Solar, storage to take over from Ranger uranium mine
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Solar, storage to take over from Australian uranium mine https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/02/17/solar-storage-to-take-over-from-australian-uranium-mine/https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/02/17/solar-storage-to-take-over-from-australian-uranium-mine/https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/02/17/solar-storage-to-take-over-from-australian-uranium-mine/
The Ranger Uranium Mine ceased production in Australia’s Kakadu National Park in January, following years of financial losses. Now, as part of a multimillion dollar rejuvenation of the park, there are plans to develop a solar and battery storage hybrid project near the town of Jabiru. FEBRUARY 17, 2021 BLAKE MATICH From pv magazine Australia Distributed energy producer EDL will build, own and operate a hybrid microgrid in the remote mining town of Jabiru, in Australia’s Northern Territory. Working with the Northern Territory government, EDL’s Jabiru Hybrid Renewable Project will help the community transition from its recent history as a uranium mining town to a new future as a tourist destination in the heart of the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park. Jabiru is held in native title by the Mirarr people. The town, as it is recognized today, has only existed since 1982, when it was established as a living community for the nearby Ranger Uranium Mine. The project, which integrates 3.9 MW of solar generation and a 3 MW/5 MWh battery with 4.5 MW of diesel generation, is in line with broader efforts to rejuvenate Kakadu. It will also be EDL’s 100th site since it began 30 years ago with the development of the Pine Creek Power Station on the other side of the national park. “Once completed, our hybrid renewable power station will provide Jabiru with at least 50% renewable energy over the long term, without compromising power quality or reliability,” said EDL CEO James Harman. The Ranger Uranium Mine is owned by Energy Resources Australia, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto. It was once one of the most productive uranium mines in the world. However, the mine ceased production on Jan. 8, after years of losses primarily attributed to the market slump following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. According to the Katherine Times, Kakadu is set to undergo a $276 million upgrade as part of a plan to rejuvenate tourism to the home of the world’s oldest living culture. Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley told the newspaper that “the park’s traditional owners want to see culturally appropriate tourism grow and we will work with them to achieve that outcome.” EDL will begin construction on the project in the months ahead. It expects the hybrid system to be generating energy by early 2022. |
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February 17 Energy News — geoharvey
Opinion: ¶ “What Would Planting 100 Million Trees Per Week Do In 5, 50, And 500 Years?” • A trillion trees, low-tillage agriculture, and a sustainable economy would mean that in about 500 years we would have the level of CO₂ about where we want to keep it, probably around 300 ppm. But simply planting […]
February 17 Energy News — geoharvey
This Week – nuclear news in Australia and more
The Julian Assange extradition case is back in the news, As Joe Biden pushes for extradition, What did we really expect from a Biden win? I am reminded of an old English comedian, who explained America’s political parties:
” Well the Republican Party is the same as our Conservatives, whereas the Democratic Party is the same as our Conservatives”
In nuclear news, Japan is alerted by a 7.3m earthquake all too close to Fukushima nuclear plant wreck. The systemic corruption in the industry is highlighted this week,, with the continuing saga of political crookedness in Ohio.
CLIMATE – the role of methane in global heating, – the Arctic, and USA’s leaking natural gas.
Some bits of good news – 10 Positive COVID Updates From Around the World – 2021 is Looking Brighter.
AUSTRALIA.
Australian Government could face an unwinnable legal case if Senate passes the Kimba Nuclear Waste Dump Bill, Legal aspects of KIMBA COMMUNITY OPPOSITION TO National Radioactive Waste Management Facility. In its rush for Kimba nuclear dump. Refuting claims about the ”medical necessity” for Kimba Nuclear Waste Dump. Australian government tries to remove rights to legal recourse.
Retain Gosford’s nuclear free zone status.. Central Coast Council will maintain the Nuclear Free Policy.
Developments at Kakadu National Park (following shutdown of uranium mining. – Chief announces power plant for Jabiru, digi portal for business– Let the work begin: Kakadu Master Plan sign-off to breathe new life into our World Heritage Park
Australian government’s brazen duplicity concerning Julian Assange.
