Rapid global increase in energy consumption
Reuters 9th April 2021, The global energy system has become greener over the last decade, but most countries are nowhere near on track to achieve net zero emissions by the middle of this century. Net zero has become symbolically and diplomatically important for policymakers, but the goal will remain far out of reach without much faster change.
In recent years, energy consumption has becomeless carbon-intensive, but not fast enough to offset the rapid increase in energy use as a result of rising populations, incomes, and demand for energy services in developing countries.
Worldwide energy consumption rose at a compound annual rate of 1.9% in the ten years before the coronavirus epidemic while energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions increased at an average rate of 1.4%.
Chinese-French nuclear power station planned for Bradwell UK – issues raised that might prevent its construction
Maldon Nub News 10th April 2021, Bradwell B: The public consultation on the reactor design is over – but there is still a chance to find out more and make comments. Both the company behind the proposals for Bradwell B new nuclear power station and a campaign group against the development have given their response to the end of the Environment Agency’s (EA) public consultation on the design of the nuclear reactor. The public consultation on the Generic Design Assessment (GDA) of the ‘UK HPR1000’ reactor, which is planned for use at Bradwell B, closed on Sunday, 4 April. The EA’s 12-week consultation asked the public’s views on its preliminary conclusions and assessment reports for the reactor design. The design has been put forward by General Nuclear System Limited, a joint venture between CGN (China General Nuclear Power Group) and the French power company EDF. “The EA raised a total of six “issues” which if not resolved would prevent the reactor design from being constructed here in the UK. It’s interesting to note that the HPR1000 design is not yet operational anywhere in the world, with four units currently under construction in China including the reference design unit for the Bradwell B reactors.” https://maldon.nub.news/n/bradwell-b-the-public-consultation-on-the-reactor-design-is-over—but-there-is-still-a-chance-to-find-out-more-and-make-comments |
Southeast Asia can leapfrog uncompetitive nuclear energy, and go straight to renewables
| World Nuclear Industry Status Report 6th April 2021, Other than to have mercy on soon-to-be-unemployed nuclear engineers, there is not a single reason why Southeast Asia shouldn’t leapfrog nuclear energy. Dangerous and expensive, the technology simply isn’t worth the hassle. Desperate to save itself from decline, the nuclear sector has peddled the myth that nuclear energy—clean, reliable and cost-effective as it allegedly is—is key to decarbonising the global economy. Except it isn’t. Economics have long conspired against the industry as it built ever larger and more complex reactors. From China to the United States, projects have run years behind schedule, leading to budget overruns, and rendering the technology uncompetitive. https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/A-decade-on-from-Fukushima-it-s-time-for-Southeast-Asia-to-bury-its-nuclear.html |
Sleekit’ increase in Trident nuclear warheads on the Clyde
Sleekit’ increase in Trident nuclear warheads on the Clyde, The Ferret Rob Edwards, April 11, 2021 The UK Government has secretly boosted the number of Trident nuclear warheads stored on the Clyde over the last five years, according to an analysis of bomb convoys.
