Olympic Dam and Four Mile uranium mines will promote nuclear weapons spread
The terror of Hiroshima
ONLINE opinion, Dr Sue Wareham, 6 August 09
“………………….The Hiroshima bomb was a very small weapon by today’s standards, and yet an estimated 90,000 people died immediately and many tens of thousands more died slowly of burns, multiple injuries, radiation sickness or, later, cancer.
For nearly six and a half decades, the survivors’ message has been clear: Hiroshima never again. And yet not only do these worst of all weapons of terror remain, but they are now held by nine nations. One of the reasons is in our own backyard – uranium.
As our sales of uranium, the raw material for bomb fuel, appear set to increase with a massive expansion of the Olympic Dam mine, and the proposed opening of the Four Mile mine, both in South Australia, it is time to seriously examine the weapons proliferation record of the industry that our exports support.
In the 1970s, the Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry found that “the nuclear power industry is unintentionally contributing to an increased risk of nuclear war”. That remains as true today as it was then.
The need to ensure that nuclear weapons are not used again, as articulated by the people of Hirohima, is making a political comeback, spurred on particularly by President Obama’s commitment to “seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons”. Nuclear weapons abolition is both essential and feasible. Feasible, that is, if all existing fissile material is brought under strict international control and we stop creating more. That means leaving uranium in the ground.
Australia, with our large uranium reserves, is blessed with leverage in this issue. Even if mining and export were to continue at some level however, there is one thing at least that should be non-negotiable. No Australian uranium should go to any nation that has nuclear weapons.
That would include a number of our current customers – the US, the UK, France and China. All of them, in addition to Russia which does not (yet) receive Australian uranium, are in violation of their Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligation to disarm. Do we really want to supply fissile material to NPT non-compliers who continue to threaten mass destruction? That question should concern the Australian government, especially with the NPT Review coming up in early 2010.
While the nuclear industry has been plagued by a litany of major problems, its most grievous failing lies in its deliberate obfuscation regarding the civilian-military nuclear links. Its glib reassurances might help sell uranium, but at the cost of the nuclear weapons free world that has eluded us since the terror of Hiroshima.
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9269&page=0
Growing concern over the safety of Olympic Dam Expansion
(more Australian news at nuclear news Australia )
Greens growing concern over the safety of Olympic Dam Expansion
MINING SAFETY5 August 2009GREENS MLC Mark Parnell says that BHP Billiton ‘s Olympic Dam Expansion Environmental Impact Statement contains glaring omissions alongside startling impacts.
Parnell claims that there are holes in this EIS almost as big as the mine’s open pit. For example, there is a woeful description on the 242 million tonne waste rock heap – a heap that will be so large it will be visible 30 kms away, soar higher than the Santos building and contain millions of tonnes of uranium and acid.
Parnell says the EIS is also silent on long term dust management. More than 25,000,000 litres of water will be sprayed around the site each and every day to prevent toxic dust storms, but what happens when the mining stops?
In many sections of there statement there are reportedly ‘options’ given – some sound, but expensive; others cheap and nasty. The huge concern is that the Federal and State Governments will approve the mine first, and leave it to the company to decide which options they pursue later.
Greens growing concern over the safety of Olympic Dam Expansion – Mining Safety
Nuclear reactors – targets for terrorism
by Christina Macpherson. 6 August 09
The following article mentions the previous terrorist plots aimed at Australia. These include the 2002 plan to attack the Lucas heights nuclear reactor. In the most recent event, a terrorsit plot is alleged to attack a miltary base that is close to the research nuclear reactor.
Nuclear reactors, even small “research” reactors, form attractive targets for terrorists. Any country would be safer without themThe Global War on Terror, Australia’s latest foiled attack is only one of many.
The Wall Street Journal AUGUST 5, 2009,
The Obama Administration may have erased the phrase “global war on terror” from the American political lexicon, but the threat remains very real to countries around the globe. For the latest reminder, look to Australia.
On Tuesday, authorities Down Under detained five suspects alleged to be plotting a suicide mission against a military base in the Sydney suburbs. In a press conference, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd claimed the men were linked to al Shabaab, a Somali terrorist group with ties to al Qaeda.
If true, that means that Australians are now dealing with a brand new African front to their war on terror. But like Washington, Canberra was already facing a global menace. In Indonesia in recent years, jihadists have killed 92 Australian tourists in two successive attacks in Bali, attacked the Australian embassy in Jakarta and killed three in a hotel bombing. The threat at home is equally grave. Since 2002, authorities have foiled plots to attack a nuclear facility, the national electricity grid and packed sporting events…………………………Australia may have foiled a big attack on Tuesday. But the global war on terror continues.
