November 19 Energy News — geoharvey
Opinion: ¶ “New York Must Act On Clean Trucks” • The future of clean, zero-emission trucks is now in the hands of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation. The must decide whether to adopt the Advanced Clean Truck rule. We believe the answer is clear: It is imperative that the Department adopt the rule […]
November 19 Energy News — geoharvey
Victoria solar rebate delivers an extra 1GW of rooftop installations — RenewEconomy
Victorian government’s Solar Homes program notches up new milestone, with the rooftop solar capacity installed under the scheme passing 1 gigawatt. The post Victoria solar rebate delivers an extra 1GW of rooftop installations appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Victoria solar rebate delivers an extra 1GW of rooftop installations — RenewEconomy
Temperature of Fukushima Daiichi’s “frozen earth wall” rises again – TEPCO: “Function is being maintained — Fukushima 311 Watchdogs
Nov. 16As a measure to reduce the amount of contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, the temperature in the ground has been rising in a part of the “frozen soil wall” that freezes the ground around the buildings to prevent the inflow of underground water.Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has stated that […]
Temperature of Fukushima Daiichi’s “frozen earth wall” rises again – TEPCO: “Function is being maintained — Fukushima 311 Watchdogs
Why Morrison and Taylor won’t “meet and beat” their 2030 emissions target — RenewEconomy
New analysis finds no evidence Australia will achieve a “projected” 35 per cent cut in emissions by 2030, and even the official Paris targets are in doubt. The post Why Morrison and Taylor won’t “meet and beat” their 2030 emissions target appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Why Morrison and Taylor won’t “meet and beat” their 2030 emissions target — RenewEconomy
South Australia takes another big leap towards 100 per cent wind and solar — RenewEconomy
South Australia knocks down another barrier to 100 pct renewables as fossil fuel generation hits record low, and wind output a record high. The post South Australia takes another big leap towards 100 per cent wind and solar appeared first on RenewEconomy.
South Australia takes another big leap towards 100 per cent wind and solar — RenewEconomy
The growing unsolved problem of nuclear waste – becoming desperate in Sweden
Five Swedish nuclear reactors may need to close between 2024 and 2028, simply because a temporary site for storing spent fuel will soon be full.
And the Swedish government has yet to approve a final waste repository.
The timetable is that the Forsmark 4 reactor risks closure in 2024, followed in 2025 by Forsmark 3, Ringhals 3 and 4 and finally Forsmark 1 in 2028. Ringhals is owned by a consortium comprising Vattenfall and Uniper, while Forsmark is owned by the same two companies plus Fortum and Skelleftea Kraft.
A Swedish government decision on used nuclear fuel storage must by law be made no later than September 30 this year, so as to avoid exceeding the official permit at the interim storage site at Oskarshamn.
Precisely where nuclear waste is to be stored long-term remains a dilemma which effectively faces every single government that permits nuclear power. And the more such plants are built, the more the problem grows.
Electrical Review 18th Nov 2021
Safety risks of Bill Gates’ Natrium nuclear reactor
The use of liquid sodium has many problems. It’s a very volatile material that can catch fire if it’s exposed to air or water,” Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety with the Union of Concerned Scientists science advocacy nonprofit, told Fortune on Tuesday.
“Honestly I don’t understand the motivation… There are some people who are just strong advocates for it and they’ve sort of won the day here by convincing Bill Gates that this is a good technology to pursue.”
Independent 17th Nov 2021
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/bill-gates-nuclear-reactor-wyoming-b1959777.html
France has multiple nuclear problems – costs, wastes, safety and more …..
Cost, waste management and safety: eight questions raised by the announced
return of nuclear power in France. Emmanuel Macron said he wanted new
reactors, in the name of France’s energy independence and climate
preservation. But where is the sector and what does this choice imply?
Le Monde 18th Nov 2021
Electricity production choices: anticipate and control technological,
technical and financial risks.
