine. U.S. Peace Council Statement on Russia’s Military Intervention in Ukraine.
Zelensky ready to negotiate with Russia over NATO and Donbas sovereignty, but Biden won’t budge. More Evidence That The US Is Trying To Prolong This War– Caitlin Johnstone lays it bare.
We have a new energy crisis, and EFFICIENCY is the largest, cheapest, safest, cleanest and fastest way to address it.
Official cover-up by 7 governments of the cancer deaths of nuclear test veterans.
Western countries importing Russian uranium and nuclear supplies – WITH NO SANCTIONS.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to discuss climate mitigation efforts, including technology to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
Climate change at the Poles. Temperatures hit ‘unthinkable’ highs at both of Earth’s poles on the weekend. Climate scientists are trying to find out why. Record-smashing heatwaves are hitting Antarctica and the Arctic simultaneously. Here’s what’s driving them, and how they’ll impact wildlife. Wildfires caused by global warming ‘are accelerating global warming’. In 20 years of studying how ecosystems absorb carbon, here’s why we’re worried about a tipping point of collapse. Fridays for Future school climate strikes resume across the world
Bitcoin miners want to recast themselves as eco-friendly
ANTARCTICA. Climate scientists alarmed at unprecedented heat at both the Antarctic and the Arctic. Record-smashing heatwaves are hitting Antarctica and the Arctic simultaneously. Here’s what’s driving them, and how they’ll impact wildlife. Antarctic heat – a horrifying reminder of the future with global heating. Gigantic Antarctic ice shelf collapses into the sea.
ARCTIC. Very low Arctic sea ice.
UKRAINE.
Forest fires erupt around Chernobyl nuclear plant. Chernobyl radiation monitors ‘not working‘. Chernobyl nuclear worker gives the inside story on the dire situation for the staff as Russians took over.
Ukraine war – the Nazi factor. What is the risk of a nuclear accident in Ukraine? Deal on Ukrainian nuclear safety to come ‘soon,’ says IAEA chief. Bellona explains Ukraine’s nuclear stations. International Atomic Energy Agency’s grave concern over safety of Ukraine’s nuclear reactors. IAEA concerned that Russia is shelling Ukrainian checkpoints in the city of Slavutych, near Chernobyl. The work of Ukraine-based European Institute of Chernobyl. So far, Zaporizhzhya’s nuclear reactors are being managed safely under Russian control . Warning on effect of Russian force’s attack on nuclear research facility.
Australian Radioactive Waste Agency – a couple of English nuclear waste officials conning the Australian public?
This should send shivers up any Australian’s spine! Nuclear Fuel Cycle Watch Australia, https://www.facebook.com/groups/1021186047913052 Kazzi Jai 28 Mar 22
This has scary echoes of Maralinga…..
We have the newly appointed CEO of Australian Radioactive Waste Agency – Sam Usher – who comes from the UK after working at Dounreay and Sellafield, and is now appointed to the newly created role of the CEO of ARWA in Australia, but has returned back to the UK to come back mid year…..doing a Memorandum of Understanding….. with the CEO David Peattie of Nuclear Decommissioning Authority Cumbria!
Sellafield is in Cumbria UK by the way…..
Despite the Memorandum of Understanding NOT being released to the Australian Public….we have an English man from Cumbria, doing a deal with an English man from Cumbria regarding AUSTRALIA’S INTERESTS!
And it will ALL LAND IN THE TINY COUNTRY TOWN OF KIMBA – in a TOTALLY ALL ABOVE GROUND NUCLEAR DUMP!
NO, NO, NO! ….They say – The nuclear dump won’t take nuclear waste generated from overseas!
Really? Then what is the SUBSTITUTED NUCLEAR WASTE or what they now call RADIOACTIVELY EQUIVALENT NUCLEAR WASTE called which landed in Port Kembla a couple of weekends ago in a second TN-81 CASK!
Whatever name you want to call it – it IS Nuclear Waste generated from overseas – from nuclear power and nuclear weapons generation from overseas! It is not our nuclear waste – it is overseas generated waste!
As much as ARWA wants to appear “established” it isn’t. It still remains bluff and bravado – acting as if everything is going as it should…..but it isn’t, and may never get there.
Caitlin Johnstone – yes, it’s a proxy war
NATO is a “sphere of influence”. It’s an extension of US imperial power. One of many.
