Review: Nuke waste, media silence, environmental causes of cancer
Australia: Strangely absent from the mainstream media was the Senate’s Report,giving green light to Martin Ferguson’s Muckaty nuclear waste dump plan. Also strangely absent, a new agreement between Obama and Rudd on nuclear technology co-operation. But – lots of coverage given to BHP’s objections to a super profit resource tax. Tony Abbott ‘educates’ kids towards Climate Change scepticism. Federal govt might compensate Maralinga vets, perhaps to prevent legal case.
International: U.S. President’s Cancer Panel Report spells out environmental causes, including ionising radiation. Israel under pressure to admit to its nuclear weapons. Germany less likely now to restart nuclear power. India’s Parliament in turmoil over nuclear insurance to help foreign nuclear companies. Uranium prices and revenues low. World Bank finds nuclear power uneconomic. – the week that has been
Australia’s Minerals Council ASKED for national profit based tax
The Australian media – ever true to its corporate masters, and 
its own slackness, is giving the big miners, and their mouthpiece, the Liberal Party, full sway with an attack on the Australian government’s newly announced super profit resource tax.
BHP Billiton’s CEO Marius Kloppers is the leader in this breath-taking hypocrisy.
1. The Minerals Council of Australia, in its submission to the government Dec. 2008 specifically requested a change to a national “profit-based” tax.
2. BHP and its ancillary industries now kick up a fuss about reduced activities, job losses, etc at the Olympic Dam uranium mine at Roxby Downs. But Olympic Dam has been functioning at about a quarter capacity for many months, due to a shaft accident, – nothing to do with the resource tax. And all probably quite convenient, in the present climate of low uranium prices.
Australia’s media will distort govt’s Resource Super Profit Tax.
the Government has already produced modelling showing the RSPT coupled with the resources exploration rebate will actually increase jobs from the “business as usual” scenario……….
The lesson here isn’t so much that the mining industry is a pack of liars. It’s what the media does with the lies. ……..
Digging through the mining industry’s lies, Crikey, by Bernard Keane, 5 May 2010, Don’t believe a single word you read in the mainstream media from the mining industry about the impact of the Resource Super Profit Tax. Continue reading
Radioactive dust and BHP’s Great Big New Uranium Mine
Government, media, corporations … tum ta da … all happy with the “resources boom” – Never mind the question of uranium wastes, when BHP Billiton sets up its Great Big New Uranium Mine. I mean – where will the radioactive dust go?
Oh dear – to Antarctica, and perhaps a few other places, too – like Australia’s capital cities. What about the towns and regions near Olympic Dam?
Quiet progress of People for a Nuclear Free Australia
More than half the battle, in getting rid of the toxic uranium , nuclear power, and nuclear weapons industries, is in informing people, about the true nature of the dangers, and financial waste involved.
This is an uphill battle in Australia, as we head off into Third World colonial status, pursuing the short term greed of the “resources boom” . The major political parties are subservient to polluting corporations. The mainstream media is closely allied to mining interests. Australia still has its cultural, colonial cringe – resulting in public ignorance and apathy about the nuclear issue.
People for a Nuclear Free Australia (PFNA) are changing this. By well planned educational materials, the facts are being placed before doctors and other professionals, trade unionists, and members of parliament. The Australian Electrical Trades Union has just produced an excellent film which documents the health implications of uranium mining both to the miners and their families who live near the mines.
To learn more about PFNA, or to contribute to their educational effort, go to http://pnfa.com.au
BHP Billiton not disclosing its bribery, while keeping up its integrity spin
Oxfam is urging BHP Billiton to clean up its act, by disclosing all its bribes to countries to secure mining leases. BHP Billiton is signed up to the ETI agreement, which sets a standard for transparency in mining operations.
Cambodia’s Minister fro Water Resources said that BHP paid $US 2.5 million to the government, to secure a special concession.
BHP Executive Marius Kloppers memo’d staff on BHP’s “working with integrity” – and with “our values, which underpins everything we do” – source: – The Age, Business April 28, 2010 – “BHP urged to open up on payments.”
Nuclear lobby a powerful influence on Nuclear Non Proliferation decisions
The big pitch to get “nuclear security” (now there’s another oxymoron) is being taken up by the nuclear lobby, with fervour. Let’s get new gee-whiz reactors that can use the old nuclear weapons fuel!
