Australia’s Labor Party must keep to its strong nuclear-free policy

Uranium

137. The production of uranium and its use in the nuclear fuel cycle present unique and unprecedented hazards and risks, including:

• Threats to human health and the local environment in the mining and milling of uranium and management of radioactive materials, which demand the enforcement of strict safety procedures;

• The generation of products that are usable as the raw materials for nuclear weapons manufacture, which demands the enforcement of effective controls against diversion; and

• The generation of highly toxic radioactive waste by-products that demand permanently safe disposal methods.

138. Labor accordingly will allow the mining and export of uranium only under the most stringent conditions.

139. In relation to mining and milling, Labor will:

• Ensure the safety of workers in the uranium industry is given priority. Labor has established acompulsory register for workers in the uranium industry that includes regular health checks and ongoing monitoring. The register is held by an independent agency and will be subject to privacy provisions;

• Ensure Australian uranium mining, milling and rehabilitation is based on world best practice standards, extensive continuing research on environmental impacts and the health and safety of employees and affected communities, particularly Indigenous communities;

• Ensure the Australian public is informed about the quality of the environmental performance of uranium mines through public accountability mechanisms;

• Foster a constructive relationship between mining companies and Indigenous communities affected by uranium mining; and

• Prohibit the mining of uranium within national parks under International Union for Conservation of Nature protected area category 1A, category 1B, and category 2, and listed world heritage areas.

140. In relation to exports other than to India, Labor will allow the export of uranium only to those countries that observe the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), are committed to nonproliferation policies, and have ratified international and bilateral nuclear safeguards agreements.

Labor will export uranium only to countries that maintain strict safeguards and security controls over their nuclear power industries.

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141. In relation to India, an important strategic partner for Australia, commitments and responsible actions in support of nuclear non-proliferation, consistent with international guidelines on nuclear supply, will provide an acceptable basis for peaceful nuclear cooperation, including the export of uranium, subject to the application of strong safeguards.

142. In addition, Labor will work towards:

• Strengthening export control regimes and the rights and authority of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA);

• Appropriate international responses to violations of existing safeguard commitments;
• Limiting the processing of weapon usable material (separation of plutonium and high

enriched uranium in civilian programs);

• Tightening controls over the export of nuclear material and technology;
• Universalising of the IAEA additional protocol making it mandatory for all states and

members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group to adhere to the additional protocol as a condition

of supply to all their transfers;

• Criminalising actions of individuals and companies that assist in nuclear proliferation;
• The development of an international guarantee of nuclear fuel supply to states foregoing

sensitive nuclear technologies;

• Revising the NPT to prevent countries from withdrawing from the NPT and passing a new resolution in the United Nations Security Council addressing the penalties for withdrawal from the NPT;

• Encouraging all nuclear states to join the NPT;
• Reserving the right to withhold supplies of uranium permanently, indefinitely or for a specified period from any country that ceases to observe the non-proliferation safeguards and security conditions applied to Australian uranium exports to that country, or which adopts nuclear practices or policies that do not further advance the cause of nuclear nonproliferation;

• Supporting the maintenance and enhancement of international and Australian safeguards to ensure that uranium mined in Australia, and nuclear products derived from it, are used only for civil purposes by approved instrumentalities in approved countries that are signatories to the NPT (with the exception of India) and with whom Australia has safeguard arrangements; and

• Seeking adequate international resourcing of the IAEA to ensure its effectiveness in undertaking its charter.

143. Labor will progress these commitments through diplomatic means including the re-establishment of the Canberra Commission to re-invigorate Australia’s tradition of middle power, multilateral diplomacy. In doing so, Labor believes that as a non-nuclear armed nation and a good international citizen, Australia can make a significant contribution to promoting disarmament, the reduction of nuclear stockpiles, and the responsible use of nuclear technology.

144. Labor will:

• Vigorously and totally oppose the ocean dumping of radioactive waste;

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•  Prohibit the establishment of nuclear power plants and all other stages of the nuclear fuel cycle in Australia;

• Fully meet all Australia’s obligations as a party to the NPT; and
• Remain strongly opposed to the importation and storage of nuclear waste that is sourced from overseas in Australia.

Toxic effects of Maralinga nuclear bomb testing continue

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.

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,

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.

