NUCLEAR / ENERGY NEWS ITEMS - MID-FEB TO MID-MARCH 2007
New information sources
Internationally-renowned disarmament campaigner jumps into river
Clean energy solutions:
* various
* clean energy - green power doubles in Victoria + sorting green from greenwash
* wind power
* wave power
* solar
* light bulbs & solar water heating
* biomass/bioenergy
* hot rocks
* energy efficiency - building standards
* europe
Baseload electricity - debunking the myths
National nuclear waste dump proposed for NT
Water use of different energy sources
Nuclear weapons for Australia
Australia as the world's nuclear waste dump
Nuclear power for Australia:
* government threatening to impose reactors despite state opposition
* no commercial insurance
* subsidies
* Victoria
* Australian Nuclear Energy Pty Ltd
* clean energy vs. nuclear power - public opinion
* public opinion
* locations
* Tim Flannery article
* Ziggy Switkowski / UMPNER follow-up
Electricity options for Australia - '0.55 to stay alive'
Nuclear test veterans
Uranium mining in Australia
* various
* Burke, Grill, Rudd, Marn Fergo
* Burke, Grill, Prosser
* Roxby Downs - desalination
* Ranger
* Honeymoon
USA ANZUS alliance
Military bases
ASIO infiltrates Pine Gap campaign
Nuclear accidents - Sweden
Environmental racism
Lucas Heights - problems with new OPAL reactor
------------------->
NEW INFORMATION SOURCES
10 minute video
on impacts of (some) nuclear power plants on surrounding marine life
... <www.nirs.org/multimedia/video/l2k_mov.htm>.
Renew magazine - energy / clean energy <eeru.open.ac.uk/natta/rol.html>
Check the
new-look FoE website with lots of new nukes content ... and lots more
coming in the next 1-2 months ... <www.foe.org.au>
------------------->
INTERNATIONALLY-RENOWNED DISARMAMENT CAMPAIGNER JUMPS INTO RIVER
------------------->
Internationally-renowned
disarmament campaigner Felicity Hill jumping into a river dressed as a
three-eyed fish with a Mr Burns head:
<www.flickruby.org/photos/photos.htm>.
Genius lurks in the wings
Mary Bolling, Herald Sun, March 12, 2007 12:00am
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21364106-2862,00.html
WEARING underpants on the outside is not always a successful path to soaring sky-high.
Neither is the pursuit of aviation particularly assisted by capes, goggles, dragons or political statements.
But when you're launching yourself off a 4m platform and towards the Yarra's murky depths, anything's worth a try.
Moomba's Birdman Rally was back yesterday, with 21 eager aviators thrilling more than 10,000 spectators along the Yarra.
One competitor was superhero Moomba Man, his cape aiding an uninspiring but painless plunge.
Equally
uncompetitive was Felicity Hill, whose Simpsons-themed outfit featured
Monty Burns riding Blinky, the mutant three-eyed fish.
Representing the Medical Association for the Prevention of War, Ms Hill said the costume was a protest against nuclear power.
"We're seeing if nuclear power will fly in this country: we definitely don't want it to!" she said.
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CLEAN ENERGY SOLUTIONS - VARIOUS
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Clean energy more than an impulse
Gerry McGowan is propelled to power, writes Glenda Korporaal
February 19, 2007
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21246819-643,00.html
GERRY McGowan reckons he added to the hole in the ozone layer as he ran Impulse Airlines.
Now, as
executive chairman of the ASX-listed renewable energy company CBD
Energy, the former airline chief is doing his best to fix the problem.
McGowan's
company is working with Hydro Tasmania to develop a storage technology
for its five wind turbines on remote King Island.
He is also
teaming up with German-based solar energy company Solon, which is
buying 20 per cent of CBD, to develop solar energy projects in
Australia.
"These sorts of
businesses are important for the country," McGowan says. "We are
developing intellectual property. We are trying to produce clean
energy. Australia has huge natural resources in solar and wind and it
is our responsibility to make the most of them."
McGowan signed a five-year non-compete agreement with Qantas when he sold it Impulse Airlines in 2001.
He spent nine
years building the airline and believes it could have been viable if
some of his backers had been able to hang in for the long haul. But
while he still keeps in touch with some people he used to know at
Impulse (which turned into Jetstar), he has no more interest in going
back into airlines.
His new passion
is for renewable energy, which he sees as being on a roll around the
world - particularly in Europe and California - with Australia finally
starting to catch up.
McGowan says his interest in renewable energy started when he bought a bee farm in the NSW Hunter Valley a few years ago.
He wanted to
develop it as a sustainable farm with its own power. Approached by many
different people after being bought out of Impulse, McGowan chose to
invest $3.5 million in CBD Energy in 2004, attracted by its work in
developing storage technology for renewable energy.
Storing the
power from wind or solar energy beyond the immediate generation has
always been one of the big problems with renewable energy. King Island
gets a lot of its wind during the day but needs power at night.
CBD is trying
to commercialise a carbon block technology developed by Lloyd Energy
Systems, working with Hydro Tasmania to use wind power to replace about
a third of the diesel fuel used for the island's power station. The
process involves converting the wind power into steam at 800C and
storing it in graphite blocks which can be used to run steam turbines
later.
"The technology
stores heat for long periods of time," says McGowan, who was with
transporters TNT and Mayne Nickless before starting Impulse in 1992.
While the wind
energy experiment at King Island power station gets under way, McGowan
is pressing ahead with plans for the company's first solar power
operation in the northern NSW town of Moree. Solon, spending $5 million
for a 20 per cent stake in CBD, is keen to use its solar power
technology in Australia. "We are actively looking for solar sites,"
McGowan says.
He says there
are several potential sites for solar power in NSW, including Cobar and
Dubbo. The company will complete a feasibility study within months on
the best site and plans to finance its first solar power operation with
a rights issue.
McGowan says he is looking forward to working with regional communities again, in the same way he did with his airline business.
He says
development of a strong renewable energy industry will depend on more
proactive government policies. "In countries where renewable energy has
progressed fairly aggressively there has been government
incentivisation of the industry."
He argues that
the cost of coal-fired power in Australia has been understated because
there is no costing of the long-term environmental damage caused by
greenhouse gases it produces.
McGowan says
Australia should be leading the world in the development of solar
energy technology. He is worried that Australian-based solar energy
experts such as Canadian-born David Mills are leaving the country
attracted by better opportunities.
Mills is going
to California where Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has launched a
$4billion initiative providing generous incentives for people to
install solar panels in their homes.
"It's tragic for the country," McGowan says. "I have always admired the Americans' ability to create their own industries.
"They are
leading the world in an area where we should be leading because we have
so much natural resources here such as renewable energy."
------------------->
American Solar
Energy Society, 2007, Tackling Climate Change in the U.S.: Potential
Carbon Emissions Reductions
from Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
by 2030,
<www.ases.org/climatechange>. Here is a review ...
Renewables Can Turn the Tide on Global Warming
By Kelpie Wilson, TruthOut.org. Posted February 12, 2007.
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/47654/
There is no
"silver bullet" solution to our energy crisis. But a new study shows
that the right combination of renewables may be our best bet.
The American
Solar Energy Association (ASES), with the backing of several U.S.
representatives and a senator, released its new nuts and bolts approach
to reducing carbon emissions with a combination of renewable energy and
energy efficiency technologies.
The report
comes at an opportune time: the release of the United Nation's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) latest climate
change report is expected to finally clear up any lingering uncertainty
about the role fossil fuel burning and other human activities have in
changing the Earth's climate. As the deniers and obstructionists lose
all credibility, the debate now turns to solutions.
The ASES
report, titled "Tackling Climate Change in the US -- Potential Carbon
Emissions Reductions From Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy by
2030," makes this extraordinary claim: "Energy efficiency and renewable
energy technologies have the potential to provide most, if not all, of
the US carbon emissions reductions that will be needed to help limit
the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide to 450 to 500 ppm."
The ASES report
was presented at a press briefing in the Capitol with the support of
Senator Jeff Bingaman, Chair of the Senate Energy and Resources
Committee, Representative Henry Waxman, Representative Chris Shays,
Sierra Club president Carl Pope, and NASA's chief climate change
scientist, Dr. James Hansen.
Hansen's
backing is especially important because the report is aimed at meeting
a target for emissions reductions that he and other scientists agree is
the minimum necessary to preserve a habitable planet. The target is to
keep the global average temperature from rising by more than one degree
Celsius, and to do that, it will be necessary to limit atmospheric CO2
levels to 450 to 500 ppm. That means reducing U.S. emissions by 60
percent to 80 percent by mid-century.
Over the past
several years, as the dimensions of the energy and climate crisis have
unfolded, the press, the public and politicians have embraced various
"silver bullet" solutions one after another according to the fad of the
day: at one moment it's hydrogen, then ethanol, then nuclear power,
then wind. Today there is a growing recognition that no single energy
technology can replace fossil fuels, but there is still no recipe that
tells us how to combine energy technologies into a healthful brew that
can save our planet and our civilization.
The ASES report
takes a unique approach. Instead of turning to the systems analysts who
normally tackle such problems, ASES asked the experts in each
technology to estimate how much carbon-emitting energy their
technologies could displace. Each technology is conceived of as a
"wedge" in a stack of wedges that add up to a replacement for fossil
fuels. The report consists of separate papers on each technology,
including energy efficiency, concentrating solar power, photovoltaics,
windpower, biofuels and geothermal.
Each paper was
written by experts in the technology, presumably giving the most
realistic possible assessment of the capabilities of the technology.
And each technology was evaluated in terms of its current capabilities
without relying on any major new technical breakthroughs, although some
research and development to increase efficiency and reduce costs was
assumed. The papers took economic factors into account and real world
constraints like the silicon supply shortage that has hampered
photovoltaic productions.
Despite its
conservative assumptions, the ASES report concludes that renewables and
efficiency alone can meet the goal of a 60 to 80 percent emissions
reduction by mid-century while the economy continues to grow. Energy
efficiency accounts for 57 percent of the reductions, and the renewable
energy technologies provide the other 43 percent.
While the
report does not estimate a total cost for the deployment of the
technologies, it does assume that some government support for R&D
and production tax credits will be available. At the press briefing,
James Hansen also said that while much could be accomplished without a
carbon tax, attaching some kind of economic cost to carbon emissions
would be essential to keep the effort on track.
Representative
Henry Waxman reiterated the need for a price on carbon: "Unless we put
a price on carbon emissions I don't see how we can avoid them
continuing to emit carbon from other sources. I mean people are already
starting to go to the Rocky Mountains and try to cook oil out of the
tar shale there, which you can do, but that's an indication of just how
addicted we are to oil."
The report
presents a serious challenge to the policy makers who have assumed that
the U.S. would need to increase its use of carbon-intensive coal, oil
shale and tar sands to meet energy needs. It also challenges the idea
that we need to ramp up nuclear power to provide carbon-free energy.
Although
President Bush often refers to nuclear power as "renewable energy," the
ASES report did not assume any nuclear expansion. A group of more than
100 businesses and organizations recently took Bush to task over his
misleading statements about nuclear power in a letter, saying: "Please
be advised that nuclear power is neither a renewable nor a clean source
of energy. For that matter, oil, coal, and natural gas are also not
renewable or clean sources of energy."
The groups
believe that Bush is defining nuclear energy as "renewable" so that it
might be included in a future federal Renewable Energy Portfolio
Standard or supported by federal tax incentives or R&D programs
specifically designed to promote renewable energy technologies.
The nuclear
issue exposed a difference of opinion among the ASES report's
supporters at the press briefing last Thursday. Senator Bingaman
expressed his support for new reactors and his view that nuclear power
is a viable carbon-free energy source, saying, "Nuclear power, I think,
is almost certain to be emphasized to a greater extent if a cap and
trade system is put in place."
Bingaman is
currently drafting a bill for a federal Renewable Portfolio Standard
that would require utilities to provide a certain percentage of power
generation from renewables, and he may add support for nuclear power to
that bill.
Representative
Waxman appeared more cautious about nuclear power, pointing out that it
requires subsidies and "therefore, may be more costly" than the
renewable technologies.
Carl Pope of
the Sierra Club was more specific: "With present technology, without
massive government subsidies, nuclear power does not appear to be
competitive with [increased] efficiency or wind ... I think what this
report reveals, however, is that even if nuclear power never becomes
competitive, and it isn't today, we can still solve our global warming
problem. And that means we should not be artificially forcing nuclear
power into the market mix as some of the current proposals would do."
Pope also
addressed an important question about the feasibility of the ASES
report's renewable energy scenario. He said: "One of the reactions it's
very easy to have when you read a report like this is, it's too good to
be true. If all these things were possible, why aren't they already
being done? And the unfortunate answer to that question is they are not
being done because we have massive examples of policy failure and
market failure in our energy sector."
Pope cited a
number of problems, like building codes that don't allow white,
reflective roofs to reduce summertime cooling loads, grid regulations
that limit solar and wind production, and builders who have no
incentive to build energy efficient buildings because they don't have
to pay the energy bills. Pope vowed that the Sierra Club would
aggressively pursue solutions to these problems. He promised that "This
is not a report that will be sitting on a shelf."
Interestingly,
the ASES report was released just as Exxon Mobil was about to announce
the largest annual profits of any corporation in history. The company
has topped its 2005 record by 9 percent, for a total profit of $39.5
billion in 2006.
Representative
Edward J. Markey blamed the Bush administration and the previous
Republican Congress for passing "energy bills full of goodies." No
doubt the Sierra Club's Carl Pope would agree that continued subsidies
and tax breaks for the oil industry are another instance of "policy
failure and market failure in our energy sector."
Download a copy of the American Solar Energy Society report. <www.ases.org/climatechange>.
------------------->
Chile becomes hot as energy group looks offshore for renewable energy deals
Peter Hannam
February 12, 2007
http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/chile-becomes-hot-as-energy-group-looks-offshore-for-renewableenergy-deals/2007/02/11/1171128813648.html
INVESTMENT
opportunities abound in renewable energy, although Australia's failure
to ratify the Kyoto Protocol means local companies often have to head
overseas to grab the best of them.
Melbourne-based
HydroChile recently raised $8 million in local and foreign venture
capital to fund the development phase for at least four hydropower
projects in Chile. The company expects to raise at least a further $100
million, possibly through an initial public offering, within 18 months.
As Chile was a
signatory to the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing carbon emissions,
HydroChile's plants would be able to generate tradeable carbon credits
that bolster investment returns, said managing director Philip van der
Riet.
"It certainly
enhances the attractiveness of the projects," Mr van der Riet said.
"And in some cases, it makes the difference between the project being
viable or not viable."
Carbon credits
now traded at about $US10 per megawatt hour in Europe, equivalent to
about one-fifth of Chile's electricity price of about $50 for that
amount of power, he said. The proportion was even larger several years
ago before power shortages worsened in Chile because of soaring local
demand and cuts of gas supplies from neighbouring Argentina.
Mr van der Riet
spent four years in Chile with Pacific Hydro, a company he helped found
in Melbourne in the early 1990s. Pacific Hydro was Australia's largest
listed renewable power generator until superannuation funds group
Industry Funds Management bought it in 2005 for $788 million. IFM also
had its sights on Chile as part of the $1.5 billion it plans to spend
on wind energy and hydropower between 2005 and 2010, Bloomberg News
reported.
Renewable
energy advocates say recent moves by Prime Minister John Howard to deal
with climate change may encourage some investment funds to remain in
Australia, a view Mr van der Riet shares.
"We're seeing
the political leaders of the country offering much more conciliatory
statements towards the need for some sort of a carbon response," Mr van
der Riet said. "Certainly, it improves the environment in Australia and
to an extent that may detract people from wanting to invest overseas if
they can get good renewable investments in Australia."
HydroChile's
investors include US-based Tudor Capital Group and Sydney-based venture
capital group CVC Sustainable Investments, both of which hold 25 per
cent stakes. Mr van der Riet and company chairman Gary Bertuch, also
one of the Pacific Hydro founders, are both substantial shareholders in
HydroChile.
The company
plans to develop small hydropower plants with a capacity of 40
megawatts at most, in part to diversify risk. The plants would tap a
mix of glacier and snowmelt.
"The glaciers
are melting but there's still enough volume in some of the areas that
we're looking to keep going for certainly the next 20, 30, 40 years,
without losing the resource entirely," Mr van der Riet said.
