Japan Disaster

The Paydirt 2011 Uranium Conference was held at the Adelaide Hilton on Monday and Tuesday. Bad timing.

The image of uranium industry executives sipping cocktails at the Hilton as the Fukushima crisis entered its second week could hardly win the public’s hearts and minds.

Likewise, Paladin CEO John Borshoff’s description of the Fukushima crisis as a “sideshow” will do nothing to quell public concern.

Efforts to cool the nuclear reactor cores have met with mixed success; there have been deliberate and uncontrolled radiation releases and several explosions; 200,000 people were evacuated and the exclusion zone was repeatedly widened; a fire led to spent nuclear fuel releasing radiation directly to the environment; radiation monitors detected alarming jumps near the reactors and low levels of radiation have been detected in Tokyo and beyond; and food restrictions are being implemented because of radioactive contamination.

Continue reading "Don’t let the nuclear industry tell you radiation’s safe" »

Some parts of the environmental movement will be quietly high-fiving each other this week, as the nuclear industry’s progress over the past decade looks certain to take a massive step backwards.

They have been quick to proclaim ``I told you so’’ and make the fallacious analogy that the incidents in Japan mean that Australia and indeed all other countries should not consider nuclear as part of the energy mix.

Incidents which, it should be kept in mind, involved an unprecedently large earthquake and decades-old technology.

Continue reading "Nuclear still part of a viable energy mix" »