INTERNATIONAL
‘Ecocide’ proposal aiming to make environmental destruction an international crime.
The real value of the nuclear ban treaty.
Drone swarms: coming (sometime) to a war near you. Just not today.
- Investigative journalism – Systemic corruption in the American nuclear industry.
- Investigative journalism – Who Are the Ultimate War Profiteers? A U.S. Air Force Veteran Removes the Veil.
Australian Government could face an unwinnable legal case if Senate passes the Kimba Nuclear Waste Dump Bill
sources outside of the government.
5. The government has been notified in writing that its concept for one national centralised facility has been badly planned and not anywhere as safe as claimed – in fact the government and its entities have been asked to withdraw their claims and express the concerns of the holders and the contractors but have refused to do so.
Refuting claims about the ”medical necessity” for Kimba Nuclear Waste Dump
It is Absolute nonsense that the facility at Kimba is critical to nuclear medicine.In what specific and fully explained way is the Kimba facility critical?
Nuclear medicine requirements in Australia are already being catered for adequately under present conditions and if additions are necessary they can be achieved without Kimba.
How can the consolidation be achieved since the federal government has no legal rights or control over the waste held at the various locations throughout Australia?
Department of Industry Science Energy and Resources but is now head of the recently established Australian Radioactive Waste Agency (ARWA)
Kimba nuclear waste dump Bill due in the Senate (again) on February 17
Kazzi Jai, 15 Feb 21, Fight to stop nuclear waste in the Flinders RangesAustralian government’s brazen duplicity concerning Julian Assange
What Assange and WikiLeaks said about Australia, https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/what-assange-and-wikileaks-said-about-australia-20210129-p56xyo.html
By Jessie Tu February 4, 2021 He has been called “truth-telling hero”, “evil and perverted traitor”, “heroic, trickster, mythical – reviled”. Robert Manne called him the “most consequential Australian of the present time”. The new US President has called him a “high-tech terrorist”.
The protean narratives of Julian Assange, who will be 50 in July, have been brewing since 2010, when his website published “The Afghan War Diaries”, “Iraq War Logs” and “Collateral Murder”, a video showing the US military killing two Reuters employees in Iraq.
December marked 10 years since Assange has been “arbitrarily detained” in Britain, according to Felicity Ruby and Peter Cronau in their introduction to A Secret Australia – a collection of 18 essays that survey the impact WikiLeaks has had on Australia’s media landscape and the consequences of our government’s attraction towards America’s intelligence and military empire.
The potpourri of authors and thinkers includes Julian Burnside, Antony Loewenstein, Scott Ludlam and Helen Razer, who critique “the powers opposed to openness and transparency” and examine the evidence, “not the likelihoods, the probabilities, the suspicions, and assumptions” around the “subversive, technology-based publishing house”.
WikiLeaks invented a “pioneering model of journalism” – one that embodied the “contemporary spirit of resistance to imperial power”, says Richard Tanter, from the school of political and social sciences at the University of Melbourne. It brought renewed debates on free speech, digital encryption and questions around the management and protection of whistleblowers who risk their lives to expose covert, deceitful actions by governments.
The documents exposed the “brazen duplicity” of the Australian government towards its citizens and presented “off-stage alliance management conversations”, Tanter writes. They invited the layperson into the green room of the performance that is politics and international diplomacy.
WikiLeaks unmasked reports that showed governments recommending media strategies to deceive the public, demonstrating their unethically utilitarian approach to international diplomacy and governance and “enlightened the public on the dark corners of wars”, writes journalist and author Antony Loewenstein.
Assange is still in a cell at London’s Belmarsh Prison, facing an appeal by the United States in its bid to extradite him to face charges for the 2010 publications. He is continuing to be “denied adequate medical care” and “denied emergency bail in light of the COVID-19″, says Lissa Johnson, a clinical psychologist and writer for New Matilda – one of the few Australian publications that have paid genuine attention to the WikiLeaks saga.
