Iran’s Nuclear Adventurism
Iran’s Nuclear Adventurism The Times January 26, 2009 The West has few options but united diplomacy to contain a threatening regime. There is no obvious course by which outsiders can stymie the development of an Iranian bomb. A military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities has surely been debated within the US, recalling Israel’s 1981 destruction of the Osirak nuclear facility in Iraq. But the logistical difficulties are immense and the chances of success slight. Moreover, while Iran has an extremist theocratic regime, it is not a totalitarian state. It has a civil society and a degree of openness that was unknown in Baathist Iraq. The West must not lose the possibility of exerting pressure on Iran by a direct appeal to a generally young population with much instinctive goodwill to the West…………………………..The conjunction of a new US Administration and technical obstacles may provide an opportunity to check Iran’s nuclear adventurism. The evidence is that Iran freezes its nuclear activities when it faces concerted diplomatic pressure. Unlike North Korea, it wishes to remain within the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In the face of a united front from the US and the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany), Iran suspended its uranium enrichment in October 2003, and a year later agreed to a still more comprehensive moratorium. It now appears that Iran’s stock of raw uranium is running low.
Iran’s Nuclear Adventurism -Times Online
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
Aboriginals want Oz Day date changed
Aboriginals want Oz Day date changed The Age January 23, 2009The NSW Aboriginal Land Council has joined calls for the date of Australia Day to be changed, saying that for many indigenous people January 26 is considered to be “Invasion day”.January 26 marks the anniversary of the establishment of the first permanent European settlement in Australia in 1788.But many indigenous people regard Australia Day as marking the commencement of the white invasion of Aboriginal land.Settling on an alternative date would be a significant step towards truly reconciling Australia, NSW Aboriginal Land Council chairwoman Bev Manton said on Friday.
Uranium nations urged not to sell to Iran: report – washingtonpost.com
Uranium nations urged not to sell to Iran: report
LONDON (Reuters) by Mark Trevelyan; 24 Jan 09 – Western powers believe Iran is running short of raw uranium for its nuclear program and are urging producer nations not to sell to Tehran, The Times reported Saturday.
The British newspaper said Britain’s Foreign Office late last year ordered its diplomats in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Brazil — all major uranium producers — to lobby their governments on the issue.
Uranium nations urged not to sell to Iran: report – washingtonpost.com
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
Little Red Yellow Black Book reveals Aboriginal history
Little Red Yellow Black Book reveals Aboriginal history Courier Mail
January 23, 2009 – “…………………. Bruce Pascoe’s The Little Red Yellow Black Book (Aboriginal Studies Press, $14.95)…………an introduction to indigenous Australia,…….. revised and expanded version of The Little Red, Yellow & Black (and Green and Blue and White Book) first published in 1994, originally written by Bill Jonas and Marcia Langton………………………
After more than 200 years of European involvement in Australia, Pascoe says people are now recognising they have much to learn from 60,000 years of Aboriginal history on the land.
“We are in trauma at the moment because it’s not raining in the country and we don’t understand how to react,” he says.
“We’ve probably farmed the country badly because we’ve tried to treat it like the European field and it’s not, our soils are incredibly thin and probably the least rich soil in the world.”
Pascoe says research into indigenous farming practices is now revealing that Aborigines had a far better understanding of how to cope with Australia’s harsh climate.
Little Red Yellow Black Book reveals Aboriginal history | The Courier-Mail
$1bn for clean energy: Wong | The Australian
$1bn for clean energy: Wong THE AUSTRALIAN Matthew Franklin, Chief political correspondent | January 26, 2009
CLIMATE Change Minister Penny Wong has scoffed at Opposition claims that the Rudd Government has done nothing on developing clean energy sources, insisting it has already allocated $1 billion for development of renewable technologies and clean coal.
Senator Wong has also demanded that the Opposition back the Government’s planned carbon emissions trading system as the best way to create incentives to trigger investment in renewable energy sources.
Green Left – AUSTRALIA: 100% renewable energy — how do we get there?
100% renewable energy — how do we get there?
Green Left 24 January 2009The December release of the federal government’s climate policy left little room for doubt. Kevin Rudd — Mr 5% — is no friend of the climate movement………….