You don’t get to unilaterally create a global dynamic and then cry when other countries respond accordingly. It’s like the US making international law meaningless by continually flouting it with zero consequences and then claiming another country violated international law.
Yes It’s A Proxy War: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/yes-its-a-proxy-war-notes-from-the?s=w Caitlin Johnstone, Mar 27
To be clear, evidence is mounting that this is a proxy war deliberately instigated and perpetuated by the US empire with the goal of ousting Putin. Which means that, despite all the narrative window dressing and spin, this war is just more US regime change interventionism.
Saddam Hussein was not a nice person, and he did bad things. This doesn’t change the fact that Bush’s regime change war was a tremendous evil which unleashed unforgivable horrors, and that it was done because Saddam became inconvenient for the US empire. The same is happening here.
As a result of deliberately provoking this war, the US empire has:
- Manufactured international consent for unprecedented economic warfare geared toward ousting Putin
- Drawn Moscow into another Afghanistan-like military quagmire
- Guaranteed immense profits for the war industry
- Cut in on Russia’s fossil fuel business
- Made Europe further subservient to US interests
People say “This is not a proxy war! How dare you call this a proxy war?”
Pouring billions of dollars worth of weaponry into a foreign nation to be used by CIA-trained fighters with the direct ongoing assistance of US military intelligence is in fact the exact thing that a proxy war is. That is what those words mean.
Continue readingAntarctic heat – a horrifying reminder of the future with global heating
“Shocking,” said the Met Office head; “bonkers,” according to an Antarctic researcher. The heat at both ends of the planet this week has scientists straining for adjectives. 40°C above normal in Antarctica,
30°C hotter than usual in the Arctic.
With temperatures so much above anything on record, scientists had to confirm that, no, it isn’t a typo:
this is really happening.
Last week, the Conger ice shelf, which sits off the East Antarctic coast and is around 1,200 square kilometers across, collapsed completely. Ice sheets hold back the flow of ice into the sea.
“If they collapse, then ice flow from inland accelerates and leads to sea level rise,” said Andrew Mackintosh, a scientist at Monash University in Australia.
A natural reaction to such news is to fear the ice sheets might collapse entirely. If the West Antarctic ice sheet collapsed into theocean, global sea-levels could rise several metres – much faster and
further than expected – swamping coastal cities. That is not likely to happen soon, but the polar heat is a horrifying reminder of the stakes involved.
Independent 25th March 2022
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/opinion/higher-food-prices-climate-crisis-b2043988.html
Gigantic Antarctic ice shelf collapses into the sea
An ice shelf about the size of Rome has completely collapsed in EastnnAntarctica within days of record high temperatures, according to satellite data. The Conger ice shelf, which had an approximate surface area of 1,200 sq km, collapsed around 15 March, scientists said on Friday.
East Antarctica saw unusually high temperatures last week, with Concordia station hitting a record temperature of -11.8C on 18 March, more than 40C warmer than seasonal norms. The record temperatures were the result of an atmospheric river that trapped heat over the continent.
Guardian 25th March 2022
Živadin Jovanović: The third world war will have no winners — Anti-bellum
Živadin Jovanović interview Živadin Jovanović was foreign minister of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1998-2000, including during the 78 days of NATO’s air war of 1999.As can be heard, he is both informed and humane, an internationalist in the true sense of the term: someone who values harmony between nations and peoples. Attention is […]
Živadin Jovanović: The third world war will have no winners — Anti-bellum
Ukraine war shows nuclear deterrence doesn’t work; we need disarmament — IPPNW peace and health blog
By Rebecca Johnson In late February, as his invasion of Ukraine became bogged down, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia’s nuclear forces had been put on ‘special alert’. This posturing is familiar in wargame scenarios. It frequently ends with nuclear weapons being launched. So, how did we get back to believing that nuclear war is possible? Why didn’t […]
Ukraine war shows nuclear deterrence doesn’t work; we need disarmament — IPPNW peace and health blog
The South Australian coastal suburbs which could ebb away.
The SA coastal suburbs which could ebb away
Coastal erosion caused by climate change is wreaking havoc with high-end South Australian suburbs, leaving millions of dollars in property vulnerable, according to a new report.
True impact of floods on animal populations remains unknown
True impact of floods on animal populations remains unknown
Byron Bay wildlife vet Dr Bree Talbot said animals have survived the floods, but food sources and habitats have been badly disrupted.