Cour des Comptes 18th Nov 2021
Nuclear revival: the Court of Auditors highlights many obstacles.
Reporterre 18th Nov 2021
https://reporterre.net/Relance-du-nucleaire-la-Cour-des-comptes-pointe-de-nombreux-obstacles
Finland’s nuclear power project collapsing – unprofitable and unnecessary
Doubts about nuclear power plant construction in Finland. The planned Hanhikivi nuclear power plant could be on the verge of collapse.
It is unclear whether there will be any need for the plant’s electricity at all.
The costs are running away, the schedule for the start of construction and commissioning has been revised and postponed several times. The planning documents are so inadequate that the project is not yet ready for approval even after a six-year approval process.
And most of the independent analyzes assume that the project can neither become profitable nor that
there is even a need for what is to be produced here. It recently revealed that there is also a huge funding gap, and now the military is raising concerns about national security.
Taz 18th Nov 2021
Use Less Stuff Day-Thursday November 18th
We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy.Richard Foster
Use Less Stuff Day It seems like every day that passes results in us accumulating more and more useless detritus in our lives. The newest tech toys, the newest kitchen gadgets, the newest whatever, all got to be in our hands and there for us to use.
Worse, we tend to use a lot of disposable containers and paper towels and just…well… stuff. All of this adds up on the environment and the world we live in, and Use Less Stuff Day encourages us to take a critical look at these behaviors and do what we can to cut back.
History of Use Less Stuff Day
Use Less Stuff Day was established as part of a campaign working to save the environment, and to save the world. Of course, what really needs to be understood is that we’re not saving the world, we’re saving ourselves. The Earth as it sits will spin on its merry way no matter what we do to it, and life on it will just adapt to the new environment we created.
Every year we use literal tons of plastic bottles, we have microbeads from our shampoo and facial scrubs that find their way down to the ocean, we burn our way through massive amounts of resources as we continue to upgrade what we own and throw away last season’s model.
Organizations like Greenpeace have jumped on board to try to encourage us to work to save ourselves, from ourselves, and one of the best ways to handle it is by controlling our consumption of resources.
How to celebrate Use Less Stuff Day
Have you been using plastic bottled water? Get a filter for your tap and bottle it yourself in glass bottles instead. Do you usually stop and get a coffee in the mornings in a disposable cup? Brew yourself a pot at home instead and save some trees.
Check your shampoo and facial cleanser and make sure it doesn’t contain any plastic microbeads, as these wash down to the ocean and build up in massive volumes, and for Pete’s sake grab yourself a bag from home and use it at the grocery instead of using the ones they provide. That’s what Use Less Stuff Day is all about!
Australian Parliament should urgently review the potentially dangerous AUKUS deal
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Australian Federal Parliament Should Urgently Review the Potentially Dangerous AUKUS Deal https://worldbeyondwar.org/australian-federal-parliament-should-urgently-review-the-potentially-dangerous-aukus-deal/
By Australians for War Powers Reform, November 17, 2021
On September 15 2021, with no public consultation, Australia entered into a trilateral security arrangement with Britain and the United States, known as the AUKUS Partnership. This is expected to become a Treaty in 2022.
At short notice, Australia cancelled its contract with France to purchase and build 12 submarines on 16 September 2021 and replaced it with an arrangement to buy eight nuclear submarines from either Britain or the United States or both. The first of these submarines is unlikely to be available until 2040 at the earliest, with major uncertainties in relation to cost, delivery schedule and the ability of Australia to support such a capability.
Australians for War Powers Reform sees the public announcement of AUKUS as a smokescreen for other undertakings between Australia and the United States, the details of which are vague but which have major implications for Australia’s security and Independence.
Australia said the United States had requested increased use of Australian defence facilities. The US would like to base more bomber and escort aircraft in the north of Australia, presumably at Tindale. The US wants to increase the number of marines deployed in Darwin, which would see numbers rise to around 6,000. The US wants greater home porting of its vessels in Darwin and Fremantle, including nuclear-powered and armed submarines.
