Nuclear

FoE Australia’s anti-nukes campaigner, Jim Green, notes the continuing attempt to paint “new nuclear” as a breakthrough.

“Australia’s nuclear energy debate reaches Peak Idiocy this week with the visit of Jessica Lovering from the U.S. Breakthrough Institute. Lovering has and will be speaking at public events alongside Australian university student Ben Heard.

“Both the Breakthrough Institute and Heard’s Bright New World present themselves as progressive environment groups but they are single-issue, pro-nuclear lobby groups with little interest in broader environmental issues. Australia’s environment groups ? i.e. real environment groups ? are united in our opposition to nuclear power.

” Real environment groups celebrate the spectacular growth of renewables and the spectacular cost reductions whereas pro-nuclear lobby groups, including Lovering’s Breakthrough Institute and Heard’s Bright New World, are on a never-ending campaign against renewables. Global renewable energy capacity has doubled over the past decade and current renewable capacity of 2,006 gigawatts (GW) is 5.1 times greater than nuclear power capacity of 392 GW (including idle reactors in Japan). Actual electricity generation from renewables (23.5% of global generation) is more than double that from nuclear power (10.7%) and the gap is widening every day.

“Lovering’s opinion piece in The Australian on Monday fails to note that her speaking trip is sponsored by the Minerals Council of Australia. Likewise, Heard has also been paid as a uranium industry consultant.

“Lovering brings a suitcase full of alternative facts to Australia. The most egregious is that the nuclear industry is in the middle of some sort of renaissance. Even her own institute contradicts this, bleating about nuclear power’s “rapidly accelerating crisis“, a “crisis that threatens the death of nuclear energy in the West“, “the crisis that the nuclear industry is presently facing in developed countries“, the “ashes of today’s dying industry”, and noting that “the industry is on life support in the United States and other developed economies“.”

Read the full article by Jim Green on the RenewEconomy website:

New nuclear push digs deep into vault of alternative facts

The Flinders Local Action Group (FLAG) and the Conservation Council of South Australia would like to invite you to attend one or both public meetings we are holding in Hawker and Port Augusta.

The meetings will discuss the proposed Radioactive Waste Management Facility at Barndioota, near Hawker, looking at the issues surrounding nuclear medicine and the history of nuclear waste management in Australia.

In 2016 a community survey undertaken by FLAG showed that a majority of local residents oppose the federal government’s proposal to build a national nuclear waste dump at Barndioota.

A nuclear waste dump in the Flinders Ranges presents a wide range of risks and many unknowns. 

Speakers include:

• Dr Margaret Beavis is a Melbourne GP and President of the Medical Association for Prevention of War. She teaches medicine and public health at Melbourne University.
• Dave Sweeney from the Australian Conservation Foundation and was on the national nuclear waste Independent Advisory Panel.

There will also be speakers from the FLAG group.

The meeting details are: