Australian government plans to transport nuclear wastes 1000s of kilometres, a dangerous plan in view of bushfires
Transporting nuclear wastes across Australia in the age of bushfires, Independent Australia, By Noel Wauchope | IN 2020, the final decision on a site for Australia’s interim National Radioactive Waste Facility will be announced, said Resources Minister Matt Canavan on 13 December.
He added: I will make a formal announcement early next year on the site-selection process.”
With bushfires raging, it might seem insensitive and non-topical to be worrying now about this coming announcement on a temporary nuclear waste site and the transport of nuclear wastes to it. But this is relevant and all too serious in the light of Australia’s climate crisis.
The U.S. National Academies Press compiled a lengthy and comprehensive report on risks of transporting nuclear wastes — they concluded that among various risks, the most serious and significant is fire:…..
Current bushfire danger areas include much of New South Wales, including the Lucas Heights area, North and coastal East Victoria and in South Australia the lower Eyre and Yorke Peninsulas. If nuclear wastes were to be transported across the continent, whether by land or by sea, from the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney to Kimba in South Australia, they’d be travelling through much of these areas. Today, they’d be confronting very long duration, fully engulfing fires.
Do we know what route the nuclear wastes would be taking to Kimba, which is now presumed to be the Government’s choice for the waste dump? Does the Department of Industry Innovation and Science know? Does the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) know? Well, they might, but they’re not going to tell us.
We can depend on ANSTO’s consistent line on this :
‘In line with standard operational and security requirements, ANSTO will not comment on the port, routes or timing until after the transport is complete.’
That line is understandable of course, due to security considerations, including the danger of terrorism.
Spent nuclear fuel rods have been transported several times, from Lucas Heights to ports – mainly Port Kembla – in great secrecy and security. The reprocessed wastes are later returned from France or the UK with similar caution. Those secret late-night operations are worrying enough, but their risks seem almost insignificant when compared with the marathon journey envisaged in what is increasingly looking like a crackpot ANSTO scheme for the proposed distant Kimba interim nuclear dump. It is accepted that these temporary dumps are best located as near as practical to the point of production, as in the case of USA’s sites.
Australians, beset by the horror of extreme bushfires, can still perhaps count themselves as lucky in that, compared with wildfire regions in some countries, they do not yet have the compounding horror of radioactive contamination spread along with the ashes and smoke.
Fires in Russia have threatened its secret nuclear areas……
Many in America have long been aware of the transport danger:
The state of Nevada released a report in 2003 concluding that a steel-lead-steel cask would have failed after about six hours in the fire and a solid steel cask would have failed after about 11 to 12.5 hours. There would have been contamination over 32 square miles of the city and the contamination would have killed up to 28,000 people over 50 years.
The State of Wyoming is resisting hosting a nuclear waste dump, largely because of transportation risks as well as economic risks. In the UK, Somerset County Council rejects plans for transport of wastes through Somerset.
In the years 2016–2019, proposals for nuclear waste dumping in South Australia have been discussed by government and media as solely a South Australian concern. The present discussion about Kimba is being portrayed as just a Kimba community concern.
Yet, when the same kind of proposal was put forward in previous years, it was recognised as an issue for other states, too.
Most reporting on Australia’s bushfires has been excellent, with the exception of Murdoch media trying to downplay their seriousness. However, there has been no mention of the proximity of bushfires to Lucas Heights. As happened with the fires in 2018, this seems to be a taboo subject in the Australian media.
While it has never been a good idea to trek the Lucas Heights nuclear waste for thousands of kilometres across the continent – or halfway around it by sea – Australia’s new climate crisis has made it that much more dangerous. Is the bushfire apocalypse just a one-off? Or, more likely, is this nationwide danger the new normal? https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/transporting-nuclear-wastes-across-australia-in-the-age-of-bushfires,13465
Australia Will Lose to Climate Change
Australia Will Lose to Climate Change https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/01/australia-caught-climate-spiral/604423/ Even as the country fights bushfires, it can’t stop dumping planet-warming pollution into the atmosphere.
But now Australia is buckling under the conditions that its fossil fuels have helped bring about. Perhaps the two biggest kinds of climate calamity happening today have begun to afflict the continent.
The first kind of disaster is, of course, the wildfire crisis. In the past three months, bushfires in Australia’s southeast have burned millions of acres, poisoned the air in Sydney and Melbourne, and forced 4,000 tourists and residents in a small beach town, Mallacoota, to congregate on the beach and get evacuated by the navy. A salvo of fires seems to have caught the world’s attention in recent years. But the current Australian season has outdone them all: Over the past six months, Australian fires have burned more than twice the area than was consumed, combined, by California’s 2018 fires and the Amazon’s 2019 fires.
