Antinuclear

“Desperate” Liberals urge Dutton to “stop this stupid nuclear palaver”

Jim Green, 18 March 2025, https://reneweconomy.com.au/desperate-liberals-urge-dutton-to-stop-this-stupid-nuclear-palaver/

The federal Coalition has gone silent about its plan to build seven nuclear power plants across Australia. But a new group called ‘Liberals Against Nuclear’ is frustrating the Coalition’s attempt to downplay its policy and wants the Coalition to ditch its nuclear policy before the election.

Announcing the group’s launch this morning, the Murdoch press reported:

“‘Desperate’ Liberal supporters have urged Peter Dutton to dump his $331bn nuclear promise, with fears the policy will drive voters to Teal and independent candidates in a tightly fought election.

“A coalition of voters, supporters and former officials will launch the new advocacy group, Liberals Against Nuclear on Tuesday through a series of ads set to be blasted on television, online platforms and billboards in targeted electorates.”

Spokesman and former Tasmanian Liberal director Andrew Gregson said:

“The people involved in this group are not doing it out of malice or anger but out of a desperation of sorts. They want to see the Liberals win government, and they are involved in a campaign against their own party. That’s not a comfortable place to be.”

Gregson added: 

“Nuclear power is the big road block preventing the Liberals getting to the Lodge. This is big government waste that betrays liberal values, splits the party, and hands Government back to Labor. It’s time for our party to dump nuclear. This policy contradicts core liberal principles by requiring tens of billions in government borrowing, swelling the bureaucracy, and imposing massive taxpayer-backed risk.

“As John Howard said: “For Liberals the role of government should be strategic and limited.” Yet this nuclear policy gives us bigger government, higher taxes to pay for it, more debt, and less freedom as the state takes over energy production.”

Referring to divisions within the Coalition about climate science and renewable energy, Gregson said that nuclear power is “a policy that fixes an internal problem but hangs a weight around the country’s neck for decades to come” and that “it’s clever politics but incredible bad policy.”

Advertising war chest

Liberals Against Nuclear has already amassed a “significant” war chest to fund its advertising campaign, Gregson said. The campaign launch includes television advertising, digital content, and billboards.

A Liberals Against Nuclear media release warns that the nuclear policy “is driving free market and middle ground voters directly to the Teals and other independents in must-win seats” and that “recent polling shows just 35% of Australians support nuclear energy, with support collapsing once voters understand the policy details.”

The Liberals Against Nuclear website makes the following statements:

“The current proposal to build nuclear power in Australia fundamentally contradicts core Liberal values of lower debt, smaller government, free markets, and less government intervention.”

“The private market has made clear they won’t invest in building Australian nuclear reactors and they won’t insure it. This market rejection speaks volumes.”

“Nuclear power has never been built anywhere in the world without massive government subsidies. As true fiscal conservatives, we cannot support such an economically unviable energy source, which is expected to cost 331 billion over 25 years. We cannot be a party of subsidies. Subsidies are a policy one would expect from socialists.”

“Nuclear energy will require a massive new government agency, massive regulation, adding unelected bureaucrats and tens of thousands of public servants to the government payroll.”

Security risks

The Liberals Against Nuclear website states:

“The recent attempted terror attack at Chernobyl, when a drone loaded with explosives was flown onto the site, illustrates that reactors are targets especially when waste is stored onsite as would occur here (exploded waste would render a radius of at least tens of kilometres uninhabitable for 100,000 years).

“An oped by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute pointed out the “Opposition’s nuclear policy would increase defence risk”, because centralising power generation makes us more vulnerable to attacks including from China. Other parties have sometimes chosen to make Australia less safe in order to pursue their ideologies.

““We are a party which puts being practical above ideology and that keeps our citizens safe and secure.”

The Australian Security Leaders Climate Group warned in a statement released in February that the Coalition’s plan to build nuclear reactors would leave Australia vulnerable to missile warfare and sabotage. 

Retired Admiral Chris Barrie, former Chief of the Australian Defence Force, said:

“Every nuclear power facility is a potential dirty bomb because rupture of containment facilities can cause devastating damage. Modern warfare is increasingly focused on missiles and uncrewed aerial systems, and with the proposed power stations all located within a 100 kilometres of the coast, they are a clear and accessible target.”

Cheryl Durrant, a former Department of Defence Director, said: 

“In the Ukraine-Russia war, both sides have given strategic priority to targeting their opponents’ energy systems, and Australia would be no different. So these nuclear facilities would necessitate expensive and complex missile defence systems as well as allocated cyber and counter-intelligence resources, making our security challenge more complex and expensive.”

