Reality bats last-Small Nuclear Reactors just not economic for Australia (or anywhere else)

Small modular reactor rhetoric hits a hurdle  https://reneweconomy.com.au/small-modular-reactor-rhetoric-hits-a-hurdle-62196/    Jim Green, 23 June 2020, The promotion of ‘small modular reactors’ (SMRs) in Australia has been disrupted by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). The latest GenCost report produced by the two agencies estimates a hopelessly uneconomic construction cost of A$16,304 per kilowatt (kW) for SMRs.But it throws the nuclear lobby a bone by hypothesising a drastic reduction in costs over the next decade. The A$16,304 estimate has been furiously attacked by, amongst others, conservative politicians involved in a federal nuclear inquiry last year, and the Bright New World (BNW) nuclear lobby group. The estimate has its origins in a commissioned report written by engineering company GHD. GHD provides the estimate without clearly explaining its origins or basis. And the latest CSIRO/AEMO report does no better than to state that the origins of the estimate are “unclear”. Thus nuclear lobbyists have leapt on that muddle-headedness and filled the void with their own lowball estimates of SMR costs.

Real-world data

Obviously, the starting point for any serious discussion about SMR costs would be the cost of operational SMRs – ignored by CSIRO/AEMO and by lobbyists such as BNW. There is just one operational SMR, Russia’s floating plant. Its estimated cost is US$740 million for a 70 MW plant. That equates to A$15,200 per kW – similar to the CSIRO/AEMO estimate of A$16,304 per kW. Over the course of construction, the cost quadrupled and a 2016 OECD Nuclear Energy Agency report said that electricity produced by the Russian floating plant is expected to cost about US$200 (A$288) per megawatt-hour (MWh) with the high cost due to large staffing requirements, high fuel costs, and resources required to maintain the barge and coastal infrastructure. Figures on costs of SMRs under construction should also be considered – they are far more useful than the estimates of vendors and lobbyists, which invariably prove to be highly optimistic. The World Nuclear Association states that the cost of China’s high-temperature gas-cooled SMR (HTGR) is US$6,000 (A$8,600) per kW. Costs are reported to have nearly doubled, with increases arising from higher material and component costs, increases in labour costs, and increased costs associated with project delays. The CAREM SMR under construction in Argentina illustrates the gap between SMR rhetoric and reality. In 2004, when the reactor was in the planning stage, Argentina’s Bariloche Atomic Center estimated an overnight cost of USS$1,000 per kW for an integrated 300-MW plant (while acknowledging that to achieve such a cost would be a “very difficult task”). When construction began in 2014, the cost estimate was US$15,400 per kW (US$446 million / 29 MW). By April 2017, the cost estimate had increased US$21,900 (A$31,500) per kW (US$700 million / 32 MW). To the best of my knowledge, no other figures on SMR construction costs are publicly available. So the figures are: A$15,200 per kW for Russia’s light-water floating SMR A$8,600 per kW for China’s HTGR A$31,500 per kW for Argentina’s light-water SMR The average of those figures is A$18,400 per kW, which is higher than the CSIRO/AEMO figure of A$16,304 per kW and double BNW’s estimate of A$9,132 per kW. The CSIRO/AEMO report says that while there are SMRs under construction or nearing completion, “public cost data has not emerged from these early stage developments.” That simply isn’t true.

BNW’s imaginary reactor

BNW objects to CSIRO/AEMO basing their SMR cost estimate on a “hypothetical reactor”. But BNW does exactly the same, ignoring real-world cost estimates for SMRs under construction or in operation. BNW starts with the estimate of US company NuScale Power, which hopes to build SMRs but hasn’t yet begun construction of a single prototype. BNW adds a 50% ‘loading’ in recognition of past examples of nuclear reactor cost overruns. Thus BNW’s estimate for SMR construction costs is A$9,132 per kW. Two big problems: NuScale’s cost estimate is bollocks, and BNW’s proposed 50% loading doesn’t fit the recent pattern of nuclear costs increasing by far greater amounts. NuScale’s construction cost estimate of US$4,200 per kW is implausible. It is far lower than Lazard’s latest estimate of US$6,900-12,200 per kW for large reactors and far lower than the lowest estimate (US$12,300 per kW) of the cost of the two Vogtle AP1000 reactors under construction in Georgia (the only reactors under construction in the US). NuScale’s estimate (per kW) is just one-third of the cost of the Vogtle plant – despite the unavoidable diseconomies of scale with SMRs and despite the fact that independent assessmentsconclude that SMRs will be more expensive to build (per kW) than large reactors. Further, modular factory-line production techniques were trialled with the twin AP1000 Westinghouse reactor project in South Carolina – a project that was abandoned in 2017 after the expenditure of at least US$9 billion, bankrupting Westinghouse. Lazard estimates a levelised cost of US$118-192 per MWh for electricity from large nuclear plants. NuScale estimates a cost of US$65 per MWh for power from its first plant. Thus NuScale claims that its electricity will be 2-3 times cheaper than that from large nuclear plants, which is implausible. And even if NuScale achieved its cost estimate, it would still be higher than Lazard’s figures for wind power (US$28-54) and utility-scale solar (US$32-44). BNW claims that the CSIRO/AEMO levelised cost estimate of A$258-338 per MWh for SMRs is an “extreme overestimate”. But an analysis by WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff, prepared for the SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission, estimated a cost of A$225 per MWh for a reactor based on the NuScale design, which is far closer to the CSIRO/AEMO estimate than it is to BNW’s estimate of A$123-128 per MWh with the potential to fall as low as A$60.

Cost overruns

BNW proposes adding a 50% ‘loading’ to NuScale’s cost estimate in recognition of past examples of reactor cost overruns, and claims that it is basing its calculations on “a first-of-a-kind vendor estimate [NuScale’s] with the maximum uncertainly associated with the Class of the estimate.” Huh? The general pattern is that early vendor estimates underestimate true costs by an order of magnitude, while estimates around the time of initial construction underestimate true costs by a factor of 2-4. Here are some recent examples of vastly greater cost increases than BNW allows for: * The estimated cost of the HTGR under construction in China has nearly doubled. The cost of Russia’s floating SMR quadrupled. * The estimated cost of Argentina’s SMR has increased 22-fold above early, speculative estimates and the cost increased by 66% from 2014, when construction began, to 2017. * The cost estimate for the Vogtle project in US state of Georgia (two AP1000 reactors) has doubled to more than US$13.5 billion per reactor and will increase further. In 2006, Westinghouse said it could build an AP1000 reactor for as little as US1.4 billion – 10 times lower than the current estimate for Vogtle. * The estimated combined cost of the two EPR reactors under construction in the UK, including finance costs, is £26.7 billion (the EU’s 2014 estimate of £24.5 billion plus a £2.2 billion increase announced in July 2017). In the mid-2000s, the estimated construction cost for one EPR reactor in the UK was £2 billion, almost seven times lower than the current estimate. * The estimated cost of about €12.4 billion for the only reactor under construction in France is 3.8 times greater than the original €3.3 billion estimate. * The estimated cost of about €11 billion for the only reactor under construction in Finland is 3.7 times greater than the original €3 billion estimate.

Timelines

BNW notes that timelines for deployment and construction are “extremely material” in terms of the application of learning rates to capital expenditure. BNW objected to the previous CSIRO/AEMO estimate of five years for construction of an SMR and proposed a “more probable” three-year estimate as well as an assumption that NuScale’s first reactor will begin generating power in 2026 even though construction has not yet begun. For reasons unexplained, CSIRO/AEMO also assume a three-year construction period in their latest report, and for reasons unexplained the operating life of an SMR is halved from 60 years to 30 years. None of the real-world evidence supports the arguments about construction timelines: * The construction period for the only operational SMR, Russia’s floating plant, was 12.5 years. * Argentina’s CAREM SMR was conceived in the 1980s, construction began in 2014, the 2017 start-up date was missed and subsequent start-up dates were missed. If the current schedule for a 2023 start-up is met it will be a nine-year construction project rather than the three years proposed by CSIRO/AEMO and BNW for construction of an SMR. Last year, work on the CAREM SMR was suspended, with Techint Engineering & Construction asking Argentina’s National Atomic Energy Commission to take urgent measures to mitigate the project’s serious financial breakdown. In April 2020, Argentina’s energy minister announced that work on CAREM would resume. * Construction of China’s HTGR SMR began in 2012, the 2017 start-up date was missed, and if the targeted late-2020 start-up is met it will be an eight-year construction project. * NuScale Power has been trying to progress its SMR ambitions for over a decade and hasn’t yet begun construction of a single prototype reactor. * The two large reactors under construction in the US are 5.5 years behind schedule and those under construction in France and Finland are 10 years behind schedule. * In 2007, EDF boasted that Britons would be using electricity from an EPR reactor at Hinkley Point to cook their Christmas turkeys in December 2017 – but construction didn’t even begin until December 2018.