The second is the irreversible scouring of the Earth’s most distinctive ecosystems. In Australia, this phenomenon has come for the country’s natural wonder, the Great Barrier Reef. From 2016 to 2018, half of all coral in the reef died, killed by oceanic heat waves that bleached and then essentially starved the symbiotic animals. Because tropical coral reefs take about a decade to recover from such a die-off, and because the relentless pace of climate change means that more heat waves are virtually guaranteed in the 2020s, the reef’s only hope of long-term survival is for humans to virtually halt global warming in the next several decades and then begin to reverse it.
Meeting such a goal will require a revolution in the global energy system—and, above all, a rapid abandonment of coal burning. But there’s the rub. Australia is the world’s second-largest exporter of coal power, and it has avoided recession for the past 27 years in part by selling coal.
Though polls report that most Australians are concerned about climate change, the country’s government has so far been unable to pass pretty much any climate policy. In fact, one of its recent political crises—the ousting of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in the summer of 2018—was prompted by Turnbull’s attempt to pass an energy bill that included climate policy. Its 
current prime minister, Scott Morrison, actually brought a lump of coal to the floor of Parliament several years ago while defending the industry. He won an election last year by depicting climate change as the exclusive concern of educated city-dwellers, and climate policy as a threat to Australians’ cars and trucks. He has so far attempted to portray the wildfires as a crisis, sure, but one in line with previous natural disasters.
In fact, it is unprecedented. This season’s fires have incinerated more than 1,500 homes and have killed at least 23 people, Prime Minister Morrison said on Saturday.* There were at least twice as many fires in New South Wales in 2019 as there were in any other year this century, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Climate change likely intensified the ongoing epidemic: Hotter and drier weather makes wildfires more common, and climate change is increasing the likelihood of both in Australia. Last year was both the hottest and driest year on record in the country.
Perhaps more than any other wealthy nation on Earth, Australia is at risk from the dangers of climate change. It has spent most of the 21st century in a historic drought. Its tropical oceans are more endangered than any other biome by climate change. Its people are clustered along the temperate and tropical coasts, where rising seas threaten major cities. Those same bands of livable land are the places either now burning or at heightened risk of bushfire in the future. Faced with such geographical challenges, Australia’s people might rally to reverse these dangers. Instead, they have elected leaders with other priorities.
The nuclear danger in wildfires: why the silence on spontaneous ignition, (pyrphoricity), of uranium
 pyrophoric@hush.com– 7 Dec 2020 Why doesn’t anyone care about pyrphoricity and the speading of unquenchable wildfires in populated areas, in industial Countries? Especially around large nuclear complexes like INL, Hanford, Mayak? Fukushima and Chernobyl? The current wildfires in Australia are some the worst catastrophe in History. I have been reading about Uranium and rare earth mining, close to the Amazon. The mining and contamination of areas around and, in the Amazon. The contamination maybe a more important factor in the wildfires there, than climate change. The human encroachment via clearing of forests, heavy metal mining, rare earth mining and uranium mining are certainly important factors.
Most reactors are well beyond their initial licensing dates. More than 30 years old. Corroded, embrittled, cracked with poor to no backup. Poor supervision in countries like the USA, Ukraine, and eastern Europe. Accelerated climate change is significantly increasing the risk of nuclear reactor catastrophe. FROM IAEA PDF on Uranium PDA “Uranium metal can be melted by any of several different techniques. However, because uranium is very reactive when heated in air, melting must be done either under a protective inert atmosphere or in a vacuum.17 Health and safety considerations must be carefully considered when using uranium because of its high toxicity and pyrophoricity. The main hazard to health occurs where finely divided particles can become airborne and inhaled. For this reason, vents and fume hoods should be used, or the workers should use respirator equipment to avoid inhalation. The use of pyrophoric phosphorus to fire bomb dresden, in world war 2 killed 120,000 people and burned Dresden to the ground. Guess what, Uranium is more pyrophoric than phosphorus and takes much less to start fires and keep them burning. The government will not talk about it. Nobody will talk about it primarily because of the implications for storage of nuclear waste, what can happen after nuclear catastrophes, and because of the militaries ongoing uses, of depleted Uranium that is highly pyrophoric and radioactive. |
Researchers still don’t fully understand Arctic melt and sea level rise
 These Are the Biggest Climate Questions for the New DecadeThe 2010s brought major climate science advances, but researchers still want to pin down estimates of Arctic melt and sea level rise, Scientific Amrican , By Chelsea Harvey, E&E News on January 4, 2020 The 2010s were almost certainly the hottest decade on record — and it showed. The world burned, melted and flooded. Heat waves smashed temperature records around the globe. Glaciers lost ice at accelerating rates. Sea levels continued to swell. At the same time, scientists have diligently worked to untangle the chaos of a rapidly warming planet. In the past decade, scientists substantially improved their ability to draw connections between climate change and extreme weather events. They made breakthroughs in their understanding of ice sheets. They raised critical questions about the implications of Arctic warming. They honed their predictions about future climate change. The 2010s were almost certainly the hottest decade on record — and it