| Nukewatch, which monitors the transport of nuclear weapons, estimated that 37 new warheads were delivered from England to Scotland between 2015 and 2020. Nine were added in 2019 and 13 in 2020, it said. In March the Ministry of Defence (MoD) reversed a ten-year-old disarmament plan by announcing the “ceiling” on the UK’s nuclear weapons stockpile would increase from 225 to 260 because of “technological and doctrinal threats”. But Nukewatch argued this increase has already happened without the public being told. It accused Westminster of failing to provide a “fully accurate picture” and of risking “catastrophic consequences”. The Scottish National Party (SNP) warned of a “moral and democratic outrage”. Campaigners lambasted UK ministers for being “sleekit” and treating parliaments and public with “utter contempt”. The MoD did not deny that more warheads had been sent to Scotland. It declined to comment on nuclear transports, and stressed that warhead numbers were “kept under review”. The MoD’s “integrated review” of nuclear weapons policy on 17 March 2021 abandoned a pledge made in 2010 “to reduce our overall nuclear warhead stockpile ceiling from not more than 225 to not more than 180 by the mid-2020s.”It said: “In recognition of the evolving security environment, including the developing range of technological and doctrinal threats, this is no longer possible, and the UK will move to an overall nuclear weapon stockpile of no more than 260 warheads.”.. https://theferret.scot/sleekit-increase-trident-nuclear-warheads/ This prompted Nukewatch to examine its recorded sightings of 78 nuclear bomb convoys between 2010 and 2020. There were 43 trips from the nuclear weapons factory at Burghfield, Berkshire, to the Royal Naval Armaments Depot at Coulport on Loch Loch, and 35 in the other direction………………. The Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament blamed a series of “sleekit” prime ministers for misrepresenting nuclear realities. “It is now clear that a succession of UK governments have treated parliaments and the public with utter contempt,” said campaign chair, Lynn Jamieson.“They have deceived their own people by this covert escalation and they have attempted to hoodwink the world at large with a show of compliance with the requirements of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.”The suggestion that nuclear weapons brought security was an “arrogant delusional absurdity”, Jamieson argued. Instead they meant “more capacity for mass extinction, life-extinguishing climate change, genocide and risk of irrecoverable accidental https://theferret.scot/sleekit-increase-trident-nuclear-warheads/ |
Accident at Iran’s Natanz nuclear station
Guardian 11th April 2021, A spokesman for Iran’s civilian nuclear programme said an “accident”
struck the electrical distribution grid of the Natanz nuclear facility, a
day after the government announced it was starting up new uranium
enrichment centrifuges.
Behrouz Kamalvandi announced the accident on
Sunday, saying there were no injuries and no pollution. A mysterious
explosion in July 2020 damaged Natanz’s advanced centrifuge facility,
with Iran later calling the incident sabotage. Iran had announced on
Saturday that it had started up advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges at
Natanz, in a breach of its undertakings under the 2015 nuclear deal, days
after the start of talks on rescuing the accord.
France24 11th April 2021
Iran says it has begun mechanical tests on its newest advanced nuclear
centrifuges, even as the five world powers that remain in a foundering 2015
nuclear deal with Iran attempt to bring the U.S. back into the agreement.
Independent 10th April 2021
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/middle-east/iran-nuclear-centrifuge-us-talks-b1829564.html
Racism, inequities move to the center of the climate debate
COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter protests threw underlying systemic inequity magnifying climate change impacts into sharp relief.
Douglas Fischer 11 Apr 21, Systemic racism and inequity has always run as a powerful undercurrent through environmental and climate change impacts.
But it’s taken a global pandemic and shifting political winds in the U.S. to connect environmental impacts with environmental justice in such a mainstream, widespread way.
That’s according to three journalists at the frontlines of climate and environmental issues….. https://www.ehn.org/climate-change-and-racism-2651950416/photo-credit
Records falsified at Turkey Point nuclear power station
Feds say Turkey Point staff falsified records. FPL says it will pay proposed $150,000 fine
BY DAVID GOODHUE, APRIL 09, 2021 Federal investigators say employees at Turkey Point nuclear power plant in Homestead falsified records and deliberately recorded inaccurate information on maintenance reports in 2019.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recommended Thursday that Florida Power & Light, which operates the power plant on south Biscayne Bay, be fined $150,000 for the violations.
The utility said Friday that it will pay the civil fine, and that it had also conducted its own
investigation, which resulted in the firing of the employees involved in the inquiry……
The NRC said in a press release that two of its investigations in 2020 “determined FPL employees engaged in deliberate misconduct” the year before………. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/homestead/article250551789.html
Keeping it short…and right — Beyond Nuclear International
New Beyond Nuclear series boils down key anti-nuclear messages
Keeping it short…and right — Beyond Nuclear International
Toxic masculinity, the nuclear lobby and its climate change confidence trick – theme for April 2021
In 2021, not only viruses, but also ideas, are sweeping around the world. There is a renewed global push for equality for women. A newly revitalised movement to end racism. The pandemic means that the health of each nation now depends on the health of all nations. The climate crisis is headed to affect the whole world.
Curiously absent from these global anxieties is the nuclear threat. Nuclear war could annihilate not only millions of people, but also our chances of a liveable climate. Nuclear pollution affects mainly indigenous peoples , just as nuclear weapons testing was cheerfully imposed by the rich nations on distant indigenous lands.