He said an IPO
would offer small investors an exit. While not ruling out a listing on
the ASX, the company is also considering Canada's Toronto or London's
Alternative Investment Market.
The latter has attracted more than 2500 companies since it started in 1995, raising some £34 billion ($A85 billion).
http://www.cvc.com.au/sustainable/sustainable—
http://investments.html
http://www.pacifichydro.com.au
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Announcing a green era
Where to go next in climate policy in an election year? Environment writer Matthew Warren previews the next possible moves
www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21276402-30417,00.html
February 24, 2007
MEMO from Prime Minister to Minister for the Environment. Subject: Climate change. Status: Very urgent.
Malcolm, great
work with the light bulbs. We're going to need a few more ideas like
that before the budget. I want to climate change proof the economy. And
the election. I've asked the Treasurer to set aside a few billion to
play with from the surplus.
The
Government's rules on climate change policy remain the same: We can
announce emissions reduction strategies similar to Labor but cannot be
seen to be copying them.
Any proposal must minimise harm or impact on the economy; it's still our strongest suit.
All proposals must be genuine solutions or pathways to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Where possible,
go after low-hanging fruit; trigger energy savings and efficiency
improvements that have recoverable and recordable payback.
And finally, I
like the incandescent light bulbs ban. The voters get it. Can you
include some other affordable and highly consumer-oriented ideas that
have high political impacts?
Thanks, PM.
Herewith is a
list of 10 possible climate change announcements Australians may hear
in the lead-up to the election later this year.
Green homes
THE Government
will drive energy savings from two of the biggest energy consumers in
Australian homes. Refrigeration comprises about 13 per cent of
household energy use while hot water comprises 37 per cent. The
Government will provide a $150 rebate for households purchasing a new
refrigerator with 4.5-star or better energy efficiency. It will also
provide a $250 rebate for households switching from electricity to
solar or high efficiency gas hot water systems. These combined will
save about 750,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases each year.
Global cooling
THE increased
use of airconditioners has become a contentious symbol of increased
energy use. The Government will mandate that all dwellings that install
airconditioners should have insulation to an efficiency value of 3 in
their ceilings. The Government will assist this by providing a $400 per
household rebate for the insulation. About half the dwellings in
Australia still do not have insulation. This rebate will therefore be
extended to all homes wishing to install insulation if it does not
exist. This measure will save about 470,000 tonnes of CO2 each year at
a cost of about $44 per tonne of greenhouse gas.
Green cars
THE Government
will accelerate the reduction of import tariffs on fuel-efficient cars,
including hybrid vehicles, fuel-efficient diesel and petrol engines
with a five-star fuel efficiency rating or better in the Government's
Green Car Guide. Presently, an import duty of 10 per cent applies to
all passenger vehicles and this is scheduled to fall to 5 per cent from
2010. This measure will cut the cost of low emissions vehicles by
between $1000 and $2000, and save 750,000 tonnes of CO2 each year at a
cost of about $266 per tonne.
Energy-smart offices
COMMERCIAL
offices in Australia account for about 10 per cent of our greenhouse
gases. Some of the cheapest energy savings can be made by simple
retro-fitting of airconditioning, ventilation and by switching to low
energy and smart lighting, which combined account for about 70 per cent
of office energy consumption. The Government will set up an expert
panel of energy efficiency experts who will work with the Property
Council and associated agencies to underwrite the cost of retrofitting
offices across Australia until 2012. These buildings will then be
certified Energy Smart and the energy savings used to repay the cost of
the initial retrofit. This scheme will therefore be revenue neutral,
but is expected to save about two million tonnes of greenhouse gases
each year.
Low-emissions targets
AT present the
Government creates incentives for renewable energy by mandating a 2 per
cent renewable energy target. The Government seeks to increase the
scope and scale of this target by introducing a 10 per cent mandatory
low-emissions technology target, which will include renewable energy as
well as other low-emissions technologies including abatement
technologies up to the equivalent of 0.2 tonnes of CO2 emitted per
megawatt hour. This will exclude gas but foster the development of a
wider range of low-emissions technologies. The present cost of the
existing scheme of $40 to $70 per tonne of CO2 is expected to be halved
by opening up a wider range of abatement options.
Go solar
THE Government
provides financial assistance to those households investing in solar
cells to provide renewable energy for their homes. But they are very
expensive. A basic domestic solar power system starts at about $13,000
to save about 65 per cent of total electricity use. To date, about 8000
homes in Australia have taken advantage of the offer (of a rebate of up
to $4 per peak watt) since 2000. The Government will therefore increase
this subsidy to $6 and target 10,000 new homes each year. This will
save about 48,000 tonnes each year at a cost of $100 per tonne of
greenhouse gas saved.
Accelerated clean coal
COAL and gas
provide more than 80per cent of Australia's electricity and power much
of the world's economy. Being able to make them clean by capturing and
storing greenhouse emissions underground is critical to a low-emissions
pathway for the globe. Equally, if this technology is not cost
effective or limited by technology or geology, it is critical Australia
and the world know this sooner rather than later so we can make
decisions about alternative technology pathways. To this end the
Government will invest $500 million, matched dollar for dollar by the
coal industry, to rapidly accelerate research and development of clean
coal technology as well as accelerated geological surveying to identify
all suitable storage locations.
Carbon-neutral air travel
AIR travel is a
substantial source of greenhouse gas emissions. From 2008 all domestic
air travel in Australia will be required to offset the greenhouse gases
emitted for each flight. This is likely to add about $6 to $10 per seat
per trip. This will be used to finance the sequestration of greenhouse
gases in forests and other approved offset schemes. This initiative
will add about $400 million to the cost of domestic air travel in
Australia each year and save the equivalent of about 18 million tonnes
of carbon emissions a year.
Environment levy
THE Government
recognises that the Australian economy is built on its access to cheap
energy. But at the same time we must drive restructuring and efficiency
if we are to remain competitive. Therefore, from 2010 the Government
will place a price on carbon of $5 per tonne in the form of an
environmental levy to raise about $2 billion, which will be reinvested
into delivering energy savings and efficiency gains for Australian
industry. This reinvestment will be managed by a panel of industry
representatives, with particular focus on accelerating efficiency gains
in energy-intense sectors such as metals processing, cement,
electricity generation and pulp and paper processing. This reinvestment
in the economy has the potential to save up to 50 million tonnes of
greenhouse gas each year and will help climate change-proof Australian
industry.
Emissions trading
A WELL-DESIGNED
emissions trading system is widely considered the most efficient way to
deliver across-the-board reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Recent
reports have reinforced the Government's concern that a stand-alone
Australian scheme will add considerable cost to business and
households. Learning from the European experience, it is also clear
that it is likely to take several years to establish a workable and
efficient trading regime. Therefore this Government will begin
development of an emissions trading scheme in Australia to begin
operation by 2012, designed to integrate with global systems as they
evolve. From 2012 each state government will be asked to nominate a
20-year regime of emission limits, which will form the basis for
domestic trading from that date. New Zealand will also be invited to
participate under the Closer Economic Relations agreement between our
two countries.
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CLEAN ENERGY - GREEN POWER DOUBLES IN VICTORIA + SORTING GREEN FROM GREENWASH
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Black balloons inflate green awareness
David Rood
March 13, 2007
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/black-balloons-inflate-green-awareness/2007/03/12/1173548107194.html
THE vivid
campaign message of countless black balloons filled with greenhouse
gases bursting from whitegoods has struck a chord, with the number of
Victorians using renewable energy sources almost doubling over the past
year.
According to
State Government figures, the number of Victorians using
government-accredited GreenPower suppliers surged from 80,000 in
December 2005 to 157,000 by December last year.
Victoria also
leads the nation in users of renewable energy sources, with Queensland
coming in second with 88,611 users and NSW third with 58,355.
Under the GreenPower scheme, consumers buy energy from renewable sources, such as wind and solar power.
Victorian
Energy and Resources Minister Peter Batchelor said the public realised
that using renewable energy was a way to help the environment.
"It is often
daunting for an individual as to how they might be able to contribute …
But in so many ways, people coming together they do make a
contribution," Mr Batchelor said.
He said renewable energy supplied about 4 per cent of Victoria's energy needs.
Director of
Environment Victoria's climate change campaign, Trisha Phelan, said the
Bracks Government's awareness campaign, including the black balloon TV
commercial, had been highly effective.
"But there isn't a government, state or federal, doing enough on climate change," she added.
Ms Phelan
warned consumers to be aware of the types of renewable energy they were
buying, as not all power companies were offering GreenPower-accredited
products.
She said the
Bracks Government had set a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions
by 60 per cent — based on 2000 levels — by 2050, but that target should
be a 30 per cent reduction by 2020, based on 1990 levels.
But Mr
Batchelor said the 2050 target was achievable in greenhouse gas
reductions and in terms of what the Victorian economy could deliver.
"We are not asking people to turn off the lights and stop using electricity, but … to increasingly use green power," he said.
The Government
also wants power producers to develop technologies that will reduce
emissions. The Government wants 10 per cent of Victoria's energy to
come from renewable sources by 2016.
http://www.greenpower.gov.au
------------------->
Green power schemes, sorting green from greenwash:
www.greenelectricitywatch.org.au
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CLEAN ENERGY - WIND POWER
------------------->
Bluff and bluster: The campaign against wind power
Mark Diesendorf
23 February 2005
<www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3057>
Wind power is
one of the fastest growing energy technologies in the world. Since the
industry took off in Denmark the early 1980s
(<www.windpower.org/en/core.htm>), it has created tens of
thousands of new jobs globally and the installed global capacity has
passed 40,000 megawatts (MW), generating enough electricity to power
over 10 million homes.
In Australia
wind power capacity is over 250 MW and the industry is growing rapidly,
at least until 2007 when the tiny Mandatory Renewable Energy Target is
expected to be achieved. Yet Australia’s wind energy potential is
large. The scenario study, A Clean Energy Future for Australia (1),
proposes that 20 per cent of Australia’s electricity could be generated
from wind power by 2040, the same percentage that was achieved in
Denmark in 2003.
Wind turbines
are best sited in prominent places such as on ridges, hill-tops and
near the coast, where they can catch the wind. Although the numbers of
people, identified in public surveys as being concerned about the
visual effect of wind turbines is tiny, anti-wind groups are even being
set up in areas of degraded farmland that are almost treeless and often
extensively eroded. Anti-wind campaigners are succeeding in creating
anxieties in rural communities by claiming that wind has major
environmental impacts and technical limitations.
Some of these
campaigners pose as environmentalists, while actually being unwilling
to say or do anything of substance about the greenhouse effect, one of
the most serious of all global environmental problems.
This article
critically examines the environmental and technical anti-wind arguments
that are being disseminated and the politics of opposition to wind
power. In doing so I take the position that every person is entitled to
their own aesthetic judgement about the visual effect on the landscape,
but they are not entitled to bolster their subjective opinions by
disseminating exaggerated and in some cases entirely false notions
about the environmental impacts and technical performance of wind power.
Alleged environmental impacts
Opponents claim
falsely that wind turbines are very noisy, a major killer of birds and
a threat to biodiversity in general. In reality, during operation
modern wind turbines reduce the biodiversity damage done by fossil
fuels and emit essentially no chemical pollution. Their only physical
emission, noise, is inaudible beyond several hundred metres, except
under very rare topographical conditions.
The energy
required to build a wind turbine is generated in 3-5 months of
operation, so, with a 20-year lifetime, a wind turbine generates 48-80
times the energy required to construct and install it. Wind turbines
are highly efficient in capturing renewable energy, since blades
occupying only about 5 per cent of the swept-out area can in practice
extract 30-40 per cent of the wind energy flowing through that area. As
a result the material inputs to a wind farm are modest and indeed are
comparable with those of an equivalent thermal power station without
fuel.
Of the
thousands of existing wind farm sites around the world, there are
really only two (Altamont Pass in California (2) and Tarifa in Spain
(3)) where bird casualties have been a significant problem and only two
(both in West Virginia, USA (4)) where bat casualties are a problem.
Australian studies on the impacts of wind farms on birds show that
there is an even lower level of impact here than was predicted on the
basis of northern hemisphere experience. This may be because Australia
does not experience the same concentrations of migrating birds found in
some parts of Europe and the USA.
In comparison,
on a single foggy night about 3,000 birds were killed when they
collided with the chimneys of a fossil-fuelled power station in
Florida, USA. The main hazards to birds are lattice-type communication
towers, office buildings and cats.
To assess the
biodiversity impacts of coal versus wind power, the global impacts, as
well as the local impacts, must be taken into account. Global climate
change resulting from the human-induced greenhouse effect is predicted
to wipe out many species of animals and plants. In Australia the
biggest single source of greenhouse gas emissions is coal-fired power
stations. By substituting for coal and other fossil-fuel power
stations, wind power reduces carbon dioxide emissions and therefore
saves global biodiversity.
To reduce local
biodiversity impacts of wind farms, planning guidelines for the siting
of wind developments are being put into place by Federal, State and
Local Governments. Proposed wind developments have to receive planning
approval under the Commonwealth’s Environment Protection and
Biodiversity Conservation Act (5) and also under any local regulator.
This addresses the protection of wetlands and other specific areas of
environmental importance and sensitivity.
Wind farms are
highly compatible with agricultural and pastoral land. Their towers and
access roads occupy very little land, only about 0.25-0.75 hectares per
megawatt of installed capacity, leaving the rest for sheep, cattle,
wheat, etc. For the same amount of electricity generated, coal-fired
power stations and their mines (even underground) have much bigger
impacts on land.
Reliability of Wind Power
Opponents of
wind power often claim erroneously that, as an “intermittent
generator”, wind power cannot be run as base-load to replace coal-fired
power stations and cannot contribute to peak demand without expensive
dedicated long-term storage. Since no-one is proposing to run a whole
electricity grid on wind power alone, these claims are simplistic. In
each of our State studies (pdf file 435KB), the clean energy mix
substitutes separately for both the contributions to peak-load (as
measured by Equivalent Firm Capacity or Effective Load-Carrying
Capability) and to base-load (as measured by annual electricity sent
out) of a coal-fired power station.
One critic of
wind power claims that a single heat wave in western Europe, during
which there was little wind, demonstrates that wind power is unsuitable
for providing electricity to the grid. But, if this argument were
valid, then a single breakdown of a coal-fired power station would also
rule out coal. In practice all types of power station - fossil, nuclear
and renewable - are only partially reliable and all require some
backup. Coal-fired power stations break down less frequently than there
are calms in the wind, but when a coal station breaks down, it is
generally out of action much longer than a typical wind calm.
Therefore the
comparison of the reliability of wind and coal power cannot be done
deterministically, based on a single peak event. The correct approaches
consider the effects of three different probability distributions:
* the availability of coal-fired power stations;
* wind power; and,
* electricity demand.
These are then
combined with the use mathematical and or computer models to calculate
the reliability of electricity grids with different penetrations of
wind power.
This was done
by a multidisciplinary research team in CSIRO and ANU in the 1980s.
Three different methods gave the consistent result that wind power is
indeed partially reliable. It has economic value in substituting for
the capital cost of coal-fired power stations, as well as for the fuel
burnt in such stations. These results were confirmed by overseas
researchers.
For the special
case of small penetrations of wind power into an electricity grid, the
value of wind power as “firm” (i.e. 100 per cent reliable) capacity is
equal to the annual average wind power generated. As the penetration of
wind power into a grid becomes very large, the value of wind power as
“firm” capacity tends towards a limit. At a wind energy penetration of
(say) 20 per cent, some additional peak-load (hydro or gas turbines) is
indeed required to maintain grid reliability. But this peak-load plant
is only a fraction of the wind capacity and does not have to be
operated frequently. It is equivalent to reliability insurance with a
low premium. And it does not diminish significantly wind’s reduction of
CO2-emissions.
Who gains from attacks on wind power?
In the UK, the
umbrella organisation opposing opponent of wind power is called Country
Guardian. At least until recently, one of its top office-bearers had a
close relation to the nuclear power industry, which is being pushed
forward as a possible competitor for renewable energy in reducing
greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation.
Australia
generates about 84 per cent of its electricity from coal, the highest
percentage after Poland and South Africa. Clearly the coal industry and
possibly one of the largest users of (subsidised) coal-fired
electricity, the aluminium industry, would benefit from the anti-wind
power campaign in Australia.