showed. The world burned, melted and flooded. Heat waves smashed temperature records around the globe. Glaciers lost ice at accelerating rates. Sea levels continued to swell. At the same time, scientists have diligently worked to untangle the chaos of a rapidly warming planet. In the past decade, scientists substantially improved their ability to draw connections between climate change and extreme weather events. They made breakthroughs in their understanding of ice sheets. They raised critical questions about the implications of Arctic warming. They honed their predictions about future climate change. Some of these links are straightforward. Melting Arctic ice pouring into the ocean can raise global sea levels. Thawing permafrost can release large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, potentially accelerating the rate of global warming. Others are more contentious. In the last decade, a growing scientific debate has arisen about the influence of Arctic warming on global climate and weather patterns, particularly in the midlatitudes…….. One ongoing project known as the Polar Amplification Model Intercomparison Project is conducting a series of coordinated model experiments, all using the same standard methods, to investigate the Arctic climate and its connections to the rest of the globe. Experts say these kinds of projects may help explain why modeling studies conducted by different groups with different methods don’t always get the same results. Outside that debate, there are still big questions about the Arctic climate to resolve. Scientists know the Arctic is heating up at breakneck speed — but they’re still investigating all the reasons why. Researchers believe a combination of feedback processes are probably at play. Sea ice and snow help reflect sunlight away from the Earth. As they melt away, they allow more heat to reach the surface, warming the local climate and causing even more melting to occur……. OCEANS AND ICE Sea-level rise is one of the most serious consequences of climate change, with the potential to displace millions of people in coastal areas around the world. At the moment, the world’s oceans are rising at an average rate of about 3 millimeters each year. It appears to be speeding up over time. That may not sound like much, but scientists are already documenting an increase in coastal flooding in many places around the world…….. Some scientists worry that as ice loss continues to speed up in both Greenland and Antarctica, parts of the ice sheets could eventually destabilize and collapse entirely — leading to catastrophic sea-level rise. In recent years, scientists have discovered that warm ocean currents are helping to melt some glaciers from the bottom up, both in Greenland and particularly in parts of West Antarctica. Better understanding the relationship between oceans and ice is a key priority for glacier experts, Tedesco said. At the same time, monitoring the way water melts and moves along the top of the ice is also a major priority. In Greenland, climate-driven changes in the behavior of large air currents like the jet stream may be helping to drive more surface melting……. EXTREME WEATHER EVENTSThe past decade saw leaps and bounds in a field of climate research known as “attribution science” — the connection between climate change and extreme weather events. It was once thought to be impossible, but scientists are now able to estimate the influence of global warming on individual events, like heat waves or hurricanes. In the past few years alone, scientists have found that some events are now occurring that would have been impossible in a world with no human-caused climate change. As attribution science has advanced, researchers have been able to tackle increasingly complex events, like hurricanes and wildfires, which were previously too complicated to evaluate with any confidence. They’ve gotten faster, too — researchers are now able to assess some extreme events nearly in real time. Some organizations are working to develop sophisticated attribution services, similar to weather services, which would release analyses of extreme events as soon as they occur. The German national weather service; the United Kingdom’s Met Office; and the Copernicus program, part of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, have all begun exploring these kinds of projects. At the same time, scientists are working to improve their predictions of future extreme events in a warming world. So far, climate models predict that many extreme weather events will happen more frequently, or will become more severe, as the climate continues to change. Heat waves will be hotter, hurricanes will intensify, heavy rainfall events may happen more frequently in some places, and droughts may be longer in others……. PROJECTING THE FUTURE Predicting how much the Earth will warm, given a certain level of greenhouse gas emissions, may seem like the simplest goal of climate modeling. But it’s harder than it sounds. Climate models don’t always agree on the Earth’s exact sensitivity to greenhouse gas emissions — although they do tend to fall within a certain range. If global carbon dioxide concentrations were to double, for instance, models from the past decade have tended to predict that the Earth would warm from between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius……. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/these-are-the-biggest-climate-questions-for-the-new-decade/?amp |
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Very unwise plan: UK’s Bradwell B nuclear project vulnerable to climate extremes
BANNG 2nd Jan 2020, It may appear that all has been quiet on the eastern front in the recent past but CGN seems intent on carrying out its plans to build Bradwell B and is continuing with its site investigations. 2020 will be an important, probably crucial, year in terms of whether plans for new nuclear power plants move forward. The Bradwell B Generic Design Assessment (GDA) will be at its peak. EDF will apply for Development Consent (DCO) for Sizewell C.We anticipate there will be a big push by the new Government and the
nuclear industry for new nuclear development. And Bradwell B will be slowly
approaching its pre-application stage, which could begin within the next
two years.
