A nuclear cover-up? Britain removes from public access, files on atomic bomb tests in Australia
“To now withdraw previously available documents is extremely unfortunate and hints at an 
attempted cover-up.”
“worrying that properly released records can suddenly be removed from public access without notice or explanation.”
Review or ‘cover up’? Mystery as Australia nuclear weapons tests files withdrawn https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/11/australia/uk-australia-nuclear-archives-intl/index.html, By James Griffiths, CNN
More than 65 years since the UK began conducting secret nuclear weapons testing in the Australian Outback, scores of files about the program have been withdrawn from the country’s National Archives without explanation.
The unannounced move came as a shock to many researchers and historians who rely on the files and have been campaigning to unseal the small number which remain classified.
“Many relevant UK documents have remained secret since the time of the tests, well past the conventional 30 years that government documents are normally withheld,” said expert Elizabeth Tynan, author of “Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga Story”.
“To now withdraw previously available documents is extremely unfortunate and hints at an attempted cover-up.”
Withdrawal of the files was first noted in late December. Access to them has remained closed in the new year.
Dark legacy The UK conducted 12 nuclear weapons tests in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s, mostly in the sparsely populated Outback of South Australia.
Information about the tests remained a tightly held secret for decades. It wasn’t until a Royal Commission was formed in 1984 — in the wake of several damning press reports — that the damage done to indigenous people and the Australian servicemen and women who worked on the testing grounds became widely known.
Indigenous people living nearby had long complained of the effects they suffered, including after a “black mist” settled over one camp near Maralinga in the wake of the Totem I test in October 1953. The mist caused stinging eyes and skin rashes. Others vomited and suffered from diarrhea.
These claims were dismissed and ridiculed by officials for decades — until, in the wake of the Royal Commission report, the UK agreed to pay the Australian government and the traditional owners of the Maralinga lands about AU$46 million ($30 million). The Australian authorities also paid indigenous Maralinga communities a settlement of AU$13.5 million ($9 million).
While the damage done to indigenous communities was acknowledged, much about the Totem I test — and other tests at Maralinga and later at Emu Field — remained secret, even before the recent withdrawal of archive documents.
“The British atomic tests in Australia did considerable harm to indigenous populations, to military and other personnel and to large parts of the country’s territory. This country has every right to know exactly what the tests entailed,” Tynan said. “Mysteries remain about the British nuclear tests in Australia, and these mysteries have become harder to bring to light with the closure of files by the British government.”
Alan Owen, chairman of the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association, which campaigns on behalf of former servicemen, said “the removal of these documents affects not only our campaign, but affects the many academic organizations that rely on this material.”
“We are very concerned that the documents will not be republished and the (Ministry of Defense) will again deny any responsibility for the effects the tests have had on our membership,” Owen told CNN.
Unclear motives Responding to a request for comment from CNN, a spokeswoman for the National Archives said the withdrawal of the Australian nuclear test files was done at the request of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which has ultimate responsibility over them.
The NDA said that “a collection of records has been temporarily withdrawn from general access via The National Archive at Kew as part of a review process.”
“It is unclear, at this time, how long the review will take, however NDA anticipates that many of the documents will be restored to the public archive in due course,” a spokeswoman said.
Jon Agar, a professor of science and technology at University College London, said the withdrawal “is not just several records but two whole classes of files, many of which had previously been open to researchers at the National Archives.”
“These files are essential to any historian of the UK nuclear projects — which of course included tests in Australia. They have been closed without proper communication or consultation,” he added.
Agar shared correspondence he had with the NDA in which a spokeswoman said some files would be moved to a new archive — Nucleus — in the far north of Scotland. However the Nucleus archives focus on the British civil nuclear industry, and it is unclear why files on military testing would be moved there, or why those files would need to be withdrawn to do so.
Nucleus also does not offer the type of online access to its records as the National Archives does.
“Why not just copy the files if the nuclear industry needs them at Nucleus for administrative reasons? Why take them all out of public view?” Agar wrote on Twitter.
Information freedom In correspondence with both CNN and Agar, the NDA suggested those interested in the files could file freedom of information (FOI) requests for them.
Under the 2000 Freedom of Information Act, British citizens and concerned parties are granted the “right to access recorded information held by public sector organizations.”
FOI requests can be turned down if the government deems the information too sensitive or the request too expensive to process. Under a separate rule, the UK government should also declassify documents between 20 and 30 years after they were created.