Incidentally,
my own connection with wind power is that I was leader of the CSIRO
(6)/ANU wind power research group mentioned above. I am not being paid
for writing this article.
Conclusion
Wind power is
one of the most environmentally benign of all energy sources. Anti-wind
power groups that exaggerate environmental impacts and technical
limitations should be scrutinised for possible funding from industries
that stand to gain from attacks on wind power. Like conventional
sources of electricity, wind power is partially reliable and, with a
small amount of inexpensive backup, could contribute 20 per cent of
Australia’s electricity. In Denmark, where wind power already
contributes 20 per cent of electricity, there is very little community
opposition. Danes generally support wind power as an environmentally
sound, job-creating technology that has already substituted for some
coal-fired power stations. But, Denmark does not have its own coal
resources and it has rejected nuclear power.
Dr Mark
Diesendorf teaches in the Institute of Environmental Studies,
University of New South Wales. He is also Director of Sustainability
Centre Pty Ltd.
(1) <wwf.org.au/ourwork/climatechange/cleanenergyfuture>
(2) < www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/programs/bdes/altamont/altamont.html>
(3) <www.nationalwind.org/publications/avian/avian98/15-Janss-Tarifa_Spain.pdf>
(4) <www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=18542>
(5) <www.dpiwe.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/WebPages/BHAN-53SUFW?open>
(6) <www.csiro.au/index.asp?type=blank&id=EnergyTransformed>
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CLEAN ENERGY - WAVE POWER
------------------->
Australia's First Wave Power Plant Ready to Roll
March 01, 2007
By Rob Taylor, Reuters
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=12314
PORT KEMBLA,
Australia -- Australia's cities are drought-parched and its desert
outback drenched by floods, but climate change has not yet killed the
country's famed surf beaches, or their promise of clean eco-power.
Australia's
first commercial wave-generated power station will in weeks begin
supplying homes south of Sydney with electricity and fresh drinking
water, courtesy of the sea.
"The energy in
waves is the densest of any natural sources of energy. It's pretty much
always there and it doesn't go away like sun and wind do," John Bell,
the Chief Finance Officer from station developer Energetech told
Reuters.
Lying anchored
just 100 metres (yards) off a popular surf beach near Wollongong, a
city of around 200,000 people just south of Sydney, the 485-tonne plant
will power 500 homes along the local grid.
Electricity is
generated when waves wash into a funnel facing the ocean, driving air
through a pipe and into a turbine capable of pumping 500kw of clean
power each day into the local grid.
The A$6 million
($4.7 million) floating plant, built to withstand a 1-in-100 year
storm, can also desalinate 2,000 litres of drinking water each day for
almost as many homes as it powers.
The station is
also popular with local surfers, having created a nearby sandbar with a
small surf break, despite the difficulty of getting to it from Port
Kembla's port.
Bell said the
plant was the prototype for a larger installation of 10 stations to be
built on the wave-battered southern Australian coast near Portland, in
Victoria.
"We'll have a
queue to roll these things out, because the fact we can do both
electrical energy and desalinated water is quite compelling," he said.
Interest in
building similar plants has come from Hawaii, Spain, South Africa,
Mexico, Chile and both U.S. coasts, with Energetech having just
completed a round of venture capital raising, mainly in Europe.
"Our production units will be producing one million litres of water each day and we can produce at very low cost," Bell said.
The costs of power from the plant ranged below 10 cents per kilowatt of electricity and under A$1 per 1,000 litres of water.
The Portland plants, floating like an ocean-bound wind farm, would produce 10 megawatts, enough for around 15,000 homes.
The turbine at
the heart of the station employs new techology which allows it to spin
in the same direction, irrespective of wind direction in the tunnel.
"We believe its
got the best chance of any of those natural sources to get close to, or
we believe get below, the cost of fossil fuel," Bell said.
Source: Reuters
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CLEAN ENERGY - SOLAR
------------------->
Solar Energy Conversion Offers A Solution To Help Mitigate Global Warming
Science Daily —
Solar energy has the power to reduce greenhouse gases and provide
increased energy efficiency, says a scientist at the U.S. Department of
Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, in a report published in the
March issue of Physics Today.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070307075611.htm
Currently,
between 80 percent and 85 percent of our energy comes from fossil
fuels. However, fossil fuel resources are of finite extent and are
distributed unevenly beneath Earth's surface. When fossil fuel is
turned into useful energy through combustion, it often produces
environmental pollutants that are harmful to human health and
greenhouse gases that threaten the global climate. In contrast, solar
resources are widely available and have a benign effect on the
environment and climate, making it an appealing alternative energy
source.
“Sunlight is
not only the most plentiful energy resource on earth, it is also one of
the most versatile, converting readily to electricity, fuel and heat,”
said Crabtree. “The challenge is to raise its conversion efficiency by
factors of five or ten. That requires understanding the fundamental
conversion phenomena at the nanoscale. We are just scratching the
surface of this rich research field.”
Argonne carries
out forefront basic research on all three solar conversion routes. The
laboratory is creating next-generation nanostructured solar cells using
sophisticated atomic layer deposition techniques that replace expensive
silicon with inexpensive titanium dioxide and chemical dyes. Its
artificial photosynthesis program imitates nature using simple chemical
components to convert sunlight, water and carbon dioxide directly into
fuels like hydrogen, methane and ethanol. Its program on thermoelectric
materials takes heat from the sun and converts it directly to
electricity.
The Physics
Today article is based on the conclusions contained in the report of
the Basic Energy Sciences Workshop on Solar Energy Utilization
sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. Crabtree and Lewis served
as co-chairs of the workshop and principal editors of the report. The
key conclusions of the report identified opportunities for higher solar
energy efficiencies in the areas of:
* Electricity –
important research developments lie in the development of new, less
expensive materials for solar cells, including organics, thin films,
dyes and shuttle ions, and in understanding the dynamics of charge
transfer across nanostructured interfaces.
* Fuel – solar
photons can be converted into chemical fuel more resourcefully by
breeding or genetically engineering designer plants, connecting natural
photosynthetic pathways in novel configurations and using artificial
bio-inspired nanoscale systems.
* Heat –
controlling the size, density and distribution of nanodot inclusions
during bulk synthesis could enhance thermoelectric performance and
achieve more reliable and inexpensive electricity production from the
sun's heat.
Last month, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations
released a report confirming global warming is upon us and attributing
the growing threat to the man-made burning of fossil fuels.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by DOE/Argonne National Laboratory.
------------------->
Earth Talk: What Will Make Solar Energy Competitive?
E Magazine. Posted March 12, 2007.
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/49141/
EarthTalk, the weekly column from E Magazine helps readers understand what will help make solar energy competitive.
Dear EarthTalk:
I'm "pro-solar" all the way for the sake of the environment, but solar
power has not historically been very cost-effective. What innovations
are coming down the pike that will bring costs down to make solar
competitive with other energy sources? -- Will Proctor, Richmond, VA
The prospect of
generating pollution-free power from the sun's rays is appealing, but
to-date the low price of oil combined with the high costs of developing
new technology have prevented the widespread adoption of solar power in
the U.S. and beyond. At a current cost of 25 to 50 cents per
kilowatt-hour, solar power costs as much as five times more than
conventional fossil fuel based electricity. And dwindling supplies of
polysilicon, the element found in traditional photovoltaic cells, are
not helping.
According to
Gary Gerber of the Berkeley, California-based Sun Light & Power,
not long after Ronald Reagan moved into the White House in 1980 and
removed the solar collectors from the roof that Jimmy Carter had
installed, tax credits for solar development disappeared and the
industry plunged "over a cliff."
Federal
spending on solar energy picked up under the Clinton administration,
but trailed off again once George W. Bush took office. But growing
climate change worries and high oil prices have forced the Bush
administration to reconsider its stance on alternatives like solar, and
the White House has proposed $148 million for solar energy development
in 2007, up almost 80 percent from what it invested in 2006.
In the realm of
research and development, enterprising engineers are working hard to
get solar power's costs down, and expect it to be price-competitive
with fossil fuels within 20 years. One technological innovator is
California-based Nanosolar, which replaces the silicon used to absorb
sunlight and convert it into electricity with a thin film of copper,
indium, gallium and selenium (CIGS). Says Nanosolar's Martin
Roscheisen, CIGS-based cells are flexible and more durable, making them
easier to install in a wide range of applications. Roscheisen expects
he will be able to build a 400-megawatt electricity plant for about a
tenth of the price of a comparable silicon-based plant. Other companies
making waves with CIGS-based solar cells include New York's DayStar
Technologies and California's Miasolé.
Another recent
innovation in solar power is the co-called "spray-on" cell, such as
those made by Massachusetts' Konarka. Like paint, the composite can be
sprayed on to other materials, where it can harness the sun's infrared
rays to power cell phones and other portable or wireless devices. Some
analysts think spray-on cells could become five times more efficient
than the current photovoltaic standard.
Environmentalists
and mechanical engineers aren't the only ones bullish on solar these
days. According to the Cleantech Venture Network, a forum of investors
interested in clean renewable energy, venture capitalists poured some
$100 million into solar start-ups of all sizes in 2006 alone, and
expect to commit even more money in 2007. Given the venture capital
community's interest in relatively short-term returns, it's a good bet
that some of today's promising solar start-ups will be tomorrow's
energy behemoths.
------------------->RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE
CLEAN ENERGY - LIGHT BULBS & SOLAR WATER HEATING
------------------->
A brighter idea to help the planet
Geoff Strong
March 14, 2007
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/a-brighter-idea-to-help-the-planet/2007/03/13/1173722463940.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
THROWING the
switch on incandescent light bulbs, as federal Environment Minister
Malcolm Turnbull announced last month, will indeed reduce Australia's
embarrassing runaway growth in greenhouse gas emissions. Whether this
will translate into helping save the planet from global warming is
another matter.
As intended,
the gesture has created the expectation that the estimated two-thirds
reduction in electricity used will stop, on the Government's figures,
800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide being emitted annually.
There is one
problem with this argument. In banning the inefficient standard light
bulb, the main candidate to replace it will be the compact fluorescent
lamp (CFL).
The new lamps
(which have been around since the late '70s) are far more internally
complex, need considerably more energy to manufacture than
incandescents and are made exclusively overseas, mostly in China. So by
cutting down on Australia's greenhouse emissions by replacing
incandescents, a case can be made that we are simply transferring
increased greenhouse emissions to the countries where CFLs are produced.
Exactly how
much is likely to be transferred is difficult to work out because the
people who should know — Turnbull's office and even one of the main
suppliers, Phillips — say they don't have any information on how much
more energy goes into making CFLs.
An incandescent
is a glass bulb on a thin metal base with some wiring inside and
electrical contacts on the bottom. A CFL too has a glass top, metal
base and some wiring, but opening the plastic bit of a failed CFL
(after removing it from the socket, of course) will reveal a pile of
electronics known as the ballast. It starts with a doughnut-shaped
printed circuit board to which are attached transistors, capacitors,
resistors and even a tiny transformer.
All this is thrown out every time one of these lights is changed.
As a
spokeswoman for Phillips admitted this week, this ballast is the part
of the lamp least likely to fail when it wears out. The most likely is
the emitter electrode inside the glass bit that gives out the light.
It is said that
CFLs last between four and 10 times longer than a conventional bulb. If
this is true, any extra manufacturing energy would be easily cancelled
out by the greater efficiency.
But as someone
who has used CFLs in most household light fittings for nearly 20 years,
I can say from experience that this simple change might not help save
the planet as much as the Government would have us believe.
I have found
some fluorescents last an extraordinarily long time. One is possibly 20
years old, another about 15 and others are at least 10. Compared with
incandescent bulbs that just stop when they wear out, some CFLs
gradually become dimmer, but this is a minor problem.
However, many
cheaper brands don't last anything like the time claimed. Recently I
have experienced a run of cheaper CFLs that have lasted only a couple
of months. One even exploded and caught fire.
With the
Government banning incandescent bulbs within three years, it is a fair
bet that most households, especially that large proportion stretched
with debt or on low incomes, will go for the cheapest CFLs they can
find.
While buying
cheaper and throwing away more might be neutral for household budgets,
it reinforces the point made earlier that more energy will be used in
manufacture for something tossed into landfill.
Despite current
legislators' reluctance to interfere in the marketplace, it might be in
the Government's interest to impose some sort of standard for CFLs sold
here.
There is
another alternative, already rejected by light manufacturers. In the
early years of CFLs, some makers produced them in two parts, with the
light component detachable from the base. My 15-year-old lamp is of
this type. The burner part, which usually fails, could be replaced and
the base with all its electronics reused.
But these
two-part lamps were a bit longer and, as Phillips said last week, they
were withdrawn because consumers didn't like their size.
In the years
since, all CFLs have become smaller. So as they become the de facto
light of choice in Australia in three years, might it not be
appropriate for the Government to lean on manufacturers to reintroduce
the two-part design?
After all, they say they are doing it for the environment.
Geoff Strong is an Age reporter.
------------------->
Now a push to turn hot water green
Wendy Frew Environment Reporter
February 21, 2007
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/now-a-push-to-turn-hot-water-green/2007/02/20/1171733763726.html
A FEDERAL
Government proposal to phase out inefficient light bulbs in a bid to
tackle climate change has been welcomed by energy experts and
environmentalists, who hope it will lead to other energy efficiency
programs.
The plan to
introduce new lighting standards legislation by 2010, announced
yesterday by the Environment Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, could be
replicated in areas such as home insulation and hot water systems, they
said.
Together, such
programs would significantly cut demand for electricity and curb
greenhouse gas pollution, without threatening jobs or industry,
Greenpeace's energy campaigner, Mark Wakeham, said.
"This will be a very fast way of getting compact fluorescent light bulbs into every house in the country," he said.
"We are always talking about job losses … with energy efficiency it is really a win-win."
Greenpeace
estimated replacing electric hot water systems with solar hot water and
water efficient shower heads by 2020 would save 17 million tonnes of
carbon dioxide a year, the equivalent greenhouse gas pollution emitted
by a large coal-fired power station.
Mr Turnbull
said the most effective and immediate way to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions was to use energy more efficiently. "We have been using
incandescent light bulbs for 125 years and up to 90 per cent of the
energy each light bulb uses is wasted, mainly as heat," he said,
explaining the Government's preference for the more energy efficient
fluorescent bulbs.
The founder of
the "Ban the Bulb" campaign, Jon Dee, said statistics from the light
bulb manufacturer Philips showed there were 135 million incandescent
light bulbs in Australian homes, about 17 per household.
Replacing them
with compact fluorescents, which last about six times as long,
represented a saving to the consumer of $30 over the lifetime of the
bulb, or a $170 cut to electricity bills every year.
On a national
basis, the change-over would knock off $1.3 billion from the annual
household electricity bill, and save 13.2 billion kilowatts of power a
year.
Although the
proposal was a good first step, it did not take much political courage
because it didn't upset any industry lobby groups, the managing
director of the energy efficiency company Big Switch, Gavin Gilchrist,
said.
"I look forward
to the day when lobby groups are taken on and we ban off-peak electric
hot water, selling residential and commercial buildings without any
electricity performance data and electricity market regulation that
favours coal-fired generators."
The Opposition
Leader, Kevin Rudd, gave the idea his "complete support". The Greens
also applauded it, but called on the Federal Government to do more.
In Tamworth,
Esther Bailey, the director of a company selling energy efficient
products, Neco, has already sensed a change in consumer attitudes
towards energy efficiency. In conjunction with the council, Neco has
been running a free campaign in the rural city to exchange standard
light bulbs in homes with energy efficient ones.
"We used to
almost exclusively talk to people about cost savings [from energy
efficiency] but since Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth we can speak more
openly about the environmental benefits," Ms Bailey said.
------------------->
The glass ceiling
Liz Minchin and Chantal Rumble
February 21, 2007
http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/the-glass-ceiling/2007/02/20/1171733766181.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
IT MAY be a bit
fat and old-fashioned compared to sleeker, modern alternatives, but how
did the humble incandescent light globe earn its reputation as
greenhouse enemy number one?
As anyone who
has ever asked how to reduce their personal contribution to climate
change would know, "change your light bulbs" is invariably among the
first tips on the list of things to do. Now it's official government
policy. The Federal Government has announced that Australia will become
the first country to ban incandescent light globes to save wasted
energy and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
But do the old globes deserve their reputation as being bad for the planet? And is a ban the right way to go?
