Nuclear Power

Sunday was the first anniversary of the nuclear meltdowns, explosions and fires at Fukushima in Japan. Australian governments and uranium mining companies need to be held to account for their role in the disaster.

The impacts of the nuclear disaster have been horrendous. Over 100,000 people are still homeless and some will never be able to return. Homeless, jobless, separated from friends and family, the toll on people’s health and mental well-being has been significant − one indication being a sharp increase in suicide rates. One farmer’s suicide note simply read: “I wish there wasn’t a nuclear plant.”

Early indications are that the long-term cancer death toll will be in the range of several hundred up to 1000. The death toll could rise significantly if many people resettle in contaminated areas. Tens of thousands of people are grappling with the dilemma of going home to live in contaminated areas or starting from scratch elsewhere. Direct and indirect economic costs of the disaster will amount to several hundred billions dollars.

Continue reading "Australian uranium fuelled the Fukushima disaster" »

The Australian Conservation Foundation is having an anti-uranium rally on Sunday to mark “one year since the start of the Fukushima nuclear disaster”.

Nearly 20,000 people died during the quake off northern Japan and following tsunami. That was a disaster. True horror. It was much more visual than the 2004 Boxing Day disaster which killed 12 times more people but didn’t have a nuke. It didn’t have the impending doom story-line, only actual suffering. Nobody really wants to see footage of amputations, infections, crushed limbs, grief and loss. It’s just too distressing.

Impending doom is much more fun, especially when there is a villain. Somebody to blame. You get to enjoy sticking the verbal boot in. I’m often tempted to believe in God just so I can blame her for natural disasters.

Continue reading "Fukushima was no disaster, no matter how you spin it" »

You don’t have to oppose uranium mining to oppose exports to nuclear-armed India. All it takes is a strong desire not to have an atomic bomb dropped on your head ... or anyone else’s.

Thus critics of the plan to sell to India include uranium mining advocates Ron Walker, a former Australian diplomat and former Chair of the International Atomic Energy Agency; Paul Barratt, former Secretary of the Defence Department; and Kelvin Thomson, a member of Labor’s Right faction and Chair of Parliament’s treaties committee.

The main concern is that India has not signed, and will not sign, the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Needless to say, that sets an alarming precedent. If the response to the India’s nuclear weapons program is to reward it with sales of uranium and nuclear technology, then others are sure to follow.

Continue reading "Our dangerous hypocrisy on nuclear proliferation" »

The option of using nuclear power to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation has been raised from time to time during the national debate on the carbon tax and climate change.

Although nuclear power it is not currently on the government’s energy agenda, Australia is a major supplier of uranium to the global nuclear industry which produces 14 per cent of the world’s electricity from four hundred and forty reactors in thirty countries. Their combined fifty year experience provides a basis on which to consider the deployment of nuclear power here.

As memories of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident and the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe receded, a global nuclear power renaissance seemed likely as climate change concerns mounted. Then came the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster following a massive earthquake and tsunami.

Continue reading "Australian nuclear power: the facts, the costs, the pitfalls" »

Prime Minister Julia Gillard would do well to consider some bigger issues than the praise of conservative political insiders when it comes to plans to sell uranium to India, a country not bound to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Aptly enough on the same day she announced her position reversal, the Times of India reported on a trial of a nuclear-ready Agni 2 ballistic missile, capable of traveling over 3000 km to reach its target.

We know that the more uranium India can source from foreign exporters, the more its own uranium supplies can be directed toward its rapidly expanded weapons program, fueling already simmering regional tensions in East Asia.

Continue reading "Selling uranium to India will literally blow up in our face" »

The Labor Party is set to backflip on dealing uranium to countries that have not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. At the upcoming ALP conference, Prime Minister Julia Gillard will push to lift the ban on selling to India - and chances are it will go through.

The Punch spoke to Professor Stephen Lincoln from the University of Adelaide, an expert in uranium, nuclear power and climate change, about what it all means.

Continue reading "Punch Q & A: A fraction too much fission over uranium" »

It’s time for a quick quiz.

1. In Italy, people marched and voted against nuclear power recently. Every Australian news service carried the story. But did they mention how many nuclear power stations Italy will need to close as a result of this courageous decision?

