Nuclear inquiry told “firmed renewables” cheapest and best option for future https://reneweconomy.com.au/nuclear-inquiry-told-firmed-renewables-cheapest-and-best-option-for-future-58109/ , Sophie Vorrath 29August 2019 A mix of distributed renewable energy generation and firming technologies including battery storage and pumped hydro remains the best path forward for Australia’s future grid, experts have told the federal government’s inquiry into nuclear power.A panel including representatives from Australia’s energy market regulator (AER), rule maker (AEMC) and operator (AEMO) faced questions on Thursday from the House of Representatives Standing Committee on the prerequisites for nuclear energy in Australia. Established by the federal Coalition and chaired by Queensland LNP MP Ted O’Brien, the Committee aims – according to O’Brien – to answer the three main questions of whether nuclear is “feasible, suitable and palatable” in the Australian context.
But in a hearing in Sydney on Thursday morning, it heard that nuclear power just doesn’t stack up against firmed renewables – already at price parity with new-build coal and gas and “well and truly” on track to becoming the lowest cost generation form for the National Electricity Market.
Nuclear power, meanwhile, was around four times more expensive – $16,000/kW for the still mainly conceptual Small Modular Reactor technology – and not fit for purpose on a rapidly changing Australian grid.“Unfirmed renewables are effectively the cheapest form of energy production today,” said Alex Wonhas, the chief system design and engineering officer at the Australian Energy Market Operator.
“If we look at firmed renewables, that current cost is roughly comparable to new-build gas and new-build coal, but given the learning rate, this will well and truly become the lowest cost generation form for the NEM.
“There is a certain amount of energy that we expect renewables to deliver,” Wonhas added. “But we will need dispatchable resources, and generators that can respond quickly.
“I don’t think we want many more plants that have a very stable output profile. We’re looking for plant that can increase and decrease rapidly and respond to market.”Pushed on the challenges to the grid of “intermittent renewables” by O’Brien, Wonhas was upbeat in his outlook. “There’s actually a whole suite of different technologies that we can draw upon, in the case of firmed renewables,” he told the Committee.“Gas is an effective firming option, but there’s a whole range of other technologies out there – such as solar thermal, that are dispatchable.” He also added pumped hydro and battery storage.
“We are quite fortunate that we have many different technology options available that we can use to build Australia’s future generation system.”
And nuclear, it is becoming blindingly clear, is not one of them.
Even Ziggy Switkowski, who headed up the Coalition’s last big excursion into nuclear power, was unequivocal on that.
“The window (in Australia) is now closed for gigawatt-scale nuclear,” he told the Committee on Thursday, noting that current large-scale versions of the technology had failed to find anywhere near the same economies of scale that had been enjoyed by solar and wind.
“Nuclear power has got more expensive, rather than less expensive,” he added, while also noting that the time required to develop new nuclear projects could cover at least five political cycles. There is no business case, and no investor appetite.”
Switkowski told the Committee that the only hope for nuclear in Australia hinged on the future of Small Modular Reactors – which, as Jim Green explains here, are currently “non-existent, overhyped, and obscenely expensive.”
Current costs for SMR generation, as modelled by the AEMO and CSIRO, are estimated at $16,000/kW, which as Committee member and Labor MP Josh Wilson pointed out, is more expensive than large-scale nuclear by at least 50 per cent, and four or five times higher than capital cost of new solar wind. And while other technologies are modelled to see a decrease in their cost over time – solar thermal and storage, for example, at $7,000/kW is expected to fall to around half that in 2050 – SMR nuclear costs stay flat in AEMO/CSIRO modelling out to 2050.
Trumped Up: Wiki cables show Australia thinks Iran is not the aggressor, Michael West, by Prof. Clinton Fernandes — 23 August 2019Wikileaks cables reveal Iran presents no threat to Australia and little threat to the US. Instead, clear intelligence from the US, Australia and Iran confirms Iran, although portrayed as aggressive, has pursued a defensive military strategy. Clinton Fernandez reports.
This week, Australia announced it would send military forces to patrol the Persian Gulf alongside Bahrain, Britain and the United States. “Iran’s unprovoked attacks on international shipping,” required nothing less, according to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The US had previously withdrawn from the so-called “Iran nuclear deal,” known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and imposed sanctions against Iran. Iran went to the International Court of Justice, asking it to rule on the legality of these sanctions. In a unanimous decision, all 15 judges of the International Court of Justice – including American judge ad hoc Charles Brower – ordered the United States to ease some sanctions against Iran………
Iran: a Clayton’s threat
Exactly what kind of threat does Iran pose? And how does the United States view its own conduct? Diplomatic cables leaked to Wikileaks in 2010 provide revealing insights into these questions. The cables written by American diplomats in Australia are especially revealing because the two countries have a very close relationship in a number of spheres.
This doesn’t mean the US sees Australia as vital; the relationship is heavily asymmetrical, with Australia going out of its way to demonstrate its relevance, as its decision to send military forces to the Persian Gulf illustrates. Combined with evidence given by the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies to the US Congress, a clearer picture of Iranian motives emerges…….
US intelligence confirmed that Iran’s defence was low in comparative terms, was aimed specifically at defence rather than aggression, and sought to deter an invasion long enough for diplomacy to set in. If it ever developed nuclear weapons, they would be remain part of a deterrence strategy. ……
Australian cables show Iran no rogue state
The leaked cables show that Australia’s intelligence agencies also acknowledge that Iran seeks a deterrent. During discussions with the United States in 2008, Australia’s intelligence analysts appeared to take a calm view of Iran’s nuclear program, saying it fell “within the paradigm of ‘the laws of deterrence.’” It was “a mistake to think of Iran as a ‘Rogue State,’” according to Peter Varghese, then the Director-General of the Australian Office of National Assessments……… https://www.michaelwest.com.au/trumped-up-wiki-cables-show-australia-thinks-iran-is-not-the-aggressor/Clinton Fernandez is Professor of International and Political Studies, UNSW Canberra, and author of “Island off the Coast of Asia: Instruments of Statecraft in Australian Foreign Policy”.