According to the BBC, multiple UK government departments — including the Home Office and Cabinet Office — have been repeatedly condemned by auditors for their “poor,” “disappointing” and “unacceptable” treatment of FOI applications.
Commenting on the nuclear documents, Maurice Frankel, director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, a UK-based NGO, said it was “worrying that properly released records can suddenly be removed from public access without notice or explanation.”
“It suggests that the historical record is fragile and transient and liable to be snatched away at any time, with or without good reason,” he added.
Australian Labor Party in a progressive move, plans to sign and ratify UN Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty
The cold war is back. Labor is right to support a nuclear ban treaty https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/28/the-cold-war-is-back-labor-is-right-to-support-a-nuclear-ban-treatyLabor’s pledge to commit to nuclear disarmament puts the alternative party of government on the right side of history.
The gulf between the shenanigans of way too many politicians, and the growing urgency of grave and looming threats has rarely seemed wider. Action on crucial issues languishes while parliamentarians make naked grabs for power, acting in the interests only of themselves. Poor personal behaviour seems endemic. On the two unprecedented dangers looming over all humanity – nuclear war and climate disruption – Australia has been not just missing in action, but actively on the wrong side of history, part of the problem rather than the solution.
The government’s own figures demonstrate that our country, awash with renewable sun and wind, is way off track to meet even a third of its greenhouse gas emissions reduction target by 2030 – itself nowhere near enough.
Not only is nuclear disarmament stalled, but one by one, the agreements that reduced and constrained nuclear weapons, hard-won fruit of the end of the first cold war, are being trashed. All the nuclear-armed states are investing massively not simply in keeping their weapons indefinitely, but developing new ones that are more accurate, more deadly and more “usable”. The cold war is back, and irresponsible and explicit threats to use nuclear weapons have proliferated. Any positive effect that Australia might have on reducing nuclear weapons dangers from the supposed influence afforded us by our uncritical obsequiousness to the US is nowhere in sight. Our government has been incapable of asserting any independence even from the current most extreme, dysfunctional and unfit US administration. The US has recently renounced its previous commitments under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT); we have said nothing.
The one bright light in this gathering gloom is the 2017 UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. For its role in helping to bring this historic treaty into being, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican) was awarded the Nobel peace prize for 2017 – the first to an entity born in Australia. This treaty provides the first comprehensive and categorical prohibition of nuclear weapons. It sets zero nuclear weapons as the clear and consistent standard for all countries and will help drive elimination of these worst weapons of mass destruction, just as the treaties banning biological and chemical weapons, landmines and cluster munitions have played a decisive role in progressing the elimination of those other indiscriminate and inhumane weapons. The treaty lays out a clear pathway for all states, with and without nuclear weapons, to fulfil their binding legal obligation to accomplish nuclear disarmament. It is currently the only such pathway.
Regrettably, the Australian government was the most active “weasel” in opposing the treaty’s development at every step and was one of the first to say it would not sign, even though we have signed every other treaty banning an unacceptable weapon.
Hence the Labor party’s commitment at its recent national conference in Adelaide that “Labor in government will sign and ratify the Ban Treaty” is an important and welcome step. It is a clear commitment, allowing no room for weaselling.
The considerations articulated alongside this commitment are fairly straightforward and consistent with the commitment. First, recognition of the need for “an effective verification and enforcement architecture” for nuclear disarmament. The treaty itself embodies this. Governments joining the treaty must designate a competent international authority “to negotiate and verify the irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons” and nuclear weapons programmes, “including the elimination or irreversible conversion of all nuclear-weapons-related facilities”. Australia should also push for the same standard for any nuclear disarmament that happens outside the treaty.
Second, the Labor resolution prioritises “the interaction of the Ban Treaty with the longstanding Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty”. The treaty has been carefully crafted to be entirely compatible with the NPT and explicitly reaffirms that the NPT “serves as a cornerstone of the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime”, and that its full and effective implementation “has a vital role to play in promoting international peace and security”. All the governments supporting the treaty support the NPT, and the NPT itself enshrines a commitment for all its members to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament”. The UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, and the International Committee of the Red Cross are among those who have affirmed that the treaty and the NPT are entirely consistent, complementary and mutually reinforcing. Even opponents of the treaty recognise that prohibition is an essential part of achieving and sustaining a world free of nuclear weapons.
Third, the Labor resolution refers to “Work to achieve universal support for the Ban Treaty.” This too is mirrored in one of the commitments governments take on in joining the treaty, to encourage other states to join, “with the goal of universal adherence of all States to the Treaty.”
