Australia’s nuclear bomb test site – touted as tourist site, but it’s still radioactive

‘Yes, there is still radiation here’, Gulf News 4 May 18 , Australia’s least likely tourist spot: a test site for atom bombs “……..

“Yes, there is still radiation here,” Robin Matthews ( Australia’s only nuclear tour guide) said as he drove a minibus to the sites where the Australian and British governments dropped seven bombs between 1956 and 1963, which dotted the earth with huge craters and poisoned scores of indigenous people and their descendants.

Back then, the government placed hundreds of human guinea pigs — wearing only shorts and long socks — in the front areas of the test zones. The effects of large doses of radiation were devastating…….

Today, just four people live full time in Maralinga village, a veritable ghost town. Amid the old buildings are new lodgings built for tourists, complete with hot water and Wi-Fi.

In the 1950s and ‘60s, at the height of the Cold War, 35,000 military personnel lived here.

The first nuclear test was conducted in September 1956, two months before the Melbourne Olympics.

That blast — as powerful as the bomb that the US dropped on Hiroshima — was the first of seven atom bombs set off here. But it was the so-called minor tests that were the most harrowing. Carried out in secret, the tests examined how toxic substances, including uranium and plutonium 239, would react when burnt or blown up.

….. Around one area tourists can visit are 22 major pits, each at least 15 metres deep and cased in reinforced concrete to prevent dangerous radiation from seeping out.

The site looks like a recently tilled garden bed, stretching out for hundreds of yards, in a near perfect circle. Dotting the red desert earth are shards of twisted metal. Aside from a few feral camels loping nearby, it is still and silent.

But on October 4 1956, a “nuclear landmine” was detonated here, tearing a crater 40 metres wide and 21 metres deep into the earth.

‘This is their land’

The resulting atomic reaction took only a fraction of a second, but its effects on one indigenous family would last decades. Survivors of the blasts, their children and grandchildren suffered from cataracts, blood diseases, arthritic conditions, stomach cancers and birth defects…….https://gulfnews.com/news/asia/australia/yes-there-is-still-radiation-here-1.2216400

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https://www.ecoshock.org/

Paul Beckwith, Climate System Scientist

The climate change threat to nuclear power

By Natalie Kopytko “…………The final problem is droughts, which climate models predict will become longer and larger. Legal battles have already been fought in the US over scarce water resources in regions with nuclear power plants, including the Catawba river basin in the Carolinas and the Apalachicola/Chattahoochee/Flint river basin in Georgia, Florida and Alabama. These battles show us that adapting our systems – including nuclear power – to a reduced supply of water will not be easy.

The International Atomic Energy Agency advises the nuclear industry to build power plants to last for 100 years. Given that climate models don’t agree on what to expect within this time period, it is not at all clear how this can be achieved.

New reactors could use dry or hybrid systems with lower water requirements, but the costs of running these systems are likely to be prohibitive. Considering nuclear power plants already have problems with construction cost overruns, any additional costs are likely to meet resistance.

What is to be done? Most forms of energy generation are vulnerable in some way to the effects of climate change, and the fact that nuclear power is among them is yet another argument against a wholesale shift towards this source of energy.

The bottom line is that if nuclear power is to be used to mitigate the effects of climate change, it must also be capable of adapting to them. There are serious doubts that it can. more https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028138-200-the-climate-change-threat-to-nuclear-power/

Uninhabitable Regions with Extreme Heat and Humidity

Human Core Body Temperature Limits Adaptability to Heat Stress

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