Learning rates

In response to relentless attacks from far-right politicians and lobby groups such as BNW, the latest CSIRO/AEMO GenCost report makes the heroic assumption that SMR costs will fall from A$16,304 per kW to as little as A$7,140 per kW in 2030, with the levelised cost anywhere between A$129 and A$336 per MWh. The report states that SMRs were assigned a “higher learning rate (more consistent with an emerging technology) rather than being included in a broad nuclear category, with a low learning rate consistent with more mature large scale nuclear.” But there’s no empirical basis, nor any logical basis, for the learning rate assumed in the report. The cost reduction assumes that large numbers of SMRs will be built, and that costs will come down as efficiencies are found, production capacity is scaled up, etc. Large numbers of SMRs being built? Not according to expert opinion. A 2017 Lloyd’s Register report was based on the insights of almost 600 professionals and experts from utilities, distributors, operators and equipment manufacturers, who predicted that SMRs have a “low likelihood of eventual take-up, and will have a minimal impact when they do arrive”. A 2014 report produced by Nuclear Energy Insider, drawing on interviews with more than 50 “leading specialists and decision makers”, noted a “pervasive sense of pessimism” about the future of SMRs. Last year, the North American Project Director for Nuclear Energy Insider said that there “is unprecedented growth in companies proposing design alternatives for the future of nuclear, but precious little progress in terms of market-ready solutions.” Will costs come down in the unlikely event that SMRs are built in significant numbers? For large nuclear reactors, the experience has been either a very slow learning rate with modest cost decreases, or a negative learning rate. If everything went astonishingly well for SMRs, it would take several rounds of learning to drastically cut costs to A$7,140 per kW. Several rounds of SMR construction by 2030, as assumed in the most optimistic scenario in the CSIRO/AEMO report? Obviously not. The report notes that it would take many years to achieve economies, but then ignores its own advice: “Constructing first-of-a-kind plant includes additional unforeseen costs associated with lack of experience in completing such projects on budget. SMR will not only be subject to first-of-a-kind costs in Australia but also the general engineering principle that building plant smaller leads to higher costs. SMRs may be able to overcome the scale problem by keeping the design of reactors constant and producing them in a series. This potential to modularise the technology is likely another source of lower cost estimates. However, even in the scenario where the industry reaches a scale where small modular reactors can be produced in series, this will take many years to achieve and therefore is not relevant to estimates of current costs (using our definition).” Even with heroic assumptions resulting in CSIRO/AEMO’s low-cost estimate of A$129 per MWh for SMRs in 2030, the cost is still far higher than the low-cost estimates for wind with two hours of battery storage (A$64), wind with six hours of pumped hydro storage (A$86), solar PV with two hours of battery storage (A$52) or solar PV with six hours of pumped hydro storage (A$84). And the CSIRO/AEMO high-cost estimate for SMRs in 2030 ($336 per MWh) is more than double the high estimates for solar PV or wind with 2-6 hours of storage (A$90-151).

Reality bats last

The economic claims of SMR enthusiasts are sharply contradicted by real-world data. And their propaganda campaign simply isn’t working – government funding and private-sector funding is pitiful when measured against the investments required to build SMR prototypes let alone fleets of SMRs and the infrastructure that would allow for mass production of SMR components. Wherever you look, there’s nothing to justify the hype of SMR enthusiasts. Argentina’s stalled SMR program is a joke. Plans for 18 additional HTGRs at the same site as the demonstration plant in China have been “dropped” according to the World Nuclear Association. Russia planned to have seven floating nuclear power plants by 2015, but only recently began operation of its first plant. South Korea won’t build any of its domestically-designed SMART SMRs in South Korea – “this is not practical or economic” according to the World Nuclear Association – and plans to establish an export market for SMART SMRs depend on a wing and a prayer … and on Saudi oil money which is currently in short supply. ‘Reality bats last’, nuclear advocate Barry Brook used to say a decade ago when a nuclear ‘renaissance’ was in full-swing. The reality is that the renaissance was short-lived, and global nuclear capacity fell by 0.6 gigawatts last year while renewable capacity increased by a record 201 gigawatts. Dr. Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and editor of the Nuclear Monitor newsletter.

South Australia targeted: easy to later bring international waste in to nuclear dump

Name withheld. to Senate Committee on  National Radioactive Waste Management Amendment (Site Specification, Community Fund and Other Measures) Bill 2020 [Provisions] Submission 39  Excerpt The amendment to the Bill put forward by the now Minister of Resources Keith Bill should be rescinded and here are the reasons why. First and foremost there was NO Broad Community Support achieved. [The writer now gives an account of the requirement for community support for the nuclear waste facility:  Support “would need to be in the vicinity of 65%, and that submissions and ‘neighbouring views’ would also be taken into consideration.” – and that this support was not achieved] So why was Kimba announced as the dump site if this stipulation was not fulfilled? To understand it, first you must understand the history behind the dump proposal. HISTORY This whole dump proposal has been flawed from the very start. It is the exact same proposal put forward in Parliament in the 1980’s and hasn’t changed. The recurrent statement of “we only have a small amount of Intermediate Level Waste so that can “tag-a-long” or “co-locate” with the Low Level Waste” was used back then and continues to be used right now 40 years later! If you consider that, back in the 1980’s the proposed dump concept was to be only operating for 50 years, as they also stated that by that time the Intermediate Level Waste would be dealt with before its closure. Think about it – that means the preparation should ALREADY be in place RIGHT NOW according to their statements – ready for 2030! And yet NOTHING has been done in that regard!! We still have the Woomera Waste still sitting in Woomera, when it was stated by the Federal Government at that time (1994), that it would only be “temporary” for 2 – 3 years maximum! Moving on 25 years plus – and it still remains in Woomera. Past behaviour is a good predictor of future behaviour. It should be noted that the waste in Woomera – the CSIRO waste from Melbourne Fishermans Bend and the St. Mary’s waste from St. Mary’s Defence Base NSW – were placed in Woomera AS A RESULT of a NSW Environmental Court Case brought onto ANSTO Lucas Heights by the Sutherland Shire Council.The CSIRO waste was from the cleanup of Fishermans Bend in Victoria – where in fact only 200 of these drums contained radioactive waste according to the then Transport code of a minimum exceeding 70,000 Becquerels per kilogram to be considered a radioactive substance! But due to the media coverage and the concern by the public, all 9726 x 205L of the drums were classified as radioactive and then taken by consignment to ANSTO Lucas Heights NSW for storage. They werenstored on site for 4 years at ANSTO Lucas Heights (1990 -1994). It was only when Lucas Heights agreed to take the waste from St Mary’s Defence Base NSW (1991) that Sutherland Shire Council brought a court case up against ANSTO Lucas Heights from taking waste from other entities.The Case was won by Sutherland Council, and although ANSTO was swift to change the Federal Act thereafter so that such jurisdictional action would never happen again. The Federal Government sought a suitable Commonwealth site to place the Fishermans Bend and St Marys Bend waste at short notice – which was Woomera in SA. At the time, the Feds were in negotiation with Northern Territory with regards to a dump site in NT, which fell through. The waste remains separately stored in Woomera – although ANSTO was commissioned to condition the St Mary’s Defence waste before it was transported to Woomera. https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/Pu blications_Archive/online/RadioactiveWaste Almost every state in Australia has been the target of this dump in the past. This is the second time SA has been targeted.And each and every time the establishment of the dump has failed.Why is this? Because it is a flawed proposal. Trotting out the exact same proposal since 1980’s shows that. The only change this time round is for nomination by land owners to nominate their land for the dump this time! 28 sites all around Australia were nominated in the nomination period 2nd March 2015 to 5th May 2015. It was the 13th November 2015 when the then resources minister Josh Frydenberg announce 6 sites around Australia which the Federal Government had deemed suitable. https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=a80c7b35-3fdc-4502-8febd8381b03dae3& subId=565152 “Submission “Submission to the Senate Inquiry into the Site Selection Process for a National Radioactive Waste Management Facility Radioactive Waste Management Taskforce April 2018” Annexure 6 – Chronology of site selection process. Coincidentally, the South Australian Royal Commission into the Nuclear Fuel Cycle was established on 19th March 2015. The final report of this Royal Commission was presented to the SA premier Jay Weatherill on 9th May 2016. From October 2016 to November 2016, with final result obtained and given to the Premier of SA on 6th November 2016 a citizen’s jury decided a NO MEANS NO to SA becoming an International Dump site. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-06/sa-citizens-juryvote- against-storing-nuclear-waste/7999262  The then opposition leader Stephen Marshall reaffirmed this stance 5 days later 11th November 2016 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-11/opposition-says-it-will-vote-against-sa-nuclear-wastedump/    8016818?fbclid=IwAR1CiCk6Y1je4l1ZUtpvlJqYT4rHeKcqreHAXtVJ1xZxpKNfHZ6xfToZxVA Why is this important? Because of the timeline! There is NO WAY ON EARTH that South Australia was NOT BEING TARGETED! And even today, there are South Australians who believe that the International AND National Nuclear Dump targeting in South Australia had been put to bed back in November 2016! That this was ONE FIGHT instead of TWO However, it has to be noted, that when Mike Rann fought to stop the Federal Government putting a dump into South Australia in the early 2000’s, there was a push by an international group called PANGEA with a leaked media video, which is intent on establishing an International Nuclear Dump in Australia. The group is now called itself ARIUS, since 2012, and is alive and kicking as witnessed in the Royal Commission into the Nuclear Fuel Cycle 2016. TECHNICAL SUITABILITY So why is the Federal Government so hell bent on putting this nuclear waste onto South Australia? Surely World’s Best Practise would dictate that the best site would be closer to the main site of generation and not over 1700kms across the country and into another state! Less transport and less handling required meaning less human error and mistakes. Which is a perfect time to reiterate ARPANSA’s definition of nuclear waste – “Radioactive waste is material that has no foreseeable use and contains radioactive materials with activities or activity concentrations at levels high enough that regulatory oversight is needed to ensure safety.” https://www.arpansa.gov.au/understandingradiation/ radiation-sources/more-radiation-sources/radioactive-waste-safety/frequently-askedquestions Why was Sallys Flat NSW which was ONE of the SIX sites deemed suitable by the Federal Government not hounded like the South Australian sites were? Sallys Flat is only 260 kms from Lucas Heights. Even Oman Ama QLD which is another of the SIX sites deemed suitable by the Federal Government is closer at 780kms! The site at Kimba is over 1700kms away!Over 90% of all Australia’s nuclear waste (non-mining) is generated on site at Lucas Heights NSW for the production of nuclear medical isotopes predominately. And these isotopes are predominately used for diagnostic imaging, and to a much, much smaller extent for treatment. How much nuclear waste does South Australia actually have itself? Back in 2003 Mike Rann was reported as stating thatSouth Australia itself had only enough nuclear waste to fill one 44 gallon drum! And today it isn’t much more than that! https://www.abc.net.au/news/2003-06-03/rannrejects-waste-dump-threats/1864470“States and territories are responsible for managing a range of radioactive waste holdings, accounting for about one per cent of total radioactive waste holdings in Australia.”…according to the DIIS – “Australian Radioactive Waste Management Framework April 2018” page 7 https://www.industry.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019- 04/australian_radioactive_waste_management_framework.pdf…… Lucas Heights was built with ample space so that they could take care of all of the waste they generated on site. It was only with the build of the OPAL reactor which replaced the aging HIFAR reactor that it was thought that the waste could go elsewhere, to pacify the nearby population as a compromise of the build of the new reactor. But the premise still remains, and Lucas Heights has enough space to deal with their own was for up to 100 years. Since Lucas Heights was built in 1958 there is still plenty of space and time for this research reactor to find a proper solution to this nuclear waste once and for all. Not to bury it somewhere out of sight and out of mind , so it is essentially abandoned. If push comes to shove with Government funding, do you think the proposed nuclear dump will be a priority? This dump simply gives Lucas Heights licence to continue and indeed even increase nuclear waste production. And then consider the criteria for acceptance of nuclear waste at the proposed dump. These can easily be changed with a stroke of a pen. No liquid now, but that can be changed. No mining waste now, but that can be changed. No High Level Nuclear Waste now, but that can be changed. Just as the management and ownership of the dump can change, should the financing prove too much for the Federal Government. They have off loaded other Government owned entities before, no different with nuclear waste. And there in comes International Nuclear Waste through the backdoor.