2. Following the Fukushima failure the Chinese suspended approvals on new nuclear power stations pending a safety review. Did the Chinese stop work on any of the 26 reactors currently under construction? How much nuclear power are the Chinese planning for in 2050?

3. The recently announced Moree Solar Farm will take 4 years to build and will be, so far, the largest solar photovaic power station on the planet. How many food producing hectares will it displace? How many such “farms” would you have to build to replace a large coal-fired power station like Victoria’s Loy Yang A?

Continue reading "China is leading the way in tackling climate change" »

Did nuclear power kill any Germans prior to the announcement last week of their plans to phase out nuclear power? No.

But Germans are dying now and it’s a safe bet that the cause will not be phased out. It probably won’t even be identified in a generic way, let alone named and shamed and prosecuted. Is it cucumbers? Or cabbage or lettuce or bean sprouts?

“Death toll from E-coli cucumber outbreak reaches 16.” shouted the Sydney Morning Herald over a picture of goats chomping on a mountain of dumped cucumber.

Continue reading "A raw deal for cucumbers" »

As a scientist who studies natural climatic disruptions of the distant past and finds disturbing parallels with the vast changes that we’re setting in motion with today’s fossil fuel emissions, I’ve long favoured a switch to alternative energy sources.

But having been an anti-nuke protester back in my college days, I’ve also been reluctant to support nuclear power thanks to the unresolved problems of meltdowns, waste storage, bomb proliferation, and terrorism. 

Nonetheless, my attitude changed several months ago after a chance conversation with a geologist friend whose son is training to become nuclear engineer.  “He’s working on a new kind of reactor,” my friend explained, “It can’t melt down, it makes only minimal waste, and it can’t be used for making bombs.  Instead of running on uranium, it uses thorium instead, which is a lot safer to work with.” 

Continue reading "Thorium: Is this clean, green energy too good to be true?" »

Anti-nuclear campaigner Helen Caldicott has argued that the nuclear industry is “conducting a whatever-it-takes propaganda campaign” and distorting scientific evidence on radiation’s effects. Here, Geoff Russell responds.

Helen Caldicott proposes a grand coverup by the World Health Organisation and presents as her only evidence a 1959 agreement between WHO and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

A search of the international medical research database PUBMED for “Chernobyl” shows 3767 scientific papers. These are from researchers all over the world. Papers like “Did the Chernobyl atomic plant accident have an influence on the incidence of thyroid carcinoma in the province of Olsztyn?” by Polish scientists. The answer, by the way was “no”.

Continue reading "Chernobyl conspiracies - where are the bodies?" »

A poll by Roy Morgan Research several days into the Fukushima nuclear crisis found that 61 per cent of Australians oppose the development of nuclear power here, nearly double the 34 per cent level of support. Thus the growth in support for nuclear power over the past five years has been totally erased ... and then some.

While there was undoubtedly growing support for nuclear power until Fukushima, the issue has been the subject of a great deal of hype and spin.

In 2009, for example, a flurry of media reports and commentary followed the release of a Nielsen poll which found that support for nuclear power had risen to 49 per cent and had overtaken the level of opposition.

Continue reading "Support for nuclear power has melted away" »

The crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station has been unfolding for about a week. The on-site situation remains extremely serious, with glimmers of hope being shrouded by a shadow of deep uncertainty.

If you’ve not been following the situation on BraveNewClimate, please visit the site, which contains assumed knowledge for understanding the rest of this post.

As predicted, attention over the last couple of days has focused on the critical situation with the ponds used for temporary storage of spent nuclear fuel at the individual reactor units, before it is moved to a centralised facility on site. Although this old fuel has lost much of its original radioactivity, the decline is exponential, which means that thermal energy must continue to be dissipated for months.

Continue reading "Fukushima: Situation critical, information scarce" »

If you’re a science or nuclear energy buff, you’ll have to excuse us for starting pretty much at the bottom of the knowledge tree here. First of all, let’s define a meltdown: basically it’s when the core of a nuclear reactor is unable to cool, because of some kind of system failure like, oh, a 10 metre wall of sea water crashing into a nuclear power plant. Radiation can then be released, and that’s when things get really dangerous. So is it happening in Japan? Latest reports say no, not yet and hopefully not at all.