Nuclear wastes keep accumulating, with no solution as to where to put them. Governments are conned by gee-whiz nuclear salesmen into pouring our tax-payers’ money into dead end Small Nuclear Reactor shemes, and propping up old decrepit Big Nuclear Reactors.
If we’re really getting serious about world health, about equality for women, and indigenous rights – then why on Earth are we tolerating the continuation of the Toxic Masculine Nuclear Culture?
They’ll tell us that we can’t understand nuclear issues – only the toxic masculine nuclear experts can. So leave nuclear decision making to them?
They’ll bend over backwards to entice and promote women into the industry (preferably bimbos if at all possible). They’ll decry women’s ignorance, and some men’s too – people with strong knowledge of environment, history – all those soft humanities issues.
But they know, as we all do, that women overwhelmingly distrust nuclear power and nuclear weapons, and so do indigenous peoples.
As world leaders prepare for the COP Climate Conference in Glascow in November, the unscrupulous nuclear lobbyists are trying every bribe, every trick in the book, to get nuclear accepted as ‘clean’. They’re desperate, as nuclear power is a financial disaster – and they want the tax benefits and subsidies that go with being accepted as ”clean” ”sustainable”
Nuclear nation France exerted pressure on European Commission. Climate taxonomy deal threatened by possible inclusion of nuclear as ”virtuous”
The future of the European nuclear industry is playing out in Brussels. https://reporterre.net/Le-nucleaire-tente-de-forcer-la-porte-europeenne-de-la-taxonomie-verte 9 Apr 21, The Commission is due to unveil this month the list of energies that will be considered “green” for investors. But an entry of nuclear and gas into this “taxonomy” risks weakening the ambitions of the EU and its Green Deal.
Brussels (Belgium), correspondence
This is a decision that will weigh on the future. For several months, the European Commission has been working on an important tool, supposed to support the energy sector and the Member States in reducing the continent’s CO2 emissions. This involves establishing a classification (called “taxonomy”) of energy sources that will be considered “virtuous” for the environment and the fight against global warming. While gas and nuclear power were initially ruled out, these two sectors are making an unexpected comeback in the discussions, on the eve of the publication by the Commission of its position, scheduled for April 21.
Initially, what is called “green taxonomy” was established on “scientifically defined” sustainability criteria, explained to Reporterre Neil Makaroff, Europe manager for the Climate Action Network. This is how the nuclear sector was sidelined mainly due to the impact of radioactive waste on the environment. But over the months, and following the adoption this summer of the European recovery plan (of which 30% of expenditure will have to be directed towards actions for the climate), taxonomy has become the object of political and economic interests. States. “It is a tool that should be neutral, but by introducing political issues into it, we are trampling on what scientific experts have established,” said Neil Makaroff.
The financial stakes are indeed very important for the sectors since, even if the classification will not prevent investors from supporting the sectors of their choice, the “green taxonomy” should be widely used as a reading grid by public investors, to start with the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the Member States subject to their climate targets. For private investors, the criteria of the taxonomy will also be benchmarks for obtaining labels on sustainability and highlighting their environmental commitments. In fact, proposing such a list amounts to directing a windfall of several billion towards the infrastructures officially dubbed for their contribution to the energy transition.
France wants to save its nuclear power hero.
In this context, the nuclear industry would like not to be forgotten by this great banquet. It initially had little hope of being invited, as several European states are hostile to her – Austria in the lead, but also Germany. Since the issue has been politically very sensitive within the Union for a long time, it was expected that nuclear power would be treated separately, later than taxonomy, with another text. Nuclear power was therefore not included in the first version of the green taxonomy project, revealed in November 2020.
However, France, a European country which has by far the largest nuclear fleet, expects that expenditure to support an industry with aging infrastructure will only increase, while private financing is increasingly difficult. to find. There is therefore a general French mobilization to try to influence the Commission. The French President, Emmanuel Macron, thus took the head of a group of seven European leaders to write, in mid-March, a letter to the European executive asking him to carefully consider the low carbon content of the production of atomic energy. “We call on the European Commission to ensure that the EU’s climate and energy policy takes into account all avenues towards carbon neutrality in accordance with the principle of technological neutrality,” wrote the seven authors.
