Articles

Rally Against the Dump: Dec 2nd

DATE: Saturday December 2,

TIME: 11am

WHERE: Parliament House Adelaide, Kaurna Land.

RALLY TIME! Join us on the steps of Parliament House to call on politicians to say no to a radioactive waste dump in SA.

FB RSVP: HERE

WEB: www.dontdumponsa.net

In its effort to find a site to house Australia’s radioactive waste, the Federal Government’s National Radioactive Waste Management Project (NRWMP) has three sites currently under consideration in South Australia – one at Barndioota in the Flinders Ranges and two in Kimba on the Eyre Peninsula. Some of this nuclear waste is a hazard for hundreds of years and some for thousands of years.

Radioactive Nuclear waste dumps for non-SA wastes are illegal in SA. In response to earlier moves to dump waste in SA, Parliament passed a law to say No: the Nuclear Waste Facility (Prohibition) Act 2000. The objects of this Act are “to protect the health, safety and welfare of the people of South Australia and to protect the environment in which they live by prohibiting the establishment of certain nuclear waste storage facilities in this state.”

We’ve said no to radioactive waste in SA before and won and we’ll do it again!

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Nuclear fuel waste: Extended Storage at Lucas Heights or target SA?

David Noonan has summarised the situation with the proposal to locate the federal nuclear waste dump in SA in a recent briefing document.

Nuclear fuel waste: Extended Storage at Lucas Heights or target SA?

Briefer (Nov 2017) by David Noonan, Independent Environment Campaigner

The Federal government has divided Australian community and is compromising safety in proposed import and indefinite above ground storage of ANSTO nuclear wastes in South Australia.

Since April 2016 the Federal government has solely targeted regional communities in SA for a proposed above ground Store to take irradiated Nuclear Fuel Waste (NFW) and long lived Intermediate Level Waste (ILW) from the ANSTO Lucas Heights reactor facility in NSW.

The ARPANSA CEO formally considered this proposed NRWMF Store and stated in May 2015:
This plan will have the provision for ILW storage above ground for approximately 100 years.”

This nuclear waste storage plan compromises safety by importing long lived reactor waste to SA without any waste disposal capacity or even a program or plan for potential disposal of NFW and ILW. Safety requires these nuclear wastes are isolated from the environment for over 10,000 years.

The proposed 100 year Store in SA for 10,000 year nuclear wastes is a divisive, unsafe and unnecessary plan – given ANSTO’s capacity to retain these nuclear wastes at Lucas Heights.

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Nuclear Royal commission is a snow job

An excellent article in Renew Economy by Friends of the Earth Australia’s anti-nuclear campaigner Dr Jim Green.

SA nuclear Royal Commission is a snow job

“Nuclear Royal Commission is a Snow Job

The South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission (RC) will release its final report on May 6. It was established to investigate opportunities for SA to expand its role in the nuclear industry beyond uranium mining.

Before his appointment as the Royal Commissioner, Rear Admiral Kevin Scarce said little about nuclear issues but what he did say should have excluded him from consideration. Speaking in November 2014 at a Flinders University guest lecture, Scarce acknowledged being an “an advocate for a nuclear industry”. Just four months later, after his appointment as the Royal Commissioner, he said the exact opposite: “I have not been an advocate and never have been an advocate of the nuclear industry.”

Other than generalisations, and his acknowledgement that he is a nuclear advocate, Scarce’s only comment of substance on nuclear issues in his 2014 lecture was to claim that work is “well underway” on a compact fusion reactor “small enough to fit in a truck”, that it “may be less than a decade away” and could produce power “without the risk of Fukushima-style meltdowns.” Had he done just a little research, Scarce would have learnt that Lockheed Martin’s claims about its proposed compact fusion reactor were met with universal scepticism and ridicule by scientists and even by nuclear industry bodies.

So the SA government appointed Scarce as Royal Commissioner despite knowing that he is a nuclear advocate who has uncritically promoted discredited claims by the nuclear industry. Scarce appointed an Expert Advisory Committee. Despite claiming that he was conducting a “balanced” RC, he appointed three nuclear advocates to the Committee and just one critic. The bias is all too apparent and Scarce’s claim to be conducting a balanced inquiry is demonstrably false.