The sorry Kimba nuclear waste saga- Michele Madigan spells it out (and it’s not over)

Fight against nuclear waste not over yet   http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article/fight-against-nuclear-waste-not-over-yet?#, Michele Madigan 10 February 2020  On January 31st, just three days before he offered his resignation as Minister for Resources and Northern Australia, Senator Matthew Canavan made his long awaited, if predictable, announcement: Australia’s long lived intermediate radioactive waste will be stored, and the low level waste deposited, at the Napandee site in the Kimba region of South Australia. Canavan’s decision was a natural follow on from his December 13th announcement that with just 47 per cent of voters in favour, the Flinders Ranges site of Wallerberdina was no longer under consideration. As such, the Kimba decision was predictable. However it still came as a jolt to most of the farmers and others rightly fearful of the plan to host nuclear waste which even the government now admits will remain toxic for an unimaginable 10,000 years. The early November Kimba vote of 61.17 per cent in favour on the proposed project followed the four year divisive government campaign. On December 5th, Kimba region farmer Terry Schmucker explained the vote’s long history: ‘We have already been through this once already where everyone was on equal terms. The minister at the time had already ruled there was not broad community support. However the landholder that nominated his land the first time then renominated a different part of his farm and his friends and family within the Kimba council moved for a vote of only the council area. The community funding has now been restricted to the Kimba council area only because of this — people are looking at the large inducement, not the radioactive waste issues.’ He concluded that ‘if the 50 km radius was applied at Kimba like it is at Hawker the vote would fail at these waste sites.’ After their 20 year struggle to successfully obtain their native title rights, which included the Kimba region, the Barngarla people were astonished at their own exclusion from the vote. As Jeanne Miller movingly explains in Kim Mavromatis’ four minute film, as Aboriginal people with no voting power they are put back 50 years, ‘again classed as flora and fauna.’ The Barngarla case against the Kimba Council will return to the Federal Court on February 21st. After the Kimba region announcement, most predictable was the delight of the man due to profit the most from the arrangement in monetary terms. Jeff Baldock of Napandee is to be paid four fold for the 160 hectares of his land that the federal government plans to acquire. Not much doubt, however, that Baldock and his family over future generations may get much more in repercussions than bargained for. At our privileged gathering on 5th February in Adelaide’s CBD, every time a guest referred to ‘intermediate long lived nuclear waste’, Dr Helen Caldicott, an internationally known anti-nuclear campaigner, insistently corrected the term to ‘high level’ nuclear waste. Somewhat surprisingly, on February 6, ANSTO (Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation) senior nuclear officer Hef Griffths voiced the same opinion. Speaking to the ABC’s Paul Culliver, Griffiths admitted France classifies waste from reprocessed spent nuclear fuel as high level nuclear waste — and when the waste gets shipped back to Australia it is reclassified as intermediate. Unsurprisingly, there has been more media coverage of this issue in the Murdoch owned Adelaide Advertiser since Senator Canavan’s anouncement. One opinion piece to one (extreme) side, more facts than usual have been reported. Unswerving however has been the insistence by many correspondents of the repetition of the government mantra that the project is all about medical nuclear waste. The reality is that over 90 per cent of the waste, measured by radioactivity, is intermediate long-lived waste including the nuclear spent fuel rods and also the parts of the previous nuclear reactor. And no, X-rays and radiotherapy aren’t nuclear medicine. After their 20 year struggle to successfully obtain their native title rights, which included the Kimba region, the Barngarla people were astonished at their own exclusion from the vote. As Jeanne Miller movingly explains in Kim Mavromatis’ four minute film, as Aboriginal people with no voting power they are put back 50 years, “again classed as flora and fauna”‘. To avoid any unnecessary repetition of details regarding the medical waste argument I suggest that any interested reader would do well to read the respondents’ questions and information to my last published article. In addition, there is always the valuable Friends of the Earth scientific information source. The hosts of the Kimba Rally for Sunday February 2nd, expecting 100, were overwhelmed and delighted with the crowd, a physical count revealing five times that number. Mrs Waniwa Lester, widow of the late Yami Lester blinded by the 1953 British nuclear tests at Emu Junction, travelled the 467 kilometres from Adelaide with me to attend. Weeks in the planning, it turned out the rally took place two days after the Minister’s actual announcement of the nuclear site. MC Peter Woodfold, President of No Radioactive Waste on Agricultural Land in Kimba or SA, summarised the local divisive campaign in his speech, saying ‘if you want to know what intimidation is, you stand between people and money.’ Perhaps most moving of all the excellent speeches were those from other farmers, James Shepherdson and Tom Harris. As reported in the Stock Journal, Shepherdson said the community had not initially been told that the facility would be used to temporarily store intermediate-level radioactive waste, in addition to the storage and disposal of low-level waste. He said funding injections, such as a $20 million government community fund, did not outweigh potential problems with grain quality. ‘Farmers are under scrutiny and at the beck and call of buyers and brokers, and to risk what is an $80m income for this district every 12 months, for a one-off $20m payment, that’s absurd,’ he said. Kimba farming land is an important part of South Australia’s just 4.5 per cent agricultural cropping land. Tom Harris revealed with some distress the current doubt by insurance agents regarding his insurance viability because of its proximity of his farm to the nuclear storage site; this may jeopardise his sons’ succession. Reflecting the determination of local No campaigners, ACF ‘s Dave Sweeney warns that the fight is far from over. Various hurdles along the way in which opponents can be involved include the required Environmental Impact Statement and then the assessment the regulator ARPANSA (The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency) must make. The inclusion of other opponents is more likely when transport routes are finally revealed. Coming from a long established Eyre Peninsula family, P Boylan is clear: all of SA’s West Coast will be affected and must have a say. Peter Woolford goes further, in view of the extraordinary ramifications of this decision for the whole state, a referendum is needed. No, it’s not over yet. Nor will it be. On an issue that will have implications for every generation to come, just 452 local residents cannot be allowed to speak for 1.7 million South Australians.