Click this link for an incredible series of graphics on the internal workings of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, pictured above. This really is some amazing work the New York Times has done at short notice. There’s another really helpful infographic here:

Despite what appears to be an easing - or at least a temporary containment - of the threat of a major radiation leak, let’s dwell briefly on the worst case scenario. Could we be facing another Three Mile Island or Chernobyl? The answer, according to the Science Media Centre of Japan, is almost certainly no. Read a full Q&A at the SMCJ website here. Highly informative, yet accessible, material. Well done them.

Continue reading "A busy person’s guide to Japan’s nuclear threat" »

It didn’t take long for the whackjobs and nutbags to start pushing their spiteful little barrows in the aftermath of the Japan earthquake and tsunami. In fact, it took them all of about two minutes.

The minute The Punch threw up an open thread for people to express sympathy, or share other information related to this unprecedented catastrophe, the snide, narky little comments started sneaking in. And it happened not just here but all over the internet, the twittersphere, and beyond. Sometimes, all this connectedness really is a curse.

Ludicrously, some hailed the event as evidence of climate change. Others thought they’d restart the age old religious debate on God, and the Problem of Evil. Others jumped headlong into the nuclear debate, like that couldn’t wait a day or two. One reader cheekily but tastelessly suggested the event was fair payback for Japanese whaling. Most astonishingly of all, some thought they’d harness the terrible moment to have their daily dig at Julia Gillard. Like this website hadn’t had 10 stories in the last week where people could vent on the PM.

Continue reading "Whackjob barrow-pushers make light of Japan’s tragedy" »

Australian women hate nuclear power. Men quite like it, but women would rather go back to candles.

This is the startling finding of Auspoll’s latest research, a poll of 1,500 Australians’ attitudes to the sticky problem of how we should generate the energy to run our homes, industries and, well, everything.

Not so long ago we never thought much about energy - flick a switch and there it is. We hardly knew nor cared how it was generated, how it got to our kitchens or what fuel ran the generator. It was enough that the lights came on.

Continue reading "Men vs. women - it’s a (nuclear) power thing" »

Ban the bomb, no new mines, the three mines policy, additional mines, street marches, fear of nuclear terrorism and the existence of rogue states with nuclear power or weaponry have all been elements in the debate about uranium mining, processing or nuclear power for a long time.

Perhaps its time to get past emotion fear and inconsistency and concentrate on rational debate in a coherent manner.

We are a blessed continent with more than adequate supplies of coal, gas and oil. We are major exporters to the rest of the world in each of these commodities. As I write new sources of energy like coal seam gas, costing tens of billions of dollars have become mainstream in Australia.

Continue reading "Clinging to old nuclear fears stifles the power debate" »

And so now we’re selling uranium to the Russians.  Juggling the morning madness of kids, breakfast, dogs and work, the news item relayed via my tinny trannie was easy to miss and at first didn’t register.  And then the irony of it all hit me like a shovel between the eyes.

It is very, very, hard to convey to Gen Y what it was like coming of age in the late ‘seventies and early ‘eighties - before we were called Gen X, before mobile phones and before the internet.

It’s hard to make them understand what it was like living everyday thinking that it could be your last, thinking you were seconds away from being annihilated in atomic cataclysm launched by those Godless Soviets.

Continue reading "Longing for a more innocent time of nuclear apocalypse" »

We have all met “truthers”. You know, the kind of conspiracy theorist who believes that every evil event was concocted at a secret military facility in the basement at Fort Dix, Georgia, or some such place.

Last week Iran’s President Ahmedinejad’s appeared before the UN General assembly. He told the assembled leaders that most of the world believed that the US government was responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Centre in 2001.

So now we have the phenomenon of a national leader as a “truther”. Ahmedinijad’s bizarre speech – the latest in a long series – gives an important insight into the nature of the regime in Tehran, a regime which may soon have its finger on the bomb.

Continue reading "Sanctions the best way to crush Ahmedinijad - for now" »

The connection between power and proliferation is the inconvenient truth of the nuclear industry.