What has given nuclear supporters hope, observers say, is the fact that the Commission seems to be backing down on the gas issue, under political pressure from ten Member States unhappy that it had not been retained as “transitional energy”. As the timetable has thus been delayed, France would like nuclear power to no longer be treated separately – which would risk excluding it from the central tool of green finance – but that it already appears in the second version of the delegated act to be published shortly. She thus found an alliance of interests with gas advocates to serve the nuclear cause. “It is very rare for heads of state to write a joint letter on this kind of subject to the Commission,” said Neil Makaroff. But that France, which shows so much its ambitions in terms of green finance, joins forces with States which want to include fossil energy in the taxonomy, it shows that it is the political game which is weighing on the Commission. “
“A last minute, opaque and politicized process”
Another recent event has also come to show how much the turn of the debate has changed. Wishing to spare the pronuclear a little and save time, the European Commission had ordered a report several months ago from its scientific committee, the Joint Research Center (JRC or JRC in English), on radioactive waste. At the end of March, rumors reported that the JRC had favorably concluded a “green” labeling for nuclear power, which should be recognized as a “transitional fuel”.
In this context, in early April, nine members of the technical expert platform (five NGOs and four experts) who had helped establish the original criteria for the taxonomy threatened to slam the door of the working group with the Commission. Faced with pressure to reintroduce fossil gas and nuclear power, they denounced a “last minute, opaque and politicized process”. “On the concept of what can be considered scientifically sustainable is not for politicians to decide,” said one of the scientists who signed the warning letter.
Originally conceived with the objective of giving clear guidelines, and presented as a world first in the field, taxonomy is therefore now in danger of being blurred by the political and strategic considerations of the Member States. For the defenders of an ambitious climate policy in Europe, if the European executive fails to keep this promise, it could ultimately affect the credibility of its “green deal” and, by extension, the Union itself in the world leadership it intended to take in the fight against global warming.
Japan poised to release Fukushima nuclear cooling water into the sea
Japan set to release Fukushima plant water into sea, Mainichi, TOKYO (Kyodo) 9 Apr 21, — The Japanese government is poised to release treated radioactive water accumulated at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea despite opposition from fishermen, sources familiar with the matter said Friday.
It will hold a meeting of related ministers as early as Tuesday to formally decide on the plan, a major development following over seven years of discussions on how to discharge the water used to cool down melted fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi plant………..
concerns remain among Japan’s fisheries industry and consumers as well as neighboring countries such as South Korea and China.
The government has said it cannot continue postponing a decision on the disposal issue, given that the storage capacity of water tanks at the Fukushima complex is expected to run out as early as fall next year.
It asserts that space needs to be secured on the premises, such as for keeping melted fuel debris that will be extracted from the damaged reactors, to move forward with the decades-long process of scrapping the complex.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. says it will take around two years for the discharge to start……..
It asserts that space needs to be secured on the premises, such as for keeping melted fuel debris that will be extracted from the damaged reactors, to move forward with the decades-long process of scrapping the complex.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. says it will take around two years for the discharge to start…….
China and South Korea are among 15 countries and regions that continue to restrict imports of Japanese agricultural and fishery products more than 10 years after the Fukushima nuclear crisis, caused by a devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011……..
The Fukushima Daiichi plant, which suffered core meltdowns following the natural catastrophe in March 2011, continues to generate massive amounts of radiation-tainted water after it is used to cool melted fuel.
The water is treated using an advanced liquid processing system, or ALPS, to remove most contaminants and stored in tanks on the complex premises. The process, however, cannot remove tritium, a radioactive byproduct of nuclear reactors…………… https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20210409/p2g/00m/0na/062000c
“Fair” exposes in detail how corporate media uses “Tropes” to win intelligent people over to USA militarism
If well-paid US columnists start becoming preoccupied with human rights in your country, it is a pretty good sign that you are about to get bombed. It is also remarkable how quickly those same pundits will lose their acute interest in human rights in a nation after a US intervention. Therefore, the next time you hear freedom, human rights and democracy in another country being endlessly discussed, be on your guard for ulterior motives; these cold-blooded media figures may just be crying crocodile tears in the service of empire.
Think of the women! ……… He’s attacking his own people! …….. We have to save democracy! ……..
How media language encourages the left to support wars, coups and intervention https://fair.org/home/support-the-tropes/comment-page-1/#comment-3189279ALAN MACLEOD, In an earlier piece (FAIR.org, 3/3/21), we explored some country case study examples of how the press helps to manufacture consent for regime change and other US actions abroad among left-leaning audiences, a traditionally conflict-skeptical group.