In an era when
gadgets such as mobile phones, MP3 players and computers seem to be
updated almost daily, the incandescent globe is a remarkably
long-lasting piece of technology, having survived for more than 125
years. While electric lighting has been around for almost two
centuries, it only became possible to start using light bulbs around
the home in the late 19th century, thanks to prolific American inventor
Thomas Edison.
Improving on
existing lights, in 1879 Edison designed a far more reliable bulb using
lower-current electricity, a small carbonised filament, and an improved
vacuum inside the globe. But even today's incandescent bulbs remain
very inefficient, converting only about 5 per cent of the energy they
produce into light.
By the early
20th century, fluorescent lights had been developed, creating light by
heating gases inside a glass tube. Today's compact fluorescent lights
last up to 6000 hours — or four to 10 times longer than incandescent
bulbs — and use about 80 per cent less electricity.
According to
the Government, phasing out incandescent globes over the next three
years could save about 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a
year by 2012 and as much as 4 million tonnes in 2015.
At best, that
would be far less than a 1 per cent cut in Australia's greenhouse
emissions, which were 564.7 million tonnes at last count in 2004 and
are forecast to keep growing rapidly.
Yet the
Government's decision to ban inefficient bulbs was widely applauded
yesterday, by everyone from welfare and environment groups to shoppers
out buying new lights.
"We need to
make efficiency gains in every sector," said Alternative Technology
Association energy policy manager Brad Shone. "There's no point saying
one area is too small and we shouldn't worry about it."
But several
cautioned that much broader energy reforms were needed to make a real
dent in Australia's greenhouse emissions, such as further improvement
of building regulations and introducing a "carbon price" for greenhouse
emissions.
Greater energy
efficiency could also save us money. In 2004, the Federal Government's
energy white paper found that many Australian businesses and households
could slice 10 to 30 per cent off their power bills without reducing
productivity or comfort levels, potentially saving up to $15 billion.
One of the
Government's initiatives in that paper was to force Australia's biggest
industry energy users — which each use as much energy as 10,000
Australian homes — to audit their energy use and report on possible
ways to save energy. But the federal scheme does not compel the
companies to do anything beyond publicly reporting their results.
In contrast, a
Victorian scheme for the state's top 250 energy users requires
companies to implement any energy savings that could pay for themselves
within three years and has started saving about 1.1 million tonnes of
greenhouse emissions a year.
The biggest
hurdle in changing Australia's light bulbs until now has been the
price. Although compact fluorescent bulbs save energy and money by
lasting longer, they currently cost about four times more than an
old-fashioned globe.
Welfare groups say that upfront cost will make life harder for people on low incomes.
Victorian
Council of Social Service policy and public affairs manager Kate Colvin
says reducing emissions is a priority but the costs of change should
not be borne by the poor. "The cost of this policy will hit low-income
households harder so there needs to be a program to subsidise the
upfront costs of replacing these light bulbs," she says.
St Vincent de
Paul Society policy and research manager Gavin Dufty said the
Government could ease the transition by offering subsidies in the form
of discounts on presentation of pension cards at the counter, GST
exemptions or through an extra payment in the utility rebate.
"For a person
on a low income, $8 is significant. It could cover a fortnightly
payment for a utility bill," he says. "In the longer term, the new
bulbs may be cheaper but the pay-back period for households on low
incomes will be too long."
But the National Seniors Association, which represents almost 300,000 people aged over 50, welcomed the decision.
"An area of
concern that's emerging from our membership is the environmental
shadow, or the environmental legacy, they are leaving for their
children," association chief executive Michael O'Neill says.
"We believe that it's not going to be a significant initial cost to people and they will work through it over time."
Anastasia
Morrit, a Northcote resident shopping for lights in Abbotsford
yesterday, said she had already installed energy-efficient bulbs in the
main living areas of her home.
"It seems expensive but they last a lot longer so it all works out in the end, and it's helping the environment," she says.
She is not
alone. The nation's biggest light retailer, Beacon Lighting, last year
sold almost 157,000 energy-saving globes — a dramatic rise from the
33,400 sold in 2004. The company expects to sell more than 300,000 this
year.
But there is still resistance to the new products and sales of incandescent globes have remained steady.
Denise Hammond,
manager of Beacon Lighting's Abbotsford store, says customers are
cautious because they are not familiar with the new lights.
"It's like with anything new. People want to know 'What is it? What's it going to do for me?' "
They are also
deterred by aesthetics, she says. Many customers presume the only
option is the sickly white flickering tube of old, and until recently
the options have indeed been sorely limited.
But today's
fluorescent lights come in a range of shapes, colours and strengths,
will suit most light fittings, and will soon be joined on the shelves
by a range of new energy-efficient technologies, including solid-state
lighting, or LEDs, now in development.
Greenpeace
energy campaigner Catherine Fitzpatrick says the light bulb ban is
significant if it signals the Government will be more willing to pass
laws on climate change.
"To solve the
climate and water crisis we are going to have to do more than ban
old-fashioned light bulbs, but it's a great symbol, a great step,"
Fitzpatrick says. "But the measure will be where they go from here."
With AP
------------------->
The three amigos of climate change
Miranda Devine
February 25, 2007
http://www.smh.com.au/news/miranda-devine/the-three-amigos-of-climate-change/2007/02/24/1171734069459.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
YOU KNOW
Australia has lost its mind on the green front when the conservative
Howard Government starts emulating the communist dictatorship of Cuba.
Federal
Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull's plan, foisted without warning
on the nation last week, to ban incandescent light bulbs from 2010 and
force us to replace them with more energy-efficient fluorescent ones,
was hailed almost unanimously around the world as a bright idea.
While the
Government billed the switch as a world first the Associated Press soon
pointed out that Cuba's dictator Fidel Castro launched a similar
program two years ago to make citizens swap incandescent bulbs for
fluorescents. His protege, Venezuela's socialist president Hugo Chavez,
soon followed suit.
You might say Turnbull, Castro and Chavez are the three amigos of the climate change nanny state.
But at least
the communists gave fluorescent bulbs away for free. In Australia we
are expected to pay six times more for the new bulbs, as well as for
any new fittings.
In Cuba, Castro
has enforced his light bulb giveaway by using thousands of students,
euphemistically called "social workers", to enter people's homes,
whether they like it or not, and change the bulbs. At the same time,
they take an inventory of electrical appliances in the home.
Now there's an idea.
This is not to
say that encouraging Australians to replace their 135 million
incandescent light bulbs with more energy efficient lights is not
worthwhile.
It's just that
we should have a choice about it. The Government could achieve a
similar result by offering incentives such as free bulbs or rebates, in
much the same way that the NSW Government has given $150 rebates for
water-efficient, four-star-rated washing machines.
Instead, in a
stroke of political brilliance, the entire cost of the light bulb
extravaganza is to be borne by individual consumers, while Turnbull
gets the kudos.
The advantage
of fluoro bulbs is they use 25 per cent less electricity than
incandescents, which convert most energy input into heat. But while the
technology has improved, with new "warmer colours" offered as
alternatives to the institutional cool blue, fluorescent light still
seems less pleasant.
Even "warmer"
globes have a clinical, unearthly quality. Maybe it's psychological.
Maybe it's a primal hangover from our days in the cave when the
flickering flames of a hot fire kept gremlins at bay. Maybe we'll get
used to the new regime.
But it's worth
noting psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, a member of the advisory
committee for the Government's Boys' Education Lighthouse Schools
Program in 2003, has advocated the removal of fluorescent lighting in
classrooms after studies showed its flickering nature reduced boys'
ability to learn and concentrate, especially if they have autism or
attention deficit hyperactive disorder.
Interior
designers and vain women have always known that skin looks better under
the warm glow of an incandescent bulb. And since dimmer switches can't
be used on most fluorescents, there goes the mood lighting.
In any case,
light-emitting diode technology, using even less energy, is the coming
revolution that will render the supposedly modern compact fluorescent
technology obsolete. Light bulb manufacturer Osram is reported to have
an LED bulb ready for the market by the end of next year.
The Government
boasts that banning incandescents will cut Australia's emissions by "as
much as" 800,000 tonnes a year by 2012. That is a reduction of just
0.14 per cent.
And even deep
green New Zealand is warning of problems ranging from the
incompatibility of light fittings to the safe disposal of toxic mercury
contained in fluorescent bulbs.
But there are less painful ways to reduce household gas emissions, which account for about six tonnes per household per year.
According to
the Australian Greenhouse Office, lighting accounts for just 5 per cent
of household greenhouse-gas emissions, clothes washing and drying
accounts for 2 per cent, cooking 3 per cent, fridge/freezer 9 per cent,
home heating and cooling 11 per cent, electronic and other appliances
15 per cent, water heating 16 per cent and travel a whopping 34 per
cent.
The AGO points
out that each household could save more than two tonnes of greenhouse
gas by buying a new efficient fridge, 1.5 tonnes by using gas to heat
hot water. Using cold water to wash clothes saves almost half a tonne a
year. But every litre of petrol saved cuts greenhouse-gas emissions by
2.8 kilograms.
So what kind of
hypocrisy is there in a government that bans incandescent light bulbs
while subsidising people who drive fuel-guzzling, greenhouse
gas-emitting, giant four-wheel-drives?
With a 5 per
cent import tariff on four-wheel-drives, most of which are imported,
compared with a 10 per cent tariff on other cars, the Government is
encouraging us to drive vehicles that are the worst greenhouse
offenders of all. Work that out.
------------------->RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE
CLEAN ENERGY - BIOMASS/BIOENERGY
------------------->
Energy solution is growing on trees
http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/energy-solution-is-growing-on-trees/2007/02/19/1171733684904.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Andrew Lang
February 20, 2007
SOME
influential politicians appear dazzled by the nuclear option as the
solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. By contrast, many
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries have
turned from nuclear to another option of base-load power that has been
effectively ignored here.
Sweden,
Finland, Austria, Britain and Germany, among others, are investing
heavily in energy plants fuelled by woody waste, often mixed with
flammable municipal waste.
Sweden, once a
significant importer of Australian coal, has gone well along this path
and is now generating about 20 per cent of its energy needs from woody
biomass. This nation of about 8 million now has about a quarter of the
Australian emissions of greenhouse gases per head, while maintaining a
lifestyle most Australians would envy. Some cities and municipalities
are as low as a sixth of Australia's per-head emissions, and aim to
reduce them further. Many strategies Sweden uses can be readily
introduced here, with the scope to rapidly and cost-effectively halve
our greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.
Why has Sweden
adopted a policy to phase out its reliance on nuclear reactors and
fossil fuels and switch to other energy sources? The answer is complex,
involving its history, the well-managed forestry resource, and its
political philosophy. It also is influenced by its recent experiences
of the radiation fallout from Chernobyl, and the acid rains due to
polluting Soviet heavy industry.
The country was
hard hit by the two oil shocks of 1973 and 1976. It now has a stated
aim of being independent of imported fossil fuels by 2030. Its cheapest
domestically available fuels for energy generation are wood and peat.
Since 1990, it has decommissioned two of its nine nuclear plants, and
its policy is to eventually close them all, as energy production from
renewable sources and more efficient energy use allows. Sweden's share
of energy from biomass is now about 20 per cent, projected to rise to
40 per cent by 2025. While much of this is heat energy for households
and industry, combined heat and power (CHP) plants of all sizes up to
500 megawatts throughout the country also put electricity into the
national grid.
The city of
Vaxjo, in central Sweden, claims the lowest per-head emissions in
Sweden and the European Union, at 3.5 tonnes. The city aims to reduce
this to about 2.4 tonnes by 2010. This compares with the EU overall at
11 tonnes and the US — with its many nuclear reactors — about 24
tonnes. To achieve this requires conversion of the city transport fleet
to run on biofuels, encouraging greater use of biofuels by private car
owners (the use of 85 per cent ethanol is doubling each year),
organising more biofuel outlets at service stations, developing more
bicycle paths and reducing household electricity use through increased
efficiencies and awareness.
Electricity and
heat for Vaxjo houses, institutions and industry comes from CHP plants
fuelled by chipped wood waste and flammable dry municipal waste. The
Vaxjo sewage plant is producing enough biogas (methane) to fuel 100
cars year-round, in addition to heat for the plant. Sweden has
industrialised the old technology of methane production by fermenting
organic material, including grass and food waste.
The supply of
biofuels will not be from agriculture, but from forestry byproducts.
Vaxjo is involved in the cutting-edge technology of the woody biomass
gasification plant at the nearby city of Varnamo. This is the EU pilot
plant developing the technology for cost-effective conversion of woody
biomass to transport fuels such as dimethyl ester (DME). Vaxjo has
installed a DME fuelling outlet for trial vehicles in the municipal
fleet.
In Australia,
woody biomass is largely underutilised. Expansion of the plantation
sector of the industry could increasingly include well-sited dispersed
commercial sawlog woodlots on farms. These dispersed woodlots could
potentially total 5 million hectares across all states in
30 years. When
properly sited, these will not have a significant impact on stream
flows, but will have great environmental, social and economic benefits,
including an increasing bank of sequestered carbon.
It has the potential to solve many of the environmental and economic problems facing Australia's rural areas.
The plantation
industry byproduct can fuel perhaps 30 per cent of base-load energy
needs, and result in a safe, rapid and significant reduction in
greenhouse gas emissions. It is carbon-neutral energy, and most of the
ash can be recycled (Sweden recycles more than a million tonnes of ash
from bioenergy plants a year). All upside, environmentally beneficial,
relatively fast to implement, and cost-effective. The puzzle is why it
is not receiving the federal political support it would appear to
warrant.
Andrew Lang
attended the 2006 World Bioenergy Conference in Sweden. He is a
Churchill Fellow, farm forester and chairman of SMARTimbers
Co-operative.
------------------->
NT fuels green energy
By BEN LANGFORD
19feb07
http://www.ntnews.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,7034,21248086%5E13569,00.html
THE proposed new green waste energy plant at Darwin's Shoal Bay has drawn a cautious welcome from environmentalists.
Environment
Centre NT co-ordinator Peter Robertson said he had met with the chief
executive of the company proposing to develop the plant, and was
pleased with initial environmental indicators.
`We're moving closer to welcoming it,'' he said.
``It seems that
the waste energy plant itself will be pretty close to zero emissions.
From what I can work out, it's mainly water vapor _ but that depends on
the power generation side of the plant.''
The plant,
proposed by Darwin City Council and the Victorian-based Renewable Oil
Corporation, would burn green waste to create oil and electricity,
which could subsequently be used to power mines.
Mr Robertson said the plant appeared to be capable of improving greenhouse gas emissions.
``When the oil
itself is burned at the mine site, then there will be some emissions as
well _ but relative to the diesel that would have been used otherwise,
the emissions are very low,'' Mr Robertson said.
``Overall and
compared to the decay of the green waste _ which would normally decay
into methane, which is a very serious greenhouse gas _ from a
greenhouse emissions point of view, it would seem that the project is
quite a positive thing.''
But he said the plan would still need to be referred to the Environment Minister for assessment.
``My
understanding, and I've spoken to the EPA, is that they will still be
required to go through some formal assessment and it is through that
process more detail will be provided.''
The energy
plant would use pyrolysis technology _ using heat to break green waste
down into oil and charcoal _ to produce fuel and electricity.
It would also generate green electricity to be put into the Darwin grid.
------------------->
Biofuels: An advisable strategy?
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-03/uadb-baa030707.php
Public release date: 7-Mar-2007
Biofuels have
been an increasingly hot topic on the discussion table in the last few
years. In 2003 the European Union introduced a Directive suggesting
that Member states should increase the share of biofuels in the energy
used for transport to 2% by 2005 and 5.75% by 2010. In 2005 the target
was not reached and it will probably not be reached in 2010 either (we
are in 2006 at approximately 0.8%), but anyway the Directive showed the
great interest that the European Commission places on biofuels as a way
to solve many problems at once. The new European energy strategy,
presented on 10th January 2007, establishes that biofuels should
represent at least 10% of the energy used for transport .
Biofuels are
not competitive with fossil fuel-derived products if left to the
market. In order to make their price similar to those of petrol and
diesel, they need to be subsidized. In Europe, biofuels are subsidized
in three ways: 1) agricultural subsidies, mainly granted within the
framework of the Common Agricultural Policy; 2) total or partial
de-taxation, which is indispensable, because energy taxes account for
approximately half of the final price of petrol and diesel; 3) biofuels
obligations, which establish that the fuels sold at the pump must
contain a given percentage of biofuels.
These three
political measures need financial means, which are paid for by the
European Commission (agricultural subsidies), by the governments
(reduced energy revenues), and by car drivers (increase in the final
fuel price). For this reason, an integrated analysis is needed in order
to discuss whether investing public resources in biofuels and employing
a large extension of agricultural land is the most advisable strategy
to solve the problems associated with fossil fuels.
The main
argument behind the policies in favour of biofuels is based on the idea
that biofuels would not increase the concentration of greenhouse gases
in the atmosphere. In fact, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by
biodiesel in the combustion phase is the same as that absorbed by the
plant during its growth through photosynthesis, resulting in a neutral
carbon budget. Moreover, substituting part of the oil products with
biofuels would reduce the European energy dependency and increase
energy security.
However, a more
careful analysis of the life cycle of biodiesel reveals that the energy
(and CO2) savings is not so high as it might seem at first sight, and
in some cases might even be negative. In fact, the raw materials for
biofuels are normally obtained with intensive agriculture, which imply
a high use of fertilizers, pesticides and machinery. The reason is
that, with less intensive agricultural methods, the yield would be
lower and the land requirement and the costs would be higher. Also,
fossil fuels are used in the processing phase (oil pressing,
trans-esterification) and for transporting the oil seeds to the
processing plant and from there to the final users.
In any case,
even if the objective of the Directive were met, the savings would not
be significant. In fact, since the transport sector accounts for 30% of
the final energy consumption, the 5.75% of the fuels for transport
corresponds to 1.8% of the final consumption. Taking into account that
this amount requires the indirect use of fossil fuels, the final
savings would be even lower.
For example,
considering a very optimistic output/input ratio (the biodiesel
produced using one unit of fossil fuels) of 2.5 , we obtain that
reaching the 5.75% percentage (approximately 20 million tons of oil
equivalent) would imply saving around 36 million tons of CO2
equivalent, i.e., less than 1% of the European Union emissions in 2004
(4,228 million tons CO2) If we take into account the emissions related
to the transport of raw materials that are imported and the imports of
food crops that would be substituted by energy farming, the savings
would be even less, and if the oil seeds are imported from outside
Europe possibly even negative.
Another point
that is often raised to promote biofuels is urban pollution. Biofuels
are not only seen as a "green" fuel on a global scale (reduction of
greenhouse effect) but also on a local scale. They would contribute to
reducing traffic contamination, and therefore the numerous ailments
associated with it. In reality, the advantages from this point of view
are very modest. For example, according to a study of the USA
Environmental Protection Agency (2002), if diesel is replaced with a
blend of 20% biodiesel (B20), Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) would increase by
2%, particulate matter (PM), unburnt Hydrocarbons (HC) and Carbon
Monoxide (CO) would decrease by respectively 10.1%, 21.1% and 11% .
Therefore, it can be assumed that with a 5.75% blend, the reduction in
PM, HC and CO would be respectively 3%, 6% and 3% (and the increase in
NOx would be negligible).
Against the
modest advantages (a small substitution of fossil fuels and a slight
reduction of some contaminants with respect to diesel), the
disadvantages of a large-scale biodiesel production are apparent.
Due to the low
yield, the land requirement is enormous. In the Biomass Action Plan
(Annex 11) it is calculated that in order to achieve the 5.75% target
(18.6 million toe biofuels), about 17 million hectares would be needed,
i.e. one fifth of the European tillable land (97 million hectares).
Since there is not so much marginal and abandoned land in Europe, the
consequence would be the substitution of food crops and a huge increase
of the food imports.
For this
reason, both in the Biomass Action Plan and in the EU Strategy for
Biofuels it is stressed that Europe will promote the production of raw
material for biofuels in extra-European countries, where the European
Commission intends to incentive energy farming.
This means that
the impacts of energy farming would be exported to Southern countries.
It is easily foreseeable that if the European demand for biofuels
increased because of biofuel obligations and other supporting policies,
Southern countries may be stimulated to replace if not food crops at
least native forests with large monocultures.
Energy farming
would presumably have a big role in deforestation, because pristine
forests would be cut down in order to cultivate energy crops. The
consequences would be, besides a worrying reduction of wild
biodiversity, a decrease in soil fertility, water availability and
quality, and an increase in the use of pesticides and fertilizers, as
well as negative social effects like potential dislocation of local
communities.
The European
Directive, and in general all biodiesel promoting policies, do not only
imply a competition for arable land but might also incentive
plantations of palm trees, whose oil is cheaper than any other source.
Palm plantations are responsible for most deforestation in South
Eastern Asia and represent a real threat to the remaining native
forests. Also they are responsible for a high soil erosion rate. For
example, between 1985 and 2000 in Malaysia palm plantations caused 87%
of the total deforestation and further 6 million hectares will be
deforested to make room for palm trees . The same more or less applies
to sugarcane plantations in Brazil.
Moreover,
taking into account the CO2 emissions due to inter-continental
transport and the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere due to
deforestation (forests are CO2 sinks), the final result might be an
overall increase of the greenhouse emissions instead of the whished
reduction.
Another
possible negative consequence is a reduction in world food
availability, which can be a particularly serious problem in a context
of increasing population and energy demand. A recent example is the
increase in corn price in Mexico by 30% in early 2007, caused by the
growing demand for corn-derived bioethanol in the USA (Mexico is a net
importer of corn from the USA). Some use the term "ethanolinflation" .
Also, a large
scale biodiesel production would imply a strong environmental impact in
the agricultural phase: the huge monocultures of energy crops would
dramatically reduce agricultural biodiversity, with strong
environmental impact in terms of soil erosion, use of fertilizers and
pesticides, and water requirement. Also, one of the consequences may be
an increase in the use of GMOs. In fact, soybean, maize and rapeseed
(among the most used raw material to produce biofuels) are respectively
the first, second and fourth most important GMO crops.
Another
argument often used in favour of biofuels is rural development.
However, it can be argued that support to biofuels should not be used
as agricultural subsidies. If the objective is to support agricultural
sector, subsidies should be granted to organic agriculture and
landscape protection.
Concluding,
using public funding to support a large scale biofuel production is not
an advisable strategy. Obviously, these considerations do not apply to
used oil or agricultural residue recycling, nor small-scale niche
productions, all of which may be good strategies, instead.
Summing up,
biodiesel cannot contribute to the solution of the problems related to
the high dependency of our economy on fossil fuels. The idea that
biodiesel could be a solution for the energy crisis is not only false,
but also dangerous. In fact, it might favour an attitude of
technological optimism and faith in a technological fix of the energy
problem. We should never forget that if we want to reduce the use of
fossil fuels there is no magic wand: the only possible solution is to
modify consumption patterns.
------------------->RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE
CLEAN ENERGY - GEOTHERMAL HOT ROCKS
------------------->
Flannery tips hot-rock future for miners
Brad Norington and Matthew Warren
February 15, 2007
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21228619-2702,00.html
AUSTRALIAN of
the Year Tim Flannery has offered an olive branch to coalminers, whose
job security could be under threat because of moves to combat climate
change, saying many could eventually switch to working in a booming
geothermal energy industry.
Professor
Flannery said yesterday energy harnessed from the heat of rocks up to
4km below the earth's surface could provide "a century's worth of
power" in Australia.
He said
geothermal energy was a highly promising resource available in northern
South Australia, western Victoria, parts of Queensland and the Hunter
Valley in NSW, which is the home to many of Australia's 30,000
coalminers.
Addressing an
Australian Workers Union national conference on Queensland's Gold
Coast, the environmental scientist said he had been wrongly accused of
wanting to shut down the coal export industry, but strong remedial
action was needed to stop high levels of carbon emissions from coal
that put the world's wellbeing at serious risk.
Professor
Flannery's views on the coal industry were widely reported last week
after he said on the ABC's Lateline program that the "time has already
come" where it was no longer in the national interest to export coal,
and that the social licence to mine coal was being rapidly withdrawn.
He also said that Australia needed to build a bridge to a new energy future and ultimately close coal-fired power stations.
He told
unionists yesterday that planning should be under way for the full
introduction of a geothermal resource by the year 2030, with a huge
energy infrastructure rivalling the Snowy Mountains scheme that could
employ many people.
Professor
Flannery said he was relieved not to receive a frosty reception from
union delegates, and later appeared briefly startled when AWU national
secretary Bill Shorten thanked him for his presentation and quipped:
"Ifthe Prime Minister hugs David Hicks when he returns, hemay even hug
Tim Flannery."
Mr Shorten said
responses to climate change had to take into account sustainable jobs
and that his members worked in areas of high energy use.
"We love our steel, our aluminium, our tobacco ... We like extraction. We like our big trucks," he said.
Tony Maher, the
leader of Australia's coalminers, last night described Professor
Flannery's enthusiasm for handing coalminers new jobs as uninformed.
"It sounds a bit bonkers to me," he said.
"The set of
skills for coalminers is well established. Jobs needed for geothermal
energy are unknown. If I hazard a guess, they are the same as a drill
operation, but that sort of hard rock drilling is not what miners do -
that is what city tunnel workers do."
The head of
geothermal development company Geodynamics, Adrian Williams, said
yesterday that Australia's main geothermal resources were in the Cooper
Basin of South Australia. He said the first big onshore well to capture
hot rock energy would be drilled later this year, leading to the first
commercialisation of technology - a 40-megawatt power station - by 2010.
Dr Williams said Australia could have as much as 4500MW of geothermal energy by 2030, or about 10 per cent of current demand.
Coal accounts for about 83 per cent of electricity generation.
------------------->
US urged to boost its geothermal power capacity
12:08 23 January 2007
NewScientist.com news service
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/energy-fuels/dn11010-us-urged-to-boost-its-geothermal-power-capacity.html
Mining the heat
stored in rocks in the Earth's crust could meet a growing portion of US
electricity demand and replace ageing nuclear and coal plants with an
environmentally friendly alternative, researchers claim.
A study from
MIT found that the mining of geothermal energy could be done on a far
larger scale than now, reducing spiralling oil import bills and
strengthening US energy security.
"This is a big
resource that is perhaps undervalued by people who are thinking of
options for the country," said Jefferson Tester, an MIT chemical
engineer who led the 15-month study released on Monday. "We're running
out of time here with our existing fleet of nuclear reactors and all
the coal-fired plants that we have that are exceeding emission
guidelines."
Geothermal
power is generated by drilling deep wells into which water is pumped.
The heated water then rises back up to power turbines that generate
electricity.
Doubling capacity
Geothermal
energy is renewable and non-polluting, once the plants are built, and
could even consume carbon dioxide. It is already on the rise globally
as expensive oil and gas make it increasingly competitive, despite its
high set-up costs.
The world's top
energy consumer, the US, is leading the way, with 61 projects in the
works. This would double its geothermal capacity to more than 5000
megawatts, according to the Geothermal Energy Association, a trade
group.
MIT's study
<http://geothermal.inel.gov/publications/future_of_geothermal_energy.pdf>
is described by it authors as the most far-reaching on the subject in
30 years. It concludes that in 50 years the nation could achieve a
capacity of 100,000 megawatts – enough to supply about 25 million homes
– at an eventual cost of just $40 million a year. That would represent
about 6% of the current US electricity supply.
"It wouldn't
take a lot of money. It's not like this requires billions of dollars to
accomplish," said Tester, who helped develop thermal energy technology
in the 1970s.
Deep drilling
The proposed
program would require a combined public and private investment of $800
million to $1 billion in the first 15 years – about the same amount
needed to build one new clean-coal power plant, the study said.
The study also
notes that, "unlike conventional fossil-fuel power plants that burn
coal, natural gas or oil, no fuel would be required. Unlike wind and
solar systems, a geothermal plant works night and day, offering a
non-interruptible source of electric power".
But there are
challenges, including high capital costs for land and the engineering
challenges of deep drilling. "It's the sub-surface engineering where
the risk is and we think the risk has been greatly reduced because of
the knowledge of the field work in Europe and in Australia," said
Tester.
"I don't want
to see us be in a situation where we are importing a big fraction of
our natural gas just to generate power, and I think that's the
direction we are headed in if we don't start to produce some
alternatives," he added.
Energy and
Fuels - Learn more about the looming energy crisis in our comprehensive
special report.
<http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/energy-fuels>
------------------->
Last Update: Thursday, February 22, 2007. 9:00am (AEDT)
Firm on track to drill 'hot rock' well
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200702/s1853760.htm
A Queensland
company working to develop 'hot rock' geothermal resources in the
Cooper Basin says it is confident it will be able to develop an
emission-free, renewable energy source.
Geodynamics
Limited has been working for several years in the South Australian and
Queensland outback exploring in the Cooper Basin.
It has
purchased a $32 million drill rig which it says will allow it to
develop Australia's first commercial scale hot rock well by the middle
of the year.
Chief executive
Adrian Williams says support for the industry is increasing because
people are now realising its potential to help combat climate change.
"We believe
that the Cooper Basin can generate more power than eight to 10 Snowy
Mountain schemes ... so it's a very, very significant energy resource
and we know it's there," he said.
"For example,
we know that we've got four times more energy in the Cooper Basin than
Australia has in all its gas reserves ... so all we have to do I think
is get on with it and do it."
------------------->
Bid for hot-rock energy
Liam Walsh
February 18, 2007 11:00pm
Article from: The Courier-Mail
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,21245930-3102,00.html
IT'S been three
years since the State government proclaimed new laws would put
Queensland on the verge of developing a green energy source buried
underground in the heat of rocks.
It's been two years since Premier Peter Beattie proclaimed such geothermal power to be a "future of energy".
It's been four months since he blasted his federal peers for not funding a Queensland-based geothermal company.
Yet no one today, it seems, is drilling in Queensland in the hunt for hot-rock power.
Geothermal energy has recently captured headlines amid global warming gloom.
Blame for
warming is pointed at industries like coal. So geothermal energy – seen
as a clean, renewable source of electricity – is naturally a darling.
It can be
tapped via near-boiling underground water (already happening near
Birdsville) or hot springs, or by accessing rocks between 3-5km
underground with temperatures over 200C.
From a business view, hot rocks are attracting hundreds of millions of dollars in preliminary work.
"Initial
estimates indicate the hot dry rocks beneath the Eromanga and Cooper
basins could meet all of Australia's energy needs for 800 years, if all
of that hot rock could be exploited," Energy Minister Geoff Wilson says.
A 2006 state
government report says heat is derived by the radioactive decay of
rocks and tectonic activity, and then is trapped in some deposits.
One technique
it cites to extract the heat is drilling into the rocks, which might
then be split (fractured) with high-pressure fluid.
Water is then pumped into the fractured area, becoming superheated.
That water is brought to the surface and goes through a heat exchanger, which then drives a turbine to generate electricity.
Serious research and big money backs the theory, but pulling it off is tough.
The main trick is generating electricity economically compared with coal.
Another hurdle
is finding the right temperatures at the right depths. Exploration
costs millions with no guarantee rocks will prove hot enough.
A third obstacle is technical hiccups. Companies have to deal with intense pressures and heat, making drilling tricky.
Brisbane-based
Geodynamics, a well-reputed organisation which has raised $92 million,
last year abandoned a 4km-deep well in South Australia after pieces of
equipment became stuck or twisted off.
Work has also
temporarily stopped at a multimillion-dollar site in Switzerland when a
series of tremors affected a town only 3km away. The tremors came after
water was injected at high pressure into a 5km-deep borehole.
Then there's the issue of the states' legal framework.
So far, SA has charged ahead with laws since 2000 dealing with geothermal exploration.
Now SA boasts of garnering over 90 per cent of all current geothermal licences and forecast exploration investment in Australia.
Companies plan
to spend more than $500 million between 2002-2011 for exploration and
proof-of-concept work there, SA's Primary Industries & Resources
Department says.
"We operate as one window to the investment (community)," the department's Barry Goldstein says.
Twelve companies had applied for 109 geothermal exploration licences, he says.
In Queensland,
government consultants are studying the geothermal potential of the
Great Artesian Basin, which is already tapped for a "geothermal" plant
in Birdsville.