Given the make-up of the RC, it came as no surprise that numerous questionable claims by the nuclear industry were repeated in the RC’s interim report released in February. A detailed critique of the interim report is available online, as is a critique of the RC process.

The RC’s interim report was actually quite downbeat about the economic prospects for a nuclear industry in SA. It notes that the market for uranium conversion and enrichment services is oversupplied and that a spent fuel reprocessing plant would not be commercially viable. The interim report also states that “it would not be commercially viable to generate electricity from a nuclear power plant in South Australia in the foreseeable future.”

In a nutshell, the RC rejected proposals for SA to play any role in the nuclear fuel cycle beyond uranium mining. But that still leaves the option of SA offering to store and dispose of foreign high-level nuclear waste (HLW) and the RC strongly promotes a plan to import 138,000 tonnes of HLW for storage and deep underground disposal.

SA as the world’s nuclear waste dump

The RC insists that a nuclear waste storage and dumping business could be carried out safely. But would it be carried out safely? The RC ought to have considered evidence that can be drawn upon to help answer the question, especially since Kevin Scarce has repeatedly insisted that he is running an evidence-based inquiry.

So what sort of evidence might be considered? The experience of the world’s one and only deep underground nuclear waste dump ? the Waste Isolation Pilot Plan (WIPP) in the U.S. ? is clearly relevant. And Australia’s past experience with nuclear waste management is clearly relevant, with the clean-up of nuclear waste at the Maralinga nuclear test site in SA being an important case study.

But the RC completely ignores all this evidence in its interim report. We can only assume that the evidence is ignored because it raises serious doubts about the environmental and public health risks associated with the proposal to import, store and dispose of HLW.

WIPP is a case study of a sharp decline in safety and regulatory standards over a short space of time. A chemical explosion in a nuclear waste barrel in February 2014 was followed by a failure of the filtration system, resulting in 22 workers receiving small doses of radiation and widespread contamination in the underground caverns. WIPP has been shut down for the two years since the accident. Costs associated with the accident are likely to exceed US$500 million. A U.S. government report details the many failings of the operator and the regulator.

At a public meeting in Adelaide Town Hall in February 2016, Scarce said that WIPP was ignored in the RC interim report because it involved different waste forms (long-lived intermediate-level waste) of military origin. In fact, the waste that the RC recommends that SA import is vastly more hazardous than the waste managed at WIPP, so Scarce’s argument is hard to fathom.

Moreover the RC has overlooked the fundamental lesson from the WIPP fiasco – initially high safety and regulatory standards gave way to complacency, cost-cutting and corner-cutting in the space of just 10–15 years. The RC notes that HLW “requires isolation from the environment for many hundreds of thousands of years”. How can Scarce be confident that high safety and regulatory standards would be maintained over centuries and millennia when WIPP shows that the half-life of human complacency, cost-cutting and corner-cutting is measured in years or at most decades?

There is no logical reason to believe that the SA government would perform any better than the U.S. government. On the contrary, there are good reasons to believe that nuclear waste management would be more difficult here given that the U.S. has vastly more nuclear waste management expertise and experience than Australia.

While completely ignoring the world’s one and only existing deep underground nuclear waste dump, the RC talks at length about deep underground repositories under construction in Finland and Sweden. According to the RC’s interim report, those two countries “have successfully developed long-term domestic solutions” for nuclear waste. But in fact, neither country has completed construction of a repository let alone demonstrated safe operation over any length of time.