Some level of buy-in, or at least a hesitancy to resist, among the United States’ more left-leaning half is necessary to ensure that US interventions are carried out with a minimum of domestic opposition. To this end, corporate media invoke the language of human rights and humanitarianism to convince those to the left of center to accept, if not support, US actions abroad—a treatment of sorts for the country’s 50-year-long Vietnam syndrome.
What follows are some of the common tropes used by establishment outlets to convince skeptical leftists that this time, things might be different, selling a progressive intervention everyone can get behind.
Continue readingBiden’s Announcement That Trump Got Military Spending Just Right Is Dead Wrong
Biden’s Announcement That Trump Got Military Spending Just Right Is Dead Wrong https://worldbeyondwar.org/bidens-announcement-that-trump-got-military-spending-just-right-is-dead-wrong/
Economic Cost, North America By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, April 8, 2021
President Joe Biden is proposing a level of Pentagon spending so close to that of Trump’s last year in office that Bloomberg calls it a 0.4% reduction adjusting for inflation while Politico calls it a 1.5% increase and “effectively an inflation-adjusted budget boost.” I call it a disgusting violation of the will of the public spent in the hypocritical name of a grand battle against autocracies by so-called democracies, driven in reality by the influence of war profiteers and contempt for the fate of the planet and the people on it.
The U.S. public, according to polling, would reduce military spending if it had something resembling a democracy.
Just five weapons dealers poured $60 million into U.S. election campaign bribery in 2020. These companies now sell more weapons abroad than to the U.S. government, with the U.S. State Department acting as a marketing firm, and with U.S. weapons and/or U.S. military training and/or U.S. government funding going to the militaries of 96% of the most oppressive governments on earth.
U.S. military spending is $1.25 trillion per year across numerous departments. Even just taking the $700 billion and change that goes to the Pentagon and stands in for the full amount in media coverage, U.S. military spending has been climbing for years, including during the Trump years, and is the equivalent of many of the world’s top military spenders combined, most of which are U.S. allies, NATO members, and U.S. weapons customers.
Still using that artificially reduced figure, China is at 37% of it, Russia at 8.9%, and Iran is spending 1.3%. These are, of course, comparisons of absolute amounts. Per capita comparisons are extreme as well. The United States, every year, takes $2,170 from every man, woman, and child for wars and war preparations, while Russia takes $439, China $189, and Iran $114.
“Takes” is the right word. President Eisenhower once admitted it out loud, saying, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
When a mere $30 billion could end starvation on earth, there is no question that militarism kills first and foremost through the diversion of funds from where they are needed, while of course risking nuclear apocalypse and driving environmental collapse, justifying secrecy, fueling bigotry, and degrading culture.
The madness of militarism is not new, but it is always newly happening in an environmentally riskier world in more desperate need of a redirection of resources, and is happening now in the midst of a pandemic. Meanwhile President Biden proposes to pay for things he wants to spend money on with slight corporate taxes over 15 years, as if no other expenses will come up between now and 2036.
A bill in both houses of Congress called the ICBM Act would move funding from intercontinental ballistic missiles to vaccines. Dozens of Congress Members say they favor moving funding from militarism to human and environmental needs. Yet, not a single one has made a public commitment to voting against any bill that fails to reduce military spending, and not a single one has introduced a war powers resolution to end a single war, now that Trump’s veto cannot be relied on to render such an action harmless.
It is a real shame that President Biden is not a member of the Democratic Party whose 2020 Platform reads: “Democrats believe the measure of our security is not how much we spend on defense, but how we spend our defense dollars and in what proportion to other tools in our foreign policy toolbox and other urgent domestic investments. We believe we can and must ensure our security while restoring stability, predictability, and fiscal discipline in defense spending. We spend 13 times more on the military than we do on diplomacy. We spend five times more in Afghanistan each year than we do on global public health and preventing the next pandemic. We can maintain a strong defense and protect our safety and security for less.”
It’s just bad luck that President Biden does not subscribe to the religion professed by the Pope who remarked last Sunday: “The pandemic is still spreading, while the social and economic crisis remains severe, especially for the poor. Nonetheless – and this is scandalous – armed conflicts have not ended and military arsenals are being strengthened.”