Higher power bills and taxes

As of this morning, the Liberals Against Nuclear YouTube page had seven video advertisements. All of them refer to an estimated $665 increase in household power bills under the Coalition’s nuclear plan and express disbelief that the Dutton Coalition plans to massively increase power bills during a cost-of-living crisis. 

“They’ve got to stop this stupid nuclear palaver,” one of the advertisements states.

The $665 figure may come from a study by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis which found that household electricity bills could rise by $665 per year on average if nuclear energy were introduced in Australia. For a four-person household, the rise would be $972 per year.

A separate study by the Smart Energy Council study also found that Dutton’s nuclear reactors would add $665 per year to the average non-solar household’s power bill and that the rooftop solar systems of up to 12.5 million Australians would need to be shut off every day to allow nuclear to be shoe-horned into the system.

The most recent economic analysis was conducted by global consultancy firm Jacobs for the Clean Energy Council. It found that reliance on coal and gas in Australia while waiting for nuclear power would increase the average household bill by $449 per year plus an $877 increase for small businesses.

Most of the Liberals Against Nuclear advertisements quote Coalition MPs — current and former, federal and state — opposed to Dutton’s nuclear reactor plan.

One advertisement quotes former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull saying nuclear power is the most expensive form of electricity generation, then cites the $665 figure, and asks if the Coalition “is trying to lose”.

Another advertisement quotes state Liberal/LNP leaders opposed to nuclear power, in Queensland, WA, Victoria and SA.

Another advertisement quotes NSW Liberal leader Mark Speakman saying that nuclear power is a trojan horse for the coal industry.

Another advertisement quotes former federal Liberal minister Chrostopher Pyne saying the nuclear debate isn’t about what’s feasible or necessary and that it is about political positioning.

Another advertisement quotes former NSW Liberal Deputy Premier Matt Kean saying that nuclear power doesn’t stack up on practical or economic grounds.

Another advertisement cites the CSIRO saying that nuclear power is twice as expensive as alternatives.

Another advertisement cites Queensland LNP Senator Matt Canavan saying that nuclear fixes a political problem for the Coalition but “it ain’t the cheapest form of power”.

Suicide note

If the Liberals Against Nuclear groups wants more fodder for its advertisements, there’s plenty to choose from.

Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in 2022: “Right now, there’s a moratorium on nuclear power here in Australia and the Labor Party are totally opposed to it. I’m just not going to put Australia through the argument which doesn’t get us anywhere … and for the Labor Party to run around at the next election and get themselves elected on the basis of a scare campaign.”

Tony Barry, former deputy state director and strategist for the Victorian Liberal Party, describes the Coalition’s decision to make nuclear power the centrepiece of its energy and climate policy is “the longest suicide note in Australian political history”.

Former Liberal leader John Hewson says that Dutton may be promoting nuclear “on behalf of large fossil-fuel donors knowing nuclear power will end up being too expensive and take too long to implement, thereby extending Australia’s reliance on coal and natural gas”.

Liberal MP Bridget Archer says that nuclear power should be pursued only if coupled with a rapid surge in renewables and that nuclear power should not be used as an excuse to prolong fossil fuel reliance.

Peter Dutton said in 2022, while settling into his new job as opposition leader, that nuclear power is “not on the table” for policy consideration because he wants to reduce power prices, not increase them.

Malcolm Turnbull, in addition to noting that nuclear is the most expensive form of power, has also said that the “science denying” element in the Coalition is “crazy, and to some extent getting crazier”; that the nuclear policy is “bonkers”; that Peter Dutton is a “thug” who says “stupid things” about nuclear power; and that nuclear power’s only utility is “as another culture war issue for the right-wing angertainment ecosystem”.

An unnamed current Coalition MP says the nuclear policy is “madness on steroids”, another says the Liberal and National Party rooms are “in a panic” about the nuclear policy and “they don’t know what to do”, and another echoes Turnbull’s view that the nuclear policy is “bonkers”.

The Howard government tried to go quiet on its policy of promoting nuclear power in the 2007 election year and to paper over divisions within the Coalition — at least 22 Coalition candidates publicly expressed concern or outright opposition. The nuclear power policy was ditched immediately after the Coalition lost the November 2007 election.

Dr. Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and a member of the EnergyScience Coalition.

March 19, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Nuclear and related news – not just industry handouts

Some bits of good news –New Zealand launches largest-ever island rewilding to rescue 300+ species. Naturally Native-Water Vole Restoration. Merely Watching Scenes of Nature Can Reduce Pain, Says New StudyTOP STORIES

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Towards a Eurobomb: The Costs of Nuclear Sovereignty. Europe’s ‘nuclear umbrella’ risks catastrophic escalation.

