Media Release: THE APPEARANCE OF BIAS – NOT A GOOD LOOK

November 6, 2015

MEDIA RELEASE

Thursday 5th November, 2015

THE ROYAL COMMISSION INTO THE NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE:

THE APPEARANCE OF BIAS – NOT A GOOD LOOK

Today the Royal Commission into the Nuclear Fuel Cycle will be hearing oral evidence from London based insurance company Nuclear Risk Insurers, on the subject of insuring against a nuclear accident.  On 1st October 2015, Dr Timothy Stone, member of the Royal Commission’s Executive Advisory Committee, was appointed director of this company.

“How critically will evidence given by this company be treated, when a member of the Executive Advisory Committee is also one of its directors?” asked Nectaria Calan of Friends of the Earth Adelaide.

On Friday 30th October GE Hitachi gave oral evidence to the Royal Commission on their new PRISM reactor design.  GE Hitachi is a global nuclear alliance between General Electric (US) and Hitachi (Japan).  Hitachi is the parent company of Horizon Nuclear Power, a UK energy company developing new nuclear power stations, of which Dr Stone is also a director.

“Dr Stone’s connections with these companies highlights the broader issue here, which is his direct involvement in the nuclear industry, regardless of whether companies he’s employed by are giving evidence. He also owns Alpha-n Infrastructure, an elusive company with a partially built website which promotes nuclear power. This interest has not been disclosed by the Royal Commission on its website,” said Ms Calan.

Dr Stone is not the only Royal Commission member directly involved in the nuclear industry. Julian Kelly, its Technical Research Team Leader, is currently the Chief Technology Officer of Thor Energy, a Norwegian company focusing on the use of Thorium in nuclear reactors.

“If you’re directly involved in the very industry the Royal Commission is considering expanding, you potentially stand to gain something if a recommendation is made that this industry expand.  At the very least there is an appearance of bias here that will undermine the credibility of the Royal Commissions findings,” said Ms Calan.

Details on today’s public session can be found here:

http://nuclearrc.sa.gov.au/app/uploads/2015/10/151105-Topic-12-Day-1.pdf

For comment contact:

Nectaria Calan

Friends of the Earth Adelaide

 

Clean Futures, Media releases, Nuclear, Old_Notes

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‘Containment’ film about nuclear waste storage 19 November

November 3, 2015

Containment film maker and Harvard Professor Robb Moss will present at the screening and be involved in a Q & A after the screening. Please spread the word and come along to this one-off and timely film screening.

Where: Uni SA – City West HH408

Cost: $5 un-waged / $10 waged

Reserve your tickets online at conservationsa.org.au and pay cash at the door.

About Containment:

Can we contain some of the deadliest, most long-lasting substances ever produced? Left over from the Cold War are a hundred million gallons of radioactive sludge, covering vast radioactive lands. Governments around the world, desperate to protect future generations, have begun imagining society 10,000 years from now in order to create monuments that will speak across the time.

Part observational essay filmed in weapons plants, Fukushima and deep underground ? and part graphic novel ? Containment weaves between an uneasy present and an imaginative, troubled far future, exploring the idea that over millennia, nothing stays put.

Facebook event page

Containment invitation

FoE, Nuclear, Old_Notes

SA LABOR ON NUCLEAR: WRONG WAY, GO BACK

November 3, 2015

Members of the SA antinuclear coalition gathered outside the ALP state conference on 24 October to ask Labor to maintain the ban on any expansion of the nuclear industry.  Friends of the Earth campaigner Nectaria Calan gave interviews to the ABC, Channel 9 and 10.

MEDIA RELEASE

Friday 23rd October 2015

SA LABOR ON NUCLEAR: WRONG WAY, GO BACK

Members of South Australia’s anti-nuclear coalition will gather outside the South Australian Labor Party’s State Conference at Adelaide’s Festival Theatre tomorrow morning at 8am, calling on the SA Labor Party to keep legislation in place banning nuclear waste dumps in South Australia, and to keep the state on its path to becoming a global leader in renewable energy.

The State Government’s formation of a Royal Commission into the expansion of the nuclear industry in SA has led to concerns that a national or international nuclear waste dump is back on the cards for SA, a little over a decade after the last proposal for a waste dump near Woomera was defeated.  This followed an extended campaign opposing the project, spearheaded by senior Aboriginal women – the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta.

In 2000, in response to growing public opposition to the proposal, the then Liberal Government passed legislation banning the disposal of certain types of nuclear waste in the state.  This legislation was extended by the incoming Labor Government in 2003 to include all nuclear waste. The stated objective of the legislation is “to protect the health, safety and welfare of the people of South Australia and to protect the environment in which they live…”

“We are calling on the Labor Party to honour this commitment to protecting the health, safety and environment of South Australia,” said Nectaria Calan of the anti-nuclear coalition and Friends of the Earth Adelaide.  ”Nuclear waste is not a business opportunity, it’s an intractable problem.”

“SA Labour was known as the party who fights nuclear waste dumps, not the one that builds them.”

“Expansion of the nuclear industry into nuclear energy would also have an impact on the fast growing renewables sector in the state,” said Ms Calan.  “SA is already 40% renewable, and nuclear power is a poor partner because it does not have the flexibility needed to operate alongside renewable energy.  Nuclear power is also highly subsidised, and is therefore likely to absorb subsidies that could be going to the renewables sector. This is one opportunity cost of nuclear energy.”

For comment contact:

Nectaria Calan

SA anti-nuclear coalition

Friends of the Earth Adelaide

blackwallaby@gmail.com

Actions, Clean Futures, Nuclear

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Olympic Dam expansion – update

October 28, 2015

Since the expansion was shelved in 2012, BHP Billiton has announced its intention to investigate heap leach mining as an alternative, cheaper method of processing mined ore.

In July 2014 the company projected that pending government approvals, construction of a heap leach demonstration plant would begin in the second half of 2015, with a 36 month trial period beginning late 2016. In August 2014 the company received Federal approval for a heap leach demonstration plant. It is yet to receive state approval, and reports suggest that it is yet to be sought, with recent comments in the media by SA Premier Jay Weatherill suggesting that even the state government is unclear about the company’s intentions regarding this project.

It’s been reported that the company has been conducting laboratory trials at Wingfield, South Australia, and that they have been so successful that BHP may skip the demonstration plant stage and progress straight to a full scale facility.

BHP has until October 2016 to proceed with an expansion under the approvals given for the expansion it shelved in 2012. Even though heap leach processing was not considered under its original Environmental Impact Statement, the Federal government approved the trial without requiring any further environmental assessment.

FoE