Strong security measures for secret transport of nuclear waste from Port Kembla to Lucas Heights
There was a large land, air and sea police presence at the port including PolAIr, maritime police officers on jet ski and in large and inflatable vessels, as well as officers on the ground
Police jet skis, helicopter and boats accompanied the ship into the Port. Police officers lined the port banks.
Roads were closed on Saturday night and into the early hours of Sunday morning
Roads closed for nuclear waste transportation from Port Kembla to Lucas Heights, Illawarra Mercury, Ashleigh Tullis, 13Mar 22 A container of nuclear waste has been safely transported to Lucas Heights, a spokesperson for ANSTO has confirmed.
The container, which was transported from Port Kembla overnight, will be stored at ANSTO until a National Radioactive Waste Management Facility is operational.
ANSTO’s group executive for nuclear operations and nuclear medicine, Pamela Naidoo-Ameglio, said as part of international treaties, countries are required to take responsibility for the disposal of any nuclear waste they produce.
Ms Naidoo-Ameglio was tight-lipped about what might happen if the waste were to get into the environment.
“There is no credible risk of that happening,” she told the media.
EARLIER: Bystanders looked on as a nuclear waste ship docked in Port Kembla on Saturday, carry reprocessed radioactive waste.
The bright blue ship was an unusual sight in the Port as full scale police operation was carried out to make sure it was safely docked.
Police jet skis, helicopter and boats accompanied the ship into the Port. Police officers lined the port banks.
Roads were closed on Saturday night and into the early hours of Sunday morning.
The waste was unloaded and transported during a police operation overnight to the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO)’s interim waste storage facility in Lucas Heights.
The waste – encased in molten glass, canisters and steel casks – left the United Kingdom on January 20 on a specialist nuclear vessel, bound for Port Kembla.
A shipment of the waste, which stems from Australia’s production of nuclear medicine and other products, docked at the port about 11.30am on Saturday.
There was a large land, air and sea police presence at the port including PolAIr, maritime police officers on jet ski and in large and inflatable vessels, as well as officers on the ground, ensuring the safe entry of the ship.
A small crowd of people gathered to watch the ship dock, with some fisherman surprised at police presence.
Live Traffic reports the police operation will see major roads closed between Port Kembla and Lucas Heights for an “oversize vehicle movement”.
Closures will be in place on the northbound lanes of the M1 Princes Motorway between West Wollongong and Waterfall, up Mount Ousley from 11:30pm and 4am.
Southbound traffic on the M1 will remain unaffected.
Motorists are being diverted northbound along Memorial Drive through to Bulli Pass, then Princes Highway to Waterfall.
This detour is not suitable for B-doubles which should travel before the closure commences or delay their journey.
Heathcote Road from Heathcote to Lucas Heights, and New Illawarra Road between Lucas Heights and Menai will also be closed between 1am and 4am on Sunday.
Diversion for Heathcote Road require drivers to travel on the Princes Hwy, River Rd, Menai Rd, Alfords Point Rd, Davies Rd, Fairford Rd, Canterbury Rd, Milperra Rd, Newbridge Rd and Nuwarra Rd.
Heavy vehicle detours including B-Doubles up to 25m will be in place along Princes Hwy, King Georges Rd, Canterbury Rd, Milperra Rd, Newbridge Rd, Nuwarra Rd.
Local residents will be allowed access to Voyager Point, Pleasure Point and Sandy Point only.
Motorists needing to use New Illawarra Road should travel via the alternative route of the Princes Hwy, River Rd and Bangor Bypass.
ANSTO’s group executive of nuclear operations and nuclear medicine, Pamela Naidoo-Ameglio this week said significant expertise would be involved in the transportation of the waste………..
Australia does not have the ability to reprocess spent fuel rods from nuclear operations, so they are sent to facilities overseas where any uranium is stripped and recycled, and the remaining waste is processed…..
Following treatment and reprocessing in the United Kingdom, the material will be temporarily held at ANSTO’s Lucas Heights campus until a National Radioactive Waste Management Facility is built.