An Australian government joining the treaty would enjoy wide popular support in doing so – an Ipsos poll last month found that 79% of Australians (and 83% of Labor voters) support, and less than 8% oppose, Australia joining the treaty.
Australia would also stop sticking out like a sore thumb among our southeast Asian and Pacific Island neighbours and be able to work more effectively with them. Brunei, Cook Islands, Fiji, Indonesia, Kiribati, Laos, New Zealand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Palau, Philippines, Samoa, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Vietnam have already signed the treaty.
Most importantly, joining the treaty and renouncing nuclear weapons would mean that Australia would become part of the solution rather than the problem of the acute existential peril that hangs over all of us while nuclear weapons exist, ready to be launched within minutes. Time is not on our side. Of course this crucial humanitarian issue should be above party politics. The commitment from the alternative party of government to join the treaty and get on the right side of history when Labor next forms government is to be warmly welcomed. It is to be hoped that the 78% of federal parliamentary Labor members who have put on record their support for Australia joining the treaty by signing Ican’s parliamentary pledge will help ensure Labor keeps this landmark promise.
• Dr Tilman Ruff is co-founder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican) and Nobel peace prize winner (2017)
UK’s Ministry of Defence setting up a smokescreen about the British nuclear bombing disgrace in Australia
Hiding Britain’s H-bomb secrets https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/dec/27/hiding-britains-h-bomb-secrets Sue Rabbitt Roff is alarmed at files being withdrawn by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority That the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has withdrawn files relating to the development of the British H-bomb in Australia 70 years ago (Nuclear weapons and energy files removed from archives, 24 December) is indeed alarming to those of us trying to get behind the smokescreens already set up by the Ministry of Defence’s closing access to files over the past decades.
My own research has been into why Sir Mark Oliphant, Australia’s premier nuclear physicist and a prime mover in the Tube Alloys group that showed the Americans how to build atomic bombs in time to use in the second world war, never spoke out about the contamination (from H-bomb tests) of his beloved home state of South Australia and further eastward just weeks before the 1956 Olympic Games took place in Melbourne.
He told me in 1993: “The Brits thought they could ensure any fallout or contamination was not too big. They were very pigheaded about it. The people in control were very haphazard about the estimates.” Why didn’t he speak out about the residual radioactive contamination at Monte Bello, Maralinga and Emu Field, even when he was governor of South Australia? He replied: “You can really decontaminate Maralinga by leaving it alone. Plutonium alpha particles contamination, I think, is grossly overplayed. The Aborigines are using it to the full. At the same time it was very naughty of the British to leave it, and to think of spreading it that way in the first place was very nasty. The British people were very reticent about revealing contamination, especially regarding food contamination. They hugged that to their chests very closely.”
I suggest that Sir Mark Oliphant was Australia’s – and Britain’s – J Robert Oppenheimer. The evidence is set out on my website www.rabbittreview.com and was mostly found in the files I accessed in the UK National Archives.
Australia’s Environment Ambassador, Patrick Suckling, promotes fossil fuels at UN Climate Summit
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One must ask was Ambassador Suckling’s presence sanctioned at Ministerial level? His attendance on the panel is hardly good diplomacy for Australia, even given the Liberal Government support for coal and weak climate targets and climate policy. After about 9 minutes the first speaker was disrupted and youth and civil society delegates unfurled a banner and made their own testimonies on the disruptive and dangerous nature of coal for health and climate. They chanted “Keep it in the ground” and “Shame on you”, before leaving the session. After they left, there were very few people to listen to the myths being spouted of clean coal. Watch the Facebook Livestream video of young delegates taking over the side event about 9 minutes in and making their own testimony on the fossil fuel industry. The Australia Institute Director of Climate & Energy Program Richie Merzian was there to document the session in the tweets below. “How could this be good for Australia? The Ambassador finding himself in the middle of the largest cultural battle at #COP24” remarks Richie Merzian…… https://www.facebook.com/groups/859848424161990/ Anger, protests as Australia supports US fossil fuels event at UN climate talkshttps://reneweconomy.com.au/anger-protests-as-australia-supports-us-fossil-fuels-event-at-un-climate-talks-17843/, 11 December 2018 , Think Progress |
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Australia’s dirty tricks in Poland: getting away with no reduction in greenhouse emissions
Fake action’: Australia’s secret path to hitting Paris climate goals, Brisbane Times, By Peter Hannam,– 10 December 2018 Australia could use a little-known loophole to help meet up to half its Paris climate commitments in a move that analysts warn could undermine the global accord.