Australian mining company Lynas gets permission to dispose of radioactive waste in Malaysia, dividing locals ABC
By Indonesia bureau chief David Lipson and Phil Hemingway in Malaysia An Australian mining company has been told to “get lost” and “go back to Australia” amid an ongoing row over hundreds of thousands of tonnes of radioactive waste piling up in Malaysia.
Key points:
Malaysia has renewed the rare earth plant licence of Australian company Lynas
Green groups say Lynas’ activities pose a threat to the local environment
Lynas says it will meet the licence obligations set by Malaysia’s Government
Outside of China, the Australian firm, Lynas, is the world’s only major producer of rare earth minerals, which are crucial in the production of high-tech gear including smartphones, laser-guidedmissiles and electric car batteries.
The ore is dug up at Mount Weld in Western Australia and then shipped to Malaysia, where the cost of processing is significantly lower.
The low-level radioactive waste is a by-product of the enrichment process and Malaysian activists are convinced it poses a threat to local communities.
At a recent protest in Kuantan, several hundred people rallied against the Australian firm and Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s decision to extend itslicence to operate.
“[The radioactivity] will be passed through our children and our children’s children,” said Moses Lim, a chemical engineer turned activist.
“We may be gone, but our grandchildren will curse us.”
Mr Lim claimed the issue had the potential to “tarnish the good name of Australia” in the minds of millions of Malaysians. But the Prime Minister,94-year-oldDr Mahathir, dismissed criticism of Lynas’ operations in Malaysia.
“It’s not Chernobyl. This isn’t going to be dangerous,” he said.
‘We just have to accept this fate’
The issue has split the local community, which relies on the hundreds of high-paying jobs that the processing facility provides.
At a local fish market in Kuantan, a mother who declined to offer her name told the ABC she feared radioactive contamination from the facility would make its way into her food.
“I am scared, but I have no choice but to buy the fresh fish from here. We just have to accept this fate,” she said.
“I think Lynas should be shut down for the sake of the surrounding environment.”
But other locals said there was nothing to worry about, blaming politicians for trying to capitalise on the issue by whipping up fear in the community.
Raja Harris bin Raja Salleh, the chief fisher in Balok village, said the residents are “not at all scared”.
“Lynas is the same as other agencies and factories that produce chemicals. The accusations against Lynas are political,” he said.
Toxic waste becomes a toxic issue
The issue of Lynas’ radioactive waste has become politically toxic for the Mahathir-led coalition, which promised in opposition to close the Australian plant.
Lynas is allowed to keep operating its plant and has been given six months to find a suitable site within Malaysia to permanently dispose of 580,000 tonnes of low-level radioactive waste currently stockpiled at the Kuantan facility.
The company has also been given four years to relocate its cracking and leaching processing operation — which creates the radioactive waste — to Western Australia.
Wong Tak, a Malaysian Government MP who attended the Kuantan protest, said the cabinet decision to extend the licence was a “great disappointment”.
The long time anti-Lynas campaigner claimed the issue was serious enough to fracture the Mahathir-led Pakatan Harapan, or Alliance of Hope, Coalition.
“I know the majority of backbenchers are with us, and I will even say the majority of the cabinet are with the people.”
Dr Mahathir has taken a pragmatic approach to the issue, saying the decision to extend the licencewas based on expert advice, not the “popular view”.
“Either we get rid of the industry and lose credibility in terms of foreign direct investment, or we can take care of the problem,” he said……
In 2010, the Chinese supply of rare earths to Japan suddenly stopped for two months following a territorial dispute over Japan’s claim to the Senkaku Islands, which angered China.
The construction of the Lynas plant in Malaysia was largely funded in 2011 by Japan, which needed a reliable supply of rare earths.
In Australian news, with considerably less media coverage, Parliament announced an Inquiry into nuclear energy for Australia, with an emphasis on Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). Submissions are due by September 16.
A bit of background. The U.S. government and the U.S. nuclear industry are very keen to develop and export small modular nuclear reactors for two main reasons, both explained in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018 Firstly, with the decline of large nuclear reactors, there is a need to maintain the technology and the expertise, trained staff, necessary to support the nuclear weapons industry. Secondly, the only hope for commercial viability of small nuclear reactors is in exporting them – the domestic market is too small. So – Australia is seen as a desirable market.
The USA motivation for exporting these so far non-existent prefabricated reactors is clear. The motivation of their Australian promoters is not so clear.
These are the main reasons why it would be a bad idea for Australia to import small modular nuclear reactors.
COST.Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Engineering and Public Policy concluded that the SMR industry would not be viable unless the industry received “several hundred billion dollars of direct and indirect subsidies” over the next several decades. For a company to invest in a factory to manufacture reactors, they’d need to be sure of a real market for them – Australia would have to commit to a strong investment up front.
The diseconomics of scale make SMRs more expensive than large reactors. A 250 MW SMR will generate 25 percent as much power as a 1,000 MW reactor, but it will require more than 25 percent of the material inputs and staffing, and a number of other costs including waste management and decommissioning will be proportionally higher.