“International best practice is that radioactive waste should be stored in a single facility, and we welcome the Federal Government’s recent strong steps to site and build that facility,” Ms Naidoo-Ameglio said.
ANSTO’s last repatriation effort in 2015 saw the waste safely brought into Port Kembla and transported to Lucas Heights. https://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/7655555/all-we-know-about-the-nuclear-waste-arrival-at-port-kembla/
The US And Ukraine Have Every Reason To Lie About The War
The US-centralized empire is censoring and propagandizing as though it is in a hot war with Russia currently. Officially the US and its allies are not at war, but the imperial narrative management machine is behaving as though we are. This makes sense because when two nuclear-armed powers are fighting for dominance and know a direct military confrontation can kill them both, other types of warfare are used instead, including propaganda campaigns and psychological warfare.
For this reason it is necessary to take everything claimed about what happens in Ukraine with a planet-sized grain of salt, whether it’s by Russia, Ukraine, or the US and its allies. Be very skeptical of anything you hear about chemical attacks or any other narrative that can be used to get military firepower moving in a way that it otherwise would not. All parties involved in this conflict have every reason in the world to lie about such things.
The US And Ukraine Have Every Reason To Lie About The War https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-us-and-ukraine-have-every-reason?s=w
| Caitlin JohnstoneThe Washington Post has a new article out titled “Intelligence points to heightened risk of Russian chemical attack in Ukraine, officials say,” and I challenge you to find me any Russian state media with two opening paragraphs that are more brazenly propagandistic and bereft of journalistic ethics than these: |
The United States and its allies have intelligence thatRussia may be preparing to use chemical weapons against Ukraine, U.S. and European officials saidFriday, as Moscow sought to invigorate its faltering military offensive through increasingly brutal assaults across multiple Ukrainian cities.
“Security officials and diplomats said the intelligence, which they declined to detail, pointed to possible preparations by Russia for deploying chemical munitions, and warned the Kremlin may seek to carry out a ‘false-flag’ attack that attempts to pin the blame on Ukrainians, or perhaps Western governments. The officials, like others quoted in this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the matter.”
So Russia is preparing to stage a chemical attack, and also the Russian chemical attack might look like Ukrainians or western governments committing a chemical attack, and also the evidence for this is secret, and also the details are secret, and also the government officials advancing this claim are secret, and also Russia’s military offensive is faltering. Gotcha.
The third paragraph is even better:
“The accusations surfaced as Russia repeated claims that the United States and Ukraine were operating secret biological weapons labs in Eastern Europe — an allegation that the Biden administration dismissed as ‘total nonsense’ and ‘outright lies.’”
This paragraph is awesome in two different ways. First, it’s awesome because The Washington Post goes out of its way to inform readers that Russia’s claims have been dismissed as “total nonsense” and “outright lies” after having literally just reported completely unevidenced claims by anonymous government officials with no criticism or scrutiny of any kind. Secondly, it’s awesome because at no point during the rest of the article is any mention made of Victoria Nuland’s incendiary admission before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Ukraine has “biological research facilities” that the US is “quite concerned” might end up “falling into the hands of Russian forces”.
Over and over again throughout the article The Washington Post takes great care to inform readers that Russian claims about biological weapons are not to be trusted, with allegations from Moscow described as “unproven accusations” made with “no verifiable evidence“, “absurd and laughable“, “outrageous claims”, “utter nonsense”, “sinking to new depths” and “baseless“.
This, again, after uncritically reporting completely unsubstantiated allegations by government officials and sheltering them from any accountability by granting them the cover of anonymity. Unproven claims by the Russian government are laughable absurdities presented without evidence; unproven claims by the US government are just The News.
The Washington Post also refers to past Russian dismissals of alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria as false flags used to frame Damascus, while of course making no mention of the mountains of evidence that this has indeed occurred. It also says the UN human rights office “has received ‘credible reports’ of Russia using cluster bombs” which “could constitute war crimes”, making no mention of the USA’s abundant use and sale of these same munitions.
Democracy Dies in Darkness.