14 years since Fukushima nuclear disaster: Greenpeace Japan statement. 

Nuclear power’s global stagnation. 

Poisoning the well – The toxic legacy of Cold War uranium mining in western New Mexico. 

The forever wars may be over, but Trump is no peacemaker.

Climate. ‘Global weirding’: climate whiplash hitting world’s biggest cities, study reveals.

AUSTRALIA.

• Australia’s Trump cards. 
• Greens leader Adam Bandt says Australia should walk away from AUKUS in wake of Trump’s tariffs.
• Coalition’s nuclear plan most expensive option for Australia, former US climate official says.
• “Nothing but broken promises”: ICAN Ambassador, Karina Lester calls out Australia’s inaction on the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. 
• More Australian nuclear news at https://antinuclear.net/2025/03/11/australian-nuclear-news-10-17-march/

NUCLEAR ITEMS.

SAFETY. ‘Nervous and rushed’: Massive Fukushima plant cleanup work involves high radiation and stress.

What if a Fukushima-sized nuclear accident happened in Australia? –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrScaM8ChXk US report discusses possibility of nuclear submarine accident, if subs supplied to Australia.

State Police to Hold Major Radiological Incident Exercise with International, Federal, State and Local Partners.

Incident: Human error leads to water spill at Finnish EPR

WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES.

• Labour’s arms exports to Israel exposed Labour allowed dozens of arms exports to Israel after weapons sanctions.
• How multi-billion nuclear weapons facility aims to overcome challenge of limited supply chain.
• Royal Navy: Powerful new nuclear submarines being built costing £41bn – when will they enter the fleet?
• Qatar calls for Israel’s nuclear facilities to be under IAEA supervision.
• The nuclear testing revival: Global fallout with deadly consequences. How many nuclear weapons does the United States have in 2025? – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vsNKk9vkIE.
• We’re #1 in Selling Weapons!
• Europe going nuclear would be a catastrophic mistake. Could Poland and Germany acquire nuclear bombs?- ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2025/03/15/1-b1-could-poland-and-germany-acquire-nuclear-bombs/ Poland’s president urges U.S. to move nuclear warheads to Polish territory. The Script of Anxiety: Poland’s Nuclear Weapons Fascination.
• FT reports. Movements across the world call for an end to all US military exercises on the Korean peninsula.
• Chinese nuclear weapons, 2025.
• An Unreliable America Means More Countries Want the Bomb.
• Canada to review the purchase of US-made F-35 fighter jets in light of Trump’s trade war.

March 18, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

27-year-old chemist discovers a process for recycling rare earths.

Gordon Edwards, 17 Mar 25 – The article copied below, translated by Google Translate, adds an optimistic note to the rise of renewables as the most affordable choice for rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Toxic materials are often used in the construction and operation of industrial infrastructure of many kinds. This includes renewable energy equipment such as wind, solar, geothermal and other renewables.

The so-called “rare earths” (also named “lanthanides”) are a group of 17 metals in the 
periodic table that have unusual properties that are ideal for use in electronic and electricity generating devices. Mining these metals is very dangerous for the workers and the environment. The metals themselves have a high chemical toxicity. But they are needed for renewable energy systems as well as many other electronic applications.

Note, however, that wind and solar do not create toxic waste. They simply make use of these naturally-occurring toxic materials that can, in principe, be recycled and used again and again. Recycling and reusing such toxic materials ought to be an essential built-in requirement of renewable energy systems.

Nuclear power, on the other hand, literally creates hundreds of highly toxic new elements that cannot be recycled or re-used for civilian purposes simply because they are too radioactive – meaning their atoms are unstable and will spontaneously disintegrate, giving off biologically damaging atomic radiation. A radioactive variety (“isotope”) of any given element is always much more toxic than the non-radioactive variety of the same element.

Even the finest stainless steal and zirconium-alloy structures used in the core of a nuclear reactor will have to be kept out of the environemnt of living things for thousands of years as radioactive waste. These originally non-radioactive metals have become intensely radioactuve. 

Such is not the case with materials used in wind and solar. No new toxic materials are created, and those toxics that are used can be recycled and reused many times.

Ironically, one of the reasons why rare earths are so dangerous to mine is because of the inevitable presence of radioactive elements – uranium, thorium and their decay products – leading to excessive exposure to radon gas and radioactive dust that can be very harmful over the long term. It turns out that rare earths have a strong geochemical affinity with uranium and thorium, the two principle primordial radionuclides on Earth.