History of Australia’s govt move towards importing nuclear waste

If the “low level” storage facility goes ahead in Kimba, it would only be a matter of time before it became a facility storing medium and high level waste creating untold risks for human life, Indigenous culture and heritage, flora and fauna, and agriculture. It must be stopped.

TERRA NUCLEAR  https://www.cpa.org.au/guardian/2020/1902/05-nuclear.html?fbclid=IwAR0oOmAw7IIbs9dERT6aUM6gKTG4eIIco6iEycpzr58GHwyPomOVyGh2jak  Anna Pha,16 Feb 2, Last week, the then Resources Minister Matt Canavan announced the site for an international nuclear waste dump on farmland in South Australia. The decision comes after two decades or more of wrangling over where to locate the facility.

The land is at Napandee in Kimba, on the Eyre Peninsula and is owned by a farmer who offered it to the government. He is set to receive compensation well above market value.

“The facility has broad community support in Kimba, but I acknowledge there remains opposition, particularly amongst the Barngarla People and their representative group,” Canavan said in a press release.

He omits to mention that the Barngarla People were excluded from a local vote on the question.

In addition, the opposition is not confined to the Barngarla People who fear the pollution of their land and waters, as well as the damage to their culture and sacred sites. Environmental and other groups as well as many individuals have not given up. They are determined to fight it to the end.

Denial of Danger

Just as the government refuses to acknowledge the dangers of inaction over climate change, Canavan plays down the deadly risks associated with radiation; “I am satisfied a facility at Napandee will safely and securely manage radioactive waste and that the local community has shown broad community support for the project and economic benefits it will bring.”

This is a hollow claim, which he cannot back with practice. How can anyone claim such a facility would be safely and securely managed for thousands or possibly hundreds of thousands of years that it would take for the radioactive material to breakdown?

The minister cannot make any guarantees. In particular, as the plan is to hand the facility over to the private sector to manage, the risks and cover-ups become far more likely and serious

The minister says the waste will come from Australia’s historical radioactive waste holdings which are currently spread over more than 100 locations across the country, like science facilities, universities and hospitals.”

“The facility will be capable of permanently disposing of low-level waste and temporarily storing intermediate level waste for decades (while a separate intermediate level waste disposal facility is developed).”

We are supposed to believe him when he says, “We will work with traditional owners to protect culture and heritage, and to maximise economic opportunities and outcomes for local Aboriginal communities near the future facility.” That would be a first for this government! After all the voice of the Indigenous custodians of the land was not listened to in the selection of the land for the facility.

Short On The Truth

Canavan also claimed the process to find a site began five years ago but it actually dates back to the late 1990s when the Howard Coalition government made moves to find a location for an international dump.

This would house intensely radioactive spent nuclear fuel, high-level radioactive waste, intermediate-level radioactive waste, and “unwanted” nuclear materials from weapons dismantling.

The dump would be sited in South Australia or Western Australia. A poll of South Australians at the time revealed that ninety-three per cent were opposed to the idea of even a low-level nuclear waste site.

In 2002, the Howard government actually allocated $9.9 million in the budget to build a shallow burial facility where nuclear waste would be stored for the next 300 years. It would be on defence land near Woomera.

It sounded like a case of terra nullius all over again. Indigenous Australians experienced more than enough showers of nuclear dust when near-by Maralinga and Emu Fields were used to test British nuclear weapons. Similar assurances given then were never honoured.

In 2006, Labor’s Martin Ferguson, supported the concept of an aptly named “cradle to grave” proposal under which nuclear waste is returned to the country that mined and exported it. It should come as no surprise that Ferguson now heads the resource sector’s lobby group, the Minerals Council.

In 2016, it was the run of the Adnyamathanha people to take up the struggle against the siting of nuclear waste dump on their land near South Australia’s Flinders Ranges. Then Resources Minister Josh Frydenberg, had picked a cattle station near Barndioota, just north of Port Augusta. The land just happened to be co-owned by former Liberal Senator Grant Chapman.

Adnyamathanha Tribal Lands Association CEO Vince Coulthard said he was “totally disgusted” by the decision; “This is our land, we have been here forever, and we will always be here, and we are totally opposed to this dump.” Once again, no respect was shown to the tradition custodians of the land.

A royal commission launched by SA Labor Premier Jay Weatherill came up with a proposal that could see Australia take in thirteen per cent of the world’s nuclear waste while offering a fuel leasing mechanism. Under this mechanism, Australia would “lease” the yellow cake to other countries who would return it in the form of spent fuel for Australia to manage.

Royal Commissioner Kevin Scarce recommended that South Australia import and store international high-level nuclear waste.

In fact, there are calls for countries that mine and sell uranium products to take back the waste. The costings of the royal commission and other proponents of similar systems fail to take into account the long-term costs and risks.

“Aboriginal people did not give prior or informed consent to the British nuclear weapons tests that took place at Maralinga; they were not warned that the black rain was laced with plutonium and radioactive fission products, or that the brilliant white flash would blind.”

As nuclear weapon countries such the US, Israel, Russia, India, and Pakistan continue to build their nuclear arsenals the question of the disposal of nuclear waste becomes more and more pressing.

Uranium mining and radioactive waste pollute air, soil, and water. Radiation can damage the genetic and reproductive systems of plants, animals and people. All of Australia’s operating uranium mines have a history of leaks, spills and accidents – and none have been properly rehabilitated.

If the “low level” storage facility goes ahead in Kimba, it would only be a matter of time before it became a facility storing medium and high level waste creating untold risks for human life, Indigenous culture and heritage, flora and fauna, and agriculture. It must be stopped.

“Ecomodernists” – Ben Heard, Oscar Archer, Barry Brook, Geoff Russell, – Australia’s pro-nuclear fake environmentalists

even in Heard’s scenario, only a tiny fraction of the imported spent fuel would be converted to fuel for imaginary Generation IV reactors (in one of his configurations, 60,000 tonnes would be imported but only 4,000 tonnes converted to fuel). Most of it would be stored indefinitely, or dumped on the land of unwilling Aboriginal communities.

Russell’s description of Aboriginal spiritual beliefs as “mumbo-jumbo” is beyond offensive.

Silence from the ecomodernists about the National Radioactive Waste Management Act (NRWMA), which dispossesses and disempowers Traditional Owners in every way imaginable:

Now, Traditional Owners have to fight industry, government, and the ecomodernists as well.