Busting Barry Brook’s uninformed propaganda about Fukushima nuclear disaster

Prof. Brook is probably, in my opinion, clearly very inadequate when he researches things such as nuclear industry. He claims academic privilege when he communicates his mere opinions related to a field he possesses no training or little training or qualifications in. He can’t have it both ways. The privilege which springs from his actual qualifications may give him status in other things on campus. Away from the lecture theatre though, his opinions of the nature of nuclear industry have zero academic weight….“I’m an academic and therefore I am right” does not wash with me

2003 saw Prof. Shimazaki speak at the first meeting of the government’s Disaster Management Council. This council formed government disaster policy. He urged the council to study the Jogan earthquake of 869 and warned the Japanese Trench could generate earthquakes anywhere along Japan’s Pacific coast.

since 2008 TEPCO management had been busy suppressing THE SAME CONCLUSION of grave risk of 15 metre tsunamis hitting the Fukushima coast, made by TEPCO’s own engineers using simulations and mathematics. 

Expert fore warning of the 2011 Tsunami Ignored and Suppressed by Nuclear Authorities. Nuclear Exhaust 12 Oct 18 

this post is in progress. Not finished.

I am again going to contrast the statements made by Barry Brook in regard to the tsunami defences at Fukushima Daiichi with the facts as presented by Mark Willacy. These facts are published in Willacy’s book, “Fukushima – Japan’s tsunami and the inside story of the nuclear meltdowns”, Willacy, M., Pan Macmillan, copyright 2013, Mark Willacy.

An interesting aspect of the work of Barry Brook is this: The views expressed by Barry are very frequently attributed by Barry to people who are, according to Barry, experts in nuclear industry. I have heard Barry’s public broadcasts in which Barry makes this attribution. I have not heard Barry give the names of his advisors and friends in the nuclear industry. However it is extremely likely Barry is correct in his attributions. Barry’s statements of opinions and claimed facts can reasonably be assumed to have been provided to Barry by unnamed – as far as I am aware – experts in the nuclear industry. The credibility of Barry statements ride therefore upon the credibility of the nuclear industry.

Of course it is no surprise to hear Barry Brook mirror the statements of nuclear experts from around the world in 2011. The narrative of the global nuclear industry as broadcast by the mass media and the narrative provided by Barry Brook were, as I recall, mutually re-affirming.

Here again is a selected, partial transcript of Barry Brook’s Australian ABC TV interview (please watch the complete interview at the youtube link  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFs_-8DtZvo

“Prof. Brook: “I think they (events) show the vulnerability of any human infrastructure to the forces of nature. Especially when they are unleashed with such fury as they were with that massive earthquake, the largest one to hit Japan in recorded times, and a 10 metre tsunami. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect any infrastructure along a coastline like that to survive an event like that. But what it does highlight is that decisions were made back in the ‘60s, when that nuclear power plant was planned and built, they did not anticipate the scale of the natural disaster that occurred here.”

Prof. Brook: “They predicted up to a 6.5 metres tsunami and protected against that. But of course, as events turned out, the tsunami was even bigger than that………

In a previous post I pointed out that Willacy had found that Dr.Yukinobu Okamura, the director of Japan’s Active Fault and Earthquake Research Centre, had, in 2007, found evidence in the geologic record that the Fukushima coast had been hit by massive tsunamis in its past. (Fukushima, page 26)

I also pointed out that in 2008 TEPCO engineers using simulations and calculations discovered that tsunamis as high as 15.7 metres were possible at the site of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. (Fukushima, page 29)

This discovery by TEPCO engineers was suppressed by TEPCO management from the Japanese people and Japanese government until 7 March 2011, or 4 days before the 3/11 quake and tsunami disaster. (Fukushima, page 29)

Annabel Crabb outlines the demise of Australia’s climate policy in 7 killings

Australia’s recent climate change policy: A brief history of seven killings http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-23/climate-change-policy-a-brief-history-of-seven-killings/10152616, By Annabel Crabb  

The story starts in 1997, when the brand-new Howard government (sweating through a brief and cock-up-infested first term during which it lost a series of ministers and most of the margin with which it had wrested power from Paul Keating) sends its environment minister, Robert Hill, to Japan for the seminal Kyoto Climate Summit.

At the summit, Senator Hill negotiates generous terms for his country in the global deal; Australia emerged with large concessions for its agricultural activities and is one of only three countries permitted to increase its emissions under the deal.