P.S. 
One of the reasons why Donald Trump wants to acquire Greenland is because there is a mountain of rare earth ores near the Inuit community of Narsaq. Thanks to Nancy Covington and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Canada (IPPNWC) (then called Physicians for Global Survival) I was sent to Narsaq in 2016 to explain the radioactive dangers of mining that mountain, called Kvanefjeld in Danish or Kuannersuit in Greenlandic (the native Inuit language).

ETH Chemist Discovers Process for Recycling Rare Earths 

The mining of rare earths is environmentally harmful and controlled by China. Chemist Marie Perrin (27) has developed a method that could solve both problems.

“Why is the sky blue? How do clouds form?” Marie Perrin asked herself as a child. “Even then, I was very curious,” she recalls. Her curiosity not only ensured that the daughter of two scientists understood the world around her better with each passing year. It could also soon be a reason why this world is changing. The now 27-year-old and her team at ETH Zurich have developed a method for recycling rare earths.

Important Resource for the Energy Transition
Rare earths are 17 metals that are used in all modern devices: in batteries, smartphones and computers, in wind turbines and electric cars. “They’re all around us,” says Perrin, “but only one percent of all rare earths are recycled.” Recycling is important because the energy transition is requiring ever more rare earths. Their extraction is not only expensive but also highly harmful to the environment and often releases radioactivity.

There’s also a geopolitical problem looming over them: Around 70 percent of rare earths are mined in China. What this could mean for the rest of the world became clear in 2010, when a conflict arose between China and Japan. China informally stopped exports of rare earths to Japan. Prices rose by over 1,000 percent, and supply shortages arose around the world. “If you compare it to oil, the largest exporting countries have a market share of 30 to 40 percent,” explains Marie Perrin.

Lightbulbs made from ETH waste 
“We were lucky to have discovered this method,” recalls Perrin. Originally, her research had nothing to do with the recycling of rare earths. But she discovered that the molecules she was studying had the potential to do just that. The chemist devoted herself to her research: “I fished old energy-saving light bulbs out of the ETH recycling bins and experimented with them in the lab,” says Perrin. Until she succeeded in separating the rare earth europium from the light bulb.

Perrin compares the process to baking pizza: Imagine mixing a pinch of salt into pizza dough. How can you recover the salt that has now dispersed throughout the dough? You need something that can distinguish and separate the elements in the dough from those in the salt. 

In Marie Perrin’s case, this ingredient is called tetrathiometalate. “Using the known methods, this process had to be repeated several times,” explains Perrin. “This requires an enormous amount of resources.” With Perrin’s process, the rare earth europium can be separated from the other elements in a light bulb in a high degree of purity in a single step.

Initiative Required 
Perrin’s research team published their results in the journal Nature Communications, filed a patent, and was faced with the question: What next? “Either you sell the license to larger chemical companies or you develop the technology further in-house,” explains Perrin. “It was clear to me that I wanted to do it myself.” The risk of the process gathering dust in a drawer at a large company was too great for her – as was her curiosity to find out where the technology could lead her. 

Together with an old school friend and her doctoral supervisor, Marie Perrin founded the startup REEcover. The goal: to make the process scalable with light bulbs in a first step. In a second step, it will be expanded to include other of the 16 remaining rare earths. “I’m a researcher and had no entrepreneurial experience,” says the Frenchwoman. But her curiosity drives her forward here too: “There’s something new every day, which is fun.

“A Promising Future“
Our timing is good,” Perrin is aware. The European Union passed a law on critical raw materials in 2024. One of the goals of the law is to reduce dependence on rare earths from China. This is another reason why REEcover is considered one of the most promising startups at ETH.

March 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Silent vigil against nuclear 

By Castlemaine Mail, March 15, 2025

A silent vigil was held on the steps of Castlemaine’s historic Market Building on Tuesday afternoon was part of the ‘National Day of Action against Nuclear Power’ held across Australia.
The day … (Subscribers only)  https://castlemainemail.com.au/latest-news/2025/03/15/silent-vigil-against-nuclear/

March 16, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Poisoning the well – The toxic legacy of Cold War uranium mining in western New Mexico

Studies have shown that chronic exposure to uranium through drinking water can cause kidney damage and cardiovascular disease. When inhaled, uranium can lead to lung cancer and pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring of the lung tissue. Studies of uranium miners associate cumulative exposure to radon with higher rates of death by lung cancer.