A study by WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff, commissioned by the 2015/16 South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission, estimated costs of A$180‒184/MWh (US$127‒130) for large pressurised water reactors and boiling water reactors, compared to A$198‒225 (US$140‒159) for SMRs.
To have any hope of being economically viable, SMRs would have to be mass produced and deployed, and here is a “Catch-22″ problem The economics of mass production of SMRs cannot be proven until hundreds of units are in operation. But that can’t happen unless there are hundreds of orders, and there will be few takers unless the price can be brought down. Huge government subsidy is therefore required
Safety problems. Small nuclear reactors still have the same kinds of safety needsas large ones have. The heat generated by the reactor core must be removed both under normal and accident conditions, to keep the fuel from overheating, becoming damaged, and releasing radioactivity. The passive natural circulation coolingcould be effective under many conditions, but not under all accident conditions. For instance, for the NuScale design a large earthquake could send concrete debris into the pool, obstructing circulation of water or air. Where there are a number of units, accidents affecting more than one small unit may cause complications that could overwhelm the capacity to cope with multiple failures.
Because SMRs have weaker containment systems than current reactors, there would be greater damage if a hydrogen explosion occurred. A secondary containment structure would prevent large-scale releases of radioactivity in case of a severe accident. But that would make individual SMR units unaffordable. The result? Companies like NuScale now move to projects called “Medium” nuclear reactors – with 12 units under a single containment structure. Not really small anymore.
Underground siting is touted as a safety solution, to avoid aircraft attacks and earthquakes. But that increases the risks from flooding. In the event of an accident emergency crews could have greater difficulty accessing underground reactors.
Security
Proponents of SMRs argue that they can be deployed safely both as a fleet of units close to cities, or as individual units in remote locations. In all cases, they’d have to operate under a global regulatory framework, which is going to mean expensive security arrangements and a level of security staffing. ‘Economies of scale’ don’t necessarily work, when it comes to staffing small reactors. SMRs will, anyway, need a larger number of workers to generate a kilowatt of electricity than large reactors need. In the case of security staffing, this becomes important both in a densely populated area, and in an isolated one.
Weapons Proliferation.
The latest news on the Russian explosion is a dramatic illustration of the connection between SMRs and weapons development.
But not such a surprise. SMRs have always had this connection, beginning in the nuclear weapons industry, in powering U.S. nuclear submarines. They were used in UK to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. Today, the U.S. Department of Energy plans to use SMRs as part of “dual use” facilities, civilian and military. SMRs contain radioactive materials, produce radioactive wastes – could be taken, used part of the production of a “dirty bomb” The Pentagon’s Project Dilithium’s small reactors may run on Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) , nuclear weapons fuel – increasing these risks.
It is now openly recognised that the nuclear weapons industry needs the technology development and the skilled staff that are provided by the “peaceful” nuclear industry. The connection is real, but it’s blurred. The nuclear industry needs the “respectability” that is conferred by new nuclear, with its claims of “safe, clean, climate-solving” energy.
Wastes.
SMRs are designed to produce less radioactive trash than current reactors. But they still produce long-lasting nuclear wastes, and in fact, for SMRs this is an even more complex problem. Australia already has the problem of spent nuclear fuel waste, accumulating in one place – from the nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights. With SMRs adopted, the waste would be located in many sites, with each location having the problem of transport to a disposal facility. Final decommissioning of all these reactors would compound this problem. In the case of underground reactors, there’d be further difficulties with waste retrieval, and site rehabilitation.
6. Location.
I have touched on this, in the paragraphs on safety, security, and waste problems. The nuclear enthusiasts are excited about the prospects for small reactors in remote places. After all, aren’t some isolated communities already having success with small, distributed solar and wind energy? It all sounds great. But it isn’t.
With Australia’s great distances, it would be difficult to monitor and ensure the security of such a potentially dangerous system, of many small reactors scattered about on this continent. Nuclear is an industry that is already struggling to attract qualified staff, with a large percentage of skilled workers nearing retirement. The logistics of operating these reactors, meeting regulatory and inspection requirements, maintaining security staff would make the whole thing not just prohibitively expensive, but completely impractical.
Delay.
For Australia, this has to be the most salient point of all. Economist John Quiggin has pointed out that Australia’s nuclear fans are enthusing about small modular nuclear reactors, but with no clarity on which, of the many types now designed, would be right for Australia. NuScale’s model, funded by the U.S. government, is the only one at present with commercial prospects, so Quiggin has examined its history of delays. But Quiggin found that NuScale is not actually going to build the factory: it is going to assemble the reactor parts, these having been made by another firm, – and which firm is not clear. Quiggin concludes:
Australia’s proposed nuclear strategy rests on a non-existent plant to be manufactured by a company that apparently knows nothing about it.
As there’s no market for small nuclear reactors, companies have not invested much money to commercialise them. Westinghouse Electric Company tried for years to get government funding for its SMR plan, then gave up, and switched to other projects. Danny Roderick, then president and CEO of Westinghouse, announced:
The problem I have with SMRs is not the technology, it’s not the deployment ‒ it’s that there’s no customers. … The worst thing to do is get ahead of the market.
Russia’s programme has been delayed by more than a decade and the estimated costs have ballooned.
South Korea decided on SMRs, but then pulled out, presumably for economic reasons.
There’s a lot of chatter in the international media, about all the countries that are interested, or even have signed memoranda of understanding about buying SMRs, but still with no plans for actual purchase or construction.
Is Australia going to be the guinea pig for NuScale’s Small and Medium Reactor scheme? If so,when? The hurdles to overcome would be mind-boggling. The start would have to be the repeal of Australia’s laws – the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999 Section 140A and Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998. Then comes the overcoming of States’ laws, much political argy-bargy, working out regulatory frameworks, import and transport of nuclear materials, – finding locations for siting reactors, – Aboriginal issues-community consent, waste locations. And what would it all cost?