The fact that this Russian false flag narrative is being shoved forward with so much propagandistic fervor, not just by The Washington Post but also by government officials and CIA media pundits, makes it all the more concerning that we’re seeing things like YouTube banning the denial of “well-documented violent events” involving Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We could soon see a chemical weapons incident occur in Ukraine, after which Silicon Valley platforms ban all accounts who express skepticism of the official western narrative about what happened.
The US-centralized empire is censoring and propagandizing as though it is in a hot war with Russia currently. Officially the US and its allies are not at war, but the imperial narrative management machine is behaving as though we are. This makes sense because when two nuclear-armed powers are fighting for dominance and know a direct military confrontation can kill them both, other types of warfare are used instead, including propaganda campaigns and psychological warfare.
There is a widespread general understanding in the west that Russia stands everything to gain by lying about what happens on the ground in Ukraine and cannot be taken at its word about occurrences during this war. There is much less widespread understanding of the fact that both Ukraine and the United States stand everything to gain by lying about this war as well and cannot be trusted either.
The Washington Post’s own reporting says that behind the scenes western governments see Russian victory in this war as a foregone conclusion. Ukraine’s only chance at stopping Russia in the near term would be if it could persuade NATO powers to take a more direct role in combat, like setting up a no-fly zone as President Zelensky has persistently pleaded with them to do. One way to get around NATO’s rational resistance to directly attacking the military forces of a nuclear superpower would be to appeal to emotion via atrocity propaganda. By circulating a narrative that Russia has done something heinous which cries out to the heavens for vengeance, regardless of the risks entailed.
The United States would also benefit from circulating atrocity propaganda about Russia, in that it would further consolidate international support behind the agenda to economically strangle the nation to death in facilitation of the empire’s struggle for unipolar planetary hegemony. Even before the invasion the US was already pushing the narrative that Russia has a list of dissidents, journalists and “vulnerable populations such as religious and ethnic minorities and LGBTQI+ persons” who it plans on rounding up and torturing.
To be clear, it is not conjecture that the US and its proxies make use of atrocity propaganda. The infamous Nayirah testimony for example helped manufacture consent for the Gulf War when a 15 year-old girl who turned out to be a coached plant falsely told the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus that she’d witnessed Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of incubators in Kuwait and leaving them on the floor to die.
Atrocity propaganda has been in use for as long as war and media have coexisted, and it would be incredibly naive to believe it won’t continue to be. Especially by power structures with a known history of doing so.
For this reason it is necessary to take everything claimed about what happens in Ukraine with a planet-sized grain of salt, whether it’s by Russia, Ukraine, or the US and its allies. Be very skeptical of anything you hear about chemical attacks or any other narrative that can be used to get military firepower moving in a way that it otherwise would not. All parties involved in this conflict have every reason in the world to lie about such things.
Morrison government blasted for ‘bungling’ eastern Australian flood disaster
Morrison government blasted for ‘bungling’ eastern Australian flood disaster
The Emergency Leaders for Climate Action — 37 former emergency services leaders — says the recent floods are the latest in a line of escalating natural disasters yet Australia is under-prepared for future incidents.
After the floods, the distressing but necessary case for managed retreat
After the floods, the distressing but necessary case for managed retreat
Antonia Settle
From Brisbane to Sydney, many thousands of Australians have been reliving a devastating experience they hoped – in 2021, 2020, 2017, 2015, 2013, 2012 or 2010/11 – would never happen to them again.
Western media trumpets blanket condemnation of Putin, without any consideration of the circumstances
Monbiot, let us note, has not used a single one of his weekly columns at The Guardian to highlight the years-long plight of Julian Assange, locked away in a British dungeon for revealing U.S. and U.K. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the gravest attack on a free press in living memory, and yet Monbiot used his most recent column to attack Assange supporters, such as veteran journalist John Pilger, for not being voluble enough in denouncing Putin.
The West’s Hands in Ukraine as Bloody as Putin’s, Consortium News, By Jonathan Cook
March 11, 2022 Jonathan Cook confronts the demand throughout the Western press and social media to not only “condemn” the Russian president, but do so without qualification.