Proving that one’s illness originated as a result of living near a mine or mill, as opposed to actually working in it, is nearly impossible, given that symptoms can take years to manifest — a lack of clear causation that is ultimately advantageous to polluters.

Near the western New Mexico town of Grants, the toxic legacy of Cold War uranium mining and milling has shattered lives, destroyed homes and created a contamination threat to the last clean source of groundwater for an entire region

SEARCHLIGHT NEW MEXICO, by Alicia Inez Guzmán, March 13, 2025 [ excellent pictures and maps]

Driving along a stretch of New Mexico Highway 605, just north of the tiny Village of Milan, it’s easy to imagine that this area has always been no-man’s-land. Little appears in the distance except for a smattering of homes and trees peppered by expanses of bone-dry scrub brush. But a hard second look reveals something else — vestiges of a mass departure. Sidewalks lead to nowhere, a dog house sits in the middle of a field next to a mound of cinder blocks, phone lines crisscross empty stretches of land and deserted propane tanks and mailboxes sit perched in front of nothing. Around the bend on one unpaved side road, a neighborhood watch sign stands sentinel where a neighborhood no longer exists…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

This home site was once part of a cluster of five rural subdivisions interspersed with rich farm and ranchland. The Homestake Mining Company — famously known for gold mining in the Black Hills of South Dakota — took up residence here in 1958, to mill uranium. From that year until 1990, millions of tons of ore were prised from nearby mines and processed at Homestake, where the ore was ground into fine particles and leached with a solution that coaxed out pure uranium oxide, often called “yellowcake.” That uranium was then shipped off to help make America’s Cold War fleet of nuclear weapons or to power nuclear reactors. The leftover slurry was piped into two unlined earthen pits, the largest the size of 50 football fields and filled with over 21 million tons of uranium mill tailings.

Over time, the uranium tailings decayed into radon gas; meanwhile, radioactive contaminants seeped into four of the region’s aquifers. Residents compiled a list of neighbors who died of cancer — they called it the Death Map. In 2014, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) predicted that the probability of developing cancer was notably higher for residents who lived closest to the mill, especially if they drank the water.

In the intervening decades, Homestake attempted to hold its remaining contamination at bay rather than offer a long-term solution. That changed in 2020, when the company declared that a full cleanup of the groundwater was not feasible and instead embarked on a mass buyout and demolition of homes inside the rural subdivisions and beyond, Boomer and Billiman’s included. Homestake’s goal, ultimately, is to hand over 6,100 acres of land — almost twice the size of nearby Milan — to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as part of a special federal program that takes over shuttered nuclear outfits when industry walks away. The deadline is 2035. And if this site is anything like the majority of the DOE’s other sites, the land will be rendered inaccessible to the public, with the company’s guarantee that toxins will stay inside the massive contamination zone boundary for a thousand years.

“Talk about the myth of containment,” says Christine Lowery, a commissioner in Cibola County. “The myth of reclamation as well,” she adds. For Lowery, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna who lives in Paguate, one of its six villages — itself blighted by the Jackpile-Paguate Uranium Mine, one of the world’s largest open pit uranium mines — the subtext is clear. “What they should be saying is, ‘We’ve contaminated everything we can, and there’s no way we can fix it.’”

In fact, the conditions necessary for contaminants to infiltrate a fifth aquifer in a single generation — not a thousand years — could already be in the making. The aquifer in question is the San Andres-Glorieta, so ancient that its limestone was forged from the same material as seashells before the era of the dinosaurs. It’s also the last clean source of groundwater for Milan, the county seat of Grants, many private well owners and the Pueblo of Laguna, as well as the Pueblo of Acoma, one of the longest continually inhabited communities in the United States.

According to regulators, the San Andres-Glorieta still meets standards for groundwater that is safe to use and drink. According to Homestake’s own reports, however, at least three uranium plumes are converging toward what Ann Maest, an aqueous geochemist with Buka Environmental, a Colorado-based firm, calls “a bull’s-eye of radioactive contamination.” The potential target? A geological formation called a subcrop. Here, approximately 100 feet below the surface of the earth and three miles southwest of the Homestake site, this subcrop directly connects the San Andres-Glorieta with an overlying aquifer long known to transport contamination from two uranium mills including Homestake. In 2022, the company commissioned an independent firm to study the geological feature. But according to a memo sent to state and federal regulators and written by Maest the following year, the findings were “light on interpretation” and evaded answering the most important question of all: Have those contaminants reached the San Andres-Glorieta?………………………

Gauging the extent of groundwater plumes is notoriously difficult. Topography and geology shape how groundwater moves, and sampling can underestimate the full range of a plume, leaving gaps in the data, whether that’s inadvertent or intentional. A 2022 ProPublica investigation found that regulators had been lax in their oversight of the Homestake mill, its toxic footprint and the uranium industry as a whole. Over time, a dizzying array of state and federal agencies have each overseen a different aspect of the site’s reclamation; in the past, those agencies haven’t even agreed on what that reclamation should look like.

