After years of denial, NSW govt quietly demolishing radioactive home
Radioactive waterfront home to be razed Sydney Morning Herald BEN CUBBY ENVIRONMENTDecember 28, 2009 NEW plans to clean up the site of a former uranium smelter in Hunters Hill mean a four-storey waterfront mansion the NSW Government has repeatedly declared safe will be demolished. Continue reading
Radiation scan urged, for air travel safety
It’s unclear how much radiation this would subject people to..
Full Body Scans Only Way To Stop Flight 253-Type Attempts: Expert Huliq News by Michael Santo 29 Dec 09 As the world continues to reel in the aftermath of the flight 253 incident, in which Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, attempted to set off PETN explosive on a Northwest Airlines flight (Delta Airlines is NWA’s parent company), a security expert says there is an answer. The backscatter machine, which provides a full body scan, could have prevented the incident, but at the cost of privacy for many……………It’s unclear how much radiation this would subject people to, however, and the potential for harm from that, for frequent travelers. There is still a loophole, however, as the backscatter machine would not detect anything hidden in a body cavity. Unfortunately, a full body X-ray would subject passengers to too much radiation, and cost millions more to implement (a backscatter machine would only cost $200,000, Laird said).
Full Body Scans Only Way To Stop Flight 253-Type Attempts: Expert | HULIQ
Russia keeping its policy of nuclear first strike
Weak Russian Military Suggestive of Nuclear First Strike Doctrine The Market Oracle by Pravda, 27 Dec 09 In October 2009, Nicolai Patrushev, Russia’s Security Council Secretary, announced that the new military doctrine was on its way. The old one was dated back in 2000 and written even earlier, under Yeltsin. Patrushev named the announcement of Russia’s right for a preventive nuclear strike the key provision of the new doctrine. He kept his word, and this provision does exist in the text of the doctrine approved by the Security Council. Continue reading
Depleted uranium was tested on soldiers in Australia
An Australian royal commission first discovered the use of depleted uranium in atomic tests at Maralinga some years ago,
Global changes ruining the world, September 25, 2009 Human Nuclear Action UK Admits Soldiers Used in Radiation Experiments The UK Ministry of Defense admitted on 12 May that it exposed British, Australian and New Zealand servicemen to radiation in tests during the 1950s and 1960s. A spokesperson for the Ministry denied that the soldiers were used as guinea pigs, Continue reading
Russia still ignoring its nuclear guinea pigs
These people were used as guinea pigs, tested, and then left to die slowly of cancer. The state does not want their tragedy recognized, because it would cost money. Nobody wants to know.
Global changes ruining the world September 25, 2009 Human Nuclear Action Soviet Human Nuclear Experiments Reported According to recently released reports, some 45,000 people, mainly Soviet soldiers, were deliberately exposed in 1954 to radiation from a bomb twice as powerful as the one dropped on Hiroshima just nine years before. Continue reading
Nuclear power declining, not reviving, in USA
Throughout the US, while the corporate media hypes a “renaissance” of new nukes, facts on the ground say the opposite is happening
A Quiet but HUGE No Nukes Triumph By Harvey Wasserman 24 Dec 09
In the wake of Copenhagen, an unheralded but hard-fought No Nukes victory has moved us closer to a green-powered Earth.
It has happened in upstate New York, Continue reading
“Nuclear ‘renaissance'” stalled in Europe, UK, USA
“It turns out that new plants would be not just extremely expensive but spectacularly expensive.”
Nuclear economics just don’t add up Sydney Morning Herald MICHAEL R. JAMES December 24, 2009 -……………………..Contrary to the claims of a nuclear resurgence in Europe and the world, it is far from certain how much of Europe will actually implement their plans. Continue reading
Sovereign rights of aboriginal people to South Australian land
sovereign-rights-exposed-south-australia-and-british-land-coverup-revealed-in-new-book/ – Coober Pedy Regional Times 23 Dec 09 A new book called “Coming to Terms – Aboriginal Title in South Australia”, edited by prominent lawyer Shaun Berg, has just been released. The book clearly exposes the enduring Sovereign land rights of indigenous people. Continue reading
Review- Maralinga aborigines and vets, Copenhagen dud…
Review of the past week
Australia: poll shows Australian want renewable energy, not nuclear, and Australian Academy of Science agrees. Maralinga veterans join British vets’ legal action. Aboriginal victims’ health ignored, too, while Maralinga land returned to them. Climate sceptics continue to get media coverage, and John Howard joins Ziggy Sinowski in nuclear push.