According to Bloomberg, the U.S. military arsenal is being strengthened in a proper progressive manner: “The $715 billion Pentagon ‘topline’ is likely to be presented as a compromise to Democrats pressing for cuts in defense spending, as some of the money would be slated for the Pentagon’s environmental initiatives.”
With friends like the Pentagon, the environment has no need of enemies, real or imagined.
According to Politico, wildly out-of-control military spending that Biden believes Donald Trump got just about exactly right is actually a demonstration of restraint because “Pentagon budgeteers” have been hoping for more. Let us weep for them in our own private ways.
There’s a long and devastating history behind the proposal for a nuclear waste dump in South Australia,
There’s a long and devastating history behind the proposal for a nuclear waste dump in South Australia, https://theconversation.com/theres-a-long-and-devastating-history-behind-the-proposal-for-a-nuclear-waste-dump-in-south-australia-158615,,,Katherine Aigner
PhD candidate Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy, Australian National University On Saturday at the Adelaide Festival there will be a public showing of Australian Atomic Confessions, a documentary I co-directed about the tragic and long-lasting effects of the atomic weapons testing carried out by Britain in South Australia in the 1950s.
Amid works from 20 artists reflecting on nuclear trauma as experienced by Indigenous peoples, the discussion that follows will focus on the ways in which attempts at nuclear colonisation have continued in South Australia, and are continuing right now.
For the fourth time in 23 years South Australia is being targeted for a nuclear waste dump — this time at Napandee, a property near Kimba on the Eyre Peninsula.
The plan is likely to require the use of a port, most probably Whyalla, to receive reprocessed nuclear fuel waste by sea from France, the United Kingdom and the Lucas Heights reactor in NSW via Port Kembla.
The waste will be stored above ground in concrete vaults which will be filled for 100 years and monitored for a further 200-300 years.
Nuclear waste can remain hazardous for thousands of years.
The Barngarla people hold cultural rights and responsibilities for the region but were excluded from a government poll about the proposal because they were not deemed to be local residents.
The 734 locals who took part backed the proposal 61.6%
The Barngarla people are far from the first in South Australia to be excluded from a say about proposals to spread nuclear materials over their land.
It’s not the first such proposal
Australian Atomic Confessions explores the legacy of the nine British atomic bombs dropped on Maralinga and Emu Field in the 1950s, and the “minor trials” that continued into the 1960s.
After failed clean-ups by the British in the 1960s followed by a Royal Commission in the 1980s, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency conducted a cleanup between 1995 and 2000 it assures us was successful to the point where most of the contaminated areas at Maralinga fall well within the clean-up standards applied for unrestricted land use.
But experts remain sceptical, given the near-surface burial of plutonium and contamination remaining across a wide area.
The Tjarutja people are allowed to move through and hunt at the Maralinga site with their radiation levels monitored but are not permitted to camp there permanently.
We are told that what happened in the 1950s wouldn’t happen today, in relation to the proposed nuclear waste dump. But it wasn’t our enemies who bombed us at Maralinga and Emu Field, it was an ally.
In exchange for allowing 12 British atomic bombs tests (including those at the Monte Bello Islands off the northern coast of Western Australia), the Australian government got access to nuclear technology which it used to build the Lucas Heights reactor.
It is primarily the nuclear waste produced from six decades of operations at Lucas Heights that would be dumped onto Barngarla country in South Australia, closing the links in this nuclear trauma chain.
Nuclear bombs and nuclear waste disproportionately impact Indigenous peoples, yet Australia still has not signed up to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The declaration requires states to ensure there is no storage or disposal of hazardous materials on the lands of Indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent.
Nor has Australia shown any willingness to sign up to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which came into force on January 22 this year after a lobbying campaign that began in Australia and was endorsed by Indigenous leaders worldwide.
Aboriginal people have long known the dangers of uranium on their country.
Water from the Great Artesian Basin has been extracted by the Olympic Dam copper-uranium mine for decades. Fragile mound springs of spiritual significance to the Arabunna People are disappearing, posing questions for the mining giant BHP to answer.
Australian uranium from BHP Olympic Dam and the now-closed Rio Tinto Ranger mine fuelled the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Senior traditional custodian of the Mirrar people, Yvonne Margarula, wrote to the United Nations in 2013 saying her people feel responsible for what happened.
