nuclear-news

Mumbai attacks postmortem: Anger, tension and shifting geopolitical power
SFGate.com 5 Dec 08 Edward M Gomez “………………..The Bush-Cheney gang cut a special, nuclear-cooperation deal with India, “lean[ing] over backward” to help the Asian economic giant but at the same time “demanding few concessions.” The result “was to compromise the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty by seeming to reward India despite its refusal to join, and despite its development of nuclear weapons. Even more uncomfortably[,] the Bush administration leaned on members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group to treat India as a special case deserving access to nuclear technology.” Maddox points out that the American government’s “position has been that India is an exception that brooks no comparison with Iran, North Korea and other proliferation threats. But [U.S. President-elect Barack] Obama has already said that the first problems facing Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state [will] include North Korea and Iran” and that the long-simmering dispute between Pakistan and India over the Kashmir region “deserves ‘serious diplomatic resources’….

There are no merits to nuclear power
The Prince Albert Daily Herald Jacqueline Swiderski,4 Dec 08 :I am very concerned about the possible nuclear reactor in Saskatchewan, and scared to death that it could be in the Prince Albert area. It is bad enough that we are mining the uranium out of the ground, but to build a reactor would be insane. There is no safe storage option for uranium products and wastes. Radium, radon gas and polonium are highly radioactive byproducts. Storage methods are at best controversial and at worst responsible for death and a toxic legacy for generations.Mining poses serious health risks. Radon gas is a known cancer-causing agent. Uranium mining can poison water sources. Reactors need a lot of water. They, too, can leak radioactive substances into both watersheds and ground water.We cannot even know until it is too late, because radioactivity cannot be detected by our senses. We cannot see it, smell it, hear it or feel it. There is no such thing as clean nuclear power.The uranium industry and our politicians are trying to trick us by dangling jobs as a carrot to entice us into allowing a reactor.Our politicians should not waste time and resources revisiting the idea of a nuclear reactor. Instead, put that time and energy into developing renewable safe resources like sun, wind and tides in order to satisfy our insatiable thirst for electrical power in a way that is safe for our earth and our people. This would also provide jobs in an industry that permits our workers, their children and their grandchildren to live in health.

The fall out of the Mumbai crisis WA Today

• Kim Beazley
• December 5, 2008 “………………….India and Pakistan approached five minutes to midnight on the South Asian nuclear war clock.That was in 2002……………

  We are some way from that boiling point, but we are on the same line now.

  Australia’s interest lies not only in the human devastation such a conflagration would cause in India and Pakistan. Though wind systems keep the toxic detritus of nuclear explosions within the hemisphere in which they occur, some high altitude materials, under certain weather conditions, could drift south over WA. In nuclear war, no man or woman is an island…………………….If India decides on active retaliation as opposed to criminal investigation, Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), provides a target-rich environment for special forces and the Indian airforce. Such actions will, however, bring us closer to that possible nuclear horror.

Kevin Rudd wants to redraw security priorities
THE AUSTRALIAN Mark Dodd | December 05, 2008

KEVIN Rudd says Australia must adopt a new concept of national security to cope with an array of complex new challenges ranging from climate change to energy security and nuclear proliferation.

The Prime Minister yesterday nominated climate change as a “fundamental national security challenge” for Australia in the long term as he delivered the first annual national security statement to parliament.

“Significant climate change will bring about unregulated population movements, declining food production, reductions in arable land, violent weather patterns and resulting catastrophic events,” the Prime Minister said.

“This is an area of emerging consequences which will require the formal incorporation of climate change within Australia’s national security policy and analysis process.”…………………….While the US alliance remained the cornerstone of the country’s security architecture, the growing rise of India and China required a fresh diplomatic focus, the Prime Minister said. A stronger engagement with the UN was also needed.