Jonathan-Cook.net There is a discursive nervous tic all over social media at the moment, including from prominent journalists such as Guardian columnist George Monbiot. The demand is that everyone not only “condemn” Russian President Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine, but do so without qualification.
Any reluctance to submit is considered certain proof that the person is a Putin apologist or a Kremlin bot, and that their views on everything under the sun – especially their criticisms of equivalent Western war crimes – can be safely ignored.
How convenient for all those Western leaders who have committed war crimes at least as bad as Russia’s current ones.
I have repeatedly described Russia’s invasion as illegal; I have regularly called Putin a war criminal (you may not have noticed but I just did it again in the two preceding paragraphs); and I have consistently compared Putin’s deeds to the very worst actions taken by the West over the past two decades. But none of that is enough. More is always needed.
The demand for unequivocal denunciation is a strange, if common, one and suggests that those insisting on it are being dishonest – if only with themselves. The function of the demand is not to clarify whether any particular piece of information or an argument is credible; it is intended purely as a “gotcha” meme.
I don’t remember an insistence that anyone condemn Tony Blair or George W. Bush for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 before they could be heard or taken seriously. Or that they denounce the U.S.-backed overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi that plunged that country into murderous chaos. Or that they deplore the West’s material support for Saudi Arabia’s slaughter of Yemen’s population, including Britain’s sale of planes, bombs and training to Riyadh. Or that they criticize the West’s backing of head-chopping jihadists in Syria (who coincidentally now appear to be drifting into Ukraine to become our allies again). Or that they decry decades of Western support for Israel as it has disappeared the Palestinian people.
And those are things for which we – meaning Westerners – are directly responsible. We elected the politicians who caused this unquantifiable suffering. Those bombs were ours. We ought to be clamoring for our leaders to be dragged to The Hague to be tried for war crimes.
By contrast, we – meaning Westerners – are not responsible for Putin or his actions. I cannot vote him out of office. Nothing I say will make him alter course. And worse, anything I do say against him or Russia simply amplifies the mindless chorus of self-righteous Western commentary intended to cast stones at Russia’s warmongers while leaving our own home-grown warmongers in place.
Westerners denouncing Putin won’t make compromise and peace more likely. It will make it less likely. Russians need to be highlighting Putin’s crimes as best they can to drive him to the negotiating table, while we need to be doing the same to our leaders to push them to the same table. As long as our attention is on Putin and his crimes, it is not on our leaders and their crimes.
Fog of War
Those who insist it is quite possible to denounce both Putin and Western leaders at the same time are precisely the people who have been so half-hearted in holding our own leaders to account.
Monbiot, let us note, has not used a single one of his weekly columns at The Guardian to highlight the years-long plight of Julian Assange, locked away in a British dungeon for revealing U.S. and U.K. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the gravest attack on a free press in living memory, and yet Monbiot used his most recent column to attack Assange supporters, such as veteran journalist John Pilger, for not being voluble enough in denouncing Putin.
Those who require unequivocal condemnation of Putin insist that now – in the midst of a war – is not the time to be sowing doubt or undermining morale in the rightness of “our” cause. (A small giveaway that they think of this as a Western, not Ukrainian, war with Russia.)
Again conveniently, that is precisely the message Western leaders want to send too – just ask Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, whose “Partygate” scandal is now a distant memory as he seeks to evoke Churchillian gravitas in facing off with Russia. Instead, the parties in the British parliament put aside their very superficial differences this week as the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, rallied them with a “historic address.”
What, really, is the point of demanding Westerners denounce Putin unequivocally when the entire Western media and political class is directing our gaze exclusively at Russia’s crimes precisely so Westerners don’t look at equivalent Western crimes?