It is likely that the radiation problems at Fukushima are, at least in part, fuelled by uranium derived from our traditional lands. This makes us feel very sad.
The Irati Wanti (The Poison, Leave It!) campaign led by a council of senior Aboriginal women helped defeat earlier proposals for nuclear waste dumps between 1998 and 2004.
There remains strong Indigenous opposition to the current nuclear waste proposal.
Over the past five years, farmers have joined with the Barngarla People to protect their communities and the health of the land.
In 2020 the government introduced into the Senate a bill that would do away with traditional owners’ and farmers’ rights to judicial reviews and procedural fairness in regard to the use of land for the facility.
Resources Minister Keith Pitt is deciding how to proceed.
Despite the influence of Bill Gates, experts find that nuclear power is the wrong climate solution
“A decade ago, perhaps one could still argue we need new nuclear power plants to combat global warming, and that better approaches were hopefully just around the corner,” Howarth says. “But in 2021, it is very clear that we can completely rebuild the energy economy of the world moving forward built on renewable energy alone, with no need for fossil fuels or nukes. To build our future on renewables is that fastest, safest, and cheapest way to address climate disruption.”
How Bill Gates’ company TerraPower is building next-generation nuclear power, CNBC Make It, , Apr 8 2021 ”……. Selected by the U.S. federal government to demonstrate the viability of nuclear power through its Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP), TerraPower aims to build “fully functional advanced nuclear reactor within 7 years of the award,” according to the Office of Nuclear Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy………
TerraPower’s ability to achieve those goals will be in no small part due to the money and influence of the company’s founder.“The most important factor is that Bill Gates is behind this,” principal research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology department of nuclear science and engineering Charles Forsberg tells CNBC Make It………..
Still, some say nuclear power is the wrong solution, Despite what Gates and TerraPower see as benefits, the debate over nuclear power is fierce. On March 18, for instance, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a non-profit group of 250 scientists and related professionals, issued a 140-page rebuke of “advanced nuclear” reactor designs.
“If nuclear power is to play a larger role to address climate change, it is essential for new reactor designs to be safer, more secure, and pose comparable or—better yet—lower risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism than the existing reactor fleet,” says Edwin Lyman, Director of Nuclear Power Safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, DC, in a statement released with the report. “Despite the hype surrounding them, none of the non-light-water reactors on the drawing board that we reviewed meet all of those requirements.”
The UCS even recommends the Department of Energy (DOE) suspend it jointly funded ARDP demonstration project (in which TerraPower is a particpant) until regulatory agencies determine what kind of prototyping is necessary, and calls on the DOE to have an independent commission to review the project.
“It doesn’t make sense to us for either government or industry to devote a lot of resources to pursuing high-risk, low-reward technologies – or technologies that could be even worse than what we have now,” Lyman tells CNBC Make It. Instead, more federal government spending to improve conventional reactors is a better tactic, according to the UCS.
“Investment to address the shortcomings of conventional reactors would have a higher chance of success because there is a large base of operating experience and experimental data that researchers can draw upon,” Lyman says………
Still others say focusing on nuclear power at all is the wrong approach.
Nuclear power, which has been around since the 1950s, “has proven to be very slow to deploy, very expensive, and fraught with dangers,” says Robert W. Howarth, professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University. “And no one has ever solved the problem with what to do with nuclear wastes.”
Safe and affordable nuclear power is “a pipe dream” that “never materialized,” he says.
Michael E. Mann, professor of atmospheric science at Penn State and director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC), argues that nuclear energy “comes with unnecessary risks when better alternatives (i.e. wind, solar, geothermal) are available.”
And “investment in nuclear likely crowds out investment in the safer alternative (renewable energy),” he says.
Both Howarth and Mann are signatories on a declaration that calls for decarbonization through 100% renewable energy, like wind and solar.
“A decade ago, perhaps one could still argue we need new nuclear power plants to combat global warming, and that better approaches were hopefully just around the corner,” Howarth says. “But in 2021, it is very clear that we can completely rebuild the energy economy of the world moving forward built on renewable energy alone, with no need for fossil fuels or nukes. To build our future on renewables is that fastest, safest, and cheapest way to address climate disruption.”
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