"The plant has very low efficiency, but meets base load needs," the government's 2006 report said.
But no one can
point to any exploration of hot rocks occurring currently in
Queensland, despite a legal framework being set up in 2004.
The laws
outlined a tender system for allocating land and envisioned
responsibilities of companies, and how they would detail planned
expenditure.
"By
establishing a legal regime for geothermal exploration, we are putting
the Smart State in the box seat for an exciting new industry," Mr
Beattie said then.
"It will
attract significant new exploration and research investment to
Queensland ... and put us at the forefront of emergent, leading edge
technology."
But hold-ups struck, which the government in 2005 linked to finalising regulations.
By April 2006, preferred tenderers were finally announced for the first blocks released for geothermal exploration.
That tendering process hardly set the sector on fire. One of six blocks was withdrawn as no one tendered.
The
Courier-Mail reported then that companies including Green Rock Energy,
Petratherm and Eden Energy did not apply citing reasons including the
time frame and criteria for deposits.
The successful tenderers were stockmarket-listed Geodynamics and Red Hot Rocks, a private company.
Neither have started exploring.
"Geodynamics is
waiting for the (government) to issue us with licences covering the two
geothermal blocks," Geodynamics says in its latest report.
Its chief
executive Adrian Williams, diplomatically, will only say he is
"relaxed" about the government's response so far and the tender system
is straightforward.
He says
Queensland might have significant potential, but points out the data so
far is sourced from explorers looking for other resources.
There "might be an opportunity" for companies with innovative ideas if they can select areas to explore, he says.
RHR director John Shirley is not bitter over the delays, saying they are part of the business.
"The government response has been very positive," Dr Shirley says.
The government
told RHR it was working on resolving native title issues, he says.
"(We're) waiting for the government to come back to us," he says.
The government did not answer why delays had occurred.
On Friday
night, it released a statement saying tenderers had to get
environmental authorities and native title clearance before permits are
issued – but could not say if this was the problem.
Now a second tender for 10 blocks has begun.
Eden Energy will look at what's on offer but its chairman Greg Solomon says Queensland's model is "very difficult".
He says
processes involve large amounts of paperwork and long lead times
compared to SA, which has a more "free-market ... streamlined approach"
and resulted in attracting more exploration interest.
Queensland's future will require more legislative work.
Allens Arthur
Robinson partner John Greig says current laws are "even-handed" but
only half the package. It was important to work on the next half
involving production, he says.
That might finally deal with royalties.
That's a
critical issue even in exploration, according to some industry
watchers, as some companies might be wary of spending on exploration
without knowing the government's ultimate take.
SA has a
royalty scheme of 2.5 per cent of the net selling value of geothermal
energy. This value takes account of allowable deductions like
depreciation.
Wilson's spokeswoman says consultation about possible production laws should begin by mid-year.
The government also stressed current laws dealt with native title. It did not answer a range of issues canvassed in this piece.
But today a number of advertisements are slated to appear in regional papers about the tenders.
"The search," Minister Wilson said in a statement on Friday about geothermal power, "is on."
On the web:
* Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Water
http://www.nrw.qld.gov.au/mines/geothermal/index.html
* Geodynamics
http://www.geodynamics.com.au/IRM/content/home.html
* South Australian Department of Primary Industries and Resources
http://www.pir.sa.gov.au/dhtml/ss/section.php?sectID=910&tempID=8
* Geothermal Resources Council
http://www.geothermal.org
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CLEAN ENERGY SOLUTIONS - ENERGY EFFICIENCY - BUILDING STANDARDS
------------------->
CBD buildings growing greener
Michelle Draper
February 24, 2007
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/cbd-buildings-growing-greener/2007/02/23/1171734022046.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
MELBOURNE property developers are racing to build more energy-efficient, water-saving offices.
The surge of
green development is being driven by businesses that want to be seen as
good corporate citizens and to attract employees.
Government has
also played a big role, with state and federal governments requiring
minimum green standards for space occupied by bureaucrats. And
Melbourne City Council recently moved staff into its new green
building, Council House 2.
Developers are
building high-rating green offices because there is intense competition
for tenants demanding environmentally friendly standards. Most of the
office towers to be built in the CBD and Docklands over the next three
years are working towards the second-highest rating awarded by the
Green Building Council of Australia.
This means
those office complexes will probably be awarded a 5-star rating, which
indicates Australian excellence in green building design when measured
against eight environmental criteria. Six-star ratings are given only
for world-leading examples of environmentally friendly design.
Buildings are measured on criteria including energy, water, materials, indoor air quality and pollution.
Melbourne City
Council requires all new CBD buildings of more than 5000 square metres
to achieve a minimum 4-star green rating, as well as a 4.5-star
Australian Building Greenhouse Rating — which just measures energy
efficiency — and to use no more than 30 litres of water a person a day.
Offices leased
or built by the Victorian Government must also meet the same standards
on both ratings systems. The Federal Government requires its workplaces
of more than 2000 square metres to have a 4.5-star greenhouse rating.
It is estimated that government offices make up about 15 per cent of the Melbourne CBD office market.
The only new
Australian building to achieve a six-star rating from the Green
Building Council is Council House 2. But there is growing evidence the
business sector is following local government's lead.
Victorian
Building Commissioner and Green Building Council chairman Tony Arnel
said it was only a matter of time before 6-star buildings became the
new green. "The competition in the market will drive 6-green star
buildings in the next few years," he said.
Andrew Tracey,
a commercial leasing director with Colliers International, said
developers who did not build green might turn away potential tenants.
He questioned whether young employees would choose to work in buildings
that were not environmentally friendly.
Offices touting
green credentials include two high-rise towers being built on the
corner of Bourke and William streets, called CBW. The developer, CBus
Property, is aiming for a 5-star green rating from the Green Building
Council and a 4.5-star greenhouse rating. Banking giant ANZ is also
shooting for a 5-star rating at its new Docklands office, due for
completion in late 2009. Rainwater collection, fresh air and a
landscaped roof will help. And a controversial glass tower proposed for
behind St Paul's Cathedral by a Macquarie Bank subsidiary is also
aiming for a 5-star rating.
Australian
office buildings produce about 8.8 per cent of national greenhouse gas
emissions and generate about 46.4 million tonnes of carbon
dioxide-equivalent emissions, according to the Green Building Council.
It estimates a green office building could expect to reduce water and
energy consumption on average by 40 to 60 per cent, compared with a
conventional building.
Property group
Investa claims it has reduced its energy consumption across its 35
office towers by 14 per cent since introducing green initiatives in
2003. Investa's general manager of sustainability, Craig Roussac, said
the company calculated a 60 per cent return on its investment in
energy-saving initiatives — a saving of $1.3 million a year on an
investment of $2.2 million. Since 2003, water consumption fell 27 per
cent and electricity use dropped by 19 per cent across Investa's
buildings.
EARNING YOUR STARS
THE Green
Building Council of Australia awards buildings four to six stars, with
four representing best practice and five Australian excellence.
Six-star ratings are given only for world-leading examples of
environmentally friendly design.
The Australian
Building Greenhouse Rating scheme is a national program developed by
the NSW Government that rates a building's greenhouse performance on a
scale of one to five, by calculating carbon dioxide emissions.
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CLEAN ENERGY - EUROPE
------------------->
EU summit adopts energy-climate strategy
Last Update: Friday, March 9, 2007. 11:15pm (AEDT)
www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200703/s1868256.htm
European Union
leaders have clinched agreement on a bold long-term strategy for energy
policy and climate change aimed at leading the world in the fight
against global warming, diplomats say.
The deal
setting binding targets for slashing greenhouse gas emissions,
developing renewable energy sources, promoting energy efficiency and
using biofuels laid down a challenge to the United States and other
industrialised powers to follow suit.
"There's a deal
on the whole package," one diplomat said. He explained that while the
27 leaders had set binding Europe-wide objectives, "setting national
targets will be done with the consent of the member states".
German
Chancellor Angela Merkel, who chaired a two-day summit, put forward the
key compromise to secure agreement to set a legally binding target for
renewable fuels such as solar, wind and hydro-electric power - the most
contentious issue.
Leaders
accepted the target of 20 per cent of renewable sources in EU energy
consumption by 2020 in exchange for flexibility on each country's
contribution to the common goal.
"This text is indeed a breakthrough as regards the environment and climate change policy of the European Union," Ms Merkel said.
Germany added
wording to win over states reliant on nuclear energy, led by France, or
coal, such as Poland, and small countries with few energy resources,
such as Cyprus and Malta, by adding references to the national energy
mix.
"Differentiated
national overall targets" for renewables should be set "with due regard
to a fair and adequate allocation taking account of different national
starting points", it said.
On Thursday,
the 27 leaders committed themselves to a target of reducing EU
greenhouse gas emissions, blamed for heating the planet, by 20 per cent
by 2020 and offered to go to 30 per cent if major nations such as the
United States, Russia, China and India follow suit.
European
Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called it "the most ambitious
package ever agreed by any commission or any group of countries on
energy security and climate protection.
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BASELOAD ELECTRICITY - DEBUNKING THE MYTHS
------------------->
In mid-March
the EnergyScience Coalition is releasing a comprehensive paper by Dr.
Mark Diesendorf from UNSW debunking the myths about baseload
electricity.
It will be posted at: <www.energyscience.org.au/factsheets.html>
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NATIONAL NUCLEAR WASTE DUMP PROPOSED FOR NT
------------------->
Owners offered 100-year rent plan for nuke dump
By Nigel Adlam
March 10, 2007 12:00am
http://www.news.com.au/sundayheraldsun/story/0,21985,21356937-662,00.html
TRADITIONAL
owners have been offered $9 million every five years for 100 years to
allow a nuclear waste facility to be built on their land.
The Federal
Government money would go to the Northern Land Council for distribution
among the 395 owners of Muckaty Station, north of Tennant Creek.
The offer was put by the land council at a meeting on Muckaty Station.
The meeting became heated as supporters and opponents of the plan clashed.
The Northern
Territory News was told some of the opponents - dubbed "dissidents" by
the land council - were threatened with violence.
But the alleged
victims said yesterday they had been told not to reveal what happened
at the meeting or they would not be paid their share of the Federal
Government royalties.
One traditional
owner said: "Those in favour were screaming at the 'dissidents'. It got
very ugly. Many people were shocked at the anger and threats of
violence."
Land council chairman John Daly, who addressed the meeting, could not be contacted last night.
Nobody lives
permanently at Muckaty, with the majority of the land's traditional
owners living at Tennant Creek. The rest live at Elliott.
They go to Muckaty only for business meetings, ceremonies and hunting.
The Federal
Government will carry out an environmental assessment at Muckaty if
traditional owners support the nuclear waste facility.
The land council has been asked by some traditional owners to put forward a second site -- near Nhulunbuy on the Gove Peninsula.
Land council
chief executive Norm Fry said in a written statement: "Privacy and
confidentiality requirements mean that the NLC is not prepared to
comment regarding matters discussed at the meeting."
------------------->
Multi-millions in waste site offer
By NIGEL ADLAM
NT News
10mar07
TRADITIONAL
owners have been offered $9 million every five years for 100 years to
allow a nuclear waste facility to be built on their land.
The Federal
Government money would go to the Northern Land Council for distribution
among the 395 owners of Muckaty Station, north of Tennant Creek.
The offer was put by the land council at a meeting on Muckaty Station.
The meeting
became heated as supporters and opponents of the plan clashed.
The
Northern Territory News was told some of the opponents -- dubbed
''dissidents" by the land council -- were threatened with violence.
But the alleged
victims said yesterday they had been told not to reveal what happened
at the meeting
or they would not be paid their share of the Federal
Government royalties.
One
traditional owner said: "Those in favour were screaming at the
'dissidents'. It got very ugly. Many people were shocked at the anger
and threats of violence."
Land council chairman John Daly, who addressed the meeting, could not be contacted last night.
Nobody lives permanently at Muckaty.
Most of the traditional owners live at Tennant Creek. The rest live at Elliott.
They go to Muckaty only for business meetings, ceremonies and hunting.
The Federal
Government will carry out an environmental assessment at Muckaty if
traditional owners support the nuclear waste facility.
The land
council has been asked by some traditional owners to put forward a
second site -- near Nhulunbuy on the Gove Peninsula.
Land council
chief executive Norm Fry said in a written statement: "Privacy and
confidentiality requirements mean that the NLC is not prepared to
comment regarding matters discussed at the meeting."
------------------->
Council to name nuke waste sites
By NIGEL ADLAM
07mar07
www.ntnews.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,7034,21339369%255E13569,00.html
THE Northern Land Council is expected to soon name at least two potential sites for a nuclear waste facility.
But there is also a second site near Nhulunbuy.
A source told
the Northern Territory News: "The land council has tried to negotiate
in secret because it wanted to talk calmly to traditional owners
without greenies getting involved."
Labor Federal
MPs Warren Snowdon and Trish Crossin last night said an announcement on
the Federal Government's choice for the site was "imminent".
But the source said it would be months before Canberra made a decision.
"The land council will name possible sites and environmental assessments and consultation will then get underway."
Mr Snowdon and
Senator Crossin said Aboriginal-owned Muckaty would be chosen -- and
this was "another sorry chapter in (the whole) process".
They said an ALP federal government would not "arbitrarily impose" a nuclear waste facility on any community.
CLP Senator Nigel Scullion was at a bush community yesterday and could not be contacted.
But Solomon MHR Dave Tollner said the process for choosing a site had been fair and was continuing.
He said the wishes of traditional owners needed to be respected.
The land council has called a meeting at Muckaty for tomorrow morning to discuss the nuclear waste facility proposal.
Environmentalists last night accused the land council of not publicising the meeting properly.
Natalie Wasley,
from the Arid Lands Environment Centre, said: "There is clear and
demonstrated community concern over the dump plan and the dump process
among many traditional owners.
"The process has been secretive, rushed and deeply flawed. Every voice must be heard."
The land council said it was legally obliged to consult all traditional owners.
It has described those opposing the Muckaty deal as "dissidents".
------------------->
Waste opponents want summit
Northern Territory News, Page: 3
Thursday, 1 March 2007
ABORIGINAL
custodians from Muckaty Station yesterday called on the Northern Land
Council to hold a meeting of all traditional owners to decide if a
nuclear waste facility should be built on their land.
Several speakers told a meeting in Tennant Creek they opposed the depository.
"We don ’t want this stuff on our country," Yapayapa woman Dianne Stokes said.
"There is a big
lawn at Parliament House they should keep the waste there if it is so
safe." Nobody spoke in favour of the facility being built at
indigenous-owned Muckaty, north of Tennant.
The land council has been secretly negotiating with some Muckaty traditional owners about the nuclear waste facility.
It said it was legally obliged to consult land owners about the depository, and said opponents were "dissidents".
------------------->
Last Update: Thursday, February 22, 2007. 1:29pm (AEDT)
NLC ignoring traditional owners' wishes, says group
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200702/s1854184.htm
A group of
traditional owners say the Northern Land Council (NLC) is going against
its wishes by negotiating with the Federal Government over a possible
radioactive waste dump in their area.
Three defence sites in the Northern Territory are under consideration as proposed dump sites.
The traditional
owners from Muckaty Station, north of Tennant Creek, say their land is
also under consideration as an alternative site.
Dianne Stokes
represents the traditional owners and says they have written to the
federal Science Minister, Julie Bishop, stating they do not want a
waste dump.
But she says the NLC has been negotiating with the Federal Government over the issue anyway.
"What we want
them to do is start listening to us so we can act together and ... if
we say no to the waste dump we don't want it in our country, well they
should be listening to the traditional owners," she said.
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WATER USE OF DIFFERENT ENERGY SOURCES
------------------->
Saving precious water at the flick of a switch
By Tim Flannery
February 12, 2007
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/saving-precious-water-at-the-flick-of-a-switch/2007/02/11/1171128807960.html
What is the
best way to save water? You might be surprised to learn that turning
off the light can help. It takes enormous quantities of water to
generate Australia's electricity.
That's because
we're so dependent on old-fashioned coal-fired power stations. For
every megawatt of power they generate, they take two tonnes of water
(and produce one to 11/2 tonnes of carbon dioxide and lesser amounts of
greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide).
For a city such
as Sydney, so great is the power demand that a fifth of the city's
water needs is consumed by electricity generation. That water is used
in steam generation and cooling.