Neither Environment Minister Melissa Price nor Labor will rule out counting Australia’s expected credits from beating its 2020 goal under the soon-to-be-superseded Kyoto Protocol against its 2030 Paris pledge.
The analysts say such a move by Australia would encourage other nations to follow suit.
One ex-member of Australia’s negotiating team said the government had considered using the credits for some time even though it went against the spirit of the Paris accord signed in 2015. While not formally on the agenda at the current climate talks in Poland, the issue of Kyoto credits is expected to be discussed in coming days.
Ms Price, who is attending the summit in the city of Katowice, has put the expected surplus by 2020 – when the Paris agreement kicks in –
at 294 million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent.
However, consultancy Climate Analytics calculated the final figure will be at least 333 million tonnes. If accounting around land use changes – including tree planting and land clearing – is settled in Australia’s favour, the surplus could swell to 400 million tonnes.
Australia’s current pledge under the Paris agreement is to cut emissions 26-28 per cent below 2005 levels by the year 2030.
Unless other nations object to the use of carryover credits, it could then meet the target with just a 15 per cent cut – a much easier task.
“This appears to be the ‘canter’ the government keeps talking about,”
said Bill Hare, director of Climate Analytics. “It is fake action and would be rorting the planet, and will undermine real action in Australia.”
Carryover estimates are based on data provided by Australia to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the end of 2017.
Ms Price declined to directly answer questions about how it will use any Kyoto carryover.
‘Fatal undermining’
Richie Merzian, who was part of Australia’s climate negotiations
team for nine years before joining think tank The Australia Institute in April, said the government had long considered deploying a Kyoto surplus towards its Paris target.
“It was certainly part of their train of thinking,” Mr Merzian said. “It could be they were banking on this.”
“You’re basically getting away without reducing your emissions,” he said…….
Labor caution
Mark Butler, Labor’s climate spokesman, declined to rule out using Kyoto credits if the ALP wins office next year………
Adam Bandt, the Greens’ climate spokesman, said the public expected “a government of climate deniers to use dodgy accounting to shirk their climate responsibilities, but not Labor”.
“Labor needs to follow the lead of many other developed countries and immediately rule out using carryover credits to meet our measly Paris obligations if it wins office,” he said.
Emma Herd, chief executive of the Investor Group on Climate Change, said any weakening of emissions targets would sap investments needed to tranform the economy to net-zero emissions by mid-century.
“To secure the long-term prosperity of Australia, targets need to be in line with the objectives of the Paris Agreement – limiting warming to 1.5 degrees and well below 2 degrees,” Ms Herd said.
“The longer we delay credible taking action, the harder the economic adjustment will be and Australia will continue to lose the opportunity to unlock the benefits of investment in clean energy and other low carbon
Rallies will demand that Australia insists on Julian Assange’s safe departure from UK
SEP meeting and livestream on December 16: What next in the fight to free Julian Assange? WSW By the Socialist Equality Party (Australia) , 28 November 2018As this year draws to a close, WikiLeaks publisher and Australian citizen Julian Assange remains effectively imprisoned inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, denied sunlight and medical care, and blocked from communicating with the outside world. A court document, which surfaced in November, confirms that the US government has filed and sealed criminal charges against Assange, on the basis that his media organisation, WikiLeaks, published leaked information revealing US war crimes and anti-democratic imperialist intrigues.
The information vindicates the fight waged by Assange and his defenders against an arrest warrant, issued against him in 2010, obligating him to answer “questions” over false allegations that he had committed sexual assault in Sweden. The allegations were fabricated in order to provide ammunition for various pro-US layers to discredit Assange and to create the conditions for him to be rendered to a country that could rapidly extradite him to the US. The American ruling elite is determined to make an example of Assange by putting him on trial for “espionage” or “conspiracy,” in order to intimidate every journalist and whistleblower. Continue reading
Australia: Bushfires, Climate Change, and Nuclear Sites
Bushfires in Queensland have ushered in the “new normal” of superfires in Australia. California has already experienced this new normal. It means that these fires are now catastrophic. They encroach on human habitation. Fire behaviour has changed. Their intensity is greater. Their severity is greater: their flames are higher. Fires last longer, and come with increasing frequency. They spread at higher rates, and jump gaps such as roads, rivers and fire breaks. .
These fires now do long -term damage to the ecosystem. The earth underneath is affected, habitat destroyed, killing all the normal bacteria and inhabitants of the soil. Many are fires that are impossible to put out.