…………..David White: Firstly, it must recognise that the urgency of the climate crisis means we need to reduce atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide to 300-325 parts per million as quickly as possible………………………… Dick Nichols: It has to be a real policy, able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the sector by 8-10% a year.Socialist Alliance supports the Al Gore position of 100% renewables in 10 years. That means that the federal government’s Expanded National Renewable Energy Target of 20% by 2020, which is causing much angst in corporate Australia, is completely inadequate.Also, the energy scheme has to have the support of the vast majority of the community, most importantly working people, and it must be paid for by those who can most afford to carry the burden, the big polluters, big capital and the rich in general.
Green Left – AUSTRALIA: 100% renewable energy — how do we get there?
Clean Coal “Confuses Consumers” : Renewable Energy News
Clean Coal “Confuses Consumers”
Coal, put simply, cannot ever be clean. Low-emissions coal is a more accurate term. However, those low emissions come at a huge environmental cost. While carbon emissions may be able to be captured and store (buried), it’s still a very controversial process and the long term ramifications are not clear. What is known is that it takes a great deal of additional energy extract and store this waste; up to 20% more………………..”.
UPDATE 3-Siemens could sell Areva nuclear stake | Reuters
UPDATE 3-Siemens to sell Areva nuclear stake?
PARIS/MUNICH, Jan 23 (Reuters) By Benjamin Mallet and Irene Preisinger – “………………….The board of German industrial group Siemens AG will meet on Monday to decide on the future of its stake in a unit of France’s Areva that it obtained in a nuclear tie-up a decade ago.
If the board decides to sell it would mark a further narrowing of the corporate focus of the once sprawling German conglomerate and could provide the starting shot for a restructuring of the French nuclear industry.
TCritics says Canada is enabling India’s military nuclear program
Critics says Canada is enabling India’s military nuclear program
– THE CANADIAN PRESS 24 Jan 09 OTTAWA — The Conservative government has tarnished Canada’s longstanding stature as a non-proliferation advocate in its pursuit of the rich commercial possibilities of nuclear trade, say critics.Now it must ensure it doesn’t compound the problem……………………………..activists argue that no matter what safeguards Canada puts in place, civilian nuclear aid to India, by definition, frees up domestic Indian capacity for its military program.“That’s the battle that we lost when the (Nuclear Suppliers Group) agreed to the exemption,” said Regehr, echoing sentiments expressed by governments from New Zealand to Sweden.
“And it’s a very serious loss.”
3 bishops oppose revival of nuke plant
3 bishops oppose revival of nuke plant
MANILA, Philippines—Three Catholic bishops are opposing the proposed revival of the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, citing safety hazards and waste of scarce government resources.
“With so much to be spent for its rehabilitation, is this the time to revive this folly of Marcos corruption?…………………………….
Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz, the first of the bishops to oppose the plan, cited the danger of improper disposal of nuclear waste.
If the government wants to revive the nuclear power plant, it should first answer the “most important of all questions”—how it would dispose of the nuclear waste, he said.
Cruz said all countries that operate nuclear power plants consider the disposal of nuclear waste a “big and deep dark national secret.”
Villegas, former aide to the late Manila Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin, a leading light of the anti-Marcos movement, recalled how the construction of the Bataan nuclear power plant was attended by many irregularities.
“It stands as a mute witness of abominable greed and corruption and as a reminder to all Filipinos that such deeds that only bring untold suffering should never again be foisted on our country,” said Villegas.
3 bishops oppose revival of nuke plant – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos
Officials blast handling of nuclear secrets case
Officials blast handling of nuclear secrets case
swisinfo.ch January 22, 2009
Parliament has strongly criticised the government for ordering documents destroyed in a case of Swiss engineers suspected of involvement in a nuclear smuggling ring.A delegation looking into the matter said that the reasons the government gave for doing so were not convincing and that briefings given to members of parliament were not sufficient. Destroying the documents had also compromised an investigation.Urs and Marco Tinner, along with their father, were arrested starting in 2004 on suspicion of aiding Libya’s atomic ambitions through a trafficking ring run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of Pakistan’s nuclear programme.In November 2007, the cabinet ordered the case documents destroyed, saying it was in the interests of international security. The documents reportedly included designs for nuclear warheads. …………..
………….It is widely believed the Tinners worked as undercover agents for the United States intelligence service and that Washington asked Bern to destroy the documents.
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
Feds: Audit of SC nuclear complex whitewashed
Feds: Audit of SC nuclear complex whitewashed Associated Press By BEN EVANS 21 Jan 09 WASHINGTON – A company managing South Carolina’s Savannah River Site nuclear complex altered findings in a 2007 financial audit to justify expenses to the government, federal investigators said in a report released Wednesday.