And, in the meantime, energy efficiency developments, renewable energy progress, storage systems – will keep happening, getting cheaper, and making nuclear power obsolete.
Cumbria Trust 11th Aug 2019The Guardian has reported that residents in Southern Australia, who face having a nuclear waste storage facility imposed on them, are being forced
to sign an excessively restrictive code of conduct if they wish to attend
community meetings. This prevents them from taking notes, repeating certain
views expressed in the meeting, or trying to take part in the committee
discussions.
This appears to go well beyond the steps required to maintain
an orderly meeting, and serves to suppress democratic accountability. While
the last search process in Cumbria, MRWS, didn’t go to such extreme
lengths, there were some unnecessary restrictions which obstructed local
democracy. Specifically, executive members of the borough councils, and
cabinet members of Cumbria County Council, were told that they could not
give any public indication of whether they were minded to vote for the
process to proceed to the next stage. This ‘predetermination’ rule
allowed senior councillors to completely avoid public scrutiny on the
matter.
23 July 2019byPeter Boyer Australia’s big dry is now its worst drought on record. Which is pretty much the way it is everywhere. Following a lead from our state and federal governments, today I’m going to avoid the delicate matter of future climate. Instead I’ll focus on what’s happening around us now.
Weather records tell us that June in Australia was 0.26C warmer than average and 31 per cent drier. The first half of 2019 produced the continent’s second warmest and seventh driest conditions in 120 years of records.
In those six months the Murray-Darling Basin had about half its normal rainfall. Basin residents might have coped with this in normal times, but these are not normal times. Dry, warm, high-evaporation weather since January 2017 has left them with conditions they’ve not seen before.
Now it’s official. Rainfall records reveal that today’s Murray-Darling experience is Australia’s worst drought on record – more severe than the Federation, the World War II, the Millennium or any other drought in our recorded history.
Bureau of Meteorology climatologist David Jones told a BOM seminar last week that proxy evidence indicates Australia hasn’t been as dry as this for two or three million years, long before humans existed. This puts the current state of our weather in a completely new place.
Numerous NSW and southern Queensland towns now have emergency water restrictions in place. Many towns in upper Darling catchments calculate their water storage as a few months at most. In Tenterfield they’re pumping already-depleted groundwater to try to keep storage levels stable.
Water is now being carted to the small town of Guyra, 150 km away, but for Tenterfield that’s not an option – at least not a sustainable one. Its businesses and 4000 residents would need 1400 B-double truckloads a month, or nearly 50 each day, to sustain even minimal water use.
The list of towns threatened with losing their water supply is growing, including Warwick and Stanthorpe in Queensland. The larger centres of Tamworth, Armidale, Orange and Dubbo are lining up to join them if good rain doesn’t come this year. The Bureau is not hopeful of that happening.
Running out of water is a nightmare for any community. Cape Town almost ran out a year ago and is still in a tenuous position. In much-larger Chennai on India’s southeast coast, where it hasn’t rained for six months, the situation is dire. Monsoon rain is not expected for another month or two.
This city of 10 million people consumes over 500 million litres a day. The provincial government is now using trains to transport water every day from a half-full storage over 300 km away, but if the city were to run out completely that supply would have to increase 50-fold. That won’t happen.
Early monsoonal downpours in India’s Assam along with Nepal and Bangladesh have brought the opposite problem: too much water, displacing millions of people and killing over 100. Not far away in the high Himalayas, the rate of glacier melt has been found to have doubled in less than 20 years to more than eight billion tonnes a year. A scientific assessment published in June is a very bad omen for downstream communities depending on glacial meltwater.
Meanwhile America’s Pacific north-west is preparing for another nasty fire season. A scientific wildfire survey has just informed Californians, after their worst season ever last year, that the state’s summer fires have increased five-fold since the 1970s, with rising temperature the key cause.
Wildfire anxiety has spread northward, to the dark, dank forests of British Columbia. The Canadian province’s wildfire service has warned that abnormally high fire conditions will be experienced in coastal regions including Vancouver Island at least till the end of summer.
This comes after several summers of intense wildfires up and down the Canadian west coast, mostly started by lightning strikes. They have been especially devastating in new-growth forests, where less genetic diversity and lower tree density allows higher moisture loss.
Things are hotting up in the far north. Alert, a Canadian military base on Ellesmere Island in the high Arctic, normally has a daytime maximum around 7C in July, but it’s currently experiencing an unprecedented heatwave that has seen temperatures climb above 20C.
Canada’s chief climatologist, David Phillips, says this heatwave is just the latest indicator of what will be a long, hot Arctic summer. The main trigger, say scientists, was a dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice over the past decade that allowed the ocean to absorb much more heat from the sun.
Smoke has become a regular contributor to Arctic weather, and this year is no exception. These are not forest fires so much as peat fires. The dried-out tundra itself is now burning in Alaska and across wide Siberian expanses, sending choking black smoke into the air.
Among the many things I’ve left out are Darwin’s groundwater crisis, depleted Great Barrier Reef coral, Europe’s unprecedented June heat, vanishing Antarctic sea ice, chronic drought in Africa and the Americas and floods in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Did I mention climate change?