Fears for more ’life-threatening’ floods in NSW [$]
Fears for more ’life-threatening’ floods in NSW
NSW is bracing for more “life-threatening flash flooding” as torrential rain impacts the state for a second time this month.
‘Our dams are full’: northern NSW and south-east Queensland again brace for floods as heavy rain looms
Severe weather is set to return to flood-ravaged NSW and south-east Queensland
Ukraine war – the Nazi factor
Make Nazism Great Again https://www.opednews.com/articles/Make-Nazism-Great-Again-by-Pepe-Escobar-Azov-Battalion_Nazis_War-In-Ukraine-220325-46.html
By Pepe Escobar , 25 Mar 22,
The supreme target is regime change in Russia, Ukraine is just a pawn in the game – or worse, mere cannon fodder.
All eyes are on Mariupol. As of Wednesday night, over 70% of residential areas were under control of Donetsk and Russian forces, while Russian Marines, Donetsk’s 107th batallion and Chechen Spetsnaz, led by the charismatic Adam Delimkhanov, had entered the Azov-Stal plant – the HQ of the neo-Nazi Azov batallion.
Azov was sent a last ultimatum: surrender until midnight – or else, as in a take no prisoners highway to hell.
That implies a major game-changer in the Ukrainian battlefield; Mariupol is finally about to be thoroughly denazified – as the Azov contingent long entrenched in the city and using civilians as human shields were their most hardened fighting force.
There’s no intention whatsoever in Washington to facilitate a peace plan in Ukraine – and that explains Comedian Zelensky’s non-stop stalling tactics. The supreme target is regime change in Russia, and for that Totalen Krieg against Russia and all things Russian is warranted. Ukraine is just a pawn in the game – or worse, mere cannon fodder.
This also means that the 14,000 deaths in Donbass for the past 8 years should be directly attributed to the Exceptionalists. As for Ukrainian neo-Nazis of all stripes, they are as expendable as “moderate rebels” in Syria, be they al-Qaeda or Daesh-linked. Those that may eventually survive can always join the budding CIA-sponsored Neo-Nazi Inc. – the tawdry remix of the 1980s Jihad Inc. in Afghanistan. They will be properly “Kalibrated” city and using civilians as human shields were their most hardened fighting force.
A quick neo-Nazi recap
By now only the brain dead across NATOstan – and there are hordes – are not aware of Maidan in 2014. Yet few know that it was then Ukrainian Minister of Interior Arsen Avakov, a former governor of Kharkov, who gave the green light for a 12,000 paramilitary outfit to materialize out of Sect 82 soccer hooligans who supported Dynamo Kiev. That was the birth of the Azov batallion, in May 2014, led by Andriy Biletsky, a.k.a. the White Fuhrer, and former leader of the neo-nazi gang Patriots of Ukraine.
Together with NATO stay-behind agent Dmitro Yarosh, Biletsky founded Pravy Sektor, financed by Ukrainian mafia godfather and Jewish billionaire Ihor Kolomoysky (later the benefactor of the meta-conversion of Zelensky from mediocre comedian to mediocre President.)
Pravy Sektor happened to be rabidly anti-EU – tell that to Ursula von der Lugen – and politically obsessed with linking Central Europe and the Baltics in a new, tawdry Intermarium. Crucially, Pravy Sektor and other nazi gangs were duly trained by NATO instructors.Biletsky and Yarosh are of course disciples of notorious WWII-era Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, for whom pure Ukrainians are proto-Germanic or Scandinavian, and Slavs are untermenschen.
Azov ended up absorbing nearly all neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine and were dispatched to fight against Donbass – with their acolytes making more money than regular soldiers. Biletsky and another neo-Nazi leader, Oleh Petrenko, were elected to the Rada. The White Fuhrer stood on his own. Petrenko decided to support then President Poroshenko. Soon the Azov battalion was incorporated as the Azov Regiment to the Ukrainian National Guard.
They went on a foreign mercenary recruiting drive – with people coming from Western Europe, Scandinavia and even South America.
That was strictly forbidden by the Minsk Agreements guaranteed by France and Germany (and now de facto defunct). Azov set up training camps for teenagers and soon reached 10,000 members. Erik “Blackwater” Prince, in 2020, struck a deal with the Ukrainian military that would enable his renamed outfit, Academi, to supervise Azov.