Lucas Heights nuclear reactor a target for latest terrorists
(Australian) Holsworthy home to anti-terrorist unit
The Age, Britt SmithAugust 4, 2009 Holsworthy Barracks on Sydney’s outskirts, the alleged target of a suspected terrorist suicide attack, is home to thousands of troops and a major anti-terrorist unit………
….Its eastern boundary is near the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor…………………
Police say they foiled a mission by Islamic terrorists to launch a suicide shoot-out on Holsworthy in what they say would have been the worst-ever terrorist attack on Australian soil.
Labor violated nuclear waste promise
(Australian) Labor violated nuclear waste promise
ABC News Alice Springs 4 August 09
The Greens have accused the Federal Government of a huge violation of its commitment to repeal legislation forcing a nuclear waste facility on the Northern Territory.Labor made an election promise in 2007 to repeal the Radioactive Waste Management Act and maintains it will happen before next year’s federal election.Greens’ nuclear spokesman Senator Scott Ludlam is in Alice Springs this week discussing nuclear issues with concerned residents.He says the legislation needs to be repealed to take the pressure off people living near the four proposed nuclear waste sites.
“We had a Senate inquiry which I initiated, which came out here and recommended very strongly to the Government that the legislation be repealed in the first half of this year,” he said.”That clearly has not happened.”The [Government] said we will announce a site and then consult, which is in clear breach of the promise that the ALP took to the election.”
ABC Alice Springs – Labor violated nuclear waste promise: Greens
BHP Billiton tries to get free permits for greenhouse emissions
(Australian) Emissions will rise under Olympic Dam plan: greens
Sydney Morning Herald Marian Wilkinson Environment Editor August 3, 2009
BHP-Billiton’s plan to dig the biggest open-cut uranium and copper mine in the world is under attack from environmental groups who claim it will send greenhouse gas emissions soaring in the home state of the Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong.The battle over the massive expansion of the Olympic Dam mine in South Australia comes as mining companies are in talks with the Government over whether the copper industry will be granted free permits to cover greenhouse gas emissions because of export competition from countries such as Chile.If the talks are successful, BHP could be shielded from some of the high costs of greenhouse pollution associated with the mine’s expansion under the Government’s carbon pollution reduction scheme.
BHP estimates that the expanded Olympic Dam mine could produce up to 4.7 million tonnes (4.7 megatonnes) of greenhouse emissions every year at its peak, according to its environmental impact statement, which is on display. That figure is close to 1 per cent of Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions today.
The Australian Conservation Foundation estimates that by 2020 the mine’s expansion will increase South Australia’s emissions by about 12.4 per cent a year.
A spokeswoman for Senator Wong told the Herald yesterday the copper industry ‘‘is working with the Department of Climate Change to assess copper’s eligibility’’ for free permits under the Government’s scheme and whether it qualifies.
Uranium mining is not considered eligible for free permits under the Government’s scheme but Olympic Dam’s main product will be its huge copper reserves.
Public submissions to the state and federal Labor governments on BHP’s environmental statement close this week.
Aborigines stand up to BHP Billiton on damage to their resources
(Australian- about iron ore, OK – but implications for uranium) –
Lore of the land as Aborigines take on BHP
The Age Jan Mayman 3 August 09
If the mining warden agrees to hear their case, they will call a series of expert witnesses, including WA’s 2009 scientist of the year, Professor Jorg Imberger, a world authority on hydrology, as well as elders to explain their fears. They are especially concerned by the cumulative impact of mining on the Pilbara’s water resources,…………..………As mining plunges deep below the water table, with huge volumes of water pumped out to expose the orebody, the traditional owners are profoundly disturbed by the impact on underground aquifers that feed springs, billabongs and waterholes all over the region……………..
Counsel for the mining company, Perth barrister Peter Quinlan, argued that human rights and public interest issues were irrelevant to the mining lease applications………………
……….WA’s Native Title Act had been repeatedly criticised by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the Human Rights Committee as being discriminatory and not adequately protective of indigenous land rights.
Australia’s nuclear reactor unnecessary for medical isotopes
(more Australian news at
Werribee rejected Uranium and the nuclear fuel cycle through political action. Reactors leak and genes mutate.
DINKUMDEMOCRATS by Roger Howe, 31 July 09“……………Werribee was mooted as a potential site for a Nuclear Reactor, but the quiet giant of public opinion stirred. The proposal was quickly stilled.
Now, Labor has increased the scale of uranium mining in Australia, and continues to operate 2 nuclear reactors at Lucas Heights.
The more modern reactor was shutdown pending investigation of incidents during its operation.
The older has suffered a number of incidents, no doubt obliging the decision to replace it.