Senator Hill is welcomed home as a conquering hero.

However, over the years enthusiasm for the compact is replaced within the government by scepticism.

First casualty

Australia’s nuclear waste, Scotland, and the substitution of nuclear waste types

As Gary Cushway points out, under current arrangements, the waste produced in the reprocessing of spent Australian nuclear fuel which was sent to Dounreay in the 1990s will stay at Dounreay; the vitrified waste produced at Sellafield is only being sent to Australia to fulfil a contractual agreement. If the transfer from Sellafield was halted, and the waste currently stored at different locations in Australia was kept where it is, the case for a national radioactive waste management facility in Australia would be drastically eroded.

Cushway believes that the Scottish Government could cancel the 2012 joint waste substitution policy and come to an arrangement with the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) regarding management of the reprocessed Australian waste at Dounreay.

At the very least, more pressure should be put on the UK Government to stop the transfer of waste until its final destination is known.

Can Scotland help stop nuclear waste being dumped on Aboriginal land? At the very least, more pressure should be put on the UK Government to stop the transfer of waste until its final destination is known. Scots are yet to fully reckonwith the role that we played in the brutal colonisation of Aboriginal Australia, but the Scottish Government now has an opportunity to offer meaningful solidarity to Aboriginal communities who are still fighting to protect their land and culture.

  Linda Pearson  @Pearson_LM   Linda Pearson, anti-nukes activist and Common Weal policy officer, explains how nuclear waste due to be transferred from the UK to Australia could be dumped on Aboriginal land, and what role the Scottish Government could play in preventing another act of racist disregard of Australia’s indigenous population in what is a long and brutal history of discrimination

APPROXIMATELY 10,000 miles from Scotland in South Australia, Aboriginal traditional owners are fighting against plans to build a nuclear waste dump on their land. It is the latest phase in a struggle to protect land and culture which has lasted over 20 years.

The Australian federal government claims that it needs to build a national radioactive waste management facility to store low level radioactive waste, which is currently held at several locations within Australia. The facility would also serve as an interim storage site for intermediate level waste which is being returned to Australia from the UK and France, as well as intermediate level waste from Australia’s research reactor at Lucas Heights, near Sydney. As a permanent site for the intermediate level waste has not been established, “interim” really means “indefinite”.

Earlier proposals to establish the dump, first at Woomera in South Australia, then at Muckaty in the Northern Territory, were defeated by sustained campaigns led by the traditional owners. The government has now shortlisted three other potential sites, all of which are in South Australia: one at Wallerberdina, near the Flinders Ranges, and two near Kimba.

The federal government has so far ignored opposition from Aboriginal groups at the proposed sites and there is a risk that the dump will be built without their consent.  A group of Adnyamathanha people, who live on land adjacent to the proposed site at Wallerberdina, have appealed to the Scottish Government to help prevent what they say would amount to “cultural genocide”.

What’s it got to do with us?

Nuclear waste substitution

In the 1990s, spent nuclear fuel was sent to Dounreay, Caithness, for reprocessing by a number of countries, including Australia. The contracts entered into at the time stated that the radioactive waste created during reprocessing would be sent back to its country of origin within 25 years. The waste is therefore now due to be returned.

To complicate the issue, Australia wants its waste returned in vitrified (glass) form, instead of in the cement form which is produced at Dounreay. Sellafield is the only location in the UK where the vitrification process can be undertaken. Therefore, in order to fulfil the original contract, the UK and Scottish governments agreed to a joint “Dounreay waste substitution policy” in 2012.  Under this policy, the waste generated during the reprocessing of Australian nuclear fuel will stay at Dounreay and a “radiologically equivalent” amount of vitrified waste will be shipped from Sellafield to Australia.

Human rights and “cultural genocide”

The Adnyamathanha want the Scottish Government to help stop the transfer of waste which may end up dumped at Wallerberdina, as they fear that radioactive contamination could poison the water and destroy sacred sites, such as the Yungapunganah waterhole. Adnyamathanha women, Regina Mackenzie, has appealed to the Scottish Government to “help us stop this racist act of impacting First Nation people who are a minority of this country we now call Australia”.

Scottish-Australian campaigner, Gary Cushway, has visited the Wallerberdina site, where he talked with the Adnyamathanha about the cultural significance of the land. He has since met with the Scottish Government on the group’s behalf. To its credit, the Scottish Government has acknowledged the Adnyamathanha’s concernsand gave assurances that they have been passed on to the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and the UK Government.