Nuclear power
uses lots of water too. Those ominous, steaming towers that most of us
associate with nuclear power plants are in fact cooling towers, and it
is water vapour, not radiation, that they emit.
Coal-fired
power stations often have a lake of warm water nearby. That's the
residue of water left from cooling the plant. In cold regions such as
Gippsland they steam in winter, and as legends of the bunyip abound in
the same regions, the warm ponds have an eerie feel about them
There are, of
course, technologies that can generate electricity using less water
than conventional coal, or no water at all. The newest two of
Queensland's coal-fired power plants are air-cooled, so while they
still generate greenhouse gases, they don't use precious water.
Modern
gas-fired power plants use just one tonne of water for each megawatt of
electricity generated, and far less carbon dioxide than coal, so
switching to them is a great step forward.
But wind, solar
and hydro power don't use any water at all, and none of these
technologies generates greenhouse gases in producing electricity. Some
kinds of geothermal energy (such as that found in central Australia)
also use no water, and none generates greenhouse gases. Hastening the
uptake of any of these technologies can thus help ease the water crisis.
There's no need
to install solar panels to help save water (though that helps
significantly). Buying a green energy option can do a great deal, and
it is cheaper. Given that it takes around a megawatt of power to
provide electricity to 600 homes, by either switching to green power,
or by saving electricity, you can do a great deal to save water.
All around
Australia our water crisis is growing so desperate that the managers of
the old-fashioned, coal-fired clunkers face enormous problems in
sourcing water. In NSW, dam levels have fallen so low that the
remaining water has become too salty to be used to cool the power
plants, so managers are having to invest in a type of desalination.
And everywhere
coal-fired power plants are trying to source recycled water for
cooling. On the face of it, this sounds like a great idea, but recycled
water is valuable stuff, and will become increasingly valuable in
future. Should we really allow it to be used in such prodigious
quantity to keep the old clunkers going?
In future, the
rising price of water, and the need to resort to technologies such as
desalination, must drive up the price of the electricity generated
using this technology, which will make the renewables more competitive.
This means that the old-fashioned, coal-fired power plants are being
caught in a pincer movement that must inevitably hasten their
decommissioning.
Given the
enormous problems we face in managing water, and in combating climate
change, it may be best to face the issue of their decommissioning now,
rather than wait until the ever-drier heavens forces the issue.
Tim Flannery is the 2007 Australian of the Year.
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NUCLEAR WEAPONS FOR AUSTRALIA
------------------->
Don't mention the bomb
Hugh White
March 1, 2007
http://www.theage.com.au/news/hugh-white/dont-mention-the-bomb/2007/02/28/1172338702694.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
The Federal
Government has not yet responded to the Switkowski report on
Australia's nuclear future, which was released in December. Debate on
its recommendations about nuclear power generation has moved into a
higher gear with news that senior businessmen - some with strong
Liberal Party affiliations, including Ron Walker, chairman of The Age's
proprietor, Fairfax Media - have formed a company to develop nuclear
power stations in Australia. But another issue raised by Dr Switkowski
and his colleagues deserves attention - the question of Australia's
nuclear weapons capability.
Come again? Who
is talking about nuclear weapons? Well, no one is, directly. But the
question is there, lurking just below the surface, and it needs to be
addressed. While much of the Switkowski report focused on mining and
power generation, one chapter considered whether Australia should
develop its own uranium enrichment capability. That might allow us to
make money by transforming our uranium into nuclear fuel for power
reactors before exporting it. But whether we like it or not, it would
also be a first, big step towards building nuclear weapons.
Let's sketch
the physics first. The hardest part of a nuclear weapons program is
acquiring the fissile material - the uranium or plutonium that, brought
together in a critical mass, produces the explosive chain reaction of a
nuclear blast. Enrichment is the process that turns natural uranium
into fissile material, or into reactor fuel. Uranium comes in two
isotopes, the rare U235 and the more plentiful U238. Natural uranium
has about 0.7 per cent U235. Enrichment increases that proportion. To
make fuel for nuclear power reactors, uranium has to be enriched to 3
to 5 per cent U235. To build a weapon, uranium needs to be enriched to
more than 90 per cent U235. Enrichment requires very complex technology
that costs a lot of money and time to build. So much so that mastering
the process is the biggest hurdle on the road to nuclear weapons.
But once the
fissile material is available, designing and building the bomb is
relatively straightforward. So we should be quite clear about this -
building an enrichment plant would take Australia a huge step closer to
the capacity to build nuclear weapons. With such a plant, an Australian
government would at any time be able to expel the international
inspectors and turn the plant over to producing weapons-grade, highly
enriched uranium. It would shorten the lead time for Australia to build
its first bomb from 10 years or more to perhaps two years or even less.
Don't get me wrong. I do not believe the Government is considering such
a step. It has seen uranium enrichment purely as a commercial
proposition, to allow Australia to add value to the uranium we export.
And, according to the Switkowski report, the commercial prospects for
enrichment are not all that encouraging.
Nonetheless,
the report did recommend that the Government should not discourage
development of an enrichment capability if the commercial prospects
improved. And it hardly touched on the strategic implications of an
enrichment industry in Australia, beyond warning that "any proposed
domestic investment would require Australia to reassure the
international community of its nuclear non-proliferation objectives".
That is a bit
of an understatement. Look at Iran. This week in London the UN Security
Council's five permanent members have met to consider tougher sanctions
against Iran, because Iran has refused to abandon its uranium
enrichment program, saying it wants to make fuel for its nuclear power
program. The Security Council believes Tehran wants to build nuclear
weapons, and it is almost certainly right. Australia, of course, is not
Iran. We are among the world's most active opponents of nuclear
proliferation and our safeguards to prevent our own uranium being
diverted into others' nuclear weapons programs are the most stringent
in the world. Who could suspect Australia of wanting to build nuclear
weapons?
Well, for a
start, anyone with a sense of history. In the '50s and '60s Australia
actively, if sporadically, tried to acquire nuclear weapons. And we
were among the last and most reluctant adherents to the
Non-Proliferation Treaty when it was concluded in the early 1970s. At
that time, with American engagement in Asia diminishing after Vietnam,
Australia was focused on the need to look after itself in Asia. As one
classified Defence Department analysis said in 1974, "a necessary
condition for any defence of Australia against a major power would be
the possession by Australia of a certain minimum credibility of
strategic nuclear capability".
Luckily the
three decades since then have been the most peaceful in Asia's history
and, as long as it stays that way, a nuclear weapon for Australia will
remain improbable. The question, of course, is what happens if Asia
changes? The growth of China and India, the strategic re-emergence of
Japan, and uncertainty about America's post-Iraq trajectory all raise
doubts about whether the next 30 years will be as peaceful in Asia as
the past 30 or will be as turbulent as the 30 before that.
If Asia slips
back into turmoil, how sure can we be that Australia might not again
look at the nuclear option? And more to the point, how sure could our
neighbours be? Here is the real danger to Australia of a flirtation
with uranium enrichment. No matter what we think, and no matter what we
say, a decision to develop uranium enrichment capability in Australia
would be seen by our neighbours as a short cut to nuclear weapons. We
would need to think very carefully about how they might respond.
Amid the highly
charged debate on nuclear power plants, the Government might want to
spend a moment working out its attitude to enrichment as well. To
endorse the Switkowski report's tolerant approach to the issue risks
looking either naive or devious. And it could be quite dangerous.
Hugh White is a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute and professor of strategic studies at ANU.
------------------->
Keep nuclear options open: report
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,21305910-5001028,00.html
March 01, 2007 12:00
Article from: AAP
AUSTRALIA
should keep open its options on becoming a nuclear weapons power
because it may not always be able to rely on the United States for
protection, a new report warns.
In an issues
paper for the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), author Robyn Lim
argues Australia should not rule out domestic uranium enrichment
because the day may come when it could no longer be certain the US
would safeguard its interests.
"Australia
decided long ago that our best option was to rely on the United States
for our nuclear security, rather than developing our own nuclear
weapons," she said.
"But our security environment has changed dramatically with the end of the Cold War."
Professor Lim
said that while Australia may think it's best to rely on the US for
"extended deterrence", if neighbouring countries were to take up
nuclear arms that might change.
"If more
countries in our region decided they needed nuclear weapons for their
security, Australia would need to decide what is in its own best
interests," she said.
Prof Lim used the example of Indonesia, a country over which Australia and the US have sometimes had disagreements.
"The US is a global power with global security interests, and will always see us through that prism," she said.
"We cannot be
sure that we could rely on the US for extended deterrence if we ever
came into serious conflict, in particular with Indonesia.
"Australia is important to the US, but so is Indonesia."
The threat of proliferation in the region was highlighted by renegade North Korea testing an atomic weapon last year.
Some observers
worry that if North Korea remains a threat it could eventually prompt
pacifist Japan to consider becoming a nuclear state.
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AUSTRALIA AS THE WORLD'S NUCLEAR WASTE DUMP
------------------->
Costello 'backed' nuclear idea
Katharine Murphy
March 1, 2007
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/costello-backed-nuclear-idea/2007/02/28/1172338709350.html
...
As well, a key
adviser to the Howard Government on uranium policy, Melbourne
businessman John White, registered a nuclear company in October last
year.
Mr White headed
the Howard Government's uranium industry framework, which recommended a
significant expansion of uranium mining in Australia.
Australian
Securities and Investments Commission documents show Mr White
registered Australian Nuclear Fuel Leasing Pty Ltd only weeks before Mr
Switkowski released a draft report recommending Australia builds
nuclear reactors.
Mr White said
yesterday his group had set up the company to pursue commercial
opportunities in countries with established nuclear power industries,
not in Australia.
"We aren't focusing on Australia any more," he said. "We received very little interest from the Switkowski review."
Mr White said his decision to set up the company followed a decade of independent work on his nuclear fuel "leasing" concept.
It had nothing
to do with the separate business venture pursued in the last six months
of 2006 by Mr Walker, Mr Morgan and Mr Champion de Crespigny.
...
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NUCLEAR POWER FOR AUSTRALIA - GOVERNMENT THREATENING TO IMPOSE REACTORS DESPITE STATE OPPOSITION
------------------->
Govt keeps nuclear options open
28th February 2007, 17:45 WST
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=28&ContentID=22477
The federal government has refused to rule out taking over planning controls from the states to build nuclear power stations.
Nuclear
physicist Ziggy Switkowski, who headed Prime Minister John Howard's
taskforce into the nuclear industry, has raised the prospect of a
federal takeover, saying state laws are too varied and inconsistent.
Labor Leader
Kevin Rudd asked Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane if he could rule out
taking planning controls from the states to build reactors.
But Mr Macfarlane ducked the question, saying the government had not responded to Dr Switkowski's report.
"The government
is yet to respond to that report, and I look forward to the
government's response on that report," Mr Macfarlane told parliament.
Several Liberal
backbenchers have expressed concerns about where nuclear reactors might
be sited, saying they do not want one in their electorate.
But Mr Howard said he was open to the idea of a reactor in Sydney, even in his seat of Bennelong.
"I am open-minded about where it might be, whether it's in Sydney or somewhere else," Mr Howard told Sky News.
"That is
something some years into the future and something that will be
determined by economic, environmental and regulatory considerations.
"And if we are
to have a genuine debate, a mature debate, a sensible debate, then we
must be willing to avoid and set our faces against this silly game of
will you rule it out here and there."
Mr Howard
denied he set up his inquiry into the feasibility of a nuclear power
industry to benefit Liberal Party powerbroker Ron Walker, who has
registered a company to investigate the controversial power source.
Mr Howard
conceded that he called the inquiry about the same time that Mr Walker
told him he had registered Australian Nuclear Energy (ANE) Pty Ltd.
ANE was registered on June 1, 2006 - five days before Mr Howard announced his taskforce.
But Mr Howard pointed out that then science minister Brendan Nelson had proposed an inquiry in November 2005.
"The idea that I thought gee, let's have an inquiry as a result of my conversation with Ron Walker is just ridiculous," he said.
"They didn't seek any assistance. They don't need the permission of the prime minister to incorporate a company."
Treasurer Peter Costello said Mr Walker had also told him about ANE, but said it was no great secret.
Mr Costello
said Mr Walker - the former treasurer of the Liberal Party - was a
memorable person and he remembered his conversations with him.
"I think I said 'good luck'," he told reporters.
Mr Rudd said the opposition could be excused for being suspicious.
But Foreign
Minister Alexander Downer accused Mr Rudd of being hypocritical for
wanting to expand uranium exports but not supporting nuclear power.
"What does the
leader of the opposition think that this uranium is going to be used
for? Fluorescent faced watches or something like that? Lava lamps? To
pave the streets of Paris, or Beijing, dare I say?" Mr Downer told
parliament.
AAP
------------------->
Rann wants state referendum on nuclear power
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200703/s1864719.htm
Last Update: Tuesday, March 6, 2007. 8:38pm (AEDT)
The South
Australian Premier, Mike Rann, wants a state referendum on nuclear
power if the Federal Government moves to override state bans on nuclear
power plants.
He says the
state needs legislation to trigger a referendum because the Federal
Government is promoting the idea of allowing nuclear power plants to be
built in Australia.
Mr Rann says
federal laws currently ban nuclear power plants being built in
Australia, and he says state legislation is needed to reinforce the ban
in South Australia.
The Greens say
they will introduce legislation in an effort to end any uncertainty
over the possibility of a nuclear power plant being built in South
Australia.
Greens MLC Mark Parnell says the Mr Rann has done a backflip by announcing he wants a referendum on the issue.
Last week Mr
Rann ruled out a nuclear plant ever being built in South Australia
under a Labor Government or while he was Premier.
Mr Parnell says the Premier's choice for a referendum has raised doubt and uncertainty over his previous pledge.
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NUCLEAR POWER FOR AUSTRALIA - NO COMMERCIAL INSURANCE
------------------->
No home insurance 'against nuclear risk'
March 1, 2007 - 12:04AM
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/No-home-insurance-against-nuclear-risk/2007/03/01/1172338718194.html
Research by the Australian Greens says Australian homes are uninsurable against nuclear accidents.
Greens senator
Christine Milne said the research showed insurance policies contained
nuclear exclusion clauses as a matter of standard practice.
The paper,
Nuclear Australia: Who bears the risk?, said homeowners are unable to
insure their homes, possessions and other assets against nuclear damage.
"Most
Australians would be surprised to learn that they can't insure their
home against a nuclear accident," Senator Milne said in a statement.
"If the Howard
government intends to build nuclear power reactors in Australia it will
expose homeowners to huge financial risk."
Senator Milne said the public would have to rely on common law to pursue compensation for damages from nuclear fallout.
But, she said,
the OECD'S Nuclear Energy Agency maintained that such common laws
inhibited rather than facilitated compensation claims for victims of
nuclear accidents.
"Victims would have to prove negligence in order to claim compensation," she said.
The paper examined insurance policies for property and possessions from major insurance groups AAMI, CGU, Allianz, QBE and NRMA.
It concluded that nuclear power reactors were so risky that companies would not build them without government indemnities.
"The Greens
want a level playing field for all energy operators and for Australian
citizens to be guaranteed the same access to compensation for nuclear
damages as the citizens of other industrialised nations," the paper
said.
------------------->
Garrett wants MPs to reveal stance on nuclear plant location
Last Update: Thursday, March 1, 2007. 11:19am (AEDT)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200703/s1860172.htm
Opposition
environment spokesman Peter Garrett has tried to make all Lower House
MPs reveal whether they would be happy to have a nuclear power plant
built in their electorates.
The Opposition
has been pressuring the Government to say where nuclear reactors might
be located if a nuclear industry is developed in Australia.
Many Coalition MPs have already said they would not want a nuclear plant in their seat.
Mr Garrett attempted to have all MPs explain their stance on the issue in Parliament.
"[I] noted the
stated opposition outside the house of a growing number of members to
the location of a nuclear power plant in their electorate, [I'm]
providing all members with an opportunity to come into the house and
declare their opposition to the location of a nuclear power plant in
their electorates," he said.
Mr Garrett's motion was defeated by the Government.
Meanwhile the
Greens want the owners of any future nuclear power stations in
Australia to be legally responsible for any damage that might be caused
to private property in Australia.