 

Aboriginal First Nations and Australia’s ‘pro-nuclear environmentalists’ Jim Green – Nuclear Monitor | 10th July 2018   Australia’s Aboriginal people have long been mistreated by governments and industry in the pursuit of nuclear projects. The attitudes of ‘pro-nuclear environmentalists’ or ‘ecomodernists’ towards Aboriginal people is as disrespectful as those of governments and industry, argues JIM GREEN. The plan to turn South Australia (SA) into the world’s nuclear waste dump has lost momentum since 2016 though it continues to be promoted by some politicians, the Business SA lobby group, and an assortment of individuals and lobbyists including self-styled ‘pro-nuclear environmentalists’ or ‘ecomodernists‘. In its 2016 report, the SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission established by the state government promoted a plan to import 138,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste (about one-third of the world’s total) and 390,000 cubic metres of intermediate-level waste. The state Labor government then spent millions on a state-wide promotional campaign under the guide of consultation. …….. The Royal Commission Royal Commissioner Kevin Scarce ‒ a retired Navy officer ‒ didn’t appoint a single Aboriginal person to the staff of the Royal Commission or to his Expert Advisory Committee. Aboriginal people repeatedly expressed frustration with the Royal Commission process…… No analysis but favourable conclusions Despite its acknowledgement that it had not systematically analysed the matter, the Royal Commission nevertheless arrived at unequivocal, favourable conclusions, asserting that there “are frameworks for securing long-term agreements with rights holders in South Australia, including Aboriginal communities” and these “provide a sophisticated foundation for securing agreements with rights holders and host communities regarding the siting and establishment of facilities for the management of used fuel.” Such statements were conspicuously absent in submissions from Aboriginal people and organisations. There is in fact an abundance of evidence that land rights and heritage protection frameworks in SA are anything but “sophisticated.”……. Enter the ecomodernists Ben Heard from the ‘Bright New World’ pro-nuclear lobby group said the Royal Commission’s findings were “robust”. Seriously? Failing to conduct an analysis and ignoring an abundance of contradictory evidence but nevertheless concluding that a “sophisticated foundation” exists for securing agreements with Aboriginal rights-holders … that’s “robust”? Likewise, academic Barry Brook, a member of the Commission’s Expert Advisory Committee, said he was “impressed with the systematic and ruthlessly evidence-based approach the [Royal Commission] team took to evaluating all issues.” In a November 2016 article about the nuclear waste import plan, Ben Heard and Oscar Archer wrote: “We also note and respect the clear message from nearly all traditional owner groups in South Australia that there is no consent to proceed on their lands. We have been active from the beginning to shine a light on pathways that make no such imposition on remote lands.” In Heard’s imagination, the imported spent nuclear fuel would not be dumped on the land of unwilling Aboriginal communities, it would be processed for use as fuel in non-existent Generation IV ‘integral fast reactors‘. Even the stridently pro-nuclear Royal Commission gave short shrift to Heard’s proposal, stating in its final report: “[A]dvanced fast reactors and other innovative reactor designs are unlikely to be feasible or viable in the foreseeable future. The development of such a first-of-a-kind project in South Australia would have high commercial and technical risk.” Heard claims his imaginary Generation IV reactor scenario “circumvents the substantial challenge of social consent for deep geological repositories, facilities that are likely to be best located, on a technical basis, on lands of importance to Aboriginal Australians”. But even in Heard’s scenario, only a tiny fraction of the imported spent fuel would be converted to fuel for imaginary Generation IV reactors (in one of his configurations, 60,000 tonnes would be imported but only 4,000 tonnes converted to fuel). Most of it would be stored indefinitely, or dumped on the land of unwilling Aboriginal communities. Honoured in the breach Heard says he “respects” the opposition of Traditional Owners to the waste import plan, but that respect appears to be honoured in the breach. Despite his acknowledgement that there was “no consent” to proceed from “nearly all traditional owner groups in South Australia”, Heard nevertheless wrote an ‘open letter‘ promoting the waste import plan which was endorsed by ‘prominent’ South Australians, i.e. rich, non-Aboriginal people. One of the reasons to pursue the waste import plan cited in Heard’s open letter is that it would provide an “opportunity to engage meaningfully and partner with Aboriginal communities in project planning and delivery”. There is no acknowledgement of the opposition of Aboriginal people to the waste import plan ‒ evidently Heard believes that their opposition should be ignored and overridden but Aboriginal people might be given a say in project planning and delivery. A second version of Heard’s open letter did not include the above wording but it cited the “successful community consultation program” with Aboriginal communities. However the report arising from the SA government’s community consultation program (successful or otherwise) stated: “There was a significant lack of support for the government to continue pursuing any form of nuclear storage and disposal facilities. Some Aboriginal people indicated that they are interested in learning more and continuing the conversation, but these were few in number.” Beyond offensive Geoff Russell, another self-styled pro-nuclear environmentalist, wrote in a November 2016 article in New Matilda: “Have Aboriginals given any reasons for opposing a waste repository that are other than religious? If so, then they belong with other objections. If not, then they deserve the same treatment as any other religious objections. Listen politely and move on. “Calling them spiritual rather than religious makes no difference. To give such objections standing in the debate over a repository is a fundamental violation of the separation of church and state, or as I prefer to put it, the separation of mumbo-jumbo and evidence based reasoning. “Aboriginals have native title over various parts of Australia and their right to determine what happens on that land is and should be quite different from rights with regard to other land. This isn’t about their rights on that land. “Suppose somebody wants to build a large intensive piggery. Should we consult Aboriginals in some other part of the country? Should those in the Kimberley perhaps be consulted? No. “They may object to it in the same way I would, but they have no special rights in the matter. They have no right to spiritual veto.” Where to begin? Russell’s description of Aboriginal spiritual beliefs as “mumbo-jumbo” is beyond offensive. His claim that Traditional Owners are speaking for other people’s country is a fabrication. Federal native title legislation provides limited rights and protections for some Traditional Owners ‒ and no rights and protections for many others (when the federal Coalition government was trying to impose a national nuclear waste dump on Aboriginal land in SA in 2003, it abolished all native title rights and interests over the site). National nuclear waste dump The attitudes of the ecomodernists also extend to the debate over the siting of a proposed national nuclear waste dump. Silence from the ecomodernists when the federal government was passing laws allowing the imposition of a national nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory without consent from Traditional Owners. Echoing comments from the Liberal Party, Brook and Heard said the site in the Northern Territory was in the “middle of nowhere”. From their perspective, perhaps, but for Muckaty Traditional Owners the site is in the middle of their homelands. Heard claims that one of the current proposed dump sites, in SA’s Flinders Ranges, is “excellent” in many respects and it “was volunteered by the landowner”. In fact, it was volunteered by absentee landlord and former Liberal Party politician Grant Chapman, who didn’t bother to consult Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners living on the neighbouring Indigenous Protected Area. The site is opposed by most Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners and by their representative body, the Adnyamathanha Traditional Lands Association (ATLA). Indigenous Protected Area Heard claims there are “no known cultural heritage issues” affecting the Flinders Ranges site. Try telling that to the Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners who live on Yappala Station, in the Indigenous Protected Area adjacent to the proposed dump site. The area has many archaeological and culturally-significant sites that Traditional Owners have registered with the SA government over the past decade. So where did Heard get this idea that there are “no known cultural heritage issues on the site”? Not from visiting the site, or speaking to Traditional Owners. He’s just repeating the federal government’s propaganda. Silence from the ecomodernists about the National Radioactive Waste Management Act (NRWMA), which dispossesses and disempowers Traditional Owners in every way imaginable: The nomination of a site for a radioactive waste dump is valid even if Aboriginal owners were not consulted and did not give consent. The NRWMA has sections which nullify State or Territory laws that protect archaeological or heritage values, including those which relate to Indigenous traditions. The NRWMA curtails the application of Commonwealth laws including the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 and the Native Title Act 1993 in the important site-selection stage. The Native Title Act 1993 is expressly overridden in relation to land acquisition for a radioactive waste dump. Uranium mining Silence from the ecomodernists about the Olympic Dam mine’s exemptions from provisions of the SA Aboriginal Heritage Act. Silence from the ecomodernists about sub-section 40(6) of the Commonwealth’s Aboriginal Land Rights Act, which exempts the Ranger uranium mine in the Northern Territory from the Act and thus removed the right of veto that Mirarr Traditional Owners would otherwise have enjoyed. Silence from the ecomodernists about the divide-and-rule tactics used by General Atomics’ subsidiary Heathgate Resources against Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners in relation to the Beverley and Four Mile uranium mines in SA. Adnyamathanha Traditional Owner Dr Jillian Marsh, who in 2010 completed a PhD thesis on the strongly contested approval of the Beverley mine, puts the nuclear debates in a broader context: “The First Nations people of Australia have been bullied and pushed around, forcibly removed from their families and their country, denied access and the right to care for their own land for over 200 years. Our health and wellbeing compares with third world countries, our people crowd the jails. “Nobody wants toxic waste in their back yard, this is true the world over. We stand in solidarity with people across this country and across the globe who want sustainable futures for communities, we will not be moved.” Now, Traditional Owners have to fight industry, government, and the ecomodernists as well. Silence from the ecomodernists about the divide-and-rule tactics used by General Atomics’ subsidiary Heathgate Resources against Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners in relation to the Beverley and Four Mile uranium mines in SA. Adnyamathanha Traditional Owner Dr Jillian Marsh, who in 2010 completed a PhD thesis on the strongly contested approval of the Beverley mine, puts the nuclear debates in a broader context: “The First Nations people of Australia have been bullied and pushed around, forcibly removed from their families and their country, denied access and the right to care for their own land for over 200 years. Our health and wellbeing compares with third world countries, our people crowd the jails. “Nobody wants toxic waste in their back yard, this is true the world over. We stand in solidarity with people across this country and across the globe who want sustainable futures for communities, we will not be moved.” Now, Traditional Owners have to fight industry, government, and the ecomodernists as well.

