Australia’s rather dodgy “medical” nuclear reactor
ANSTO chief ducks and weaves on 
questioning about incidents at Lucas Heights nuclear reactor
Noel Wauchope 18 Oct 12, I guess that we can rely on the mainstream media to give a sympathetic coverage to Dr Adi Paterson, chief of Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) – who was very distressed after being put on the spot in the Senate yesterday. At one point in the polite, but persistent, questioning by Senator Scott Ludlam, the discussion was interrupted by an interjection from David Reid. Reid was the whistleblower who alerted us all to a radiation incident at Lucas Heights, and was sacked for this
Anyway, the most recent KPMG report on the 2007 incident criticised the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) for its poor response to the incident.
This report was one of several reports on the matter. In February 2011, Australia’s workplace health and safety regulator, Comcare, found the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, or ANSTO, has under-reported accidents and breached safety standards. Investigating radiation incidents, Comcare found that ANSTO breached health and safety laws. It also reported that Mr Reid’s suspension was somewhat extreme and Mr Reid was substantially denied procedural fairness.
In the Senate yesterday Senator Scott Ludlam got devious answers from Dr Paterson, who seemed bent on asserting that the radioactive spill incidents never happened, anyway. No wonder that David Reid angrily interjected!
SENATOR LUDLAM: ” The KPMG report finds that ANSTO technical and supervisory staff and the executive management covered up the fact that three staff were contaminated by the beta emitter yttrium on the relevant day and that Mr Reid witnessed an incident between two men at the contamination barrier on the day in question n. He reported that one man had yttrium contamination, which is a beta radiation emitter, all down his clothes and in his mouth and that the other man’s supervisor was trying to clean him up and was telling him not to report the contamination….Mr Paterson, are you still contesting that these events even occurred at all? “
DR PATERSON: We were not involved in this investigation in a way that would have allowed us to put all of the issues on the table this was a report that was, indeed, intended for ARPANSA. It was not intended to make any findings in relation to ANSTO, and I do not believe it has done.
SENATOR LUDLAM: It is your facility; it is your plant. It is a report about an accident involving your staff at your facility. I am not quite sure why we are creating this distance. It was created for the regulator because they were extremely unhappy—I will contest these contentions later on this morning with ANSTO—with ANSTO’S response to these incidents, which did indeed occur. These are not alleged incidents. These are a matter of public record.
DR PATERSON I believe that we have been very clear on this matter. If indeed this incident did take place— —(interjection here from David Reid)…
SENATOR LUDLAM: So you contest the existence?
DR PATERSON: : I can contest whether there was an incident of this nature at the time that has been outlined in the report.
Global nuclear medicine planning flawed! -Australian plans to combat looming nuclear medicine supply crisis
The Australian Parliament has been updated today on plans to put our country front and centre in the fight against a looming international nuclear medicine supply crisis.
Romania asks companies to reconsider nuclear plan – Investment is going to wind and solar generation
BUCHAREST | Wed Oct 17, 2012 11:10am BST
Oct 17 (Reuters) – Romania has asked four of Europe’s largest power companies to reconsider a plan to build two nuclear reactors after it failed to find other investors, the Eastern European nation’s deputy economy minister said on Wednesday.
Romania, which must replace a third of its plants by 2020, needs new power generation or faces future supply shortages and rising import costs.
However, many power companies have been scaling back investment in central and eastern Europe in light of the euro zone debt crisis and with a renewed focus on wind and solar capacity.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/10/17/romania-nuclear-idUKL5E8LH6XG20121017
McCarthyism -Activist, Leah-Lynn Plante – Jailed for staying silent! (Video plea)
Source of Article Disclose TV
October 12, 2012 –
“Today is October 10th, 2012, and I am ready to go to prison,”
“The arbitrary issuing of subpoenas to activists and pressuring them to divulge information about others in secret proceedings extends to arresting them when they decide to resist,”
“Today is October 10th, 2012, and I am ready to go to prison,” announced 24-year-old Leah-Lynn Plante yesterday. By Thursday morning, the Portland activist was in custody and could remain incarcerated in a U.S. federal prison for 18 months, although she has not been charged with a crime.
Along with two others in the Pacific Northwest, Plante was remanded into federal custody for her refusal to provide a grand jury testimony regarding activists in the region. Matt Duran and Kteeo Olejnik were jailed in previous weeks for, like Plante, refusing to cooperate with a grand jury. All three are now being held in U.S. federal prison, not because they are being punished for crime, but, as the National Lawyers Guild’s executive director Heidi Boghosian told me earlier this year, “to coerce cooperation.”