In Australia, there’s been a “striking absence of a solid debate on WikiLeaks in the mainstream public discourse”, according to Benedetta Brevini, a journalist and media activist who insists that our concerning “lack of a thorough and sustained debate” is incomprehensible. Loewenstein calls Australia’s lack of journalistic solidarity with Assange “deeply shameful”. He says we have an “anodyne media environment” – perhaps not unsurprising, considering our highly concentrated media market, one of the most severe in the world.
The standout essays come from Guy Rundle and Helen Razer – whose amusing voice cuts through the somewhat parched tenor of cold academic-speak that lightly threads through the other essays. Her addition is a breath of fresh air in the middle of a chain of same-same arguments.
The most useful essay is Rundle’s take on the historical basis for WikiLeaks. He surveys the swirling currents of Australian history that led to its founding, identifying WikiLeaks as a continuation of political activist Albert Langer’s resistance to capital.
“We need a whole new organisation of how recent Australian history is told,” Rundle concludes, seconding Lissa Johnson’s opinion that we demand citizens who “cut across the acquiescence and consent, remove the deadbolt on the torture chamber door, turn down the music and expose what is going on inside”. This collection of polemics, though at times repetitive, takes us closer to a future where these demands no longer seem beyond reality.
Press freedom hangs on the fate of Julian Assange
Sabine von Törne 14 Feb 21, Biden administration presses for Julian Assange to be extradited to USA
Biden administration files appeal pressing for Assange extradition, Yahoo News, Sat, 13 February 2021 The administration of US President Joe Biden has appealed a British judge’s ruling against the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a Justice Department official said Friday.
A brief filed late Thursday declared Washington’s desire to have Assange stand trial on espionage and hacking-related charges over WikiLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of US military and diplomatic documents beginning in 2009.
The Justice Department had until Friday to register its stance on Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s January 4 ruling that Assange suffered mental health problems that would raise the risk of suicide if he were sent to the United States for trial.
“Yes, we filed an appeal and we are continuing to pursue extradition,” Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi told AFP.
After Baraitser’s decision, which did not question the legal grounds for the US extradition request, Donald Trump’s administration moved to appeal.
But Biden’s stance was not clear, and he was pressured by rights groups to drop the case, which raises sensitive transparency and media freedom issues.
After WikiLeaks began publishing US secrets in 2009, then-president Barack Obama, whose vice president was Biden, declined to pursue the case.
Assange said WikiLeaks was no different than other media constitutionally protected to publish such materials.
Prosecuting him, too, could mean also prosecuting powerful US news organizations for publishing similar material — legal fights the government would likely lose.
But under Trump, whose 2016 election was helped by WikiLeaks publishing Russian-stolen materials damaging to his rival Hillary Clinton — the Justice Department built a national security case against Assange.
In 2019 the native Australian was charged under the US Espionage Act and computer crimes laws with multiple counts of conspiring with and directing others, from 2009 to 2019, to illegally obtain and release US secrets……….
Assange has remained under detention by British authorities pending the appeal.
Earlier this week 24 organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International USA and Reporters Without Borders, urged Biden to drop the case.
“Journalists at major news publications regularly speak with sources, ask for clarification or more documentation, and receive and publish documents the government considers secret,” they said in an open letter.
“In our view, such a precedent in this case could effectively criminalize these common journalistic practices.”
Assange’s fiancée Stella Moris said in a statement that Baraitser’s January decision that Assange was a high risk for suicide and that US prison facilities were not safe remained a strong reason to deny extradition.
Baraitser “was given clear advice by medical experts that ordering him to stand trial in the US would put his life at risk,” she said.
“Any assurances given by the Department of Justice about trial procedures or the prison regime that Julian might face in the US are not only irrelevant but meaningless because the US has a long history of breaking commitments to extraditing countries,” she said https://au.news.yahoo.com/biden-administration-files-appeal-assange-171637702.html
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 