Pine Gap is in the process of significantly expanding its listening and war directing capabilities.
Acquiescing to these requests or demands considerably undermines Australian sovereignty.
The US is likely to want oversight, amounting to control, of northern air space and shipping lanes.
If the US deploys Cold War tactics against China, for that is what this military build-up is all about, it is likely to conduct aggressive flight missions up to the edge of Chinese air space with nuclear armed bombers, just as it did against the USSR. The US will patrol shipping lanes with greater frequency and intensity, knowing it has secure home bases only a short distance away, protected by surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles which are soon to be installed.
Any one of these flights or naval patrols could trigger a warlike response directed against Australian and US defence facilities and other assets of strategic value, such as oil, fresh water and infrastructure, or a cyber-attack on Australian communications and infrastructure.
Australia could be at war before most Australian politicians are aware of what is happening. In such an event, Parliament will have no say on going to war nor on the conduct of hostilities. Australia will be on a war footing as soon as these arrangements are in place.
AUKUS will be detrimental to national security. The ADF will lose its capacity to act independently.
Australians for War Power Reform believes these arrangements should not come into force, and that AUKUS should not become a Treaty.
We deplore the lack of consultation with neighbours, friends and allies, particularly relating to the storage and home porting of nuclear weapons and other US arms, ammunition and materiel.
We deplore the hostile profile adopted against our recent friend and major trading partner China.
We deplore the activities of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), funded by foreign arms manufacturers and the US State Department, in blind-siding the Australian people with its advocacy for such a deleterious outcome.
Morrison’s tactless belligerence towards China, while USA moves to mend relationship to China
Morrison didn’t mention China – he didn’t have to, https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/morrison-didn-t-mention-china-he-didn-t-have-to-20211117-p599t4
Scott Morrison is selling the broader and immediate technology benefits of the AUKUS deal as he campaigns on national security.Jennifer HewettColumnist he Morrison government’s blueprint for critical technologies is supposed to demonstrate the immediate benefits of much broader research and technology exchange as a result of the AUKUS deal on nuclear submarines.
After all, it’s not just France’s Emmanuel Macron expressing savage criticism about the “fantasy” of the decades-long timetable for Australia’s new submarine strategy to be realised.
So the Prime Minister wants to sell the national security significance of advanced technology co-operation with allies in protecting Australia from urgent, increasing threats in the Indo-Pacific region, including cyber attack.
A first step is $70 million for a quantum commercialisation hub to co-ordinate industry and research in quantum computing and partner with equivalent bodies in “like-minded countries”, starting with a joint co-operation agreement with the US.
“Our trilateral efforts in AUKUS will enhance our joint capabilities and interoperability with an initial focus on cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and additional undersea capabilities,” Morrison told the inaugural Sydney Dialogue.
Even though he didn’t specifically name China, Morrison’s primary target might as well have had blinking red lights around it. It wasn’t just that the government partnered for the dialogue with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, regularly condemned by Beijing for overt antagonism towards China.
Morrison’s repeated references to the importance of trust, shared values and like-minded countries are all supposed to buttress the image of an Australian government in lockstep with other leading democracies against aggression and interference from governments that don’t “see technology the same way”.
“To state the obvious, AUKUS is about much more than nuclear submarines,” he said.
“The simple fact is that nations at the leading edge of technology have greater economic, political and military power. And, in turn, greater capacity to influence the norms and values that will shape technological development in the years to come.”
But the timing of Morrison’s address, right after US President Joe Biden held his virtual summit with China’s Xi Jinping, is an awkward reminder of Australia’s uniquely isolated status in China’s diplomatic deep freeze.
Even the government’s relatively modest $111 million “down payment” on quantum computing as one of nine priority critical technologies demonstrates the limits of Australia’s attempts to harness revolutionary global trends in technology as well as in geopolitics.