growing and BANNG will need all supporters to play a part.
erosion.
Australia’s bushfires and their danger to nuclear waste transport
In all the propaganda for a nuclear waste dump in Kimba, South Australia, 
there was no mention of bushfire risks. An extraordinary omission, don’t you think?
The whole bizarre plan to trek the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor wastes some 1700km by land, or even longer by sea, would entail trucking highly radioactive (they call it intermediate) wastes through forest areas, towns, ports, to what used to be an agricultural area.
The nuclear industry touts itself as the cure for climate change. In reality,it is the other way around. For Australia especially, climate change, bushfires, water shortages – make every aspect of the nuclear industry ever more dangerous.
The Lucas Heights nuclear reactor itself is uncomfortably close to the bushfires. But nobody’s talking about that. That reactor shoud be shutdown, and no more wastes produced.
Dangerous climate is now upon Australia- Michael Mann
Australia, your country is burning – dangerous climate change is here with you now , Guardian, Michael Mann 1 Jan 2020, I am a climate scientist on holiday in the Blue Mountains, watching climate change in action,
After years studying the climate, my work has brought me to Sydney where I’m studying the linkages between climate change and extreme weather events.
Prior to beginning my sabbatical stay in Sydney, I took the opportunity this holiday season to vacation in Australia with my family. We went to see the Great Barrier Reef – one of the great wonders of this planet – while we still can. Subject to the twin assaults of warming-caused bleaching and ocean acidification, it will be gone in a matter of decades in the absence of a dramatic reduction in global carbon emissions.
We also travelled to the Blue Mountains, another of Australia’s natural wonders, known for its lush temperate rainforests, majestic cliffs and rock formations and panoramic vistas that challenge any the world has to offer. It too is now threatened by climate change.
I witnessed this firsthand.
I did not see vast expanses of rainforest framed by distant blue-tinged mountain ranges. Instead I looked out into smoke-filled valleys, with only the faintest ghosts of distant ridges and peaks in the background. The iconic blue tint (which derives from a haze formed from “terpenes” emitted by the Eucalyptus trees that are so plentiful here) was replaced by a brown haze. The blue sky, too, had been replaced by that brown haze. ……
The brown skies I observed in the Blue Mountains this week are a product of human-caused climate change. Take record heat, combine it with unprecedented drought in already dry regions and you get unprecedented bushfires like the ones engulfing the Blue Mountains and spreading across the continent. It’s not complicated.
The warming of our planet – and the changes in climate associated with it – are due to the fossil fuels we’re burning: oil, whether at midnight or any other hour of the day, natural gas, and the biggest culprit of all, coal. That’s not complicated either.
When we mine for coal, like the controversial planned Adani coalmine, which would more than double Australia’s coal-based carbon emissions, we are literally mining away at our blue skies. The Adani coalmine could rightly be renamed the Blue Sky mine.
In Australia, beds are burning. So are entire towns, irreplaceable forests and endangered and precious animal species such as the koala (arguably the world’s only living plush toy) are perishing in massive numbers due to the unprecedented bushfires.
The continent of Australia is figuratively – and in some sense literally – on fire.
Yet the prime minister, Scott Morrison, appears remarkably indifferent to the climate emergency Australia is suffering through, having chosen to vacation in Hawaii as Australians are left to contend with unprecedented heat and bushfires.
Morrison has shown himself to be beholden to coal interests and his administration is considered to have conspired with a small number of petrostates to sabotage the recent UN climate conference in Madrid (“COP25”), seen as a last ditch effort to keep planetary warming below a level (1.5C) considered by many to constitute “dangerous” planetary warming.
But Australians need only wake up in the morning, turn on the television, read the newspaper or look out the window to see what is increasingly obvious to many – for Australia, dangerous climate change is already here. It’s simply a matter of how much worse we’re willing to allow it to get.