VICTIM of a chronic decline in government support, Hobart’s venerable environment and sustainability body, Sustainable Living Tasmania, has been forced to close its doors after nearly 50 years of quiet achievement. It will continue as a volunteer-run organisation with no office
Adani protest: French journalists arrested while filming anti-coal activities, Guardian
Journalists charged with trespassing after filming Frontline Action on Coal activists include Hugo Clément, Ben Smee@BenSmee, Mon 22 Jul 2019 Four journalists working for the public television network France 2 have been charged with trespassing for filming a protest near the Abbot Point coal terminal, in north Queensland, targeting the operations of the Adani group.
The group of journalists includes Hugo Clément, a reporter well known in France for his documentaries about climate change and environmental issues.
Clément and a crew were arrested while filming anti-coal activists from the group Frontline Action on Coal, which early on Monday morning set up a blockade outside the Abbot Point port. About 20 members of the environmental group gathered outside the port entrance from 7am. Two locked themselves to a concrete barrel on the roadway.
In a statement Frontline Action on Coal said Clément and others were told by police they were “obstructing the railway” while filming the protests.
“Without warning, all four Frenchmen were immediately placed in handcuffs and put into police vehicles,” the statement said.
The group was taken to a police station in the nearby town of Bowen. They were released on bail on Monday afternoon and ordered to face the local magistrates court in September.
Clément said he spent several hours in a cell after being arrested while filming a protest, which included two demonstrators locking their hands inside a concrete barrel.
“We were just filming the action at the blockade of the highway and police came straight to us and arrested us without a word, without saying anything,” Clément said.
“They took us into a cell for seven hours.”
He said he and his crew, who work for French public broadcaster France 2, were charged with trespassing and released on conditional bail, which included that they not go within 20km of the Carmichael site.
“We didn’t understand why they arrested us because we weren’t doing anything wrong, we were just doing our jobs by filming the action,” he said.
Leave it in the ground: stopping the Jabiluka mine, Red Flag Fleur Taylor, 15 July 2019 “…… The election of John Howard in March 1996 marked the end of 13 years of ALP government…..
Australia’s giant mining companies – major backers of the Coalition – got their wish list. Howard immediately abolished Labor’s three mines policy, and the business pages crowed that “25 new uranium mines” were likely and possible. And in October 1997, then environment minister Robert Hill blew the dust off an environmental impact statement from 1979 that said mining at Jabiluka was safe. Approval of the mine quickly followed.
The Jabiluka uranium deposit, just 20 kilometres from the Ranger uranium mine, is one of the richest in the world. The proposal was to build a massively bigger mine than that at Ranger, which would be underground and therefore more dangerous for the workers. It was projected to produce 19 million tonnes of ore over its lifetime, which would be trucked 22 kilometres through World Heritage listed wetlands.
The Liberals hoped to make a point. After all, if you could put a uranium mine in the middle of a national park in the face of Aboriginal opposition, what couldn’t you do?
The fight immediately began. The traditional owners of the area, the Mirarr, were led by senior traditional owner Yvonne Margarula and the CEO of the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, Jacqui Katona. They were supported by anti-nuclear campaigners around the country, most notably Dave Sweeney of the Australian Conservation Foundation, as well as a network of activist groups.
The most important objective was to delay construction of the mine, scheduled to begin in 1998. To do this, the Mirarr called on activists to travel to Jabiluka in order to take part in a blockade of the proposed mine site until the onset of the wet season would make construction impossible.
The blockade was immensely successful. Beginning on 23 March 1998, it continued for eight months, attracted 5,000 protesters and led to 600 arrests at various associated direct actions. Yvonne Margarula was one: she was arrested in May for trespass on her own land after she and two other Aboriginal women entered the Ranger mine site.
The blockade also attracted high-profile environmental and anti-nuclear activists such as Peter Garrett and Bob Brown. This helped signal to activists that this was a serious fight. The sheer length of time the blockade lasted created a fantastic opportunity for the campaign in the cities. Activists were constantly returning from Jabiluka with a renewed determination to fight.
The Jabiluka Action Group was key to building an ongoing city-based campaign in Melbourne, and the campaign was strongest there of any city. It held large – often more than 100-strong – weekly meetings, organised endless relays of buses to the blockade and took the fight to the bosses and corporations that stood to profit from the mine.
We were determined to map the networks of corporate ownership and power behind the mine. But in the late 1990s, when the internet barely existed, this wasn’t as simple as just looking up a company’s corporate structure on its glossy website. It took serious, time consuming research.
A careful tracing of the linkages of the North Ltd board members showed that they were very well connected – and not one but two of them were members and past chairmen of the Business Council of Australia (BCA) – one of Australia’s leading bosses’ organisations. So our June 1998 protest naturally headed to the Business Council of Australia. We occupied their office, and the two groups of anti-uranium protesters, 3,800 kilometres apart, exchanged messages of solidarity, courtesy of the office phones of the BCA.
We were also staggered to learn that the chairman of a company that owned two uranium mines and was Australia’s biggest exporter of hardwood woodchips was also a member of the Parks Victoria board, the national president of Greening Australia and the Victorian Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) board president!
The EPA, and corporate greenwashing in general, thereby became a target for the campaign. Another target was the Royal Society of Victoria, which made the mistake of inviting Sir Gus Nossal, a famous scientist and longstanding booster for the nuclear industry, to give a dinner address. We surrounded its building, and the organisers, somewhat mystified, cancelled the dinner. This action once again made headline news, helping to keep the issue of the Jabiluka mine in people’s minds.
We held regular protests at the headquarters of North Ltd on Melbourne’s St Kilda Road. On the day that Yvonne Margarula was facing court on her trespass charge, a vigil was held overnight. When we heard she had been found guilty, the protest erupted in fury. Cans of red paint – not water-based – materialised, and the corporate facade of North Ltd received an unscheduled refurbishment. The Herald-Sun went berserk.