…….. with the appropriate use of particle accelerators, nuclear reactors would no longer be required for nuclear medicines and medical research, the stated justification for keeping the reactors.
Australia is trading the genetic health of generations in return for quick bucks – Is it really worth it??
Australia was once proudly nuclear free, with uranium left safely in the ground. Now we have operating and planned Uranium mines and two sick nuclear reactors. This is NOT progress.
Australia’s new uranium mine linked to arms sales and spying
The company with the right contacts
The Brisbane Times, Ben Cubby, 30 July 09
GENERAL ATOMICS, the company behind the nation’s newest uranium mine, has been patiently lobbying Australian politicians for more than a decade to encourage it to allow mining, to develop nuclear reactors and buy high-tech weapons.
The company has ferried members of the US Congress, their families and aides to Australia for high-level talks. It has paid for Labor MPs to travel to the United States to see its weapons and nuclear reactors first-hand, as well as hosting taxpayer funded trips……………………………………
To put its case for more mines and more weapons in Canberra, the company uses Hawker Britton, a lobbying firm that includes many former ALP staffers and MPs.
But among the biggest supporters of uranium mining expansion is the South Australian Premier, Mike Rann, who was on the Greenpeace executive that launched the Rainbow Warrior protest ship to try to block French nuclear weapons tests in 1972……………………………….
General Atomics flew a group from the US Congress to Australia, accompanied by company executives, to persuade the Federal Government to buy the company’s Predator unmanned aircraft………………………….
As well as its interest in unmanned spy planes, General Atomics has employed human spies. Last year it was caught hiring a former undercover police officer turned private investigator to infiltrate Australian environment groups and report on their actions. The former officer was posing as a Kurdish refugee and feeding information back to General Atomics.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/the-company-with-the-right-contacts-20090729-e1lk.html
Neal Blue: U.S. arms salesman in charge of South Australian uranium mines
Digging dirt with a sledgehammer
The weapons manufacturer who converted Labor’s staunchest opponents to nuclear development has a controversial past, write Nick O’Malley and Ben Cubby…………………………….
………………..Neal Blue’s single-mindedness emerged during the battle over a Blue-owned uranium processing plant on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma.
After a series of radioactive spills a nine-legged frog was discovered outside the yellowcake factory.
A government investigation eventually established the company had known for years that radioactive material was leaking and that radioactivity in water around the plant was at levels 35,000 times higher than US federal laws permitted………………………………….
As General Atomics grew, Blue kept an eye on Australia. One of his former employees recalls that in the late 1980s Blue was sure the future was nuclear and Australia was going to be a key part of it.
He went about buying pastoral leases sitting on uranium deposits in South Australia and the Northern Territory, gambling that bans on uranium would one day be lifted.
He was right. In 1990 Blue established Heathgate Resources to operate the new Beverley uranium mine, near Lake Frome in South Australia……………………..The South Australian Government has recorded 59 spills of radioactive material on the surface at the site,……………..
there is no requirement it decontaminate the site when mining ceases.
The environmental impact assessment for Blue’s nearby Four Mile mine, approved this month by the federal Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, similarly carries no such requirement.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/digging-dirt-with-a-sledgehammer-20090729-e1lj.html
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Fraud background of 4 Mile uranium mine’s owner
Arms maker behind uranium mine settled fraudulent pricing case
The Brisbane Times, Nick OMalley and Ben Cubby
July 30, 2009
THE arms manufacturer that received approval through an Australian subsidiary for a new uranium mine in central Australia this month was sued for fraudulently hiking uranium prices and manipulating costs at a neighbouring mine.
Neal Blue, owner and chairman of General Atomics, was accused in the proceedings of instructing executives at his Australian subsidiary, Heathgate Resources, to prepare false reports for customers, telling them costs at Heathgate’s Beverley uranium mine were higher than anticipated, and production lower……………………….
The Illinois District Court case was settled last year. One of General Atomics’s customers, Exelon, received $US41 million from the company. It is estimated Mr Blue made $US200 million by breaking the contracts and selling uranium on the spot market…………………………………
Four Mile mine will be owned by a General Atomics subsidiary, Quasar Resources, and an Australian-owned minerals explorer, Alliance Resources.
Uranium mining company jumps the gun at Beverly 4 Mile in South Australia,
Traditional Owners call for immediate halt to uranium operations at Beverley 4 Mile
Coober Pedy Regional Times 28 July 09
Traditional Aboriginal owners of the country that includes the Beverley 4 Mile uranium deposit are outraged with mining operations having commenced prior to the completion of State and Federal approvals processes.
Last week Traditional Owners visiting the site were greeted by new fences and locked gates. They were advised by company representatives that future visits would require company consent and supervision as the mining site was ‘already operational’.