Australia is experiencing a climate emergency. It is literally burning. It needs leadership that is able to recognise that and act. And it needs voters to hold politicians accountable at the ballot box.
Australians must vote out fossil-fuelled politicians who have chosen to be part of the problem and vote in climate champions who are willing to solve it.
- Michael E Mann is distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University. His most recent book, with Tom Toles, is The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy (Columbia University Press, 2016).https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/02/australia-your-country-is-burning-dangerous-climate-change-is-here-with-you-now
The Green New Deal: Not Insanity, but an Investment.
businesses alike.
results of his number crunching and concluded that while the implementation
of a worldwide Green New Deal during a seven-year span would cost a
whopping $76 trillion dollars, the global economy would recoup that massive
sum relatively quickly by reaping annual savings of about $11 trillion –
not to mention the fact that citizens would benefit from reduced climate
action risks, cleaner air, fewer blackouts and more reliable sources of
energy and power.
https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2019/green-new-deal-not-insanity-investment/86036
European Union split on nuclear energy, but manages a draft Green Finance deal.
Green-finance deal survives EU split on nuclear energy. European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde has underlined the importance of the reform, with sustainable finance deals reaching one half a trillion dollars in 2018.
But the long-standing disagreement over nuclear energy has undermined the EU’s efforts to cut greenhouse emissions, with a promise last week by EU leaders for carbon neutrality by 2050 nearly scuppered by a feud over atomic energy.
https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50671303/green-finance-deal-survives-eu-split-on-nuclear-energy 23 Dec 19, EU negotiators have been struggling for weeks to finalise a harmonised classification system for green finance in Europe that could decide the fate of hundreds of billions of euros in investment.
The lobbying frenzy in Brussels over the new EU norm has been immense, with soon to Brexit Britain also making its voice heard while protecting the interests of the City of London financial hub.
“This is a historic moment… the much-needed enabler to get green investments to flow and help Europe reach climate neutrality by 2050,” said EU Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis.
Late on Monday, EU lawmakers approved an offer by member states that delayed the nuclear question – as well as the role of natural gas cherished by Berlin – until the end of 2021.
“I am fully aware that the nuclear problem will return in two years’ time. We pushed back the matter,” said the chairman of the European Parliament’s Environment Committee, French centrist MEP Pascal Canfin.
“The risk was to take the whole classification hostage,” he added.
Ever since the European Commission’s proposal was put on the table in May 2018, nuclear energy has been the subject of a huge fight between its supporters, led by France and backed by Eastern European countries.
But opponents of nuclear power – such as Germany, Austria, Luxembourg and Greece – have refused to back down, with domestic opinion fearing atomic energy disasters, such as Fukushima or Chernobyl.
The compromise suggested by Finland, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, was reached with MEPs behind closed doors and needs final approval by member states envoys on Wednesday.
Once approved, the European Commission will then have two years to draw up detailed lists of sectors eligible for a Green finance label, based on the criteria.
These 32 experts refute the claim that nuclear power is a sustainable method against climate change
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Global investment in nuclear is in stark decline https://www.ft.com/content/75ea3180-0a02-11ea-bb52-34c8d9dc6d84 From Dr Paul Dorfman et al
We write in response to James E Hansen et al’s letter (“EU must include nuclear power in its list of sustainable sources”, December 17), which mistakenly advocates nuclear energy to address climate change. In fact, spending on new nuclear power significantly reduces our chances in effectively responding to climate change. This is because, for nuclear to be considered a feasible option, new reactors should be able to be completed economically, efficiently and on time — however, practical experience proves otherwise. Nuclear new-build represents a high-risk technical, regulatory and investment option, with significant delay and cost overrun. Market analysis shows investment in nuclear power to be uneconomic — this holds for all plausible ranges of investment costs, weighted average costs of capital, and wholesale electricity prices.
In the end, the fate of new nuclear seems inextricably linked with, and determined by, that of renewable energy technology rollout. Worldwide, market trends for new nuclear are in stark decline and renewables are markedly rising.
The, perhaps obvious, explanation for this dynamic can be found in the ramping costs of the former and the plummeting costs of the latter.