The leadership of the Mirarr people gave this campaign a different focus from other environmental campaigns of the time. It was fundamentally about land rights, sovereignty and the right of Aboriginal communities to veto destructive developments on their land. In Melbourne, the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation appointed long-time Aboriginal militant and historian Gary Foley as their representative. Gary worked tirelessly to provoke and educate the many activists who turned up wanting to “support” or “do something” for Aboriginal people.
At a time when “reconciliation” was strongly supported by liberals and much of the left, Foley told us that reconciliation was bullshit. He argued native title (supposedly a key achievement of Keating) was “the most inferior form of land title under British law”, and that the ALP was every bit as racist as One Nation – if not worse. He insisted activists must educate themselves about sovereignty and the struggles happening right here, not just those happening 3,800 kilometres away. The way the Jabiluka Action Group activists approached this challenge was an example of how people’s ideas change. Many came into the campaign primarily as environmental activists, but almost all left as committed fighters for Aboriginal rights.
**********
When the blockade wound down at the onset of the wet season, it was an opportunity to fight on some other fronts. Representatives of the UN World Heritage Committee visited Kakadu in late 1998 and issued a declaration that the World Heritage values of the area were in danger. They called on the government to stop the mine. Yvonne Margarula and Jacqui Katona travelled to Paris to speak to the European Commission about the mine.
John Howard, at the time mired in ministerial scandals and resignations, had called an election for September 1998, and there was hope in some quarters that Labor might win and stop the mine. But Howard scraped back in on only 48.3 percent of the vote, and it was clear that the fight on the ground would have to continue.
In the meantime, an important legal loophole had been identified. North Ltd had failed to secure agreement for the Jabiluka ore to be trucked to the Ranger mine for processing. It turned out the Mirarr did have the right to refuse this, and by exercising this right they would increase the cost of the project by $200 million (the cost of building a new processing plant at Jabiluka). This, combined with the ongoing protests, became a huge problem for the company.
Something we enjoyed doing at the time was monitoring North Ltd’s share price. It started out high when the Liberals took power. But after a year of protest and controversy, it had started to sink. The slump world uranium prices were going through didn’t help. But what the share price correlated to most closely was the major protests – it showed a drop after every single one.
Fund managers everywhere had absorbed the simple message that Jabiluka meant trouble, and early in 1999 this formerly prestigious blue-chip mining stock was described as one of the year’s “dog stocks”. Encouraged by this, the campaign launched its most ambitious action to date – the four-day blockade of North Ltd, from Palm Sunday until Easter Thursday 1999. This was the beginning of the end for the mine. In mid-2000, Rio Tinto bought out the struggling North Ltd. With no appetite for a brawl, the new owners quietly mothballed the Jabiluka project, signing a guarantee with the Mirarr to that effect. The campaign had won.
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The Jabiluka campaign was one of those rare things – an outright victory. It was a win not just for the Mirarr people, but for every community threatened by a devastating radioactive mine. And it was a win for humanity as a whole, protected from more of this deadly substance. Our chant – “Hey, North, you’re running out of time! You’re never going to get your Jabiluka mine!” – for once came true.
The victory inspired a neighbouring traditional owner, Jeffrey Lee, single-handedly to challenge the development of the Koongarra uranium deposit, resulting in the cancellation of that entire mining lease. In Melbourne and other cities, the Mirarr resistance inspired sustained and creative campaigning from a wide variety of participants – from vegan Wiccans and revolutionary socialists to doof-doof rave organisers and corporate-philanthropist Women for Mirarr Women. The campaign was chaotic and argumentative, but united by a commitment to challenging corporate power and standing up for Aboriginal sovereignty.
It still serves as an inspiration for anti-nuclear and anti-mining campaigns, such as the brave and determined opposition of the Wangan and Jagalingou traditional owners to the Adani mine. It stands as a great example of how blockades on country can nourish and inspire actions in the cities. https://redflag.org.au/node/6839
We must think very carefully before committing to war in the Gulf, The Age, By Hossein Esmaeili, July 8, 2019 Conflict between the United States and Iran is deepening and the two states are marching towards war. The Persian Gulf, where a third of the world’s natural gas and a fifth of the world’s oil is sourced, may soon see another large scale and probably long-lasting international conflict………
On Sunday, Iran announced it would enrich uranium beyond the nuclear deal limit unless the remaining parties – Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China – help reduce the paralysing US economic sanctions, which are strangling Iran’s economy. …….
Any war in the volatile environment of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East would not be, as Trump said, ‘‘quick and short’’, but rather a blazing regional and international conflict which may disturb the world economy and endanger global peace and security. ….
In late June, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo officially called on Australia to play a role in a new global coalition against Iran. Following Pompeo’s request, Prime Minster Scott Morrison did not rule out possible Australian involvement in a possible military conflict between the US and Iran. ……
After the events of September 11, 2001, John Howard invoked provisions of the 1951 ANZUS Treaty to demonstrate Australia’s support for the US in its war against the Taliban/al-Qaeda and later against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. …..
Australia has no legal obligations under the ANZUS Treaty, or any other international agreement, to join the US in another possibly long, chaotic and devastating regional conflict. Indeed, under the Charter of the United Nations, to which both Australia and the US are parties, the use of force is prohibited unless authorised by the Security Council of the United Nations.
Australia’s Prime Minister must think very carefully before committing Australia to a war that has virtually no international support, no international legal justification, and no rational justification. ……
the European Union is backing measures, provided by France, United Kingdom and Germany, known as Instruments In Support of Trade Exchange (INSTEX), to facilitate trade between the EU and Iran to partially get around the US sanctions, in order to save the 2015 nuclear deal, to maintain dialogue with Iran and to prevent an international military crisis.