Writing for Truth-Out in August about the Northwest grand juries and those resisting cooperation, I noted that grand juries “are among the blackest boxes in the federal judiciary system.” The closed-door procedures are rare instances in which an individual loses the right to remain silent. As was the case with the Northwest grand juries resistors, the grand jury can grant a subpoenaed individual personal immunity; Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination are therefore protected, but silence is not. In these instances, refusal to speak can be considered civil contempt. Non-cooperators can be jailed for the 18-month length of the grand jury.
MIchigan -Calls for temporary ‘hardened on-site storage’ of nuclear waste
“Users pay as taxpayers, too – for dry storage,” AP said. “Utilities that have run out of storage space in pools successfully sued the federal government for breach of contract, because it failed to keep to the 1998 deadline to establish long-term storage. By law, the money for dry casks cannot come from the nuclear waste fund, and must come from the federal budget.”
“We can’t keep generating more and more of this waste,” said Jackson, “It’s not socially responsible.”
Published: Monday, October 15, 2012
By Jim Bloch, Voice Reporter
They oppose reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods. They are critical of current methods of storing high level nuclear waste in cooling pools and dry casks.What do they propose to do with the more than 68,000 tons of spent fuel in the U.S. as of 2009, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is growing by 2,000-2,400 tons per year?
The short answer is hardened on-site storage of used fuel rods.
Eternal danger
The problem with high level nuclear waste is that it remains dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of years.
“Spent nuclear fuel is about 95 percent uranium,” said a 2011 AP report. “About 1 percent are other heavy elements such as curium, americium and plutonium-239, best known as fuel for nuclear weapons. Each has an extremely long half-life” – the time it takes to lose half its radioactivity – “(and) some take hundreds of thousands of years to lose all of their radioactive potency. The rest, about 4 percent, is a cocktail of byproducts of fission that break down over much shorter time periods, such as cesium-137 and strontium-90, which break down completely in about 300 years.”
Birth defects in iraq from depleted uranium
Depleted Uranium to Blame for Iraqi Birth Defects? http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&entry_id=5425 AMERICA – THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC WEEKLY , OCTOBER 16, 2012 by KEVIN CLARKE The U.S. military has consistently downplayed or denied possible adverse health and environmental effects because of its use of depleted uranium ordnance , yet birth defects and spikes in sometimes odd health problems seem to follow closely behind in communities unfortunate enough to have been the site of the heavy use of such munitions. U.S. and NATO forces used D.U. penetrator munitions in the 1991 Gulf War, the Bosnia war, Serbia and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Now in Fallujah, Iraq, the site of two rounds of intense fighting and bombing raids by U.S. forces in March and April 2004, a University of Michigan study (<-warning: not for faint of heart) funded by the World Health Organization has uncovered “staggering” increases in sometimes bizarre birth defects—babies born with brains and other organs outside their bodies—according to a report in Britain’s Independent . The study found that in Fallujah, more than half of all babies born between 2007 and 2010 suffered some kind of birth defect. “Before the siege, this figure was more like one in 10.” Continue reading
Australian Prime Minister unwise to support India’s dodgy nuclear power program
India is pursuing an unreliable technology. The DAE’s plans involve constructing hundreds of fast breeder reactors.
there are reasons to be worried about the risk of severe accidents at Indian nuclear facilities.
there are ongoing protests at all new sites selected for nuclear plants. The protracted and intense protests over commissioning of the Koodankulam reactors in Tamil Nadu is just the most spectacular of these.
India’s nuclear power failures warn against uranium exports, The Conversation, MV Ramana 16 October 2012, Selling Australian uranium is reportedly at the top of Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s priorities as she travels to India this week. Before she decides to do that, there are three facts she may want to consider. Continue reading
International Renewable Energy Agency’s success in developing countries
The World Energy Forum in Dubai from October 22 to 24 is a major event. It is the first time this event is being held away from UN headquarters in New York.
Renewable energy in developing countries to inspire world http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/environment/renewable-energy-in-developing-countries-to-inspire-world-1.1090242 Around 160 countries joined Irena within a few years — an unprecedented achievement By Binsal Abdul Kader, October 16, 2012 Abu Dhabi: Initiatives in renewable energy in developing countries will inspire the world to adopt clean energy to address energy poverty and climate change caused by pollution, a top official of International Renewable Energy said on Monday. Continue reading
Nuclear power UNsafety in India
India questions its own nuclear industry, SMH, October 15, 2012 ”…….India’s comptroller and auditor-general, Vinod Rai, has found the body that oversees nuclear safety in India, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, is ineffective, mired in bureaucracy and negligent in monitoring safety.