Articles in The Australian in recent weeks by Ziggy Switkowski and academic Andrew O’Neil trivialise the links between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. O’Neil in particular had me choking on my cornflakes (and spluttering them all over Greg Sheridan’s mugshot, as luck would have it) with his contention that “every nuclear weapons program since and including the US Manhattan Project has been the product of dedicated military reactors rather than an offshoot of civilian programs.”

O’Neil seems blissfully unaware that uranium enrichment provides a pathway to nuclear weapons without the need for a reactor of any description. He points to North Korea, claiming that “no one − including high-level International Atomic Energy Agency experts − was in any doubt ... that North Korea’s nuclear reactor program was military in its focus and intent.”

Continue reading "The myth of the peaceful atom" »

The Australian Greens want to stop all uranium exploration, close all of Australia’s existing uranium mines, oh, and while they’re at it, they’d also like a nuclear free world.

Guess what: It’s not going to happen. It’s bad policy, naive politics, and exhibits an undergraduate response to federal politics which is unbecoming in a party soon to hold the balance of power in the Senate.

Added to that, it’s a stance which assumes that the debate about the utility of nuclear power for climate change reduction is over, and that it’s been found wanting. This is far from the case.

Continue reading "Greens think locally, act stupidly on uranium" »

He might have a problem with yellowcake, but with his apocalyptic oratory at the National Press Club this week, Greens Leader Senator Bob Brown showed he’s more than happy to resort to nuclear-powered fraudulence to make his case.

The Senator’s performance in the debate with Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation chairman Ziggy Switkowski at the National Press Club this week was one of the more disingenuous recent contributions to Australian public life.

Since September 11 and throughout the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Senator Brown has been our very own antipodean Noam Chomsky, arguing long and loud that Australia has been suckered into a battle with an illusory enemy at the behest of Uncle Sam.

Continue reading "Why the Greens are nuclear-powered frauds" »

A Nielson poll has reported that about half of Australians are open to nuclear energy being considered as part of the solution reducing carbon emissions, up from 38% in 2006.  So the question remains as to why half of the population doesn’t even want nuclear on the table as an option. 

Is the dislike or even fear of nuclear power a rational one?  The threat of nuclear war or nuclear power station accidents such as Chernobyl or Long Island (the only two accidents of any significance) should not be taken lightly; nuclear energy is awesome in the true meaning of the world. 

But does it actually deserve the bad reputation is carries? 

Continue reading "Nuclear power isn’t dangerous, just expensive" »

The year is 2025. The national growth figures have confirmed that, for the seventh consecutive quarter, South Australia is the fastest-growing state in the land, its economy fuelled by three key decisions which have transformed what was once regarded as an industrial wasteland into a beacon of opportunity.

The first decision was to end the hypocrisy and contradictions surrounding the mining of uranium – and the continuing ban on its use as a domestic energy source – and go forward with the creation of a world’s best-practice nuclear industry which involves both the processing of uranium and the storage of nuclear waste.

The arguments which were put to allow this policy shift started, first and foremost, with the need to eliminate a stupid double-standard – whereby our nation will happily dig up yellowcake at three, four, (now) five and (probably soon) six uranium mines for sale and processing overseas, while remaining hysterically opposed to its domestic use.

Continue reading "SA should stop worrying and learn to love yellowcake" »

NOW that we’ve all accepted Peter Garrett is a monstrous sell-out, can we get back to the real debate _ should we develop a nuclear power industry in Australia?

It’s a debate Labor desperately doesn’t want us to have. Note how quickly Penny Wong and Wayne Swan yesterday shut down the suggestion from Rio Tinto _ admittedly the owner of our biggest uranium miner _ that Australia should start using nuclear energy to help meet its carbon reduction targets. ``We don’t agree with Rio Tinto on that point,’’ was the Treasurer’s curt response.

Unfortunately, the government’s blanket refusal to accept nuclear energy as a potential solution the planet’s greenhouse woes is fatally undermined by Labor’s own schizophrenic platform on uranium _ pro-mining, pro-exports but anti-power.

Continue reading "...And Labor should nuke its hypocrisy on uranium" »