Australia would be much wiser to join the EU’s INSTEX and engage in dialogue with Iran……..
Should Morrison decide to enter into a conflict in one of the most volatile regions of the world, he will not have the decision-making power to end it. He would do well not to drive Australia into such a war, instead, given Australia’s international reputation, he should help European countries, the world community and the United Nations to avoid a useless armed conflict, which will not benefit any country.
War with Iran won’t be like war with Iraq: significantly more pain, more bloodshed and more devastation for the entire world, including Australia, will be the result.
I am a grandmother with eight grandchildren. Sometimes I lie awake at night worrying about how our changing climate is going to affect their future.
Seeing those little faces looking up at you, I feel we’re betraying the trust of these future generations by not taking care of this beautiful planet.
I attend the church of Our Lady of Fatima at Kingsgrove.
And while I pray for the Earth’s future, I also know that we must stand and act together. Our leaders must be persuaded to take moral responsibility. That’s why last week the organisation I’m involved with, the Australian Religious Response to Climate Change, released an open letter to the Prime Minister asking him to make the climate the No.1 priority.
It was signed by 153 religious leaders from across the spectrum, many of them in very senior roles.
Climate change and the burning of fossil fuels is a moral issue. Saving the world is a spiritual matter. I don’t interpret spiritual as “other worldly”.
Spirituality for me is about being responsible and reasonable, which shows in healthy relationships.
You see the fruits in laughter, peace and kindness towards each other. In his time on earth, Jesus himself was less interested in rules and who was or wasn’t praying.
He was interested in who was caring about people, especially people who are suffering.
Today, the people who have been hit hardest by climate change are mostly in developing countries, and they’ve done nothing to contribute to the problem.
Those suffering most in Australia are largely people in rural and regional areas. They are on the frontline of droughts, bushfires, intense heat and flooding, left grieving for lost herds and ruined crops.
But people in these areas are being sold short by politicians who are not planning for a more sustainable future, which includes an orderly transition away from the mining and burning of fossil fuels.
Many other nations are making big commitments to reduce emissions but Australia is out of step.
Our elected representatives may think politics is not about religion or spirituality. But it is about morality and caring about people.
Acting on Iran has painful shades of joining the US in IraqThe Age, Tony Walker, 1 July 19, Here’s a word of advice to Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Unless he wants to risk a smudge on his reputation of the sort that accompanies John Howard to this day: don’t get involved in conflict with Iran beyond limited naval engagement in a Gulf peace-keeping role.
When we read that Canberra is open to joining an international effort to ratchet up pressure on Iran “in consultation with our allies and partners”, this invites disquieting questions.
If Morrison is talking about involvement in a “global coalition”, as described by the hawkish US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, then he might remind himself of what happened when Australia last lent itself to a so-called “Coalition of the Willing”.
That was 17 years ago in 2002 when John Howard – as one of the “three amigos” with Britain’s Tony Blair and Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar – joined George W. Bush in promoting a disastrous invasion of Iraq.
Only World War II, which absorbed one-third of American GDP, or $4 trillion in today’s dollars, has cost more than the Iraq debacle at $1 trillion (a total $2 trillion if Afghanistan is included).
These are the measurable costs in people, materiel and nation building. Incalculable are the ongoing costs of the destabilisation of the entire Middle East, and the empowerment of Iran…..
In a multi-year assignment in the Middle East I reported the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88); the first Gulf War (1990-1991), in which the US and its allies routed the Iraqi military; and the invasion of Iraq (2003). If I learned anything from those experiences it is that wars are easier to start than to finish. …..
Morrison is surrounded by a weak national security team. The national security committee of cabinet does not include one individual with credible security experience. …….
Morrison might remind himself that Canada’s then-prime minister, Jean Chretien, kept his country out of the Iraq war. The sky did not subsequently fall in on Ottawa.
All this is relevant today given that Morrison found himself last week in the presence over dinner of the two most hawkish members of the Trump administration. Secretary of State Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton both advocated air strikes against Iranian targets in retaliation for suspected Iranian attacks on gulf oil facilities before the President, at the 11th hour, called off military action.
Bolton has been an intemperate advocate of regime change in Tehran. In an interview with The Australian newspaper, Pompeo said Australia had a key role in a “global coalition”. What that means is anyone’s guess.
Two workers exposed to unsafe radiation dose at Lucas Heights nuclear facility, Guardian, Michael McGowan@mmcgowan 24 Jun 2019
Production at Australia’s only nuclear medicine facility halted after ‘safety incident’ Production has ceased and an urgent investigation has been launched after two employees at a newly opened Australian nuclear medicine facility at Lucas Heights were exposed to an unsafe dose of radiation late last week.Just two weeks after it was granted a licence to enter into full domestic production, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (Ansto) has confirmed production at its new $168m nuclear medicine facility has been halted after “a safety incident” on Friday morning.
Ansto said three of its workers were “attended to by radiation protection personnel” after the incident, in which contamination was detected on the outside of a container holding 42 millilitres of the radioisotope molybdenum-99 (Mo-99).
Two of those workers received a radiation dose above the legal limit roughly equivalent to a conventional cancer radiation therapy treatment, an Ansto spokesman said……
Located at the Lucas Heights nuclear facility in Sydney’s south, the $168m nuclear medicine facility was announced by the federal government in 2012 with the goal of tripling Australian production of Mo-99, the parent isotope of Technetium-99m. …..
It is the second contamination scare at the Lucas Heights facility in only a few months.