It was none other than sinister Maidan cookie distributor Vicky “F**k the EU” Nuland who suggested to Zelensky – both of them, by the way, Ukrainian Jews – to appoint avowed Nazi Yarosh as an adviser to the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi. The target: organize a blitzkrieg on Donbass and Crimea – the same blitzkrieg that SVR, Russian foreign intel, concluded would be launched on February 22, thus propelling the launch of Operation Z.
All of the above, in fact just a quick recap, shows that in Ukraine there’s no difference whatsoever between white neo-Nazis and brown-colored al-Qaeda/ISIS/Daesh, as much as neo-Nazis are just as “Christian” as takfiri Salafi-jihadis are “Muslim”.
When Putin denounced a “bunch of neo-Nazis” in power in Kiev, the Comedian replied that it was impossible because he was Jewish. Nonsense. Zelensky and his patron Kolomoysky, for all practical purposes, are Zio-Nazis.
Even as branches of the United States government admitted to neo-Nazis entrenched in the Kiev apparatus, the Exceptionalist machine made the daily shelling of Donbass for 8 years simply disappear. These thousands of civilian victims never existed.
U.S. mainstream media even ventured the odd piece or report on Azov and Aidar neo-Nazis. But then a neo-Orwellian narrative was set in stone: there are no Nazis in Ukraine. CIA offshoot NED even started deleting records about training members of Aidar. Recently a crappy news network duly promoted a video of a NATO-trained and weaponized Azov commander – complete with Nazi iconography.
Why “denazification” makes sense
The Banderastan ideology harks back to when this part of Ukraine was in fact controlled by the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Russian empire and Poland. Stepan Bandera was born in Austro-Hungary in 1909, near Ivano-Frankovsk, in the – then autonomous – Kingdom of Galicia.
WWI dismembered European empires into frequently non-viable small entities. In western Ukraine – an imperial intersection – that inevitably led to the proliferation of extremely intolerant ideologies.
Banderastan ideologues profited from the Nazi arrival in 1941 to try to proclaim an independent territory. But Berlin not only blocked it but sent them to concentration camps. In 1944 though the Nazis changed tactics: they liberated the Banderanistas and manipulated them into anti-Russian hate, thus creating a destabilization force in the Ukrainian USSR.
So Nazism is not exactly the same as Banderastan fanatics: they are in fact competing ideologies. What happened since Maidan is that the CIA kept a laser focus on inciting Russian hatred by whatever fringe groups it could instrumentalize. So Ukraine is not a case of
“white nationalism” – to put it mildly – but of anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalism, for all practical purposes manifested via Nazi-style salutes and Nazi-style symbols.
So when Putin and the Russian leadership refer to Ukrainian Nazism, that may not be 100% correct, conceptually, but it strikes a chord with every Russian.
Russians viscerally reject Nazism – considering that virtually every Russian family has at least one ancestor killed during the Great Patriotic War. From the perspective of wartime psychology, it makes total sense to talk of “Ukro-nazism” or, straight to the point, a “denazification” campaign.
How the Anglos loved the Nazis
The United States government openly cheerleading neo-Nazis in Ukraine is hardly a novelty, considering how it supported Hitler alongside England in 1933 for balance of power reasons.
In 1933, Roosevelt lent Hitler one billion gold dollars while England lent him two billion gold dollars. That should be multiplied 200 times to arrive at today’s fiat dollars. The Anglo-Americans wanted to build up Germany as a bulwark against Russia. In 1941 Roosevelt wrote to Hitler that if he invaded Russia the U.S. would side with Russia, and wrote Stalin that if Stalin invaded Germany the U.S. would back Germany. Talk about a graphic illustration of Mackinderesque balance of power.
The Brits had become very concerned with the rise of Russian power under Stalin while observing that Germany was on its knees with 50% unemployment in 1933, if one counted unregistered itinerant Germans.
Even Lloyd George had misgivings about the Versailles Treaty, unbearably weakening Germany after its surrender in WWI. The purpose of WWI, in Lloyd George’s worldview, was to destroy Russia and Germany together. Germany was threatening England with the Kaiser building a fleet to take over the oceans, while the Tsar was too close to India for comfort. For a while Britannia won – and continued to rule the waves.
Then building up Germany to fight Russia became the number one priority – complete with rewriting of History. The uniting of Austrian Germans and Sudetenland Germans with Germany, for instance, was totally approved by the Brits.
But then came the Polish problem. When Germany invaded Poland, France and Britain stood on the sidelines. That placed Germany on the border of Russia, and Germany and Russia divided up Poland. That’s exactly what Britain and France wanted. Britain and France had promised Poland that they would invade Germany from the west while Poland fought Germany from the east.