The background to these new superfires is climate change. Climate change has brought higher temperatures and drought – resulting in drier trees and other vegetation – meaning that tinder-dry fuel is ready for ignition.
Australia is uniquely vulnerable, as the driest continent, with its prevailing eucalypt forests.
In California, the authorities are trying hard to cover up the reality that the wildfires started at an abandoned and still radioactively contaminated, nuclear facility . The fire would undoubtedly have caused radioactive ash to be blown about. (The fact that it’s not measured doesn’t mean that it is non existent)
Australia is vulnerable to a similar radioactive threat. Last year, bushfires went uncomfortably close to the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor. Plans to transport Lucas Height nuclear waste 1700 km across Australia to Flinders Ranges area mean that this radioactive trash would be at risk of accident, and one of the worst risks would be bushfires.
Australia must face up to the climate change threats – floods (as more water vapour, due to heat, will come down as flooding) , sea level rise, and super bushfires. Lucas Heights nuclear reactor should be closed, and ANSTO’s nuclear dream prevented from becoming Australia’s climate-nuclear nightmare.
The Age of Super Fires
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef – its plight pretty much ignored by government
Portrait of a planet on the verge of climate catastrophe As the UN sits down for its annual climate conference this week, many experts believe we have passed the point of no return, Guardian, by Robin McKie, 2 Dec 18 “…………Great Barrier Reef Coral reefs cover a mere 0.1% of the world’s ocean floor but they support about 25% of all marine species. They also provide nature with some of its most beautiful vistas. For good measure, coral reefs protect shorelines from storms, support the livelihoods of 500 million people and help generate almost £25bn of income. Permitting their destruction would put the planet in trouble – which is precisely what humanity is doing.
Rising sea temperatures are already causing irreparable bleaching of reefs, while rising sea levels threaten to engulf reefs at a faster rate than they can grow upwards. Few scientists believe coral reefs – which are made of simple invertebrates related to sea anemones – can survive for more than a few decades.
Yet those who have sounded clear warnings about our reefs have received little reward. Professor Terry Hughes, a coral expert at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, recently studied the impact of El Niño warmings in 2016 and 2017 on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral reef and its largest living entity – and wept when he saw the damage.
“The 2016 event killed 30% of corals, the one a year later killed another 20%. Very close to half the corals have died in the past three years,” he said recently.
For his pains, Hughes has faced demands from tourist firms for his funding to be halted because he was ruining their business. “The Australian government is still promoting new developments of coal mines and fracking for gas,” Hughes said, after being named joint recipient of the John Maddox prize, given to those who champion science in the face of hostility and legal threats. “If we want to save the Great Barrier Reef, these outdated ambitions need to be abandoned. Yet Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are rising, not falling. It’s a national disgrace.”
This grim picture is summed up by the ethnographer Irus Braverman in her book Coral Whisperers: “The Barrier Reef has changed for ever. The largest living structure in the world has become the largest dying structure in the world.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/02/world-verge-climate-catastophe
Australian schoolkids go out on strike in order to push for climate action
Why aren’t they doing anything?: Students strike to give climate lesson, Brisbane Times, By Peter Hannam, 24 November 2018 This Friday, November 30, thousands of Australian students will go on strike, demanding their politicians start taking serious action on climate change.The movement, School Strike 4 Climate Action, has been inspired by a 15-year-old Swedish student, Greta Thunberg, who started boycotting classes before parliamentary elections in her nation on September 9, and continues to skip school every Friday. She also has a particular message for Australia.
Students in each state capital and across 20 regional Australian centres will walk out of their classrooms this week to tell politicians that more of the same climate inaction is not good enough.
Here are some of the lessons they hope to teach.
‘If we really want a better planet Earth’…….. https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/climate-change/why-aren-t-they-doing-anything-students-strike-to-give-climate-lesson-20181123-p50hvu.html
Australian population – the guinea pigs for British nuclear scientists in the 1950s
British scientists secretly used Australian population to test for radiation contamination after nuclear tests at Maralinga,
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the agency said it had detected varying levels of Strontium-90 in all Australian capital cities.
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Australian commercial TV station now selling its soul to the nuclear industry?
The 60 Minutes Fukushima nuclear infomercial, Independent 
Australia Noel Wauchope 23 October 2018 A FEW YEARS AGO, Australian Channel 9’s 60 Minutes did an excellent investigation of the Fukushima nuclear accident.
This Fukushima investigation was compered by Liz Hayes. I recall that, at the time, the program was a much more thorough, serious and well-resourced presentation than anything put forward by even the ABC or SBS.