However, Cushway believes that the Scottish and UK governments are content for the waste to be returned to Australia and for its final destination to be decided by the Australian Government. This is problematic, as Australian state and federal governments have a long history of ignoring the wishes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, violating their human rights and prioritising private profit over Aboriginal culture and heritage, especially where nuclear matters are concerned.

Aboriginal people in South Australia have already suffered the effects of radioactive contamination caused by the British atomic tests carried out at Maralinga and Emu Fields in the 1950s. The British Government had considered, but decided against, conducting the tests in Wick, Scotland, and the Australian Government was willing to let the tests go ahead near Aboriginal communities. Evidently, the British Government considered Aboriginal lives to be worth even less than Scottish lives and the Australian Government agreed.

Aboriginal people who lived in the area were not informed of the tests, nor were they warned about the dangers of radiation. A “black mist” of radioactive dust enveloped the land, bringing serious immediate and long-term health consequences and rendering much of the affected area uninhabitable.

Uranium mining has been imposed on Aboriginal communities since the 1950s, bringing further health problems and wreaking environmental devastation. A 1997 federal government report stated that the “history of uranium mining in Australia and its impact on Aboriginal people is deplorable. Past mining in places like Rum Jungle [in the Northern Territory] have left areas so degraded that traditional owners are unable to use them, while mines such as Ranger have been forced on traditional owners against their will”.

Other industries have been allowed to ravage sites of great cultural significance, such as Murujuga (also known as the Burrup Peninsula), on the coast of Western Australia. Murujuga has been dubbed the “largest open-air museum in the world”, as it is thought to contain around one million ancient rock engravings. Yet successive state governments have promoted the establishment of huge industrial projects in the area, including the largest natural gas and ammonia fertiliser production facilities in the world. The National Trust of Australia says that thousands of pieces of rock art have been destroyed in the process and there are concerns that that emissions from industry in the area could damage many more.

This racist disregard for Aboriginal lives and culture is intrinsic to the system of oppression which began in 1788, when Britain invaded and stole land that already belonged to more than 200 Aboriginal nations. Aboriginal Australians are the most incarcerated people on earth, while Aboriginal children are removed from their families at 10 times the rate of other children, and Aboriginal life expectancy is on average 10 years shorter than that of other Australians.

“No one is listening to us”

An Australian Senate inquiry is currently underway into the selection process for the site of the nuclear waste dump. Only the three sites in South Australia have been formally nominated at this stage, however, it is possible that other communities will be considered in future. Brewarrina in New South Wales was recently put forward by its shire council and Leonora Shire Council in Western Australia has backed a proposal for the dump to be located there.

The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which Australia adopted in 2009, states that “no storage or disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands or territories of indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent”. However, traditional owners at each of the current proposed sites have expressed strong opposition to the dump proposal and have criticised the federal government’s lack of consultation.

A majority of Adnyamathanha traditional owners strongly object to the dump being built at Wallerberdina. In its submission to the Senate inquiry, the Adnyamathanha Traditional Lands Association, which represents 2,500 Adnyamathanha people, states that its concerns about the dump have been ignored and it “has no confidence in or support for the current federal process”.

“No one is listening to us”, the submission says.

The Barngarla people are the native title holders of both proposed sites at Kimba, where the federal government has asserted that there is no Aboriginal cultural heritage to be concerned about. In its submission to the Senate inquiry, the Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation disagrees, citing an assessment of the area by a cultural heritage consultant which found a number of significant sites. The submission describes the community consultation on the site selection process as “patently inadequate, bordering on non-existent” and states that “the need for Indigenous support has so far not played a part in the Department’s site selection process at all in respect of the sites near Kimba”.

Brewarrina in New South Wales is the site of what are believed to be the oldest manmade structures in the world, the Ngunnhu fish traps on the Barwon river. Local traditional owners are concerned about the damage that the dump could cause to the environment and the health risks it could pose to Aboriginal people, who make up 64 per cent of the population of Brewarrina Shire. They have describedBrewarrina council’s consultation process on its decision to nominate the area as a site for the dump as “grossly inadequate”. Trish Frail of Keep Bre Nuclear Free told ABC Radio that traditional owners in Brewarrina would help the other Aboriginal groups that are fighting against the dump proposal, because “it seems like governments are always seeking out small, isolated communities with a majority of First Nations People, and we want to be able to put a stop to that”.

