Nuclear

Friends of the Earth Adelaide > Nuclear

Make a submission about the National Radioactive Waste Dump in SA

October 29, 2019

Send a submission to the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science (DIIS)

The Federal Government wants to put a National Radioactive Waste Facility in Kimba or the Flinders Ranges in South Australia.

The Department is calling for submissions and says these will be “one of the factors the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia may take into account when determining broad community support for the Facility.”

Please express your view by sending DIIS a submission.

If you live outside the ballot area, a submission is the only way to have your say! Here are some of the reasons why it is important that you do: 

  • There is strong opposition from Traditional Owners of the targeted sites. The Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation (BDAC) is pursuing legal action against the exclusion of Barngarla Traditional Owners from a proposed ballot to gauge community support in the Kimba region of SA. The Adnyamathanha Traditional Lands Association lodged a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission last year, alleging contractors damaged a precious cultural site while assessing land for the proposed nuclear dump, and also protesting the exclusion of Traditional Owners from the proposed ‘community ballot’.
  • This is Australia’s waste and a national issue. The burden of responsibility shouldn’t fall on small, regional and remote communities.
  • Communities along the transport route have not been consulted by the government at all, yet they will be affected
  • Flinders Ranges and Kimba communities have been divided by the flawed process and really need the support of people from all over the country.
  • Government seem to be making it up as they go along. Just recently the size of the site required was increased from 100 to 160 hectares. This is 4 years into the process. The government should have known what they are doing before they started.
  • Minister Canavan has recently stated that the amount of low level waste from Woomera destined to be permanently disposed of at the site is less than expected – only about 100 barrels. About 93% of the waste going to the site will be long-lived intermediate level waste produced and currently stored at ANSTO’s Lucas Heights reactor. The government plans to store this waste at the chosen site “temporarily” until a permanent disposal solution is found. Double handling is expensive, unnecessary and increases transport risks. There is no proven need to move it twice.  Why build this facility when 93% of the waste going there is only for temporary storage?

Please go to www.foe.org.au/have_your_say to find out what you can do!

Submissions can be made by:

Email: radioactivewaste@industry.gov.au

Post: The Department of Industry, Innovation and Science

National Radioactive Waste Section

GPO Box 2013, Canberra ACT 2601

Please write your own submission or use our online proforma here.

Sign up to No Dump Alliance

Please join the No Dump Alliance as a group or individual and encourage others to do the same. We need as many people as possible to join us in the fight for responsible radioactive waste management.

Donate

Click here to chip in to the campaign

No Dump Alliance

www.nodumpalliance.org.au

Nuclear, Old_Notes

Nuclear Power – No Solution to Climate Change

August 17, 2019

There has been a lot of discussion in all media recently about nuclear power for Australia but…
is this just a distraction from the real issues around the climate crisis?
Friends of the Earth Australia Statement

August 2019

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Renewables and storage technology can provide a far greater contribution to power supply and to climate change abatement compared to an equivalent investment in nuclear power. Peter Farley, a fellow of the Australian Institution of Engineers, wrote in January 2019: “As for nuclear the 2,200 MW Plant Vogtle [in the US] is costing US$25 billion, plus financing costs, insurance and long term waste storage. For the full cost of US$30 billion, we could build 7,000 MW of wind, 7,000 MW of tracking solar, 10,000 MW of rooftop solar, 5,000MW of pumped hydro and 5,000 MW of batteries. That is why nuclear is irrelevant in Australia.”

 

Support for nuclear power in Australia has nothing to do with energy policy – it is instead an aspect of the ‘culture wars’ driven by conservative ideologues (examples include current and former politicians Clive Palmer, Tony Abbott, Cory Bernardi, Barnaby Joyce, Mark Latham, Jim Molan, Craig Kelly, Eric Abetz, and David Leyonhjelm; and media shock-jocks such as Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt and Peta Credlin). With few exceptions, those promoting nuclear power in Australia also support coal, they oppose renewables, they attack environmentalists, they deny climate change science, and they have little knowledge of energy issues and options. The Minerals Council of Australia – which has close connections with the Coalition parties – is another prominent supporter of both coal and nuclear power.

In January 2019, the Climate Council, comprising Australia’s leading climate scientists and other policy experts, issued a policy statement concluding that nuclear power plants “are not appropriate for Australia – and probably never will be”. The statement continued: “Nuclear power stations are highly controversial, can’t be built under existing law in any Australian state or territory, are a more expensive source of power than renewable energy, and present significant challenges in terms of the storage and transport of nuclear waste, and use of water”.

Friends of the Earth Australia agrees with the Climate Council. Proposals to introduce nuclear power to Australia are misguided and should be rejected for the reasons discussed below (and others not discussed here, including the risk of catastrophic accidents).

Download the full statement as a PDF

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Adelaide FoE Notes, Clean Futures, Nuclear

NGOs Ask Australia to Suspend Lynas’ Rare Earth Export to its Malaysian Plant

August 17, 2019

MEDIA RELEASE | Friday 16 August 2019

AUSTRALIA | Yesterday, Australian rare earth producer Lynas Corporation has been granted conditional six-month licence extension by the Malaysian Government. However, environmental and human rights non-government organisations in Australia have joined their counterparts in Malaysia in expressing grave concerns at this decision.

Lynas owns and operates a rare earth mine in Western Australia and ships lanthanide concentrate from its Mount Weld mine to Malaysia to its controversial secondary processing plant to extract rare earth oxides and carbonates for its Japanese and Chinese customers. This process leaves behind an enormous amount of toxic waste laced with thorium, uranium, heavy metals and other chemicals.

Friends of the Earth Australia, AID/WATCH, together with Australian chapters of Malaysian BERSIH Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections and Saya Anak Bangsa Malaysia Melbourne (SABMOZ) have responded to a petition that has gained momentum in Malaysia demanding that Australia suspends Lynas’ rare earth export to Malaysia because Lynas has no safe disposal facility for its radioactive waste.

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Adelaide FoE Notes, Mining, Nuclear

“Chernobyl” Faithfully Recreates the World’s Worst Nuclear Disaster

June 14, 2019

Some of us were adults in 1986, some of us were children or teenagers, and some of us didn’t yet exist. Because of that, we all have different memories of Chernobyl – the world’s deadliest nuclear disaster.

That didn’t stop the screenwriter Craig Mazin, or the director John Renck, from creating the five-part mini-series Chernobyl, and it didn’t stop American network HBO, and the British network Sky, from producing the series.

Chernobyl is certainly a change of pace for both Renck and Mazin. Renck had directed episodes of the TV series Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. Mazin had written the Hangover and Scary Movie movie franchises.

[…]

For those who don’t know much about the disaster, the series is an eye-opener. For those who do know what happened, the series is a near-perfect recreation of the events that took place in Soviet Ukraine on the morning of April 27, 1986.

 

Mazin said that Chernobyl arose out of his interest in writing something that addressed the fact that, “We are struggling with the global war on the truth.” For each episode, Mazin has created a podcast that can be found on Youtube.

Researching for the truth

To create the series, Mazin consulted many different kinds of sources, “from government reports to first person accounts to scientific journals to historical works, photo essays.” And, he worked hard to avoid putting false drama into his scripts because as he said, “So much of what happens in the show is just shocking. It’s shocking to believe that that’s what happened.

Well, our feeling was if we started pushing the envelope on those things then we would diminish the impact of all the things that we were accurate about, so we stayed as accurate as we could.”

— full story at interestingengineering.com

Adelaide FoE Notes, Nuclear