Now, as uranium mining undergoes a national revival under initiatives that favor carbon-free nuclear energy, waste from the previous Cold War era of mining and milling endures. Homestake’s remediation — which has gone on for 49 years — exemplifies this legacy. During that time, company reports say, its collection wells have pumped out billions of gallons of contaminated water. Nearly one million pounds of uranium have been removed from the groundwater, too. Bingham says this represents 85 percent of the total uranium that was released into the environment. That’s in addition to the removal of tens of thousands of pounds of selenium and over a million pounds of molybdenum.

The company has attempted to keep pollutants that have seeped into groundwater from migrating farther away from the source. But this so-called hydraulic barrier has only addressed the symptoms of the contamination, not the cause: the tailings piles, which the company declined to relocate into a lined repository nearby. That means that some groundwater contamination continues to spread beyond Homestake’s site. The hydraulic barrier has another drawback — it has used “a massive amount of freshwater from the San Andres-Glorieta aquifer to operate,” says Laura Watchempino, a member of the Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment (MASE), a grassroots network of uranium-impacted communities working collectively to address the legacy of mining and milling on the health and environment of future generations. Watchempino is a former lawyer who also worked as a water quality specialist for the Pueblo of Acoma………………………………………………………………………………..

………………………………………………………………….Carver estimates that he is one of around 30 holdouts left in the five subdivisions; four of the families live in his own, Murray Acres. But few others have spent so much time fighting to hold the company accountable. “I’m 85 and it all started when I was 40,” he says.

In 1983, he was one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against the company, which argued, among other claims, that contamination of the well water had “completely destroyed the market value of the plaintiffs’ properties.” As part of the settlement, the company made small cash payments to residents and hooked them up to the municipal water system, which drew from the last clean source of water in the region, the San Andres-Glorieta. That year, the mill was designated a Superfund site, and in 1987 the company entered into a consent order with the EPA to analyze radon levels in residents’ homes, the product of uranium decaying from the tailings piles.

The mill closed in 1990, less than a decade after the uranium industry went bust. Records from the county assessor’s office show that Homestake quietly began buying a handful of homes in adjacent neighborhoods as early as 1996. (In 2001, Homestake Mining merged with the Canadian juggernaut, Barrick Gold, one of the world’s largest gold mining companies.)

“Every time someone dies or decides to move away, Homestake-Barrick Gold buys the property at a greatly reduced cost, which they can do because their ineffective groundwater remediation has devalued property many of us worked lifetimes to build,” Candace Head-Dylla, a former resident, said in a 2017 letter to the NRC.

In 2020, the company argued that it was no longer technically practical to clean up the groundwater to match its pre-mill days, Bingham wrote. So began the tangled regulatory process of applying for a less-stringent cleanup standard through the NR……………………………………

Searchlight asked the DOE for comment, but the agency declined. According to Samah Shaiq, a former DOE spokesperson, the agency is not yet responsible for the site.

The NRC denied Homestake’s application for the lower standard — the basis of the buyout — but the company remains steadfast in its desire to walk away. As part of those plans, Homestake has already scooped up approximately 455 of the estimated 523 properties that sit inside its proposed boundary, an expanse that’s nearly as large as the most contaminated area of the Rocky Flats Plant, another of the more than 100 sites under the DOE’s perpetual care, where thousands of plutonium bomb cores for the nation’s nuclear arsenal were fabricated between 1952 and 1989. 

Much of Milan, along with huge swaths of land west and north, including some five miles of Highway 605, sit within this massive pie-shaped chunk, a proposed boundary that is based on the company’s groundwater modeling data. Inside are public water and electric lines, groundwater wells, septic systems and other, smaller roads, the fate of which have yet to be determined. Milan Elementary School sits only a mile away from the boundary’s southernmost rim.

When Searchlight asked how fast those plumes are migrating, drawing on a Homestake-produced simulation that’s meant to predict how contaminants move in groundwater aquifers at the site, the EPA declined to comment, because the simulation was still in draft form.