Sixty per cent of regulatory inspection reports for operating nuclear power plants in India were either delayed – up to 153 days late – or not undertaken at all. For power plants under construction, the number of regulatory inspections delayed or not done was 66 per cent.
Smaller radiation facilities operate throughout the country with no licences and no oversight at all. In many cases there are no rules for nuclear operators to follow. Despite an order from the government in 1983, the board has still not developed an overarching nuclear and radiation safety policy for India.
And even when laws do exist and are broken, the existing legislation gives the board almost no punitive power. In some cases, the fines for nuclear safety transgressions are as low as 500 rupees – less than $10.
India has had nuclear scares already. In 2010, a gamma irradiation machine containing Cobalt-60 was sold off by Delhi University for scrap. Pulled apart, it unleashed a massive dose of radiation, killing one person and putting another six in hospital.
The Indian government has legislation before parliament to replace the board with a new body, the proposed Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority.
But Prabir Purkayastha from the Delhi Science Forum said: ”It is a very weak piece of legislation, that makes the regulator subservient to a group of ministers. It is a weakening of the current regulation.” http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/india-questions-its-own-nuclear-industry-20121014-27l0a.html#ixzz29Zt1gRpm
Lithuanium referendum result is a blow to global nuclear industry
As these companies have no prospect of building a new nuclear plant in Japan since the government reviewed the nuclear energy policy after the Fukushima crisis, they must try to expand their businesses overseas
Hitachi’s nuclear plan hits bump / Lithuania referendum on construction project could hurt export strategy The Yomiuri Shimbun, 17 Oct 12 A Lithuanian referendum result has cast a shadow over Hitachi Ltd.’s strategy to increase sales from its nuclear business–and could affect other Japanese companies in the nuclear industry. Continue reading
Most of Europe’s nuclear reactors are just not safe
Most EU Nuclear Power Plants ‘Unsafe’ IPS, By Julio Godoy BERLIN, Oct 16 2012 – The so-called ‘stress tests’ on nuclear power plants in the European Union (EU) have confirmed environmental and energy activists’ worst fears: most European nuclear facilities do not meet minimum security standards. Continue reading
Rapid melting of ice in the Antarctic
parts of the Antarctic ice caps were melting at unprecedented rates.
“The role of scientists is not to be alarmists, and not to downplay the data, but simply to report it.”
Antarctic climate facing ‘rapid’ changes: chief scientist, The Age, October 16, 2012 -Australia’s chief Antarctic scientist says claims by climate experts about environmental changes in the southern continent are not alarmist.
The Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) told a Senate estimates hearing today “rapid changes” taking place across the icy land mass would have significant impact on global climate.
Changes in ocean flows and shifts in Antarctic ice cap levels were occurring at rates faster than at any other time in history, chief scientist Nick Gales said. ”That’s the part that is the most dramatic about the information we’re receiving,” he told the hearing. Continue reading
China’s nuclear power program slows down, as safety problems recognised
China Nuclear Report Acknowledges Safety Concerns, WSJ, By BRIAN SPEGELE And WAYNE MA 16 Oct 12, BEIJING — A report by China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection
acknowledged safety concerns in China’s fleet of nuclear reactors, including potential complications from the sheer variety of reactors in operation…. Continue reading
Indian Point nuclear power plant – many want it shut down
Nuclear Power Debate Heats Up in NYCs Backyard: Relicensing Controversy Intensifies AOL Energy By Jared Anderson October 16, 2012 The battle lines have been drawn for years, but the fight over nuclear power’s risks and benefits reached a new stage in New York this week where issues including public safety, reliability, the environment and ratepayer costs are being disputed. Continue reading
Scotland continues to struggle with radioactivity on Dalgety Beach
Beach to be dug up in latest radiation investigation dunfermline press 16 Oct 2012 TEST pits and boreholes will be dug at Dalgety Bay starting Monday to identify radiation and the size of the problem.
It’s the latest move to investigate and rid the area of the contamination that has blighted the town’s beach and turned it into a no-go zone….. http://www.dunfermlinepress.com/news/roundup/articles/2012/10/16/437815-beach-to-be-dug-up-in-latest-radiation-investigation/
1 This Month.
5 January -Webinar-What is Trump’s Golden Dome?
REGISTER AT Massachusetts Peace Action Education
New book – https://www.amazon.com/dp/1923372157?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Now until to February 10, 2026 Radioactive waste storage in France: the debate is finally open! How to participate?
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