The truth is that, in power politics, unequivocal denunciations are for politicians and diplomats – and virtue-signalers. Condemnations may be emotionally satisfying, but the rest of us can put our energies to far better use.For most of us, the better course would be to blow away the immediate fog of war and instead analyze our – meaning the West’s – role in the unfolding events……………………………………………………………………………….. https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/11/the-wests-hands-in-ukraine-as-bloody-as-putins/
Cannon-Brookes, Forrest pour more money into world’s biggest solar and battery project — RenewEconomy
Cannon-Brookes and Forrest lead another major capital raising for Sun Cable, which is planning world’s biggest solar and battery storage facility, and other projects on a similar scale. The post Cannon-Brookes, Forrest pour more money into world’s biggest solar and battery project appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Cannon-Brookes, Forrest pour more money into world’s biggest solar and battery project — RenewEconomy
Australia’s oldest solar farm was the country’s best performing in February — RenewEconomy
The list of best performing wind and solar farms for the month of February threw up a few surprises. The post Australia’s oldest solar farm was the country’s best performing in February appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Australia’s oldest solar farm was the country’s best performing in February — RenewEconomy
11 years later, fate of Fukushima reactor cleanup uncertain — Fukushima 311 Watchdogs
One of the Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) employees holds a radiation counter as they take AP journalists to the area under the Unit 5 reactor pressure vessel, which survived the earthquake-triggered tsunami in 2011, at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, run by TEPCO, in Futaba town, northeastern Japan, Thursday, March 3, 2022. […]
11 years later, fate of Fukushima reactor cleanup uncertain — Fukushima 311 Watchdogs
Fukushima spill plan goes ahead despite local opposition — Fukushima 311 Watchdogs
March 10, 2022 By Antonio Hermosin Gandul Tokyo, March 10 (EFE).- Japanese authorities continued with their plan to dump contaminated and processed water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean in 2023, despite the rejection of local communities suffering the consequences of the nuclear disaster 11 years on. The Fukushima Daiichi plant, […]
Fukushima spill plan goes ahead despite local opposition — Fukushima 311 Watchdogs
Bullying, suicide attempts…11 years for a girl in Fukushima… Before evacuation, she was cheerful: “It’s OK. You’ll just make more friends.” — Fukushima 311 Watchdogs
A woman holds a group photo and high school diploma taken in Fukushima before the evacuation. She sometimes looked at the photos at the beach when she was having a hard time. March 11, 2022 Serialization “At the End of the Tunnel: Trajectory of the Girl and Her Family” (1) On her last day of […]
Bullying, suicide attempts…11 years for a girl in Fukushima… Before evacuation, she was cheerful: “It’s OK. You’ll just make more friends.” — Fukushima 311 Watchdogs
«We forget and we consider ourselves superior… But we are after all a mere part of Creation.» – We all must revise our relationship with Nature and reorient our association with consumerism! — Barbara Crane Navarro
« I do not see a delegation for the Four Footed. I see no seat for the Eagles. We forget & we consider ourselves superior. But we are after all a mere part of Creation. We stand somewhere between the mountain & the Ant. » Chief Oren Lyons, Seneca Nation, in an address to the Non-Governmental […]
«We forget and we consider ourselves superior… But we are after all a mere part of Creation.» – We all must revise our relationship with Nature and reorient our association with consumerism! — Barbara Crane Navarro
No room at the ER — Beyond Nuclear International
Even one nuclear bomb would spell disaster for medical services’ capacity to cope
No room at the ER — Beyond Nuclear International
A fight for homeland — Beyond Nuclear International
Visual narrative of nuclear legacy is lived experience for Dene
A fight for homeland — Beyond Nuclear International
Cumbria Remembers Fukushima — RADIATION FREE LAKELAND
Yesterday was the 11th anniversary of the ongoing Fukushima disaster. Members of Radiation Free Lakeland met up with Kazuhiko Kobayashi in 2018 to show him the Sellafield area and he told us that there is money for climate research but not so much for research into the impacts of radiation on our food and health. […]
Cumbria Remembers Fukushima — RADIATION FREE LAKELAND
What we learned this week — The Earthbound Report
Just building all the renewable energy that already has planning permission would offset any loss from Russia’s oil and gas, according to analysis by Carbon Brief. So no need for fracking then. Greenpeace have a petition to the government on a related note, asking for insulation and energy efficiency measures to reduce our use of […]
What we learned this week — The Earthbound Report
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 