The world still ends up with even more toxic waste from these reactors. And the transport of the enriched uranium and plutonium? Still plenty of scope there for somebody to get hold of it and make a bomb. Even a “dirty bomb” will do. – our theme for April – Nuclear Power and Peace
Australian govt undermining nonproliferation: uranium sales to Russia
“The spread of weapons grade material is the dark underbelly of the
uranium mining industry,”
Fernando de Freitas, 24 April 2010, The Federal Government’s decision to allow uranium exports to Russia will harm Australia’s credentials as a leading international voice against the spread of nuclear weapons, according to the Australian Greens. Continue reading
Australian uranium companies scouting for investment from India
Australia looking for investors in infrastructure sector, Thaindian News Kolkata, April 23 (IANS) Australia wants India to share costs with it in infrastructure projects required to support the mining expansion projects in that country, an official said here Friday.Damian Papps, director for investments, department of trade & economic development of South Australia, said the country was scouting for investors in India for this. Australia looking for investors in infrastructure sector
Lax controls in possibly corrupt BHP Billiton
BHP Reveals Possible Corruption Australasian Investment Review – (AIR) 22 April 2010, BHP Billiton, the world’s biggest mining company, has joined its smaller rival, Rio Tinto, in being implicated in possible corrupt activities.The news was buried in the company’s first quarter exploration and development report, issued yesterday……
The ASX and or ASIC should ask BHP to provide more details as soon as possible……The disclosure laws here in Australia will have to be applied to see if BHP has provided timely and adequate disclosure to the local (and London) markets……There’s no word on whether the US Justice Department will become involved, but if it involves a breach of America’s bribery laws, it will.If the reports are confirmed then authorities in countries in Europe, especially the European Commission and China could also become involved…..the fact that the allegations have been raised by the SEC shows the lax controls inside BHP, Australasian Investment Review
BHP’s Olympic Dam uranium production dropped 90%
BHP’s Mixed Production Report Australasian Investment Review – (AIR) 22 April 2010 “……Uranium production from Olympic Dam dropped 90% from the March 2009 quarter because of the damage to the main shaft which also cut copper output…”
An Olympic sized earthquake danger
the EIS Study Team is not competent to evaluate seismic risk. The EIS Study Team did not include any geophysicists – it is essential that the EIS be approved by seismologists,
EARTHQUAKE WARNINGS – SOUTH AUSTRALIANS WAITING FOR THE BIG ONE April 18, 2010 by Coober Pedy Regional Times“.……in 2004 Sandra Kanck, Leader of the South Australian Democrats and Member of the Legislative Council warned that the earthquake risk was too high for the proposed nuclear waste dump at Woomera in South Australia’s Far North……
OLYMPIC DAM: Mashers Fault Mashers Fault and the Seismicity Anticipated to be Stimulated by the Proposed Open Pit Mine at Olympic Dam, By: Edward Cranswick, Geophysicist,
Abstract: The proposed excavation at Olympic Dam of one of the largest open pit mines on Earth, 4.1 km long, 3.5 km wide, 1 km deep, at a bend in the steeply dipping, 35-km-long Mashers Fault, and the associated perturbation of the local groundwater pore pressures in a region of horizontal compressive stress would most likely stimulate local seismicity. Continue reading
Olympic Dam uranium mine still only at 25% capacity output
Delays continue at BHP’s Olympic Dam, The
Independent Weekly, KEVIN NAUGHTON 10 Apr, 2010 Work on the full recommissioning of Olympic Dam’s main shaft has been delayed again,….The shaft, which carries 75 per cent of the mine’s output, has been out of action since an accident on October 6, 2009…… Continue reading
Australia’s contribution to nuclear war
Australians complacently think that big corporations, like BHP Billiton, and ERA, and others, can keep on digging up and selling off uranium, for “peaceful purposes”, without Australia playing any part in the dirty radioactive waste problem, or the even dirtier nuclear weapons proliferation. – our theme for April 2010 – NUCLEAR POWER and PEACE
Northern Territory “Intervention” in interests of uranium miners, not Aborigines
Without doubt, the so called ‘resource boom’ where the price of minerals, especially of uranium started climbing, had a major impact in the introduction of the NT intervention laws which permitted the government to reclaim aboriginal lands.
it is the mining companies and not the aboriginal people who stand to gain from the relocation of aboriginal people away from their land
Alyawarr (Australian Aboriginal) people walked off. They say “enough is enough ! Abolish Northern Territory Intervention ! jagath dheerasekara, 23 March 2010, ” Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 