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https://www.ft.com/content/75ea3180-0a02-11ea-bb52-34c8d9dc6d84 AUTHORS:
Dr Paul Dorfman, UCL Energy Institute, University College London Prof Tom Burke, Imperial and University Colleges, E3G
Prof MV Ramana, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia
Prof Benjamin K Sovacool, Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex
Prof Andy Stirling Centre on Social Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability, University of Sussex
Prof Steve Thomas Public Services International Research Unit, University of Greenwich
Prof Keith Barnham Physics Department, Imperial College London
Prof David Elliott, The Open University Prof Mark Lemon, Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development, De Montfort University
Prof Manfred Mertins, Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences
Prof Benjamin K Sovacool, Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex
Prof Andy Stirling, Centre on Social Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability, University of Sussex
Prof Steve Thomas, Public Services International Research Unit, University of Greenwich
Dr Abhishek Agarwal, Aberdeen Business School, Robert Gordon University
Dr Sarah J Darby, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford
Dr John Downer, Global Insecurities Centre, University of Bristol
Dr Ian Fairlie, Vice President CND
Dr Phil Johnstone, Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex
Dr Pascal Hingamp, Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography, Marseille University
Dr Dan van der Horst, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh
Dr Helga Kromp-Kolb, Vienna University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, former Head of the Austrian Nuclear Advisory Board
Dr Jeremy Leggett, Solarcentury
Dr David Lowry, Institute for Resource and Security Studies, Cambridge Massachusetts
Dr med. Alex Rosen, IPPNW Germany
Dr Michael Schöppner, Vienna University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences
Dr Eva Stegen, Elektrizitätswerke Schönau, Energy Watch Group
Dr David Toke, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Aberdeen
Cllr David Blackburn, UK and Ireland NFLA
Paul Brown, Climate News Network Eur Ing
Herbert Eppel, Chartered Environmentalist and Director of HE Translations Ltd
Friederike Frieß, MSc. Dr.rer.nat., Vienna University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences
Michel Lee, Council on Intelligent Energy & Conservation Policy
Jonathon Porritt, Author and Campaigner Ulli Sima, Vienna Deputy Mayor, Cities for a Nuclear Free Europe
David Thorpe, One Planet Life
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Male dominated climate talks falter, while women’s perspective is excluded
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The first step to achieving this aim would be gender parity at international climate conferences such as the Madrid COP. While we don’t yet know how many of the 13,000 registered governmental delegates were women, based on past numbers they are unlikely to make up more than a quarter. This is not the only forum where the experiences of women are ignored. Our research, spanning Kenya, Cambodia and Vanuatu, has found women are working collectively to strengthen their communities in the face of climate change. But their knowledge about climate risk is dismissed by scientists and political leaders. Bridging climate awareness When women are excluded from local and national-level governance, the absence of their voices at regional and global levels, such as COP meetings, is virtually assured. Our work across Africa, Asia and the Pacific found scientists – generally male – lack awareness of the knowledge women hold about the local consequences of climate change. At the same time, those women had little access to scientific research. In places where the labour is divided by gender, women and men learn different things about the environment. Though the women in our research generally did not know about government policies or programs on climate change and disaster risk reduction, they were very aware of environmental change. In Kenya, the pastoralist women we spoke to are acutely aware of the link between their physical insecurity and extreme drought. Continue reading |
European Union’s “taxonomy” of sustainable activities includes nuclear
 Green-Finance Deal Reached by EU States on Nuclear Compromise https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-16/green-finance-deal-reached-by-eu-states-on-nuclear-compromise
By Alexander Weber, December 16, 2019,
Diplomats from the European Union’s 28 countries agreed to advance with key legislation for green financial products, bringing the bloc a step closer to embedding environmental goals in standards for banks, money managers and insurers. Envoys signed off on a deal on the EU’s list of sustainable activities after more lenient wording on the inclusion of nuclear energy won the backing of countries including France and the U.K., according to an official involved in the talks, who asked not to be named, in line with policy. A first attempt to strike a deal last week failed amid divisions over the role that nuclear energy should play in the framework. The EU’s list of sustainable activities for investment purposes, dubbed “taxonomy,” is the centerpiece of its push to regulate the fast growing market of green finance, in the hope of directing trillions of euros to fund a radical revision of the region’s economy. It’s meant to define what’s green and what’s not, an effort that could find a range of uses and serve as an example for governments around the world. The difficulty of agreeing on the rules shows what kind of obstacles the EU has to overcome to meet its ambitious climate targets. Leaders last week agreed that the bloc should achieve zero net emissions in 2050, paving the way for a flurry of legislation that’s needed for the unprecedented clean-up of the economy. The member states now have to present their compromise to the European Parliament, which has been critical of allowing fossil fuels and nuclear power to be classified as sustainable and thus eligible to be financed with green bonds and similar financial products. |
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European Union’s sustainable finance debate bogged down in question of including nuclear power
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Nuclear power toxifies EU sustainable finance debate EU28 ambassadors meet on Monday morning to see if they can come up with a compromise that can keep all sides happy Mehreen Khan 15 Dec 19 https://www.ft.com/content/f4ee6bfc-1fb2-11ea-b8a1-584213ee7b2b Nuclear power toxifies EU sustainable finance debate EU28 ambassadors meet on Monday morning to see if they can come up with a compromise that can keep all sides happy Share on Twitter (opens new window) Share on Facebook (opens new window) Share on LinkedIn (opens new window) Save Mehreen Khan YESTERDAY Agreeing on international climate deals is harder than it looks. Despite rising public pressure for policymakers to grapple with the challenge, marathon talks at the UN’s COP25 summit ended this weekend in failure. In what was the world’s longest ever climate negotiation (14 consecutive days), international delegates in Madrid failed to agree rules for how rich and poorer countries should construct a new global carbon trading market. The FT’s Leslie Hook dissects how the summit came to an inconclusive end and why the EU and environmental NGOs are lamenting the outcome.