However, I was pretty appalled at the latest 60 Minutes coverage of the Fukushima issue, which screened on Sunday (21 October) titled, Is nuclear power the solution to our energy crisis?
The main message of this program is a call to scrap Australia’s legislation against establishing the nuclear industry. The argument given is that we need nuclear power because it is supposedly cheap and dependable. We also need it because it is supposedly essential to combat climate change.
This time, the reporter is not Liz Hayes. It’s Tom Steinfort, who is described as a “seasoned Channel 9 star”. Does a seasoned Channel 9 star just accept without question the claims made in this episode?
Among claims made:
- that the evacuation of the Fukushima prefecture was unnecessary — which implies that the Japanese Government and scientists acted stupidly;
- that there were no deaths and will not be any deaths resulting from the radiation from the meltdown, a point on which many experts disagree;
- that nuclear power is essential to tackle climate change, despite recent research which doubts its usefulness.
- that cancer deaths from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster will amount to only 40-160, despite a comprehensive Russian-UK investigation estimating over a million deaths; and
- the downgrading of renewable energies, which the latest research recommends for Australia.
So, what do we make of this latest offering about Fukushima, from 60 Minutes? It must have taken a lot of money and a lot of negotiation to get a 60 Minutes camera team inside the Fukushima nuclear station. I assume that the negotiations were largely arranged by Ben Heard, who has influential nuclear contacts overseas — particularly in Russia and South Africa, where he has been a prominent nuclear spokesperson. In Russia, Heard launched Rosatom National Geographic — a nuclear soft sell environmental program.
I think that we can be sure of one thing. As Japan plans for the 2020 Olympics – some sections of which are to take place in Fukushima Prefecture – the Japanese Government is not likely to permit a team with any anti-nuclear perspective access to the crippled nuclear power plant.
The 60 Minutes media team would have had to have the Japanese authorities on side. I would bet, some companies keen to set up the nuclear industry in Australia would also be on side and keen to assist.
There have been rumblings, too, of yet another resurgence for nuclear energy in Australia, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison declaring that he is ‘open to the idea of nuclear power’ and that ‘the source of Australia’s energy doesn’t bother him and he isn’t interested in an ideological debate’.
Is it too much to hope that Channel 9 might do something to correct this nuclear infomercial and give us a different, more comprehensive view, rather than one blessed by Japanese authorities and the nuclear power lobby? https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/the-60-minutes-fukushima-nuclear-infomercial,12023
Australian company Berkeley Energia’s bid to open uranium mine is knocked back by Spain
Spain to block Berkeley uranium mine project – sources, CNBC , Belén Carreño, 16 Oct 2018 The Spanish government has decided not to deliver the permits necessary to open the European Union’s only open-cast uranium mine near Salamanca, dealing a serious blow to Australian mining company Berkeley Energia’s plans.
65 years later, the toxic legacy continues – of British nuclear bomb tests in Australia
Menzies “immediately agreed to the proposal,” without consulting any of his cabinet colleagues or the Australian parliament. Indeed, until weeks before the first test was carried out, only three government ministers knew about it.
The most devastating effects were suffered by two groups: Australian and British soldiers working on the tests themselves, and the Indigenous populations local to Emu Field and the later testing site of Maralinga.
One prominent member of the testing team, Sir Ernest Titterton, later said that if Indigenous people had a problem with the government, they should vote it out, ignoring that Indigenous Australians did not have full political rights until 1967.
an Australian defense ministry report was leaked to the press, warning that large amounts of plutonium left at Maralinga could potentially be a target of terrorists.
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Australia is still dealing with the legacy of the UK’s nuclear bomb tests, 65 years on https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/14/australia/australia-uk-nuclear-tests-anniversary-intl/index.html By James Griffiths, CNN October 15, 2018 (
Yami Lester was 12 years old when the black mist came to Walatinna.
Early on the morning of October 15, 1953, Lester heard a “big bang” in the distance. This was followed by a dark, ominous-looking cloud which drifted low over the ground like a slow-moving dust storm, bringing with it an unpleasant smell.
A tiny speck in the vast South Australian outback, the area around Walatinna was regarded as “depressingly inhospitable to Europeans” by early colonizers, few of whom settled there. But Indigenous people had a long history in the region, including Lester’s tribe.
As the dark cloud settled over the Walatinna camp, the tribal elders attempted to ward it off, thinking it was a malevolent spirit. In many ways they were right.