What can the Scottish Government do?

A Friends of the Earth Australia submission to the Senate inquiry states that “the treatment of Aboriginal people by the federal government has been disgraceful and there is no indication that this will change”. Given the Australian Government’s apparent disregard for its UNDRIP obligations and its generally shameful record on Indigenous rights, the transfer of nuclear waste from the UK to Australia should be halted, at least until it’s clear that the waste will not be dumped on Aboriginal land against the wishes of traditional owners.

On top of these human rights concerns, the transfer would pose serious safety risks. Highlands Against Nuclear Transport (HANT), Friends of the Earth Scotland and the Scottish Green Party oppose the transport of nuclear waste between countries. Tor Justad of HANT believes that the transport of nuclear waste is never safe as “all the research into both military and civil nuclear accidents has demonstrated that as soon as you start moving nuclear weapons materials or civil nuclear waste, significant and unpredictable risks are created”.  In Australia, campaigners have raised safety concerns about the transfer of intermediate level waste from Lucas Heights in Sydney to an interim storage site, arguing that this would create unacceptable safety risks and the waste could instead be kept at Lucas Heights.

As Gary Cushway points out, under current arrangements, the waste produced in the reprocessing of spent Australian nuclear fuel which was sent to Dounreay in the 1990s will stay at Dounreay; the vitrified waste produced at Sellafield is only being sent to Australia to fulfil a contractual agreement. If the transfer from Sellafield was halted, and the waste currently stored at different locations in Australia was kept where it is, the case for a national radioactive waste management facility in Australia would be drastically eroded.

Cushway believes that the Scottish Government could cancel the 2012 joint waste substitution policy and come to an arrangement with the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) regarding management of the reprocessed Australian waste at Dounreay. Instead of a radiologically equivalent amount of vitrified waste being sent from Sellafield, the Australian Government could pay the Scottish Government to manage the waste at Dounreay. This would save the Australian Government the costs of transporting and managing the waste in Australia.

Cushway believes that this plan would “benefit both the Australian and Scottish Governments and send a clear message to Indigenous Australians that the international community won’t sit back and allow the Australian Government to continue to damage what’s left of the world’s valuable Aboriginal culture”.

At the very least, more pressure should be put on the UK Government to stop the transfer of waste until its final destination is known. Scots are yet to fully reckonwith the role that we played in the brutal colonisation of Aboriginal Australia, but the Scottish Government now has an opportunity to offer meaningful solidarity to Aboriginal communities who are still fighting to protect their land and culture.

 

Australia’s nuclear testing before the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne should be a red flag for Fukushima in 2020

 https://theconversation.com/australias-nuclear-testing-before-the-1956-olympics-in-melbourne-should-be-a-red-flag-for-fukushima-in-2020-85787 Sue Rabbitt Roff Part time tutor in Medical Education, University of Dundee October 19, 2017 

The scheduling of Tokyo 2020 Olympic events at Fukushima is being seen as a public relations exercise to dampen fears over continuing radioactivity from the reactor explosion that followed the massive earthquake six years ago.

It brings to mind the British atomic bomb tests in Australia that continued until a month before the opening of the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne – despite the known dangers of fallout travelling from the testing site at Maralinga to cities in the east. And it reminds us of the collusion between scientists and politicians – British and Australian – to cover up the flawed decision-making that led to continued testing until the eve of the Games.

Australia’s prime minister Robert Menzies agreed to atomic testing in December 1949. Ten months earlier, Melbourne had secured the 1956 Olympics even though the equestrian events would have to be held in Stockholm because of Australia’s strict horse quarantine regimes.

The equestrians were well out of it. Large areas of grazing land – and therefore the food supplies of major cities such as Melbourne – were covered with a light layer of radiation fallout from the six atomic bombs detonated by Britain during the six months prior to the November 1956 opening of the Games. Four of these were conducted in the eight weeks running up to the big event, 1,000 miles due west of Melbourne at Maralinga.

Bombs and games

In the 25 years I have been researching the British atomic tests in Australia, I have found only two mentions of the proximity of the Games to the atomic tests. Not even the Royal Commission into the tests in 1985 addressed the known hazards of radioactive fallout for the athletes and spectators or those who lived in the wide corridor of the radioactive plumes travelling east.