The EU, which was part of the negotiations in Madrid, will be discouraged by the rancour over carbon trading permits — especially as Brussels is drawing up contentious plans to force third countries to pay a price for carbon it exports to the bloc.
Away from the UN talks, EU governments will have to face down their own green divisions on Monday when they meet to discuss much-anticipated market rules on sustainable finance products. Despite hopes for a deal before the end of the year, France and eastern European capitals last week demanded the rules make explicit to investors that nuclear energy is part of the EU’s journey towards carbon neutrality.
EU28 ambassadors meet on Monday morning to see if they can come up with a compromise that can keep all sides happy. Austria and Luxembourg have led the charge against giving a green-stamp to nuclear, with Germany also resisting over concerns about the environmental impact of nuclear waste.
While the EU has championed itself as a global leader in climate policy, Brussels has yet to prove whether it can “walk the talk” on green policy. The debate over the classification system (known as the “taxonomy”) is the new European Commission’s first real test.
Energy policy is a fiercely protected part of governments’ national powers. Divisions were laid bare in a tense leaders’ summit last week where member states ultimately failed to convince Poland to sign up to the bloc’s 2050 net zero carbon target. But in a triumph for France and its eastern allies, the summit conclusions gave an explicit nod to nuclear as “part of the energy mix” in some countries.
Diplomats think the summit agreement on nuclear should pave the way for pro-nuclear countries to win the argument over the taxonomy. Even if they do, another battle with MEPs lies ahead. Should ambassadors get a compromise on Monday, it still has to be agreed by the European Parliament, which has insisted on its “no” to nuclear.
Pascal Canfin, head of the EP’s environment committee and member of Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche, also held firm on the issue. He told the Brussels Briefing that EU governments should not “modify the balanced political compromise” agreed with MEPs earlier this month. “All parties know that it is the only deal that could have been reached. That’s why I’m confident we will get a formal endorsement this week,” said Mr Canfin.
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Marathon UN climate talks have a rather disappointing outcome
Disappointment as marathon climate talks end with slim deal. AP News, By FRANK JORDANS and ARITZ PARRA,MADRID (AP) 15 Dec 19, — Marathon U.N. climate talks ended Sunday with a slim compromise that sparked widespread disappointment, after major polluters resisted calls for ramping up efforts to keep global warming at bay and negotiators postponed debate about rules for international carbon markets for another year.
Organizers kept delegates from almost 200 nations in Madrid far beyond Friday’s scheduled close of the two-week talks. In the end, negotiators endorsed a general call for greater efforts to tackle climate change and several measures to help poor countries respond and adapt to its impacts.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said he was “disappointed” by the meeting’s outcome.
“The international community lost an important opportunity to show increased ambition on mitigation, adaptation and finance to tackle the climate crisis,” he said. “We must not give up and I will not give up.”
The final declaration cited an “urgent need” to cut planet-heating greenhouse gases in line with the goals of the landmark 2015 Paris climate change accord. But it fell far short of explicitly demanding that countries submit bolder emissions proposals next year, which developing countries and environmentalists had demanded……
Thankfully, the weak rules on a market-based mechanism, promoted by Brazil and Australia, that would have undermined efforts to reduce emissions, have been shelved,” said Mohamed Adow, director of Nairobi-based campaign group Power Shift Africa.
Helen Mountford, from the environmental think-tank World Resources Institute, said that “given the high risks of loopholes discussed in Madrid, it was better to delay than accept rules that would have compromised the integrity of the Paris Agreement.”…….
Delegates made some progress on financial aid for poor countries affected by climate change, despite strong resistance from the United States to any clause holding big polluters liable for the damage caused by their emissions. Countries agreed four years ago to funnel $100 billion per year by 2020 to assist developing nations, but so far nowhere near that amount has been raised. …..