China’s leadership is clearly willing to punish Australia’s supposed transgressions with punitive trade measures and a refusal to engage indefinitely. Beijing’s blanket attitude will not soften and may yet harden, especially given the propensity of various government ministers to emphasise Australia’s determination to confront China.
US-China relationship reset
Beijing certainly paid furious attention to recent comments by Defence Minister Peter Dutton, for example, that it would be “inconceivable” for Australia not to support the US in defending Taiwan if the US chose to take that action. So much for the attempt at maintaining deliberate diplomatic nuance with a long-term policy of “strategic ambiguity” on this sensitive topic.
It will become yet another marker making it hard for Australia to retreat on its rhetoric and easy for China to berate with its own. While it is certainly China under Xi that has changed most – and made no friends in the region by doing so – Australia’s challenges to China’s approach can never add up to an argument between economic and power equals.
That’s why most other governments are more cautious in their wording unless their borders or direct interests are threatened.
And now the Biden administration is also keen to at least partially reset its relationship with China after the open hostility of the past few years.
That is despite continuing US ire over China’s behaviour translating into rare bipartisanship in Congress about the need to aggressively counter China as a military and economic threat.
Despite his confidence in the West’s steady decline and China’s inevitable ascendance, Xi also wants to improve the connection with the US.
Unlike its rejection of Australia, China can’t afford to ignore the potential moves and countermoves of another great power. With the erratic Donald Trump no longer in office and Xi seemingly in office for as long as he wants, talks have become more feasible.
The US President declared it to be the responsibility of both leaders to “ensure that the competition between our two countries does not veer into conflict, whether intended or unintended”.
The most obvious flashpoint is Taiwan with the virtual summit not producing any breakthroughs or much evidence of the “commonsense guardrails” that Biden had suggested could help manage tensions.
But beneath the litany of grievances reiterated by both leaders on a range of issues, the three-and-a-half-hour meeting demonstrated a desire to keep lines of communication open and encourage potential co-operation in discreet areas of mutual interest.
That was evident in their agreement on climate change – however vaguely worded – that was unexpectedly announced in Glasgow. After the summit, the two sides have also tentatively agreed to explore the possibility of arms control talks – spurred by China’s rapid acceleration of its nuclear weapons capability.
In contrast to the treatment of Australian journalists, there is also an apparent easing of current restrictions on journalists following China’s expulsion of some US reporters during the Trump Administration.
How much all this will alter the substance as well as the tone of the strategic rivalry and disputes between two great powers asserting themselves in the Indo-Pacific is even less clear.
But for all the talk of trusted partners, the importance of alliances of democracies and the US not “leaving Australia on the field” in terms of China’s economic coercion, the Biden administration will be heavily focused on its own national interest in dealing with China.
Caveat emptor.
”.
Taylor concedes key government policy was never intended to cut emissions — RenewEconomy
Taylor rules out strengthening the Safeguard Mechanism, raising fresh questions around how the Morrison government intends to get to zero net emissions. The post Taylor concedes key government policy was never intended to cut emissions appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Taylor concedes key government policy was never intended to cut emissions — RenewEconomy
Queensland’s biggest coal export terminal goes 100 pct renewable, with certificates — RenewEconomy
Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal inks deal with CleanCo to offset 100% of its electricity consumption with the purchase of renewable energy certificates. The post Queensland’s biggest coal export terminal goes 100 pct renewable, with certificates appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Queensland’s biggest coal export terminal goes 100 pct renewable, with certificates — RenewEconomy
Queensland outlines plans for 3GW of new renewables, but it’s not nearly enough — RenewEconomy
Early feedback on framework for proposed 3.3GW first-stage build-out of Queensland’s renewable energy zones is that it is too little, and too slow. The post Queensland outlines plans for 3GW of new renewables, but it’s not nearly enough appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Queensland outlines plans for 3GW of new renewables, but it’s not nearly enough — RenewEconomy
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 