315 nuclear bombs and ongoing suffering: the shameful history of nuclear testing in Australia and the Pacific

315 nuclear bombs and ongoing suffering: the shameful history of nuclear testing in Australia and the Pacific, https://theconversation.com/315-nuclear-bombs-and-ongoing-suffering-the-shameful-history-of-nuclear-testing-in-australia-and-the-pacific-148909, Tilman Ruff, Associate Professor, Education and Learning Unit, Nossal Institute for Global Health, School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Dimity Hawkins, PhD Candidate, Swinburne University of Technology November 3, 2020     The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons received its 50th ratification on October 24, and will therefore come into force in January 2021. A historic development, this new international law will ban the possession, development, testing, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons.Unfortunately the nuclear powers — the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea — haven’t signed on to the treaty. As such, they are not immediately obliged to help victims and remediate contaminated environments, but others party to the treaty do have these obligations. The shifting norms around this will hopefully put ongoing pressure on nuclear testing countries to open records and to cooperate with accountability measures.For the people of the Pacific region, particularly those who bore the brunt of nuclear weapons testing during the 20th century, it will bring a new opportunity for their voices to be heard on the long-term costs of nuclear violence. The treaty is the first to enshrine enduring commitments to addressing their needs. From 1946, around 315 nuclear tests were carried out in the Pacific by the US, Britain and France. These nations’ largest ever nuclear tests took place on colonised lands and oceans, from Australia to the Marshall Islands, Kiribati to French Polynesia.   The impacts of these tests are still being felt today. All nuclear tests cause harm Studies of nuclear test workers and exposed nearby communities around the world consistently show adverse health effects, especially increased risks of cancer. The total number of global cancer deaths as a result of atmospheric nuclear test explosions has been estimated at between 2 million and 2.4 million, even though these studies used radiation risk estimates that are now dated and likely underestimated the risk. The number of additional non-fatal cancer cases caused by test explosions is similar. As confirmed in a large recent study of nuclear industry workers in France, the UK and US, the numbers of radiation-related deaths due to other diseases, such as heart attacks and strokes, is also likely to be similar. Britain conducted 12 nuclear test explosions in Australia between 1952 and 1957, and hundreds of minor trials of radioactive and toxic materials for bomb development up to 1963. These caused untold health problems for local Aboriginal people who were at the highest risk of radiation. Many of them were not properly evacuated, and some were not informed at all. We may never know the full impact of these explosions because in many cases, as the Royal Commission report on British Nuclear Tests in Australia found in 1985: “the resources allocated for Aboriginal welfare and safety were ludicrous, amounting to nothing more than a token gesture”. But we can listen to the survivors. The late Yami Lester directly experienced the impacts of nuclear weapons. A Yankunytjatjara elder from South Australia, Yami was a child when the British tested at Emu Field in October 1953. He recalled the “Black Mist” after the bomb blast: It wasn’t long after that a black smoke came through. A strange black smoke, it was shiny and oily. A few hours later we all got crook, every one of us. We were all vomiting; we had diarrhoea, skin rashes and sore eyes. I had really sore eyes. They were so sore I couldn’t open them for two or three weeks. Some of the older people, they died. They were too weak to survive all the sickness. The closest clinic was 400 miles away. His daughter, Karina Lester, is an ambassador for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons in Australia, and continues to be driven by her family’s experience. She writes: For decades now my family have campaigned and spoken up against the harms of nuclear weapons because of their firsthand experience of the British nuclear tests […] Many Aboriginal people suffered from the British nuclear tests that took place in the 1950s and 1960s and many are still suffering from the impacts today. More than 16,000 Australian workers were also exposed. A key government-funded study belatedly followed these veterans over an 18-year period from 1982. Despite the difficulties of conducting a study decades later with incomplete data, it found they had 23% higher rates of cancer and 18% more deaths from cancers than the general population. An additional health impact in Pacific island countries is the toxic disease “ciguatera”, caused by certain microscopic plankton at the base of the marine food chain, which thrive on damaged coral. Their toxins concentrate up the food chain, especially in fish, and cause illness and occasional deaths in people who eat them. In the Marshall Islands, Kiritimati and French Polynesia, outbreaks of the disease among locals have been associated with coral damage caused by nuclear test explosions and the extensive military and shipping infrastructure supporting them. Pacific survivors of nuclear testing haven’t been focused solely on addressing their own considerable needs for justice and care; they’ve been powerful advocates that no one should suffer as they have ever again, and have worked tirelessly for the eradication of nuclear weapons. It’s no surprise independent Pacific island nations are strong supporters of the new treaty, accounting for ten of the first 50 ratifications. Negligence and little accountability Some nations that have undertaken nuclear tests have provided some care and compensation for their nuclear test workers; only the US has made some provisions for people exposed, though only for mainland US residents downwind of the Nevada Test Site. No testing nation has extended any such arrangement beyond its own shores to the colonised and minority peoples it put in harm’s way. Nor has any testing nation made fully publicly available its records of the history, conduct and effects of its nuclear tests on exposed populations and the environment. These nations have also been negligent by quickly abandoning former test sites. There has been inadequate clean-up and little or none of the long-term environmental monitoring needed to detect radioactive leakage from underground test sites into groundwater, soil and air. One example among many is the Runit concrete dome in the Marshall Islands, which holds nuclear waste from US testing in the 1940s and 50s. It’s increasingly inundated by rising sea levels, and is leaking radioactive material. The treaty provides a light in a dark time. It contains the only internationally agreed framework for all nations to verifiably eliminate nuclear weapons. It’s our fervent hope the treaty will mark the increasingly urgent beginning of the end of nuclear weapons. It is our determined expectation that our country will step up. Australia has not yet ratified the treaty, but the bitter legacy of nuclear testing across our country and region should spur us to join this new global effort.

‘Medical Scientific’ committee, stacked with nuclear executives, promotes nuclear power in space

“The nuclear industry views space as a new—and wide-open—market for their toxic product that has run its dirty course on Mother Earth.”

“Now it appears that the nuclear industry has also infiltrated the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that has been studying missions to Mars. ”

It’s going to take enormous grassroots action—and efforts by those in public office who understand the error of the space direction being taken—to stop it.

Nuclear Rockets to Mars?, BY KARL GROSSMAN– CounterPunch, 16 Feb 21,

A report advocating rocket propulsion by nuclear power for U.S. missions to Mars, written by a committee packed with individuals deeply involved in nuclear power, was issued last week by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

The 104-page report also lays out “synergies” in space nuclear activities between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the U.S. military, something not advanced explicitly since the founding of NASA as a civilian agency supposedly in 1958.

The report states: “Space nuclear propulsion and power systems have the potential to provide the United States with military advantages…NASA could benefit programmatically by working with a DoD [Department of Defense] program having national security objectives.”’

The report was produced “by contract” with NASA, it states.

The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NAS) describes itself as having been “created to advise the nation” with “independent, objective advice to inform policy.”

The 11 members of the committee that put together the report for the National Academy includes: Jonathan W. Cirtain, president of Advanced Technologies, “a subsidiary of BWX Technologies which is the sole manufacturer of nuclear reactors for the U.S. Navy,” the report states; Roger M. Myers, owner of R. Myers Consulting and who previously at Aerojet Rocketdyne “oversaw programs and strategic planning for next-generation in-space missions [that] included nuclear thermal propulsion and nuclear electric power systems; Shannon M. Bragg-Sitton, the “lead for integrated energy systems in the Nuclear Science and Technology Directorate at the Idaho National Laboratory:” Tabitha Dodson, who at the U.S. government’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency is chief engineer of a program “that is developing a nuclear thermal propulsion system;” Joseph A. Sholtis, Jr., “owner and principal of Sholtis Engineering & Safety Consulting, providing expert nuclear, aerospace, and systems engineering services to government, national laboratories, industry, and academia since 1993.” And so on.

The NAS report is titled: “Space Nuclear Propulsion for Human Mars Exploration.” It is not classified and is available here.

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, from its offices in Maine in the U.S., declared: “The nuclear industry views space as a new—and wide-open—market for their toxic product that has run its dirty course on Mother Earth.”