In the end, the Poles were double-crossed. Churchill even praised Russia for invading Poland. Hitler was advised by MI6 that England and France would not invade Poland – as part of their plan for a German-Russian war. Hitler had been supported financially since the 1920s by MI6 for his favorable words about England in Mein Kampf. MI6 de facto encouraged Hitler to invade Russia.
Fast forward to 2022, and here we go again – as farce, with the Anglo-Americans “encouraging” Germany under feeble Scholz to put itself back together militarily, with 100 billion euros (that the Germans don’t have), and setting up in thesis a revamped European force to later go to war against Russia.
Cue to the Russophobic hysteria in Anglo-American media about the Russia-China strategic partnership. The mortal Anglo-American fear is Mackinder/Mahan/Spykman/Kissinger/Brzezinski all rolled into one: Russia-China as peer competitor twins take over the Eurasian land mass – the Belt and Road Initiative meets the Greater Eurasia Partnership – and thus rule the planet, with the U.S. relegated to inconsequential island status, as much as the previous “Rule Britannia”.
England, France and later the Americans had prevented it when Germany aspired to do the same, controlling Eurasia side by side with Japan, from the English Channel to the Pacific. Now it’s a completely different ball game.
So Ukraine, with its pathetic neo-Nazi gangs, is just an – expendable – pawn in the desperate drive to stop something that is beyond anathema, from Washington’s perspective: a totally peaceful German-Russian-Chinese New Silk Road.
Russophobia, massively imprinted in the West’s DNA, never really went away. Cultivated by the Brits since Catherine the Great – and then with The Great Game. By the French since Napoleon. By the Germans because the Red Army liberated Berlin. By the Americans because Stalin forced to them the mapping of Europe – and then it went on and on and on throughout the Cold War.
We are at just the early stages of the final push by the dying Empire to attempt arresting the flow of History. They are being outsmarted, they are already outgunned by the top military power in the world, and they will be checkmated. Existentially, they are not equipped to kill the Bear – and that hurts. Cosmically.
NSW maps out new renewable energy zone as shift from coal accelerates — RenewEconomy
The NSW government outlines the boundaries of a new renewable energy zone as it accelerates work to shift from coal to renewables and storage. The post NSW maps out new renewable energy zone as shift from coal accelerates appeared first on RenewEconomy.
NSW maps out new renewable energy zone as shift from coal accelerates — RenewEconomy
March 27 Energy News — geoharvey
Science and Technology: ¶ “Pivotal Battery Discovery Could Impact Transportation And The Grid: Overcoming Performance Decline” • One of the more promising candidates for new battery technology is sodium-ion. It is attractive in part because of sodium is so cheap, but battery performance declines rapidly. Researchers have found a cause of that problem, and a […]
March 27 Energy News — geoharvey
Nuclear Politics – theme for March 2022
Homo Sapiens (and I do mean Homo, not Femina) has always solved his relational problems by fighting, by war and the threat of war.
And it sorta worked, in a sorta way. (The meek, the ”weak” men had some success, setting up co-operative arrangements, like the United Nations). It’s turning out that the ”weak” ”sissy” men might just have a broader, more considered, intelligence that just might be essential for the survival of the species. Heck they might even welcome Femina in – likely to be a lot more sapiens.
In the current crisis – one thing is for sure – if it develops into a third world war – it will be a nuclear war. Probably now, only Russia accepts that it’s just fine to send thousands of men to their deaths, and even Russians might be getting sick of this old idea.
The new way is – press a button, from far away, and incinerate millions. Trouble is that might cause millions on your side also to be incinerated – heck – even the ones pressing the buttons.
A new politics must be found. Otherwise, at best, the species might be lucky enough to survive, and evolve into a bee or ant-like species, with males as just a tiny minority.
1 This month.
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/235274195556
19 May – Webinar- Webinar: No Nuclear Weapons in Australia
Start: 2026-05-19 18:00:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
End: 2026-05-19 19:30:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
20 May – Webinar – The dangerous world of AUKUS, US, military occupation and suppression of dissent
National Webinar, 20th May, 2026, 6.30pm AEST. Confronting laws restricting/suppressing protest speech and action
Speakers: Former Sen. Rex Patrick, Lawyer Nick Hanna ,Arthur Rorris ,Jorgen Doyle, Sen David Shoebbridge,
Facilitator Kelley Tranter.
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 