At the time, the approaching Olympics were referred to only once in the Melbourne press in relation to the atomic tests, in August 1956. It is known that D-notices from the government “requesting” editors to refrain from publishing information about certain defence and security matters were issued.

The official history of the tests by British nuclear historian Lorna Arnold, published by the UK government in 1987 and no longer in print, reports tests director William Penney signalling concern only once, in late September 1956:

Am studying arrangements firings but not easy. Have Olympic Games in mind but still believe weather will not continue bad.

This official history doesn’t comment on the implications. And nowhere in the 1985 Royal Commission report is there any reference to the opening of the Olympics, just one month and a day after the fourth test took place 1,000 miles away.

The 1984 report of the Expert Committee on the review of Data on Atmospheric Fallout Arising from British Nuclear Tests in Australia found that the methodology used to estimate the numbers of people who might have been harmed by this fallout at fewer than 10 was inappropriate. And it concluded that if the dose calculations were confined to the communities in the path of the fallout and not merged with the total Australian population “such an exercise would generate results several orders of magnitude higher than those based on conventional philosophy”. There was no mention of the Olympic Games.

Neither Prime Minister Menzies nor his cabinet ever referred publicly to what had been known from the outset – that the British atomic tests in Australia would almost coincide with the Melbourne Olympics. The tests and the Games were planned simultaneously through the first half of the 1950s.

In May 1955, 18 months before the Olympics were due to start, Howard Beale, the Australian minister for supply, announced the building of “the Los Alamos of the British Commonwealth” (a nuclear test site in New Mexico) at Maralinga, promising that “tests would only take place in meteorological conditions which would carry radioactive clouds harmlessly away into the desert”.

An Atomic Weapons Tests Safety Committee was formed by the Australians but was closely controlled by physicist Professor Ernest Titterton, the only Englishman on the panel. The 1985 Royal Commission stated explicitly that the AWTSC was complicit in the firing of atomic detonations in weather conditions that they knew could carry radioactive fallout a thousand miles from Maralinga to eastern cities such as Melbourne.

Hazards of radioactivity

Professor Titterton, who had recently been appointed to a chair in nuclear physics at the Australian National University after working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, and at Aldermaston in England, explained why the atomic devices were being tested in Australia:

Because of the hazards from the radioactivity which follows atomic weapons explosions, the tests are best carried out in isolated regions – usually a desert area … Most of the radioactivity produced in the explosion is carried up in the mushroom cloud and drifts downward under atmospheric airstreams. But particular material in this cloud slowly settles to the ground and may render an area dangerously radioactive out to distances ranging between 50 and several hundred miles … It would therefore be hazardous to explode even the smallest weapons in the UK, and it was natural for the mother country to seek test sites elsewhere in the Commonwealth.

The AWTSC published two scientific papers in 1957 and 1958 which flat out denied that any dangerous levels of radioactivity reached the eastern states. But their measurements relied on a very sparse scattering of sticky paper monitors – rolls of gummed film set out to catch particles of fallout – even though these could be washed off by rain.

Despite their clear denials in these papers, meteorological records show that prior to the Games there was rain in Melbourne which could have deposited radioactivity on the ground.

The AWTSC papers included maps purporting to show the plumes of radioactive fallout travelling north and west from Maralinga in the South Australian desert. The Royal Commission published expanded maps (see page 292) based on the AWTSC’s own data and found the fallout pattern to be much wider and more complex. The Australian scientist Hedley Marston’s study of radioactivity uptake in animals showed a far more significant covering of fallout on a wide swathe of Australian grazing land than indicated by the sticky paper samples of the AWTSC.

The 1985 Royal Commission report into British Nuclear Tests in Australia discussed many of these issues, but never in relation to the proximity and timing of the 1956 Olympic Games. Sixty years later, are we seeing the same denial of known hazards six years after the reactor explosion at Fukushima?

 

Advancing responsible radioactive waste management in Australia.

Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF Briefing note: March 2018

Overview:

Radioactive waste management in Australia has been a contested, divisive and ultimately non-productive area of public policy for decades. The timing and circumstances are now conducive for adopting a revised approach that is more likely to advance responsible national radioactive waste management and agreed and lasting outcomes.