“During our campaigns in 1989, 1990, and 1997 to stop NASA’s Galileo, Ulysses and Cassini plutonium-fueled space probe launches, we learned that the nuclear industry positioned its agents inside NASA committees that made the decisions on what kinds of power sources would be placed on those deep space missions,” said Gagnon. “Now it appears that the nuclear industry has also infiltrated the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that has been studying missions to Mars.  The recommendation, not any surprise, is that nuclear reactors are the best way to power a Mars mission.”

“It’s not the best for us Earthlings because the Department of Energy has a bad track record of human and environmental contamination as they fabricate nuclear devices. An accident at launch could have catastrophic consequences.”

Stated Gagnon: “We fought the DoE and NASA on those previous nuclear launches and are entering the battle again. The nuclear industry has its sights set on nuclear-powered mining colonies on an assortment of planetary bodies—all necessitating legions of nuclear devices being produced at DoE and then launched on rockets that blow up from time to time.”

“We urge the public to help us pressure NASA and DoE to say no to nukes in space. We’ve got to protect life here on this planet. We are in the middle of a pandemic and people have lost jobs, homes, health care and even food on their table.”

“Trips to Mars can wait,” said Gagnon.

There have been accidents in the history of the U.S.—and also the former Soviet Union and now Russia—using nuclear power in space……

(Article goes on to explain how solar power can be, and is being used for space travel and research)

The NAS committee, however, was mainly interested in a choice between a “nuclear thermal propulsion” (NTP) or “nuclear electric propulsion” (NEP) for rocket propulsion…….

“Advanced nuclear propulsion systems (along or in combination with chemical propulsion systems) have the potential to substantially reduce trip time” to Mars “compared to fully non-nuclear approaches,” says the report.

An issue: radioactivity from either of the systems affecting human beings on the rockets with nuclear reactors propelling them. Back after World War II with the Cold War beginning, the U.S. began working on bombers propelled by onboard nuclear reactors—even built one. The idea was that such bombers could stay aloft for days ready to drop nuclear weapons on the Soviet Union. No crews would need to be scrambled and bombers then sent aloft.

But, as The Atlantic magazine noted in a 2019 article titled, “Why There Are No Nuclear Airplanes”:

“The problem of shielding pilots from the reactor’s radiation proved even more difficult. What good would a plane be that killed its own pilots? To protect the crew from radioactivity, the reactor needed thick and heavy layers of shielding. But to take off, the plane needed to be as light as possible. Adequate shielding seemed incompatible with flight. Still, engineers theorized that the weight saved from needing no fuel might be enough to offset the reactor and its shielding. The United States spent 16 years tinkering with the idea, to no avail”

The Eisenhower administration concluded that the program was unnecessary, dangerous, and too expensive. On March 28, 1961, the newly inaugurated President John F. Kennedy canceled the program. Proposals for nuclear-powered airplanes have popped up since then, but the fear of radiation and the lack of funding have kept all such ideas down.”……

The “synergies” in space nuclear activities between NASA and the U.S. military advanced in the NAS report mark a change in public acknowledgement. The agency was supposed to have a distinctly civilian orientation, encouraging peaceful applications in space science.

However, throughout the decades there have been numerous reports on its close relationship with the U.S. military—notably during the period of NASA Space Shuttle flights. As a 2018 piece in Smithsonian Magazine noted, “During the heyday of the space shuttle, NASA would routinely ferry classified payloads into orbit for the Department of Deense among other projects the agencies have collaborated on.”

With the formation of a U.S. Space Force by the Trump administration in 2019, the NASA-Pentagon link would appear to be coming out of the shadows, as indicated by the NAS report. The Biden administration is not intending to eliminate the Space Force, despite the landmark Outer Space Treaty of 1967 put together by the U.S., the then Soviet Union and the U.K, setting aside space for peaceful purposes. It is giving the new sixth branch of U.S. armed forces “full support,” according to his spokesperson Jen Psaki.

The NAS report says, “Areas of common interest include (1) fundamental questions about the development and testing of materials (such as reactor fuels and moderators) that can survive NTP conditions and (2) advancing modeling and simulation capabilities that are relevant to NTP.” And, “Additionally, a NASA NTP system could potentially use a scaled-up version of a DoD reactor, depending on the design.”

It declares: “Threats to U.S. space assets are increasing. They include anti-satellite weapons and counter-space activities. Crossing vast distances of space rapidly with a reasonably sized vehicle in response to these threats requires a propulsion system with high Isp [Specific Impulse] and thrust. This could be especially important in a high-tempo military conflict.”

Moreover, on December 19, just before he was to leave office, Trump signed Space Policy Directive-6, titled “National Strategy for Space Nuclear Propulsion.” Its provisions include: “DoD [Department of Defense] and NASA, in cooperation with DOE [Department of Energy}, and with other agencies and private-sector partners, as appropriate, should evaluate technology options and associated key technical challenges for an NTP [Nuclear Thermal Propulsion] system, including reactor designs, power conversion, and thermal management. DoD and NASA should work with their partners to evaluate and use opportunities for commonality with other SNPP [Space Nuclear Power and Propulsion] needs, terrestrial power needs, and reactor demonstration projects planned by agencies and the private sector.”

It continues: “DoD, in coordination with DOE and other agencies, and with private sector partners, as appropriate, should develop reactor and propulsion system technologies that will resolve the key technical challenges in areas such as reactor design and production, propulsion system and spacecraft design, and SNPP system integration.”

It’s going to take enormous grassroots action—and efforts by those in public office who understand the error of the space direction being taken—to stop it.

Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, and is the author of the book, The Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet, and the Beyond Nuclear handbook, The U.S. Space Force and the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear war in space. Grossman is an associate of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion. more https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/02/16/nuclear-rockets-to-mars/

Solar sails for space voyages

Nuclear Rockets to Mars?, BY KARL GROSSMAN– CounterPunch, 16 Feb 21,”………. As for rocket propulsion in the vacuum of space, it doesn’t take much conventional chemical propulsion to move a spacecraft—and fast.

And there was a comprehensive story in New Scientist magazine this past October on “The new age of sail,” as it was headlined. The subhead: “We are on the cusp of a new type of space travel that can take us to places no rocket could ever visit.”

The article began by relating 17^th Century astronomer Johanne Kepler observing comets and seeing “that their tails always pointed away from the sun, no matter which direction they were traveling. To Kepler, it meant only one thing: the comet tails were being blown from the sun.”

Indeed, “the sun produces a wind in space” and “it can be harnessed,” said the piece. “First, there are particles of light streaming from the sun constantly, each carrying a tiny bit of momentum. Second, there is a flow of charged particles, mostly protons and electrons, also moving outwards from the sun. We call the charged particles the solar wind, but both streams are blowing a gale”—that’s in the vacuum of space.

Japan launched its Ikaros spacecraft in 2010—sailing in space using the energy from the sun. The LightSail 2 mission of The Planetary Society was launched in 2019—and it’s still up in space, flying with the sun’s energy.

New systems using solar power are being developed – past the current use of thin-film such as Mylar for solar sails.

The New Scientist article spoke of scientists “who want to use these new techniques to set a course for worlds currently far beyond our reach—namely the planets orbiting our nearest star, Alpha Centauri.”……. more https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/02/16/nuclear-rockets-to-mars/

Accidents in both USA’s and Russia’s use of nuclear power in space

Nuclear Rockets to Mars?, BY KARL GROSSMAN– CounterPunch, 16 Feb 21”…………There have been accidents in the history of the U.S.—and also the former Soviet Union and now Russia—using nuclear power in space.

And the NAS report, deep into it, does acknowledge how accidents can happen with its new scheme of using nuclear power on rockets for missions to Mars.

It says: “Safety assurance for nuclear systems is essential to protect operating personnel as well as the general public and Earth’s environment.” Thus under the report’s plan, the rockets with the nuclear reactors onboard would be launched “with fresh [uranium] fuel before they have operated at power to ensure that the amount of radioactivity on board remains as low as practicable.” The plans include “restricting reactor startup and operations in space until spacecraft are in nuclear safe orbits or trajectories that ensure safety of Earth’s population and environment” But, “Additional policies and practices need to be established to prevent unintended system reentry during return to Earth after reactors have been operated for extended periods of time.”

The worst U.S. accident involving the use of nuclear power in space came in 1964 when the U.S. satellite Transit 5BN-3, powered by a SNAP-9A plutonium-fueled radioisotope thermoelectric generator, failed to achieve orbit and fell from the sky, disintegrating as it burned up in the atmosphere, globally spreading plutonium—considering the deadliest of all radioactive substances. That accident was long linked to a spike in global lung cancer rates where the plutonium was spread, by Dr. John Gofman, an M.D. and Ph. D., a professor of medical physics at the University of California at Berkeley. He also had been involved in developing some of the first methods for isolating plutonium for the Manhattan Project.