The United States will be excluded from much of those talks after President Donald Trump announced the country’s withdrawal from the Paris accord, a process than comes into force Nov. 4, 2020……. https://apnews.com/aca79ab4956f370b8892ba574fe56834
The world is headed for climate crisis and nuclear destruction
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The world is headed for climate crisis and nuclear destruction https://www.idsnews.com/article/2019/12/opextinction121119 BRYCE GREENE In August 1945, the development and dropping of the atomic bombs ushered humanity into an unprecedented era. For the first time in human history, we possessed the capacity for complete species destruction.
Current actions regarding climate and atomic bombs taken by lawmakers are putting the world at risk of this destruction again. Since 1947, an organization known as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists developed a theoretical model to describe just how close we are to the brink. The end result was a clock whose countdown to midnight signified the approaching end of humanity. This model was dubbed The Doomsday Clock. Over the years, scientists have adjusted the clock according to their assessment of the risk of destruction. In 1953, the clock was moved to 11:58 as Americans and Soviets developed the hydrogen bomb, a weapon with destructive capabilities orders of magnitude greater than the Hiroshima bomb. Given the effects of nuclear winter alone, such a war have almost certainly wiped out all of humanity, the catastrophic event known as omnicide. In subsequent years, the U.S. maintained Cold War-level military spending and rejected a series of nuclear arms treaties. This aggressive stance, along with a nuclear North Korea and fears of nuclear terrorism, has prompted the clock to shift continuously back towards midnight. In 2007, the bulletin included a new variable for measuring omnicidal dangers: climate change. The effects of a steadily warming planet pose an enormous threat to organized human existence. Global warming increases the frequency and severity of natural catastrophes such as wildfires, floods, freak storms and droughts. Increased carbon in the atmosphere is causing decreased nutrition levels in crops. Coastal areas around the world will sink under water, and entire countries will be uninhabitable due to excessive heat. The effects of this would be enough to tear apart the liberal world order. Since then, the clock has been inching closer to destruction. In 2018, the bulletin moved the clock to 2 minutes to midnight, as close as it has ever been in the clock’s history. The reasons are clear. President Donald Trump and the rest of the Republicans continued to march the U.S. on the path towards climate and nuclear catastrophe. In many ways they are aided by a Democratic establishment who scoff at a Green New Deal while taking hundreds of thousands in fossil fuel money. Earlier this year, the administration announced that it was going to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, absolving itself of the responsibility to help limit emissions. Of course, Trump and America aren’t the only culprits behind the world’s emissions. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists notes that most of the countries of the world have “failed miserably” in their goal to reduce emissions. After a brief plateau in emissions, global emissions resumed their rise after 2017. After the Obama administration initiated a $1 trillion investment in “modernizing” our nuclear arsenal, Trump is also hastening our march to nuclear annihilation by expanding that investment. In response, Vladmir Putin announced Russia’s own modernization efforts. Additionally, Trump announced that the U.S. was abandoning the INF treaty that limits the kinds of nuclear weapons that could be developed The administration’s Nuclear Posture Review highlights the need to be prepared to use nukes in a wide variety of circumstances, as well as plans to develop “more-useable” nuclear weapons. None of this will increase our safety. We are at the beginning of a new nuclear arms race. Earlier this year, Trump announced he would reimpose sanctions of Iran, violating the Iran nuclear deal. The direct human costs of the sanctions aside, this raises the risk of a conflagration in the region that could lead to nuclear exchange. A nuclear North Korea continues to hang over Southeast Asia. Though the Trump meeting with Kim was a step in the right direction, no concrete actions were taken. All of these problems are exacerbated by the new paradigm of weaponized information. In 2019, the Bulletin announced that information warfare techniques pose another threat to civilization. In a world of fake news and alternative facts, the information ecosystem is threatened with utter chaos. The Bulletin writes that “by manipulating the natural cognitive predispositions of human beings, information warriors can exacerbate prejudices, biases, and ideological differences.” The modern information society makes such manipulation exponentially more dangerous. Society will not be able to deal with the problems we face if citizens cannot trust the information they encounter. The Bulletin says, “This new abnormal is simply too volatile and dangerous to accept as a continuing state of world affairs.” Our society is living with a gun pointed at our head, and the people who run the world seem intent on playing around with the trigger. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists released a statement saying “The means for managing dangerous technology and reducing global-scale risk exist; indeed, many of them are well-known and within society’s reach, if leaders pay reasonable attention to preserving the long-term prospects of humanity, and if citizens demand that they do so.” As citizens of the world, we have a job to do. |
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1 This Month
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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