As those exposed to it later told investigators, the black mist caused their eyes to sting and their skin to break out in rashes. Others vomited and suffered from diarrhea.
It took almost three decades until the cause of the mist was acknowledged as the Totem I nuclear bomb test, as Indigenous people had been claiming for years.
That test was one of a number conducted in the 1950s and ’60s, not by the Australian government, but by its former colonial master, the UK. Today, 65 years after the Totem I test, the effects are still being felt in South Australia and beyond.
British bombAustralia was not the UK’s first choice of nuclear testing site. British scientists had been intimately involved in the Manhattan Project during World War II, and fully expected to be able to follow the US in testing their own nuclear weapon on American soil.
“Ultimately, they settled on Australia, which had many benefits,” said Elizabeth Tynan, author of “Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga story,” a book about the tests. These includes a sympathetic, compliant government under the recently elected Anglophile Prime Minister Robert Menzies, and wide open spaces in which to carry out the detonations themselves.
In September 1950, British leader Clement Attlee sent Menzies a secret message asking whether his government “would be prepared in principle to agree that the first United Kingdom atomic weapon should be tested in Australian territory.”
According to a later Australian Royal Commission investigation, Menzies “immediately agreed to the proposal,” without consulting any of his cabinet colleagues or the Australian parliament. Indeed, until weeks before the first test was carried out, only three government ministers knew about it.
Menzies’ enthusiasm for the British bomb “wasn’t all sycophantism, it wasn’t all sucking up to his colonial masters,” said Tynan, though this was definitely a factor. The Australian leader also saw in the atomic age an advantage for his country, which was one of the few to have large stocks of uranium, a previously largely unwanted material.
The UK’s first atomic bomb was detonated in the waters off the Montebello Islands, a small archipelago in north western Australia, in the early hours of October 3, 1952, officially making London the third member of the nuclear club, after the US and the Soviet Union.
Emu FieldWhile the Montebello Islands were used for the first test, British planners were never totally happy with the location, and even before the bomb was set off they began looking for a site on the Australian mainland where they could be granted greater secrecy and autonomy.
They settled on a location in the Great Victoria Desert, about 480 kilometers (300 miles) from the nearest town, Woomera, which they named Emu Field.
Plans were soon set in motion for a second test, and on October 15, 1953, the first of the Totem devices was detonated.
Unlike the Montebello test, which went off largely as planned, the 9.1 kiloton Totem I sent a cloud of debris and smoke some 15,000 feet (4,500 meters) into the air, spreading fallout far higher and farther than originally expected.
The Royal Commission later found the test was carried out in inappropriate wind conditions and without proper consideration for people living nearby, examples of the often staggering lack of care taken by British officials overseeing the nuclear program, who frequently ignored or did not bother to seek out vital information about the potential effects of their tests on the host country.
Black mistThe most devastating effects were suffered by two groups: Australian and British soldiers working on the tests themselves, and the Indigenous populations local to Emu Field and the later testing site of Maralinga.
While some concern was paid to their safety during the tests, it was often cursory at best. A single “native patrol officer” given the thankless task of having to try and inform Indigenous residents of the potential dangers had a 100,000 square kilometer (38,610 square mile) region to cover.
Nor did the British much seem to care. One prominent member of the testing team, Sir Ernest Titterton, later said that if Indigenous people had a problem with the government, they should vote it out, ignoring that Indigenous Australians did not have full political rights until 1967.
Another senior official, in a letter to his superiors, complained that W. B. MacDougall, the man with the dubious task of trying to protect the local Indigenous populations, was “placing the affairs of a handful of natives above those of the British Commonwealth of Nations.”
“The harm done to the Aboriginal people is one of the most shameful aspects (of the tests),” Tynan said. “Nowhere in the British records is there a sign of even the slightest concern for the Aboriginal people.”
This lack of concern is likely what led to the situation at Walatinna. Around 40 people were in the camp when the Totem I blast sent clouds of radiated material miles into the sky.
“It rumbled, the ground shook, it was frightening,” Lalli Lennon told investigators. Some time later, a large black cloud passed low over the settlement. Her husband Stan described it as “sort of hazy, like a fog or something.” Lalli and her children developed fevers, headaches, vomiting and diarrhea, and two of them suffered rashes and sore eyes from the smoke.
But just as they had paid little attention to the wellbeing of Indigenous people prior to the test, the British and Australian authorities did not concern themselves with such matters afterwards.