Regulators, meanwhile, are plodding through the process of determining what final act of remediation they should require before allowing Homestake to hand off the site to the DOE. But prospects for that remedy depend on whether and when the company will receive a lower cleanup threshold. If a lower standard is settled on, that remedy, whatever it may be, will fall radically short of truly protecting groundwater, advocates believe. Adding to the uncertainty is a recent announcement that the Trump administration intends to cut personnel at the EPA by up to 65 percent.

The future of the site seems all but predetermined: a wasteland in the truest sense, and a national sacrifice zone. The buyout, a prologue to this future, has fractured residents’ lives in the present. Homestake subjected sellers to nondisclosure agreements — “standard business practice,” in Bingham’s words — but to some in the community, a mechanism for silencing dissent……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“We’ve been poisoned to the gills”

The Grants Mining District stretches from the Pueblo of Laguna to Gallup, across almost 100 miles of western New Mexico’s red bluffs. Uranium here and throughout the world is ancient even by cosmic standards………………………………………………………

…………………………..in time, more than 150 mines would be developed across this district and the greater San Mateo Creek Basin, and, today, there are a total of 261 former uranium mines statewide, making New Mexico the fourth-largest producer of uranium globally, behind East Germany, the Athabasca Basin and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which supplied much of the uranium for the Manhattan Project. 

But with the uranium boom came a wave of devastation across the greater Southwest, including in Indigenous communities like the Pueblo of Laguna, as well as the Navajo Nation, where there are more than 500 abandoned uranium mines. Workers often lived near mines and mills and would bring yellowcake home on their clothes, exposing their families to harmful radioactive dust; water sources, meanwhile, have shown “elevated levels of radiation,” according to the EPA. 

In the Church Rock Chapter of the Navajo Nation, a tailings dam breached on an early July morning in 1979, sending contaminated water into the Rio Puerco. Today, it constitutes the largest release of nuclear materials in the U.S. worse even than the meltdown at Three Mile Island. 

Church Rock was among the eight mills that processed uranium ore in New Mexico. Others include Homestake and, in its immediate vicinity, Bluewater  and two mills at Ambrosia Lake. Workers flocked here from across the state and nation during the booming 1960s and 1970s, with Homestake alone employing 1,500 people at its peak.

After graduating from high school and intermittently through his college years, Carver worked stints at all four of those mills before opening his own business, Carver Oil. At Homestake, he worked at a site where yellowcake was processed and packaged into barrels to go to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where it would be enriched for use in nuclear weapons. He also worked in the tailings piles.

Carver now receives benefits for spots on his lungs from the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), a program he qualified for because of his time working in the mills. Whether his illness was compounded by living near the mill tailings and by breathing excess radon, or by drinking the water — at least until the company connected residents to a clean source — is unknown. Studies have shown that chronic exposure to uranium through drinking water can cause kidney damage and cardiovascular disease. When inhaled, uranium can lead to lung cancer and pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring of the lung tissue. Studies of uranium miners associate cumulative exposure to radon with higher rates of death by lung cancer.

Maggie Billiman, who’s from the Sawmill Chapter of the Navajo Nation, has advocated for RECA to cover people in New Mexico and parts of Arizona who lived downwind of atmospheric nuclear tests or who worked in mines after 1971, the current cutoff date. Last fall, she traveled with other Indigenous activists to Washington, D.C., as part of her efforts to expand RECA after struggling with various undiagnosed illnesses for years; several painful cysts that have yet to be biopsied were recently found on her liver and pancreas. Many doctor visits later, she’s still pursuing a clear diagnosis and treatment plan. 

But whether or how one gets sick can depend on biological sex, age when exposed and the pathway a certain type of radioactive particle takes to enter the body. Proving that one’s illness originated as a result of living near a mine or mill, as opposed to actually working in it, is nearly impossible, given that symptoms can take years to manifest — a lack of clear causation that is ultimately advantageous to polluters.

Groundwater contamination from uranium mining was detected as early as 1961. Even before that, the federal government was aware that New Mexico’s waterways were already showing signs of radioactive contamination from the burgeoning uranium extraction industry. It would take another 15 years for Homestake to begin a convoluted, if limited, remediation effort: A series of collection wells would pull contaminated water out and treat it, then pump that water, along with clean water sourced from the San Andres-Glorieta, back into the subsurface.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. It’s hard to visualize such an underground fortification — on maps, it looks like a cashew-shaped moat that wraps around the west and south sides of the large tailings pile — or the timescale needed for its maintenance. In 1982, Homestake said it would “require operation for a considerable amount of time.” In response, NMED declared that Homestake had to commit to operating the system until it “can be demonstrated that contaminants in the groundwater will not exceed New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission standards off Homestake’s property in the foreseeable future.” 