Community members believe the company has pre-empted the Australian approvals process as Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett has not yet approved a Monitoring and Management plan, a Mine Closure plan and a Community Engagement plan, all of which are required prior to the start of mining works at Beverley 4 Mile.
Similarly Petratherm announced the commencement of drilling without community consultation being satisfied and without a Risk Assessment being obtained to satisfy community concerns of their intentions regarding chemicals use and contaminated waste disposal procedures.
“On the 4 Mile a number of important South Australian Aboriginal heritage assessment processes are also currently unfinished or incomplete. This was not the deal. The company has jumped the gun. Our community is being left out and our concerns are being ignored,” said Adnyamathanha elder Enice Marsh.
“We want the Federal and State governments to make this company stop work now.”
Traditional Owners and custodians are deeply saddened and angered by the position taken by the mining company Quasar Resources, an affiliate of the US weapons and nuclear energy corporation General Atomics ……………..
Dr Helen Caldicott – international campaigner for the truth about nuclear power
Profile – Helen Caldicott
Sydney Morning Herald By Lucinda Schmidt July 29, 2009This anti-nuclear campaigner has spent a lifetime striving to create a better world.
The day after the Federal Government approved a new uranium mine in South Australia, veteran anti-nuclear campaigner Helen Caldicott was appalled. In her view, exporting uranium, to any country, is morally indefensible.
“I think it’s devastating,” she says, describing Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” and accusing Environment Minister Peter Garrett of moral turpitude.
“I’m so ashamed to be an Australian at the moment,” says Caldicott, 71, a Melbourne-born medical doctor.
“As we export uranium, we’re in fact exporting nuclear weapons, cancer, leukaemia and genetic disease. It’s a public health issue.”
In the 1970s and 1980s, Caldicott was one of the world’s leading anti-nuclear voices, as the Cold War generated fear of a nuclear holocaust.
In Australia, she played a big role in forcing the French atmospheric nuclear tests underground, after writing a letter to a newspaper in 1971 about the increase in radiation levels in Adelaide’s water supply following tests over the Pacific Ocean.
Profile – Helen Caldicott – Money – Business – Home – smh.com.au
BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam will cause greenhouse emissions to soar
Mining growth a greenhouse gas threat
– Adelaide Now 29 July 09July 29, 2009
SOUTH Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions will skyrocket with the expansion of the Olympic Dam copper and uranium mine if the power comes from non-renewable sources.
The Australian Conservation Foundation says the State Government must make the expansion conditional on the use of renewable energy.
“This BHP mining plan is equivalent to putting more than one million inefficient polluting cars on to the roads and keeping them there for decades to come,” said ACF climate change program manager Tony Mohr.
A spokesman for Premier Mike Rann said the greenhouse gas emissions were “a key issue for consideration” and that the Government would ask BHP Billiton to demonstrate how it would comply with relevant legislation.
Australia’s nuclear hypocrisy
Unholy Trinity
ON LINE opinion by Bill Williams 28 July 09
“……………………………..the moral and political quagmire created by our ongoing export of the raw ingredient for nuclear weapons fuel, uranium. The not-so-subtle identification of China as our most likely aggressor in the White Paper’s purview ought to raise questions about the role our uranium will play in that nation’s anticipated rearmament…..………..The capacity to produce nuclear power intrinsically involves the capacity to produce fissile material usable for nuclear weapons. A world free of nuclear weapons will be more readily achieved and sustained in a world in which nuclear power generation is phased out. Bomb-making ingredients will be harder to acquire and more conspicuous to seek. This will substantially deter proliferation, while facilitating timely detection and intervention, focusing scarce intelligence resources on needles, not haystacks.
With the weapons’ retirement age fast-approaching, Australia can contribute to real progress in abolishing these apocalyptic anachronisms, by putting some real spirit into driving the NWC agenda, by politely withdrawing from the US nuclear umbrella and by reducing the flow of raw material into the nuclear fuel chain.
1 This month
7 April – WEBINAR – Australia and the Doomsday Clock – Preventing nuclear war through NoFirstUse and other policies
Online | Tuesday April 7, 4:00-5:30pm, Australian Eastern Time / 8:00-9:30am Central Europe Time
– Access the registration link
15 April – Zoom –Nuclear Power is Not the Solution
Apr 15, 2026 01:00 AM in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney
Join the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) on Tuesday, April 14th for a timely webinar exploring the risks associated with nuclear power and challenging the myth that it offers a simple, safe, carbon-free solution to the climate crisis
21 April Webinar: No Nuclear Weapons in Australia
Start: 2026-04-21 18:00:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
End: 2026-04-21 19:30:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
Event Type: Virtual
A virtual link will be communicated before the event.
Host Contact Info: australia@icanw.org
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
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