International: China- France nuclear deal despite China’s bad record for secrecy and poor safety. Copenhagen a dud, but strong popular movement for action. Russia plans nukes in space. France’s nuclear electricity coping poorly in extreme weather. South African antinuke movement. Renewables going ahead in Scotland, and Taiwan.
In defense of leaders at Copenhagen
Yes – I know that it was a crummy outcome. But what did you expect? If Obama, Rudd etc came up with even a half-decent agreement – they would be out of office in no time, with the domestic outcry. Then somebody worse would be in office.
(Shades of Hilaire Bellooc’s advice, on the boy who had his head bitten off by a lion – “always keep a hold of nurse, for fear of finding something worse”)
As long as the public, egged on by the media, see economic groswth and consumerism as the desirable lifestyle – there is no hope for reducing C02 emissions.
It’s Christmas – what a symptom of our public disease – with everybody rushing around buying more unnecessary stuff – to watch on their great plasma screens, in their McMansions etc. It’s US – the world public – who consume all the junk that keeps the factories and mines roaring.
I just hope that the world wakes up to this before catastrophe awakens us properly.
Ziggy Spinowski still spruiking “clean” “green” nuclear power
Christina Macpherson 18 Dec 09 Why does the media continue to give such a platform to the narrow views of a nuclear physicist obviously spruiking for his business? Is it because of some mindset that sees “hard” science (nuke physics, geology etc) as somewhow “real” scince, as compared to the “soft” sciences like ecology, environmental science, climatology?
It wouldn’t be so bad if Ziggy Switkowski showed that he had a clue about the ecological effects of radiation from uranium tailings, or the discharge of hot water into marine environments. He obviously doesn’t. Nor does he show any understanding even of the problems that will shut down nuclear plants as extreme weather events occur, and as sea levels rise.
But perhaps most of all, Ziggy Switkowski is right out of his depth on economics – as predictions of nuclear’s likely costs show not just the exorbitant construction costs, but also the running costs. As quoted today (by Tessa de Ryck) “a 2007 report that nuclear power will likely cost over $7,000 per kilowatt, Moody’s Investor Services is now taking an even more cautious view towards investment in nuclear power,”
A clean and green way to fuel the nation THE AUSTRALIAN , Ziggy Switkowski, 18 Dec 09 “………Cost. Nuclear energy has the highest capital cost, up to $4 billion to 6bn for our first 1000MWe reactor, but low running costs largely independent of the cost of uranium itself………………….
Nuclear Energy specifically excluded under Kyoto Protocol
Copenhagen, nuclear power, and the Clean Development Mechanism Nuclear Reaction, by Justin, 18 Dec 09
“……..For those who don’t know it,the Clean Development Mechanism the CDM is a system set up under the Kyoto Protocol which allows industrialised countries committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions to earn carbon credits by investing in low-carbon projects in developing countries rather than building more expensive projects in their own countries.
Nuclear energy was specifically excluded from the CDM at the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change conference in 2001. Needless to say, the nuclear industry and its supporters have been lobbying hard ever since for nuclear’s inclusion in the mechanism. Continue reading
Aborigines get tainted land back, but no compensation for cancers
Just as the Maralinga army veterans find no justice from the Australian government, in their fight for compensation for radiation-induced illness, so those surviving aborigines affected by the atomic tests still go unrecognised.
In the true tradition of British and Australian governments, it is hoped that they will just all die out and be forgotten.
It sounds fine for SA’s Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Jay Weatherill to claim that this land handover is the” final chapter of a 50-year struggle for justice.” But it’s not – those victims of nuclear radiation are still there, and so are their children. The veterans are taking their case to Britain, particularly on behalf of their children and grandchildren. Why should the aboriginal victims continue to be ignored, in the pretense that their health was not affected? Continue reading
Nuclear “cure” for climate change – a $10 trillion useless exercise
Greenpeace debunks nuclear benefit Malaysia Business Insight BY PAUL ICAMINA 18 Dec 09 NUCLEAR’S contribution in easing climate change is “too little, too late,” the anti-nuclear group Greenpeace said.
“Most of the hypothetical new big reactors would start to generate energy well beyond 2020, probably after 2025, Continue reading
China’s nuclear program mired in corruption and dubious safety
Nuclear Power Expansion in China Stirs Concerns The New York Times By KEITH BRADSHER 15 Dec 09 “………. inside and outside the country, the speed of the construction program has raised safety concerns.
The last country to carry out such a rapid nuclear expansion was the United States in the 1970s, in a binge of reactor construction that ended with the Three Mile Island accident Continue reading
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