Mismanagement of radioactive waste in SA

The RC has also ignored the mismanagement of radioactive waste in SA. A radioactive waste repository at Radium Hill, for example, “is not engineered to a standard consistent with current internationally accepted practice” according to a 2003 SA government audit. And the ‘clean-up’ of nuclear waste at the Maralinga nuclear test site in the late 1990s was a fiasco:

Nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson said of the ‘clean-up’: “What was done at Maralinga was a cheap and nasty solution that wouldn’t be adopted on white-fellas land.” (See Parkinson’s videos here and here.)
Scientist Dale Timmons said the government’s technical report was littered with “gross misinformation”.
Dr Geoff Williams, an officer with the Commonwealth nuclear regulator ARPANSA, said that the ‘clean-up’ was beset by a “host of indiscretions, short-cuts and cover-ups”.
Nuclear physicist Prof. Peter Johnston (now with ARPANSA) noted that there were “very large expenditures and significant hazards resulting from the deficient management of the project”.
The RC’s interim report claims that “South Australia has a unique combination of attributes which offer a safe, long-term capability for the disposal of used fuel”. But SA has a track record of mismanaging radioactive waste (Radium Hill, Maralinga, etc.) and no experience managing HLW. The RC’s claim that SA has “a mature and stable political, social and economic structure” needs to be considered in the context of the longevity of nuclear waste. Australia has had one profound political revolution in the past 250 years (European invasion) and is on track for 1,200 political revolutions over the 300,000-year lifespan of nuclear waste.

Economics

The RC’s interim report presents speculative and implausible figures regarding potential profits from a nuclear waste storage and dumping industry. The Australia Institute crunched the numbers presented in the interim report and wrote a detailed factual rebuttal. Scarce responded on ABC radio on 31 March 2016 by saying that the RC will “take apart” the Australia Institute’s report “piece by piece”. When asked if such an aggressive attitude was appropriate, Scarce said: “I’m a military officer, what would you expect?”

And that says all that anyone needs to know about Rear Admiral Kevin Scarce and his Royal Commission. Critics are taken apart piece by piece, or ignored altogether. On the other hand, Scarce uncritically repeats Lockheed Martin’s discredited claims about its ‘compact fusion reactor’ and the RC’s interim report repeats many other nuclear industry falsehoods. Scarce ignores the mismanagement of radioactive waste in SA (Radium Hill, Maralinga etc.) and he ignores the failure of the world’s only deep underground nuclear waste dump while claiming that Sweden and Finland “have successfully developed long-term domestic solutions” by partially building deep underground dumps.

A year ago the Adelaide Advertiser published a Friends of the Earth letter likening the RC to a circus and Kevin Scarce to a clown. Events over the past year have only confirmed the illegitimacy of the RC. The RC’s bias would be comical if the stakes weren’t so high, particularly for Aboriginal people in the firing line for a HLW dump.

The Aboriginal Congress of South Australia endorsed the following resolution at an August 2015 meeting:

“We, as native title representatives of lands and waters of South Australia, stand firmly in opposition to nuclear developments on our country, including all plans to expand uranium mining, and implement nuclear reactors and nuclear waste dumps on our land. We view any further expansion of industry as an imposition on our country, our people, our environment, our culture and our history. We also view it as a blatant disregard for our rights under various legislative instruments, including the founding principles of this state.”

The Aboriginal-led Australian Nuclear Free Alliance is asking organisations in Australia and around the world to endorse a statement opposing the plan to turn SA into the world’s nuclear waste dump. Organisations can endorse the statement online at www.anfa.org.au/sign-the-declaration”

Busting nuclear myths – flyer

Our campaigner Nectaria has created a flyer busting nuclear myths:

1. The new generation (Gen IV) of nuclear reactors supposedly designed to recycle nuclear waste don’t exist!

2. Nuclear is not the only alternative to coal for baseload power – a mix of renewable energy and demand management can provide continuous power.

3. There is no nuclear renaissance – nuclear power is in decline world wide.

4. An expansion of the nuclear industry would not be good for the economy – see flyer for reasons.

5. Nuclear energy is not zero carbon when it comes to climate change.

6. We can’t guarantee isolation of high level radioactive waste from the environment for 200,000 years – there is no operating dump for high level waste anywhere in the world.

Links to the PDF:

Nuclear Mythbuster Flyer

Nuclear Mythbuster Flyer with References

Nectaria has finished with us now and we would like to thank her for all her hard work and wish her all the best in the future especially with the Lizard’s Revenge Protestival next July.    

Historic Progress Towards Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights

Notes from Cam Walker

 

Rules for Business

Rules for Business

GENEVA, July 10 — The first session of UN negotiations on legally binding rules for transnational corporations (TNCs)[1] concluded today, with hopes high for the process towards a treaty that could finally bring justice and protection to millions.

Talks convened in Geneva on July 6th to begin elaborating a treaty on business and human rights. Civil society organizations from all over the world took part, demonstrating coordinated work, a wealth of proposals and thorough analyses of the urgent need for an international legally binding instrument to prevent TNCs’ human rights abuses and provide justice and remedy for affected people.

Preparatory work of civil society at national and international level was strong. Movements from Indonesia and Brazil, for example, combined proposals for the treaty built on the voices of affected peoples, on concrete cases of human rights violations by TNCs and on advocacy work to push national governments to engage in a proactive way.

TNCs are often responsible for human rights violations. These crimes frequently go unpunished due to glaring gaps in the international legal system, the absence or weakness of enforceable national policies, or judicial corruption in TNC host and/ or home countries. Many corporations are also richer and more powerful than the states seeking to regulate them. Corporate campaign financing for political candidates also creates a layer of impunity for TNCs.

“UN member States and expert panelists made great progress tackling this difficult but vital work. We also applaud the formidable mobilization of civil society organizations, whose presence really spurred the talks forward,” said Lucia Ortiz, Economic Justice International Program Coordinator, Friends of the Earth International.

The EU and several other, mostly rich, countries were largely absent from the talks, allegedly claiming that negotiation of a legally binding treaty would distract from the implementation of the existing UN Guiding Principles — a set of voluntary guidelines for businesses.

“The growing abundance of human rights abuses perpetrated by TNCs or on their behalf proves  voluntary guidelines are absolutely insufficient and TNCs should not be trusted to police themselves,” said Anne van Schaik, Sustainable Finance Campaigner, Friends of the Earth Europe. “Many EU countries are home to TNCs with deplorable records of systemic rights violations in the global south. European civil society organizations have joined forces with great strength to defend rules for business and rights for peoples, making The EU governments’ lack of interest in pushing corporations to respect rights even more shameful.”

“For decades social movements have been demanding a legally binding treaty and insisting corporate influence of the UN must end. Yet even last year many people still believed that a treaty like the one the UN is now working towards would be impossible,” said Irhash Ahmady of Friends of the Earth Indonesia, “but this week has demonstrated that the political will exists, the experts believe it is possible, and many States and people are prepared to make it happen.”

“Most of the States came to the talks open minded and feeling brave enough to finally advance a devastatingly neglected area of international law,” said Ricardo Navarro, Director of Friends of the Earth El Salvador. “This bravery will be crucial ahead of the next round of talks. States and civil society must work hard to keep up momentum, bring even more States to the table, and consult widely. Affected people, whose struggles in the face of TNC violations, expertise and proposals must be part of this consultation, so we can truly condemn impunity to history!” he added.

A delegation from Friends of the Earth International attended the talks as part of the Campaign to Dismantle Corporate Power and as member of the Treaty Alliance: together, a movement of over one thousand organizations representing tens of millions of individuals around the world.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Lucia Ortiz, Economic Justice International Program Coordinator, Friends of the Earth International: + 55 48 99150071 or lucia@natbrasil.org.br

Alberto Villarreal, Trade and Investment Campaigner, Friends of the Earth Latin America & Caribbean: +41 79 429 4275 or comerc@redes.org.uy

Anne van Schaik, Sustainable Finance Campaigner, Friends of the Earth Europe: +31 6 243 43968 or anne.vanschaik@foeeurope.org

Ricardo Navarro, Director of Friends of the Earth El Salvador: + 503 78 887 567 or email foeelsalvador@hotmail.com

Irhash Ahmady, Friends of the Earth Indonesia: +62-81572222066 orirhaz@walhi.or.id

Or visit http://www.foei.org/what-we-do/towards-binding-treaty-transnational-corporations-human-rightshttp://www.treatymovement.com/; http://www.stopcorporateimpunity.org and http://www.radiomundoreal.fm/basta-de-impunidad-corporativa-258

NOTES

[1] The open ended intergovernmental working group’s mandate as defined by United Nations Human Rights Council resolution 26/9 http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G14/082/52/PDF/G1408252.pdf?OpenElement