This was reflected by and large by Australian public opinion, which Tynan said was initially “quite jubilant” about the tests, and remained broadly supportive until the 1970s and ’80s, when a host of revelations about the British nuclear program exposed its lackluster safety procedures — even by the standards of the time — and the disdain of those overseeing it for Australian democratic oversight.
Maralinga messThis shift began when an Australian defense ministry report was leaked to the press, warning that large amounts of plutonium left at Maralinga could potentially be a target of terrorists.
This ran contrary to a 1968 report prepared by British official Noah Pearce which assured the Australian government the plutonium had been properly buried and did not present a significant risk.
Indeed, that year the Australians agreed to release the UK from nearly all “liabilities and responsibilities” regarding the tests, in the belief the British had “completed decontamination and debris clearance … to the satisfaction of the Australian government.”
When Canberra finally carried out its own survey of the site, scientists were shocked by what they found.
“They still thought the Pearce Report was accurate until their geiger counter went crazy,” said Tynan, who has interviewed several of the inspectors. “They weren’t wearing protective gear (and) were kicking plutonium soaked rocks with their boots.”
The Royal Commission report said later that there were between “25,000 and 50,000 plutonium- contaminated fragments in the (Maralinga) area, although the number might need to be doubled if missed and buried fragments were included.” Emu Field and the Montebello Islands were also found to be more dangerous than expected.
“In addition to British scientific and military personnel, thousands of Australians were exposed to radiation produced by the tests,” according to a report by the Australian Institute of Criminology. “These included not only those involved in supporting the British testing program, but also Aboriginal people living downwind of the test sites, and other Australians more distant who came into contact with airborne radioactivity.”
Final hearingThe Royal Commission hearings marked the end to any lingering approval of the tests among the Australian public, exposing fully the ongoing harm done to the local environment, Indigenous people, and the soldiers who worked on the tests.
While many disorders are difficult to link directly to the nuclear tests, veterans of the program have complained of numerous cancers, autoimmune diseases, and other ailments — including among their children — which they put down to their lack of protective clothing and other precautions at the time.
Last year, the Australian government expanded medical benefits for members of the nuclear testing program, but most are now in their late 80s and one told the ABC the move was “too bloody late.”
The harm done to Indigenous people has also been recognized in the decades since the Royal Commission, including by the black mist — which a British official once said investigating would be a “complete waste of money and time.”
In 1993, the British agreed to pay the Australian government and the traditional owners of the Maralinga lands around 46 million AUD ($30 million). The Australian authorities also paid Indigenous Maralinga communities a settlement of 13.5 million AUD ($9 million).
“Everyone became friends again after that,” said Tynan, adding that the issue, which had dominated Australian media and public attention for years, slowly slipped away, becoming a “great Australian secret.”
Today, she said she often meets young Australians who are unaware of the tests, and even many people who were alive at the time of the Royal Commission who only have a hazy idea of the issues.
“It was one of those things that, because it was not really written into the history books … just dropped off the radar,” she said, even as veterans and Indigenous people affected by the tests continue to suffer health repercussions and shortened lifespans because of their exposure to radiation.
Yami Lester died on July 21, 2017. He was remembered in parliament by then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull as a “man of wonderful intelligence and insight, as an elder of great standing and as a champion of Aboriginal rights and dignity.”
“He will be revered for rising from personal tragedy to serve his community and to lead his people to ensure that they were recognized and their wrongs addressed,” Turnbull added.
But as Tynan and others have pointed out, those wrongs have not been fully addressed. Health problems stemming from the tests continue for those still living, and while the veracity of Lester and other victims’ stories has been acknowledged, what exactly happened to them remains unclear, the details of the nuclear test still kept top secret.
“To this day we don’t know what Totem I did, those records are still classified by the British,” Tynan said. “It remains one of the great mysteries.”
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Nuclear lobby spreads confusion as it touts “SMRs” – nuclear fantasy research
Small Modular Reactors don’t exist yet, and the picture below shows that the size of these speculative reactors are far from “small” (red arrow points to tiny human figure). Yet Barry Brook continues to receive funding from the “Australian Research Council” to investigate all things nuclear, including putting these reactors on small islands. How much money has gone to funding pro-nuclear fantasy research?
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1021186047913052/
Noel Wauchope they are now referred to by IAEA as small and medium reactors (SMRs)…..A subcategory of very small reactors – vSMRs – is proposed for units under about 15 MWe, especially for remote communities……..Note that many of the designs described are not yet actually taking shape. ……. There’s a bewildering array of reactor designs, listed in MWe (MegaWatts electic) -not in physical size.
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