NASA, after the SNAP-9A (SNAP for Systems Nuclear Auxiliary Power) accident became a pioneer in developing solar photovoltaic power. All U.S. satellites now are energized by solar power, as is the International Space Station.

The worst accident involving nuclear power in space in the Soviet/Russian space program occurred in 1978 when the Cosmos 954 satellite with a nuclear reactor aboard fell from orbit and spread radioactive debris over a 373-mile swath from Great Slave Lake to Baker Lake in Canada. There were 110 pounds of highly-enriched (nearly 90 percent) of uranium fuel on Cosmos 954.

Highly-enriched uranium—90 percent is atomic bomb-grade—would be used in one reactor design proposed in the NAS report. And thus there is a passage about it under “Proliferation and security.” It states that “HEU [highly enriched uranium] fuel, by virtue of the ease with which it could be diverted to the production of nuclear weapons, is a higher value target than HALEU [high assay low enriched uranium], especially during launch and reentry accidents away from the launch site. As a result, HEU is viewed by nonproliferation experts as requiring more security considerations. In addition, if the United States uses HEU for space reactors, it could become more difficult to convince other countries to reduce their use of HEU in civilian applications.”

As for rocket propulsion in the vacuum of space, it doesn’t take much conventional chemical propulsion to move a spacecraft—and fast……..more https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/02/16/nuclear-rockets-to-mars/

Continued use of nuclear energy brings pollution, cancers and birth defects

mitigating climate change, is both unnecessary and downright harmful.

A Grim Reality.   https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2021/02/15/a-grim-reality/, Living longterm in radioactively contaminated areas damages our health, By Cindy Folkers, 15 Feb 21,

A growing body of evidence supports a grim reality: that living in radioactively contaminated areas over multiple years results in harmful health impacts, particularly during pregnancy.

This is borne out in a recent study by Anton V. Korsakov, Emilia V. Geger, Dmitry G. Lagerev, Leonid I. Pugach and Timothy A. Mousseau, that shows a higher frequency of birth defects amongst people living in Chernobyl-contaminated areas (as opposed to those living in areas considered uncontaminated) in the Bryansk region of Russia.

Because the industry and governments are pushing to spend more money on new nuclear reactors — or to keep the old ones running longer — they have been forced to come up with a deadly workaround to surmount the strongest argument against nuclear power: its potential for catastrophic accidents.

Even the nuclear industry and the governments willing to do its bidding understand that you cannot really clean up after a nuclear catastrophe. For example, in Japan, where the March 2011 nuclear disaster has left lands radioactively contaminated potentially indefinitely, there is an attempt to mandate that people return to live in these areas by claiming there are no “discernible” health impacts from doing so.

Bodies that are supposed to protect health and regulate the nuclear industry, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the International Commission on Radiological Protection and Nuclear Regulatory Commission are raising recommended public exposure limits, considering halting evacuations from radiation releases, and encouraging people to live on, and eat from, contaminated land. 

The public justification for continued nuclear energy use is, ostensibly, to address the  climate crisis. The reality is more likely a desperate last-ditch effort by the nuclear industry to remain relevant, while in some countries the nuclear energy agenda remains inextricably linked to nuclear weapon programs.

Forcing people to live on and consume produce grown from radioactively contaminated land is contrary to scientific evidence indicating that these practices harm humans and all animals, especially over the long-term. By the time these health impacts are unearthed, decades later, the false narratives of “harmless low radiation doses” and “no discernible impact” have solidified, covering up the painful reality that should be a touchstone informing our debate over nuclear power.

The recent joint study, whose implementation, says Korsakov, would not have happened without the support and efforts of co-author Mousseau, found that birth defects like polydactyly (having more than five fingers or toes), and multiple congenital malformations (including those that are appearing for the first time — called de novo), were “significantly higher… in newborns in regions with elevated radioactive, chemical and combined contamination.”

Uniquely, Korsakov also examines areas contaminated by both Chernobyl radioactivity and industrial chemicals. Multiple congenital malformations (MCM) were much higher in areas of combined contamination, indicating an additive and potentially synergistic effect between pollutants for these birth defects.

Congenital malformations (CM) are thought to originate in the first trimester of pregnancy and represent a main cause of global disease burden. They are considered “indicators of adverse factors in the environment,” including radioactive pollution, and can afflict numerous organs (heart, brain, lungs, bones, intestines) with physical abnormalities and metabolic disorders. Counted among these are clubfoot, hernias, heart and neural tube defects, cleft palate and lip, and Down syndrome.

CMs are the leading cause of infant mortality in many developed nations, accounting for 20% of U.S. infant deaths. For those living past infancy, the effects can be lifelong. While a number of CMs are obvious early in life, some may not be identified until later, even into adulthood. Countries of low- and middle-income are affected disproportionately.

In the Bryansk region of Russia, birth defects were examined over the 18-year period from 2000-2017. For areas contaminated with radiation alone, dose estimations from Chernobyl radiation (released from the 1986 nuclear catastrophe) ranged from 0.6 mSv to 2.1 mSv per year, while in areas contaminated with radiation and chemicals, dose ranges were 1.2 to 2.0 mSv per year.

As the Bryansk study authors point out, “[n]early all types of hereditary defects can be found at doses as low a [sic] 1–10 mSv indicating that current radiation risk models are inadequate for low dose environments.”

In comparison, Japan and the U.S. maintain that there is little risk to resettling or inhabiting areas contaminated by nuclear catastrophe where estimated doses would range from 5-20 mSv/year. Yet harm was found among Bryansk populations exposed to doses far lower than the much higher ones proclaimed “livable” by nuclear proponents.

One explanation for the disconnect between the expected and actual health effects is an underestimate of the impact of ingesting or inhaling manmade radioactive isotopes, particularly beta emitters, a large source of exposure following radiation releases from nuclear power catastrophes.

A number of these isotopes mimic nutrients that our bodies need such as calcium (radiostrontium) and potassium (radiocesium), so our body doesn’t know to avoid them. Of course, nuclear proponents recognize that economic recovery of polluted places will be difficult without being able to grow, sell and consume food that might be contaminated with isotopes that give off this radiation,.

Korsakov et al. point to yet another explanation for the disconnect — the assumption that dose reconstruction models properly fit all realistic exposures. When experts estimate doses they often do so without adequate knowledge of local culture and habits. Therefore, they fail to capture variations in exposure pathways, creating enormous errors in dose reconstruction. As a starting point, radiation science would be better served by directly measuring contamination levels where people actually live, play, breathe and eat.

But it seems dose models also fail to adequately represent the damage done to fetuses and neonates, not least because damage can be random (stochastic) making it difficult to predict. Stochastic health impacts include cancer and other genetic damage, and may be severe even at low doses.  During pregnancy, one hit from radiation could damage or destroy cells meant to form entire organs, making accounting for stochastic impacts during fetal development extremely important — especially as fetal tissue collects some radionuclides in greater amounts than maternal tissue.

Health impacts in the Bryansk region could be a result both of direct radiation exposure during pregnancy and of cumulative impact over a “series of generations (genetic load)” raising the specter of heritability of genetic damage. Past studies have indicated that radiation damage can be heritable — passing from parents to offspring; that living in environments of elevated natural background radiation will increase mutations and disease; that the ability to withstand radiation doses appears to diminish as continually-exposed generations progress; and that doses from catastrophic releases should be accounted for across generations, not just in the generation initially exposed.

These currently sparse, yet growing data, support long-held conclusions that humans do not differ significantly from every other animal and plant — they, too, suffer heritable damage from radiation.

The Korsakov study projects that overall, multiple congenital malformations will increase in the next few years in the contaminated regions. Increases in birth defects are occurring despite access to free in-depth medical exams for pregnant women residing in areas of higher contamination and, if warranted, pregnancy termination. Such access has apparently greatly decreased the number of stilbirths in the region, as did a similar program at the end of the 1990s in Belarus, the country which bore the brunt of radioactive Chernobyl contamination. But even with such programs, overall birth defects have increased in the contaminated areas in Russia.

So not only is it unhealthy to live in radiologically-contaminated areas, attempts at mitigating the effects, particularly those on pregnancy, have limited impact. Encouraging, or worse yet, forcing people to live in contaminated areas and eat contaminated food, is foolishly cruel (particularly to people of reproductive age who may face wrenching decisions about wanted pregnancies) and not in the interest of public health.

Meanwhile, the continued use of nuclear energy that has forced us into this Faustian bargain in the name of mitigating climate change, is both unnecessary and downright harmful.