What’s more chilling: watching Chernobyl or cogitating on the cost of going nuclear? Michael West Investigative Journalism Jun 20, 2019, The sudden push by the Murdoch media and Coalition right-wingers to overturn Australia’s nuclear power ban ignores the chilling economic cost — huge public subsidies, storing radioactive waste for thousands of years, the heavy costs of decommissioning and, potentially, radiation-related health costs. Veteran nuclear writer Noel Wauchope reports on the popular TV series, Chernobyl, and the economics of nuclear power.
THE frightening TV miniseries “Chernobyl” could put a few Australians off the idea of nuclear power but nuclear economics might turn out to be the bigger scare.
It is bad news for the Minerals Council of Australia and nuclear lobbyists, that Chernobyl has now arrived on some Australian TV screens, but pro-nuclear advocates are continuing to push their campaign anyway.
The miniseries “Chernobyl” has just finished in Europe and USA, outdoing “Game of Thrones” in popularity. HBO’s Chernobyltopped film and TV database IMDB’s list of the greatest 250 TV shows of all time. The first episode was screened on 12 June, 2019 in Australia, on Foxtel.
The series has had a big impact. It was highly praised by numerous reviewers but criticised by pro-nuclear lobbyists, and infuriated some Russian politicians. ………
The Liberal Coalition’s renewed push for nuclear power……
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he is open to considering nuclear power if it can stand on its own two feet. Energy Minister Angus Taylor told TheGuardianon 12 June 2019 he wouldn’t rule out revising Australia’s nuclear ban “when there is a very clear business case which shows the economics of this can work”. Two days later, Environment Minister Sussan Ley also told TheGuardian she was open to the review considering a removal of the ban.
But — are the economics of nuclear power viable for Australia?
When even Australia’s former top nuclear promoter has doubts, it doesn’t look promising……….
How viable is nuclear power elsewhere?
Nuclear economics in America is really a tale of woe. You hardly know where to start, in trying to assess how much this industry is costing communities and tax-payers. There are the attempts to save the nuclear industry via subsidies. There are the continuing and ever-increasing costs of radioactive wastes. There are the compensation payments to workers with radiation-caused illnesses, $15.5 billion and counting, and the legal battles over where to put the wastes. Needless to say, really, America is not initiating any new nuclear “big build”. The much touted “Small Modular Nuclear Reactors” are turning out to have no market and little prospect of being economically viable……
The UK nuclear industry is in the doldrums with repeated postponement of new projects – Hinkley Point C, Wylfa Newydd, Moorside, Sizewell C, Oldbury B and Bradwell B……The 2018 forecast for future clean-up of Britain’s aging 17 nuclear power stations has blown out to £121 billion which has had to be spread across the next 120 years……
The miniseries follows the power plant workers, first responders, Soviet Union officials, scientists, soldiers and the locals of Pripyat, Ukraine (formerly the Soviet Union) in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploding.
As with most historical dramas, the show has been critiqued for taking liberties with the truth in service of the story. And these departures are somewhat ironic for a show whose tagline is “the cost of lies”.
But the function of historical dramas isn’t pinpoint accuracy: the best ones work as allegories.
And as an allegory for our times, Chernobyl could not be more fitting.
Moscow has a long history of ‘fake news’
The lies start early on. While most of the town sleeps through the nuclear explosion, in the control room of the power plant, denial is in full swing.
The assistant chief engineer, Anatoly Dyatlov (Paul Ritter), tells his men to pump water to the core, insistent the problem can be fixed.
An engineer tells Dyatlov: “there is no core”.
Dyatlov insists the core is intact. From the earliest moments, the truth is in flux.
The radiation leak has already begun to kill these workers; we’re in the company of the living dead.
But despite the horror of watching these men slowly die, as if a needle is untethering the fabric of their DNA, it’s the words of a Soviet Union official (Donald Sumpter) that shock the most.
“When the people ask questions that are not in their own best interests,” he tells his men, “they should simply be told to keep their minds on their labour and leave matters of the state to the state.”
The next step is to seal the city and cut the phone lines to prevent the spread of misinformation.
The speech is met with applause.
Over the course of the series it becomes clear the Chernobyl disaster was caused by the cost-cutting measures of the Soviet Union, but the state was structured perfectly to work their way out of the problem and contain the truth.
Miners and soldiers are conscripted to clean-up the mess, despite the risk to their health. Scientists are told to do their job and not ask any questions.
All the while, Soviet officials work to compartmentalise the tragedy to hide the horrors of a nuclear meltdown.
For scientists Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) and Ulana Khomyuk (Emily Watson) to understand what caused the meltdown they must be critical of the Soviet Union.
The most intense moments are the conversations where characters weigh up the risk of telling the truth.
The war on the truth continues
Decades later, Moscow continues to tightly control the flow of information both at home and abroad — its “troll farms” set up to spread misinformation and propaganda are just the latest iterations.
But Australia is not immune to attempts by government to conceal and manipulate the truth.
Chernobyl focuses on what happens when government policy is put before human lives.
The scientists investigating Chernobyl repeatedly attempted to sound the alarm, warning Soviet Union officials that the problem was bigger than one reactor as poison spread across Eastern Europe (one study predicts by 2065 the disaster could cause 16,000 cases of thyroid cancer and 25,000 cases of other cancers).
Today, scientists are trying to warn us of an existential threat to our health and safety: climate change. Once again, government drags its feet.
If we take anything from Chernobyl, it should be this: put science before politics.
In 2019, we may have grasped the extreme dangers of radiation, but the war on the truth is ongoing — it’s eternal.
As we face another environmental catastrophe, the question will be: what is the cost of lies?
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