nuclear-news

Groundwater use unacceptable, says report
Sydney Morning Herald Marian Wilkinson Environment Editor
October 23, 2008

AUSTRALIA’S peak water body has raised the alarm over the overuse and pollution of the nation’s groundwater supply, which now supplies up to 30 per cent of the country’s water consumption.

As river systems face drought and climate change, the increasing use of water from underground aquifers has become “an unacceptable risk”, the National Water Commission said yesterday in its annual report.

‘Nuclear incident would make 9/11 insignificant’SYDNEY: The world is on the brink of an avalanche in the spread of devastating weaponry, a new global non-proliferation group warned yesterday, saying that a nuclear incident would dwarf the September 11 attacks.The Middle East, particularly Iran, is a potential tipping point, according to Gareth Evans, co-chair of the newly formed International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament.Evans, a former Australia foreign minister, said the world had been “sleepwalking” on the issue of atomic weapons for a decade.“The devastation that could be wreaked by one major nuclear weapons incident alone puts 9/11 and almost everything else (in) to the category of the insignificant,” he said, referring to the attacks inflicted on the US in 2001.Evans was speaking as the commission, which was first proposed by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd after a visit to the Japanese city of Hiroshima in June, entered the second and final day of its inaugural meeting in Sydney…………………………International affairs analyst Michael McKinley said there was an urgent need to rekindle debate about nuclear proliferation, but he doubted the new commission would make much headway.
“The nuclear weapons establishments are so well entrenched now that I’m concerned only a disaster will make them reconsider,” said McKinley, from the Australian National University.

UK nuclear tests left ‘disease timebomb’

politics.co.uk 23, Oct 2008 12:01

UK nuclear tests conducted in the 1950s have left veterans and their children with a variety of congenital diseases, according to a backbench Tory MP.

John Baron conducted an adjournment debate in the Commons yesterday afternoon, where he voiced concerns the government was “backsliding” on its commitment to investigate the issue.

A recent report conducted by Dr Chris Busby for the British Nuclear Tests Veterans Association (BNTVA) found higher levels of miscarriage, still birth and infant mortality among the families of those who helped conduct the tests……………………………….

The government carried out several nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean and at Maralinga, Australia between 1952 and 1967, involving over 20,000 servicemen.

Among these were the ‘Grapple Y’ and Grapple Z’ detonations on Christmas island, involving weapons far more powerful than those used to on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Of 2,500 men surveyed in 1999, 30 per cent had died, mostly in their 50s. More than 100 veterans children reported reproductive difficulties.

Many children and grandchildren of servicemen have experienced a range of problems including holes in the heart, deafness, reproductive difficulties, missing or excess teeth, deformity and early death.

Don’t let crisis slow carbon preparations, leaders told
The Age