Feds: Audit of SC nuclear complex whitewashed – MSNBC Wire Services- msnbc.com
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
Safety critical in nuclear power stations
Safety critical in nuclear power stations
‘New Delhi THE HINDU (PTI) Environment safety issues are attracting more attention at national and international level due to adverse impact on the ecological balance, said Management Consultant, SCOPE, M K Suri.: As India makes forays into nuclear power, the issue of safety will become critical for averting a mishap, head of a leading government-owned firm said on Thursday.”There is a need to take adequate safety measures to avoid any disaster as the country is going for nuclear power,” National Projects Construction Corporation Chairman and Managing Director Arbind Kumar said…………………………Environment safety issues are attracting more attention at national and international level due to adverse impact on the ecological balance, said Management Consultant, SCOPE, M K Suri.
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
: Nuclear Fallout
Nuclear fallout Fort Worth Weekly 23 Jan 09 Luminant announced plans to expand Comanche Peak at an estimated cost of $20.4 billion. There is, however, a caveat to the utility’s grand plan: The Mitsubishi-designed reactors it has ordered have not been approved by the NRC for use in this country and have not been tested under real-world conditions anywhere, a fact that makes Harper even more nervous.“What?” she asked. “Are they going to test them on us?”………………Lon Burnam will be the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit being planned by a coalition of public interest groups…………………………..Environmentalists, many of them veterans of the first battle of Comanche Peak, will have evidence of actual, rather than just theoretical, health effects in the area around the plant: Cancer rates in Hood County, Somervell’s nearest downwind neighbor, have increased significantly since the plant came on line. And other issues will be in play that weren’t germane last time around — like water. In a drought-damaged area of Texas with predictions of more drought to come, the plant’s voracious thirst for water is high on the list of objections.
“We can live without a lot of things,” Harper said. “But we can’t live without water.” ………………………………….
Luminant’s environmental impact documents show that each of the two existing reactors uses a million gallons of water every minute for the circulating water system that provides cooling. The new, higher- capacity ones will need 1.2 million gallons of coolant water per minute. In order to meet such a huge demand, Luminant will draw 103,717 acre feet per year from Lake Granbury. (An acre foot is the volume of water that would cover one acre to a depth of one foot.) That would be about three-fourths of Lake Granbury’s total storage capacity of 136,823 acre feet, according to the Brazos River Authority.
The water needs of Lake Granbury’s other customers pale beside that of the plant — 2 billion gallons per year in 2006, according to the river authority, versus 33 billion to be used by the expanded plant, drawn from both Squaw Creek and Granbury.
FWWeekly: Feature: Nuclear Fallout
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
Mothers for Peace take on nuclear waste storage
Mothers for Peace take on nuclear waste storage Associated Press 22 Jan 09 By ERICA WERNER – 2 hours agoSAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (AP) — At the western edge of a largely dormant anti-nuke movement, three generations of mothers are tilting at nuclear reactors. But their mission is less quixotic than it might appear.Wielding a novel argument about the potential impact of a terrorist attack on nuclear facilities, San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace is aiming to set legal precedent requiring tougher environmental reviews for nuclear power plants and radioactive waste storage nationwide.It’s the latest chapter in a long-running battle that pits the all-volunteer group of aging hippies, activists and teachers against the federal government, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., and PG&E’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, nestled on a gorgeous stretch of coastline nearby.”This whole town — it’s like this veil is over our town. Of denial, is what it is,” said Mothers for Peace member Linda Seeley………………………..f Mothers for Peace has its way, no new plant would get built, nor storage facility approved, without an in-depth review of the environmental impacts if terrorists attacked such facilities.
Adding that level of review is an unwelcome prospect for the industry, as it would add another, potentially steep barrier to getting projects under way………………….Meanwhile, challenges on similar grounds were filed elsewhere, setting up the potential for a conflicting opinion from another federal appeals court that would have to be resolved in the Supreme Court. The nuclear industry might hope to get a more favorable outcome in that setting than from the 9th Circuit, viewed as liberal-leaning — but Mothers for Peace might also be in reach of its goal of setting new precedent for the nuclear power industry.
The Associated Press: Mothers for Peace take on nuclear waste storage
1 This Month
10 June – Assessing Canada’s Investments in Small Modular Nuclear Reactors – https://zoom.us/meeting/register/IiqHA5feRhaEBycOLNTJlA#/registration
Cuba Is Not a Failed State – It Is a Besieged State
PETITION: “Global Appeal to Endorse Palestinian Right of Return of Refugees”
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