This approach to responsible radioactive waste management in Australia is founded on not imposing any federal facility on an unwilling community, acting in a manner consistent with both existing state and territory laws and leading international industry practise and ensuring high standards of extended federal interim storage at the two secured sites where the majority of the waste is sited pending an inclusive and robust examination of the range of long term future management options.

Scale and current context:

Australia holds around 4250 cubic metres of low level radioactive waste and 655 cubic metres of longlived intermediate level waste. Around 95% of this material is currently stored at two secured Federal sites. Nearly all of Australia’s intermediate level waste is held where it was created at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation’s (ANSTO) Lucas Heights nuclear reactor facility in southern Sydney. This material is Australia’s highest level radioactive waste and is the most significant management challenge. Most of the low-level waste is at the Defence Department’s Woomera site in South Australia.

The National Radioactive Waste Management Project:

The current preferred federal plan involves the emplacement and covering of containerised low-level radioactive wastes and the above ground storage of long lived higher level waste at a single regional or remote site. There is no intention to recover the low-level material – it would be disposed of in-situ.

There are plans to remove the higher-level waste for deep geological disposal at a location yet to be determined after a period of between 20 to 100 years. The current approach to intermediate level waste management is not best international practice. Instead it is based on unnecessary transport and doublehandling and replacing above ground interim storage at ANSTO for above ground interim storage at a far less resourced regional facility.

Since April 2016 South Australia has been the only region under active consideration as a site for a federal radioactive waste facility. Three sites, one at Barndioota in the Flinders Ranges and two near Kimba on the Eyre Peninsula, are under consideration. All sites are contested and there is considerable Aboriginal and wider community concern, opposition and division. Existing SA legislation, the Nuclear Waste Facility (Prohibition) Act 2000, makes the federal plan unlawful in SA. While the federal government could override any state legislative road-blocks doing so would be inconsistent with leading practise for facility siting and open to clear procedural and legal challenge.

The employment and economic opportunities provided by the federal radioactive waste plan are modest. There would be some short-term fencing and construction work and there are plans for twelve to fifteen (fte) security and maintenance jobs, an interim ‘disruption’ payment of two million dollars for community programs in the affected regions and a ‘community benefit fund’ of no more than ten million dollars (with no clear guidance on where, when or how the federal government would allocate this money).

Previous federal attempts over many years to impose a radioactive waste dump on multiple sites in regional South Australia and the Northern Territory have all failed.

The case for a revised approach: Extended interim storage and option assessment:

Leading civil society organisations including environment, public health, Indigenous and trade union groups all support an expert, open and independent Inquiry into the full range of radioactive waste management options.

Radioactive waste remains a concern for thousands of years and its management demands the highest quality decision making and information. Enhanced and extended interim storage at current federal facilities offers a policy circuit-breaker and, coupled with an options review, is the best way to identify and advance lasting and responsible radioactive waste management.

Extended interim storage, particularly at Lucas Heights given this site is already home to the most problematic wastes, is prudent and credible as:

ANSTO is already both the continuing producer of and home to virtually all of Australia’s higher level radioactive waste

 ANSTO has certainty of tenure, a secure perimeter and is monitored 24/7 by Australian federal police

 Storing the waste at ANSTO means the waste will be actively managed as operations at the site are licensed for a further three decades. It also keeps waste management on the radar of the facility/people with the highest level of nuclear expertise and radiation response capacity in Australia

 After community opposition and Federal Court action ended an earlier proposed waste site at Muckaty (NT) ANSTO constructed and commissioned a new purpose built on site store dedicated to housing reprocessed spent nuclear fuel waste which returned from France in late 2015. This Interim Waste Store has a conservative design life of forty years, its license is not time limited and it has (if required) regulatory approval to store these reprocessed wastes ‘until the availability of a final disposal option’.

 Extended interim storage at ANSTO helps reduce any political pressure to rush to find a ‘remote’ out of sight, out of mind dump site and increases the chances of advancing responsible management

 Storage at ANSTO has been previously identified as a credible and feasible option by ANSTO, nuclear industry lobby group the Australian Nuclear Association and, most importantly, the federal nuclear regulator, the Australian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA).

There is no regulatory or radiological impediment to extended interim storage at Lucas Heights. ANSTO’s facility is prohibited from becoming a permanent disposal site, however there are no comparable constraints on it as a site for extended storage.