Advocates believe that means forever. If barrier maintenance is stopped, experts contend that highly contaminated groundwater will migrate southward and downward and eventually make its way to the subcrop, an entry point into the San Andres-Glorieta, municipal supply wells for Milan and Grants and eventually the Río San José. “This signals a bleak future for the stream system and for future generations,” Laura Watchempino warns. 

Bluewater’s plume is coming from the northwest; Homestake’s plumes from the northeast. Models show that all are converging, like a Venn diagram, in a location where groundwater flows toward the subcrop. On one side, the hydraulic barrier is warding off some of that pollution, but when it stops operation completely, those contaminants will very likely infiltrate the San Andres-Glorieta, according to NMED. 

In the past, it’s been difficult to discern what contaminants belong to what polluter, especially when they mingle, as is the case here. But in 2019, the USGS published the findings of a study that “fingerprinted” such mine and mill contaminants to show their point of origin……………………….

…………………………………….. “We’ve been poisoned to the gills,” says Christine Lowery, the Cibola county commissioner. “The question is: How do we recover and live with contamination?”

Alicia Inez Guzmán

alicia@searchlightnm.org

Raised in the northern New Mexican village of Truchas, Alicia Inez Guzmán has written about histories of place, identity and land use in New Mexico. She brings this knowledge to her current role at Searchlight, where she focuses on nuclear issues and the impacts of the nuclear industry. The former senior editor of New Mexico Magazine, Alicia holds a Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester in New York. More by Alicia Inez Guzmán  https://searchlightnm.org/new-mexico-cold-war-uranium-mining-toxic-legacy-threat-homes-underground-aquifers/?utm_source=Searchlight+New+Mexico&utm_campaign=d2d0fd81fc-3%2F13%2F2025+%E2%80%93+Poisoning+the+well&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8e05fb0467-d2d0fd81fc-395610620&mc_cid=d2d0fd81fc&mc_eid=a70296a261

March 14, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

New tool to cut through energy debate as price hike prompts new questions about nuclear

March 13, 2025 AIMN Editorial, Australians for Affordable Energy https://theaimn.net/new-tool-to-cut-through-energy-debate-as-price-hike-prompts-new-questions-about-nuclear/

Amid today’s news of energy bill spikes, Australians have a new tool to calculate how their bills would fare with a nuclear generation option.

It’s been confirmed that unreliable coal-fired electricity plants are causing 2.5-8.9 per cent energy bill increases. That has raised concerns about the Coalition’s nuclear proposal, which would keep households vulnerable to coal price spikes for many years, Australians for Affordable Energy (AFAE) warned today.

With energy costs shaping up as a key election issue, AFAE has launched a free calculator, available at afae.net.au/calculator, which provides a real-world cost estimate for households based on the proposed nuclear energy plan.

The calculator extrapolates from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) analysis to provide Australians with a clear picture of nuclear energy costs based on international examples.

The tool allows users to input their current electricity costs and household size – or use state averages if unsure – to see potential changes to their bills under various nuclear scenarios and help them make an informed decision.

“Australians are confused about the costs and timelines of building seven nuclear reactors—one of the largest government projects ever proposed. There’s widespread uncertainty in the energy debate, and our goal is to clarify exactly what nuclear power could mean for household bills, good or bad,” said AFAE spokesperson Jo Dodds.

“Cost of living will dominate the upcoming election, and Australians deserve clear answers. Our calculator helps Australians see firsthand whether nuclear energy genuinely stacks up as an affordable option.”

The Australian Energy Regulator confirmed today that power prices are predicted to go up by up to 8.9% per cent from July, forcing families and businesses already struggling with cost-of-living pressures to pay even more for essential electricity.

The price hike directly results from continued reliance on ageing coal-fired power stations. Gas prices also contribute to rising energy costs due to ongoing international volatility, adding uncertainty and pressure to wholesale electricity prices.

“Today’s announcement is another blow to households already struggling. Australians are exhausted as bills keep rising with no clear solutions in sight. Australians for Affordable Energy wants to help everyone understand what these price hikes really mean as we approach the federal election. Australians deserve better than constant uncertainty and higher costs.

“Coal is like a beloved old, beat-up car we keep throwing money at just to keep it running. Nuclear is increasingly becoming something we don’t need and can’t afford. Both drive costs higher without offering practical, affordable solutions. Australians deserve reliable, affordable electricity – not crumbling coal plants or overpriced nuclear projects decades away.”

Australians for Affordable Energy (AFAE) is dedicated to ensuring energy policies prioritise affordability and sustainability for all Australians.

March 13, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment