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AUKUS and the implications for Australia’s domestic nuclear landscape

May 25, 2023

National anti-nuclear campaign online meeting: Saturday morning May 27

The purpose of this meeting is to strengthen our collective anti-nuclear campaign work with an emphasis on the risks that AUKUS will:

  • i) strengthen the push for domestic nuclear power (at the expense of the necessary and happening renewable energy transition)
  • ii) facilitate national and international nuclear waste dumping in Australia
  • iii) facilitate more uranium mining and potentially other steps in the nuclear fuel cycle such as uranium enrichment
  • iv) undermine federal Labor’s commitment to signing and ratifying the Treaty on the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
  • We won’t be discussing the deeper militarism and foreign policy concerns around AUKUS but will focus on the domestic nuclear sector risks outlined above.

People interested in and involved in anti-nuclear campaigning are invited to attend and help develop a platform to ring-fence and constrain the wider pro-nuclear momentum the AUKUS plan is generating.

Please RSVP to jim.green@foe.org.au or dave.sweeney@acf.org.au

Date and time: Saturday May 27, 10.30am to 12.30 pm eastern time, 10am SA, 8.30am WA. Zoom details below.

For background see the ACF paper: AUKUS and Australia’s Nuclear Landscape – ACF – May 2023  .
See also David Noonan’s paper on AUKUS and nuclear waste online.

Schedule: 4 x 30 minute sessions

Nuclear Power ? lead speakers Jim Green (FoE) and Trevor Gauld (ETU)

Waste

— proposed national dump at Kimba: speakers tbc

— intermediate and international waste: David Noonan
Uranium:  Mia Pepper (CCWA) and Dave Sweeney (ACF)
Weapons:  ICAN speaker/s

Zoom details

Join Zoom Meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9256268989?pwd=OFVmNkhYdVFSWnhidUFXYVZGSmZxUT09

Meeting ID: 925 626 8989, Passcode: 3101952

Nuclear, Old_Notes

Outrageous anti-protest laws

May 25, 2023

Clearly the SA government was annoyed by the protests at the APPEA conference: by the Thursday of that week, the lower house had passed legislation dramatically increasing penalties for public protests.

If you are concerned about this threat to democracy, come to the snap protest this Friday, May 26th at 6pm at Parliament House. Event by Adelaide Uni Students for Climate Justice, Adelaide Campaign Against Racism and Fascism and others

Earlier this week, the Human Rights Law Centre released an explainer which revealed many of the problems with the ill-considered legislation

The Bill: Summary Offences (obstruction of Public Places) Amendment 2023 (SA)

On 18 May 2023, the South Australian Legislative Assembly introduced, and passed, the Summary Offences (Obstruction of Public Places) Amendment (The Bill) in response to protest activity in Adelaide which briefly closed traffic. The Bill amends section 58 of the Summary Offences Act 1953 (The Act) to, among other things, dramatically increase the maximum penalty for obstructing a public place. The Bill is currently before the Legislative Council for deliberation.
…

Section 2(1)

2(1)

Section 2(1) of the Bill increases the penalty for obstructing a public place from $750 to a maximum of $50,000 or a maximum term of imprisonment of 3 months. This is a 60-fold increase to the maximum financial penalty; the Act does not currently provide imprisonment as a penalty for obstructing a public place. It is intended that these penalties would have a strong deterrent effect to protestors who block public space.

…

Section (3) (1a)

Section (3) (1a) of the Bill makes defendants criminally responsible for their direct obstruction of a public place, but it also intends to capture conduct even if it indirectly causes obstruction of a public place.

The Bill provides an example of what this may include, namely, if police or other emergency services need to restrict access to the public place to, “safely deal with the person’s conduct”.

… Read more >>

Actions, Adelaide FoE Notes, Clean Futures

New report from lock the gate…

March 27, 2023

A new report by renowned environmental scientist Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe finds that methane emissions from coal, oil and gas facilities make up ~70% of total greenhouse gas emissions covered under the federal Safeguard Mechanism (SGM), when the global warming impact is calculated over a 20-year period. Methane devastates the climate. It is 85 times more potent than CO2 over 20 years.

Accounting responsibly for the severe short-term warming impact of methane emissions shows that coal mining is by far the biggest emitter of all heavy industries covered by the Safeguard Mechanism in Australia currently, followed by oil and gas.

The report, “Short-term warming effect of methane from fossil fuels and implications for the Safeguard Mechanism”, also finds that the unlimited use of carbon offsets by methane-emitting facilities allowed under the SGM is irretrievably flawed. There is no technically feasible way to draw down methane from the atmosphere and no “like for like” offsetting is possible.

Download the full report here.

Climate, Old_Notes

What happens when we can detect nuclear subs?

March 16, 2023

New details of the AUKUS defence and security pact have revealed Australia will buy three second-hand US Virginia-class submarines early next decade (and potentially two more), subject to approval by US Congress.

Australia will also build a fleet of eight nuclear-powered SSN-AUKUS boats at Adelaide’s Osborne Naval Shipyard. The first will be delivered by 2042, with five completed by the 2050s, and construction of the remaining three going into the 2060s.

It’s estimated the program will cost between A$268 billion and A$368 billion over the next three decades.

Make no mistake. Modern submarines, especially nuclear-powered ones, are one of the most potent and effective weapon systems in today’s world. That is, until they aren’t.

Our analysis shows they might soon be so easily detected they could become billion-dollar coffins.
[…]

Subs in the ocean are large, metallic anomalies that move in the upper portion of the water column. They produce more than sound. As they pass through the water, they disturb it and change its physical, chemical and biological signatures. They even disturb Earth’s magnetic field – and nuclear subs unavoidably emit radiation.

Science is learning to detect all these changes, to the point where the oceans of tomorrow may become “transparent”. The submarine era could follow the battleship era and fade into history.

— read the full article “Progress in detection tech could render submarines useless by the 2050s. What does it mean for the AUKUS pact?” at theconversation.com

FoE, Old_Notes