Importantly, this approach also provides the ability to have a circuit breaker in this long running issue in the form of an evidence based and open review of the best long-term management options.

Nothing about the nuclear industry, especially nuclear waste, is clean or uncomplicated but extended interim federal storage – coupled with a wider robust public review of the full range of longer term management options – is the approach that is most likely to advance and realise lasting and responsible radioactive waste management in Australia.

Paul Waldon Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA July 4

Where are all of these alleged proponents of a nuclear waste dump that the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science has claimed support the risk of contaminating their own environment of Hawker for a few jobs.

Only one, yes 1, that’s less than two, nearly zero, zip, squat, zilch, butt kiss, and it was only that one elderly local that got up and spoke in support of a risky program at the Hawker community meeting on the 6th of May 2016. A man with No conscience, and willing to burden the young with the contamination of Hawker and the Flinders,

the same meeting that had over 100 concerned people decrying the abandonment of radioactive waste, yet the DIIS claim this one man was the majority. The augury of the DIIS’s factoids needs to raised so people are adroit to the dangers of their manufactured figures.  https://www.facebook.com/groups/344452605899556/

Geologists warn that the Barndioota region is a dangerous site for nuclear waste dumping

‎Barb Walker‎ to Quorn – Out & About Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA June 25 

From: Professor Chris von der Borch
For distribution: The Advertiser, The Transcontinental, The Town Crier, Quorn Out and About, The Mercury and Get About – Hawker.
Received: Sunday, June 24th 2018

Subject: Proposed nuclear waste dump near Hawker.

“A site on the western slopes of the Flinders Range west of Hawker is one of the key areas currently under consideration for storage of low level, and the much more dangerous intermediate level, nuclear waste. A number of distinguished geological colleagues and myself, who collectively share many decades of geological research in the proposed area, are very concerned that the one of the suggested storage sites, in the Barndioota region, ticks “all the wrong boxes” as a fail-safe option.

Such nuclear waste, which would have a radioactive half-life of tens of thousands of years, needs a careful consideration of the geological parameters of a proposed responsible storage site, rather than what appears to be “political expediency”! And the site under consideration would certainly not satisfy these geological considerations.

It lies in one of the most seismically active regions of Australia. It lies in a zone which is subject to catastrophic flash-flooding and mudflow activity. The area is adjacent to a major saline lake, Lake Torrens, which is a “terminal drainage area”, meaning that all surface and underground run-off from the ranges ends up in the periodically drying surface lake sediments. So the bottom line is that, were such a storage site were to break down within the next several thousand years, radioactive material would end up in the surface sediments of Lake Torrens. Dry desert winds would then have the potential to disperse radioactive dust over large areas which may well be occupied by humans in the future.”  https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=Fight%20To%20Stop%20Nuclear%20Waste%20Dump%20In%20Flinders%20Ranges%20SA

Response to ‘Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems’

Science Direct 18 May 18 

• T.W. Brown^a, b, , ,
• T. Bischof-Niemz^c,
• K. Blok^d,
• C. Breyer^e,
• H. Lund^f,
• B.V. Mathiesen^g

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2018.

Highlights

•We respond to a recent article that is critical of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems.

•Based on a literature review we show that none of the issues raised in the article are critical for feasibility or viability.

•Each issue can be addressed at low economic cost, while not affecting the main conclusions of the reviewed studies.

•We highlight methodological problems with the choice and evaluation of the feasibility criteria.

•We provide further evidence for the feasibility and viability of renewables-based systems.

Abstract

A recent article ‘Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems’ claims that many studies of 100% renewable electricity systems do not demonstrate sufficient technical feasibility, according to the criteria of the article’s authors (henceforth ‘the authors’). Here we analyse the authors’ methodology and find it problematic. The feasibility criteria chosen by the authors are important, but are also easily addressed at low economic cost, while not affecting the main conclusions of the reviewed studies and certainly not affecting their technical feasibility. A more thorough review reveals that all of the issues have already been addressed in the engineering and modelling literature. Nuclear power, which the authors have evaluated positively elsewhere, faces other, genuine feasibility problems, such as the finiteness of uranium resources and a reliance on unproven technologies in the medium- to long-term. Energy systems based on renewables, on the other hand, are not only feasible, but already economically viable and decreasing in cost every year

1. Introduction

………..https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032118303307