Greens Senator
Christine Milne says there is a standard nuclear exclusion clause in
every insurance policy, which leaves home owners liable for any costs
resulting from an accident at a nuclear facility.
Senator Milne is calling on the Government to back a Greens' Bill to force a change.
The Greens will
be moving a private member's Bill which will make it very clear that
nuclear facilities bear absolute liability for any damage to property
surrounding that facility," she said.
"Now if the Government doesn't support that then it will be leaving all Australians vulnerable."
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NUCLEAR POWER FOR AUSTRALIA - SUBSIDIES
------------------->
(Actually the
government plans to begin subsidising nuclear power in the near future
by funding uni nuclear science and engineering courses. JG.)
No help for nuclear industry: Costello
Michelle Grattan, Canberra
March 2, 2007
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/no-help-for-nuclear-industry-costello/2007/03/01/1172338796134.html
AN AUSTRALIAN
nuclear industry should not get tax breaks to help it start up but must
"stack up on its merits", Treasurer Peter Costello said yesterday.
With the
Government soon to debate the outcome of its nuclear inquiry, Mr
Costello said: "I don't think it's the role of the Government to try to
make an industry, which wouldn't otherwise be competitive, competitive."
The Switkowski inquiry into nuclear energy makes it clear that government help would probably be needed.
But Mr Costello said: "It will either stack up or it won't. If it doesn't stack up, we shouldn't do it."
He said the
equation would turn on the price of carbon emissions and developments
in clean coal technology, which may, or may not, give coal a
competitive edge.
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NUCLEAR POWER FOR AUSTRALIA - VICTORIA
------------------->
MP: nuclear unlikely
Louise Clifton-Evans
http://www.hastingsleader.com.au/article/2007/02/12/10285_hsv_news.html
12Feb07
WESTERN Port is not a strong contender for a nuclear power station according to Opposition spokesman on Ports Denis Napthine.
Dr Napthine met
with members of the Western Port Action Group and other community
members at the office of Hastings state Liberal MP Neale Burgess last
week.
He said
Victoria had between 500 and 700 years supply of brown coal, making the
idea of nuclear power redundant for many years to come.
Last week the
Australia Institute told the Hastings Leader that its research revealed
Western Port was one of the strongest contenders for a nuclear power
station.
"My point of
view is that we in Victoria have 500 to 700 years of brown coal and I
don't see any economic haste for nuclear power in Victoria,'' Dr
Napthine said.
"I can't imagine a nuclear power station being built in Victoria for another 50 or 60 years at least.
"There is an
enormous supply of brown coal that cannot be used for anything else it
can't be readily exported because it is so wet and very hard to move
around.
"It is best used for power generation.
"Our most
important challenge definitely would be to utilise our brown coal
resources in an economic and more environmentally friendly way.''
Dr Napthine
said there should be more debate on the issue of nuclear power as well
as solar, wind and wave power along with the use of brown coal.
Mr Burgess said
he was opposed to the establishment of nuclear power in Australia and
would fight any proposal to introduce such a facility to the Western
Port area "regardless of who proposes it''.
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NUCLEAR POWER FOR AUSTRALIA - AUSTRALIAN NUCLEAR ENERGY PTY LTD
------------------->
Crikey 8/3/07
<www.crikey.com.au>
Alex Flood
writes: Perusing the website of "Honest John's" market research and
election campaign gurus, Crosby Textor, one cannot be too shocked to
discover that nuclear power plant spruiker, Robert Champion de
Crespigny AC, is Chairman of the Board. I wonder how much lobbying is
being done behind closed doors? Prizes for anyone that can guess who's
going to directly benefit from "Nuking Australia". Is this the "nuclear
debate" that the PM says Australia is having?
------------------->
Wednesday, 28 February 2007
Nuclear power push steeped in cronyism and hypocrisy:
Greens
With the Prime Minister's push for nuclear reactors and
his relationship with reactor proponents Ron Walker, Hugh Morgan and
Robert Champion de Crespigny the subject of intense scrutiny, Labor's
hypocrisy on nuclear power also deserves to be put under the microscope,
the Australian Greens said today.
Greens' nuclear spokesperson, Senator Christine Milne,
said Prime Minister Howard and Opposition leader Kevin Rudd need to be
straight with the community about uranium mining, exports, nuclear
reactors and waste dumps and the discussions they are having with party
backers, pollsters, the mining industry and nuclear proponents.
"Is there a three way relationship on messaging between
Mark Textor and Lynton Crosby, their company chaired by Robert Champion
de Crespigny, and the Howard government? Are they push-polling on
nuclear? Are the messages developed in conjunction with the Howard
Government to the mutual benefit of both the government and the business
interests of the chairman of their boards?
"Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd supports increased uranium
exports and the Olympic Dam mine; the very mine that would feed the
South Australian reactor Nuclear Energy Australia Pty Ltd wants to
build.
"It is hypocritical for him to say that nuclear power
and nuclear waste dumps are too dangerous for Australia whilst at the
same time backing increased exports of uranium, saying it's good for
China.
"These concerns apply regardless of whether a nuclear
power reactor is cited in Beijing or Brisbane.
"At the same time as the Prime Minister was talking up
being part of President Bush's Global Nuclear Partnership which would
require Australia to take nuclear waste from overseas, Hugh Morgan was
saying that Australia should develop a global nuclear waste dump to
take the world's high level nuclear waste. He argued, "there's no
better use to which I think you can put the country" referring to
outback South Australia.
"Is the real agenda of NEA Pty Ltd the construction of a
global, high level nuclear waste dump? Has the Prime Minister talked to
the company about that?
"It is no wonder Australians are confused about how
Australia is suddenly in the grip of a major nuclear push when
overwhelmingly the community opposes it. Conflicts of interest,
hypocrisy, and cronyism are rife.
"Transparency of process and freedom of information are
the cornerstones of democracy. They are sadly lacking in Australia
right now," Senator Milne said.
------------------->
Walker told me about nuclear plans, says PM
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/walker-told-me-about-nuclear-plans-says-pm/2007/02/27/1172338625785.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Katharine Murphy, Canberra
February 28, 2007
Prime Minister
John Howard has revealed that former Liberal Party treasurer Ron Walker
told him he intended to set up a nuclear energy company at the time his
Government was moving towards an inquiry into the feasibility of
reactors in Australia.
As Mr Howard
stared down increasing nervousness in his ranks about the political
risks of pursuing nuclear energy, Labor pounced on news that Mr Walker
and two mining executives, Robert Champion de Crespigny and Hugh
Morgan, had registered a company intending to explore opportunities in
the nuclear industry.
Labor leader
Kevin Rudd said the company, Australian Nuclear Energy, had been
registered on June 1 last year, only days before Mr Howard announced an
expert taskforce to examine nuclear power.
Mr Howard told
Parliament yesterday Mr Walker had told him in a telephone conversation
"about the middle of last year" that he intended to register the
company.
"He said that
he, Hugh Morgan and Robert Champion de Crespigny had decided to
register a company that could be interested in nuclear power. I said,
'That's a great idea, Ron, because you know my view on it'," Mr Howard
said.
The Prime
Minister's office would not answer questions from The Age about the
precise timing and content of the conversation between Mr Howard and Mr
Walker, who is also chairman of Fairfax Media, owner of The Age.
During
parliamentary question time, Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane evaded a
series of Labor questions on his contact with the businessmen.
He later told
The Age through a spokeswoman: "I have not met with the company about
this issue, and I have not seen a proposal on a nuclear power station
from them."
Mr Howard accused Mr Rudd of peddling conspiracy theories.
He said the
Government would press ahead with the nuclear debate despite the
political attacks from Labor and the Greens and jitters among his own
MPs. "I am not ruling out power stations anywhere in this country," he
said.
The company said in a statement it had not "put forward a proposal to build nuclear power plants in Australia."
The Age
believes the businessmen looked at the feasibility of building reactors
but decided not to proceed, given the long lead times in acquiring
components and equipment.
However, Mr
Morgan and Mr Champion de Crespigny did have discussions with Melbourne
industrialist John White last year about his proposal for nuclear fuel
leasing.
Mr White, who
provided policy advice to the Government last year on uranium mining,
is part of a group arguing the commercial case for nuclear fuel
leasing, where uranium is mined, enriched, converted to fuel rods, then
stored in Australia at a radioactive waste facility.
Mr White told
The Age yesterday he had explained the benefits of his leasing proposal
to the executives last year, around the time business and environmental
groups were making submissions to the Switkowski inquiry into nuclear
energy. "It was a fertile time to be talking to people," Mr White aid.
Meanwhile, the
Bracks Government yesterday introduced a bill that would require a vote
of all Victorians to be held if the Federal Government pushed for a
nuclear power plant in Victoria. "The people of Victoria would decide
whether or not that proceeds," Premier Steve Bracks said.
But a vote
against nuclear power, while symbolically significant, would probably
be legally useless if Canberra legislated to allow plants to be built.
Under section
109 of the Constitution, federal laws prevail over state laws in the
event of any inconsistency. "If the Commonwealth has got the power (to
allow nuclear power), they can always rely on Section 109 to override
any inconsistent legislation," said Monash University constitutional
law lecturer Julie Debeljak.
Dr Debeljak
described the plebiscite proposal as "a political rather than a legal
manoeuvre" - a position backed by University of New South Wales
constitutional law expert George Williams.
"A plebiscite
has no legal effect whatsoever," Professor Williams said. The only
question is: Does it have some political effect, and does it have some
impact in making it less likely that the Federal Government might move
if the plebiscite comes out strongly against nuclear power?"
------------------->
PM urged to answer nuclear plant questions
www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200702/s1857926.htm
Last Update: Tuesday, February 27, 2007. 10:06am (AEDT)
Labor is
demanding the Prime Minister reveal if he has had any discussions with
a company reportedly planning to build a nuclear plant.
It has been
reported a group of businessmen including former Liberal Party national
treasurer Ron Walker has approached the Federal Government about
building a plant in Victoria or South Australia.
South Australia's Premier Mike Rann says his government has not had discussions with the group.
The ALP's environment spokesman, Peter Garrett, says John Howard must say if his Government has been in talks.
"It seems that Mr Howard's plans for bringing nuclear reactors are advanced," he said.
"I think it's
important that the Prime Minister answer these questions and inform the
Australian people on whether or not his government has had discussions
with Mr Walker about these proposals."
Mr Walker is
refusing to confirm that a consortium he is involved with is examining
the possibility of building a nuclear power plant.
Australian Nuclear Energy Limited was registered last year, and is part-owned by Mr Walker.
Mr Walker says
the company is an investment in the clean fuel business and its owners
have had discussions with some governments.
Victorian Premier Steve Bracks says he has spoken to Mr Walker about nuclear power in Victoria.
"He only
indicated, I think, to myself and the Treasurer in passing, that he may
be looking at the nuclear industry in the future," he said.
"He didn't have any proposals.
"We indicated that we did not support nuclear power plants in Victoria.
"At that time, I think it was before the election, we had a legislative capacity to prevent a nuclear power plant."
The Federal
Government says it has no knowledge of a plan by to build a nuclear
power plant, either in Victoria or South Australia.
Federal Industry and Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane says he has no recollection of a meeting with the company.
"I meet with a
lot of people and I've certainly met with those people on individual
occasions but I must admit I don't recall meeting with the three of
them together," he said.
------------------->
Last Update: Tuesday, February 27, 2007. 8:36am (AEDT)
SA Govt rejects nuclear power plant proposal
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200702/s1857827.htm
South Australian Premier Mike Rann is rejecting a proposal for a nuclear power plant to be built in his state.
The plan
reportedly comes from a company headed by former SA Economic
Development Board chairman Robert de Crespigny and businessmen Ron
Walker and Hugh Morgan.
Mr Rann says it will never have the support of his Government.
"We've already ruled it out - it's not economically viable, it would be a financial disaster," he said.
"We've already
told Parliament that a nuclear power plant for Adelaide would force up
the wholesale price of power by 100 per cent.
"So it would be an all-round disaster, like the Liberals' privatisation of electricity."
Mr Rann says
the State Government has not had discussions with the company behind
the proposal and he stands by his previous statements that his
Government would never support a nuclear plant in South Australia.
"As a Government we are totally opposed to building a nuclear power plant," he said.
"It isn't necessary and would force the wholesale price of electricity up by 100 per cent.
"So my message
to this company is you've got zero chance of building a nuclear power
plant in South Australia; you'll have to look elsewhere."
------------------->
Bid to build nuclear power plant in SA
GEORGE LEKAKIS, CAMERON ENGLAND
February 27, 2007 12:15am
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,21293733-5006301,00.html
THREE of
Australia's richest men have formed a private company to set up the
first nuclear power plant in the country, with South Australia and
Victoria identified as potential locations.
Former SA
Economic Development Board chairman Robert de Crespigny and business
identities Hugh Morgan and Ron Walker are the key shareholders of a
company called Australian Nuclear Energy Pty Ltd.
Mr Morgan, the
former head of previous Olympic Dam uranium mine owner Western Mining,
is chairman of the venture and owns 20 per cent of the company.
Mr de Crespigny and his close friend Mr Walker each hold a 40 per cent stake in the business.
The trio are
examining the viability of setting up a nuclear plant at sites in South
Australia or Victoria. A source close to the business partners told The
Advertiser the company had raised its plans with the Federal Government
and the Rann and Bracks governments.
The company is
also talking to the U.S.-based General Electric company which is the
world's largest supplier of nuclear generation equipment.
"The company was formed to investigate the feasibility of setting up a nuclear plant in Victoria," the source said.
"Informal discussions have been held with the Federal Government and the South Australian and Victorian state governments."
But Premier
Mike Rann last night said he had not heard of the company and would not
consider its proposal.
Body: "If they ever try to see me, they will
be shown the door," he said.
The high-powered business push for a
nuclear plant comes at a sensitive time for the Federal Government as
it examines the recommendations of the Switkowski report.
Earlier
this month the state Labor premiers warned the Howard Government it
should temper its support for nuclear power generation.
"The
(premiers) call on the Prime Minister to provide assurances that
federal powers will not be used to impose nuclear power stations or
waste dumps on the states and territories," the premiers said on
February 8.
Mr Rann ruled out nuclear power at the time. "A nuclear
power station costing a couple of billion dollars would not be either
financially or economically viable given our population size," he said.
The Rann Government successfully fought off a Federal Government bid
to place a low-level radioactive waste dump in the state's Outback in
2004.
The de Crespigny proposal could put Mr Rann in a difficult
political position, with the former EDB boss a key architect of
bureaucratic and funding changes driving a mining exploration boom. He
was also a member of the State Government Cabinet executive committee.
Victorian Premier Steve Bracks vowed in December to put any proposal
for a nuclear plant to a referendum.
In December the Federal
Government's expert review of the potential for nuclear power
generation headed by former Telstra chief Ziggy Switkowski, recommended
Australia could have 25 nuclear plants by 2050.
Dr Switkowski said
the first reactor could be operating within 10 years.
A study
published last month by the Australia Institute think-tank identified
the South-East, the upper Spencer Gulf and Port Adelaide as potential
nuclear energy plant sites.South Australia has been the epicentre of a
uranium exploration boom in Australia, with more than 50 companies now
searching for uranium ore in the state.
Australia's first nuclear
reactor, at Lucas Heights near Sydney, was shut down last month after
50 years as an experimental facility.
The Lucas Heights site does not
generate power and the decommissioned reactor will be replaced at a
cost of $350 million this year.
------------------->
Giants unite for Victorian plant
George Lekakis
February 27, 2007 12:00am
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21292884-664,00.html
THREE of Australia's richest men have joined forces to set up Australia's first nuclear power plant.
Top businessmen
Ron Walker, Hugh Morgan and Robert Champion de Crespigny are the key
shareholders of a private company called Australian Nuclear Energy Pty
Ltd.
The trio is examining the viability of building a nuclear plant in Victoria or South Australia.
A source close
to the group told the Herald Sun the company had raised its plans with
the Federal Government and the Bracks and Rann governments.
Mr Morgan, the former head of uranium producer Western Mining, is chairman of the venture and owns 20 per cent of the company.
Mr Walker and his close friend Mr de Crespigny each hold 40 per cent stakes in the business.
The company is
also talking to the US-based General Electric company, the world's
largest supplier of nuclear generation equipment.
"The company was formed to investigate the feasibility of setting up a nuclear plant in Victoria," the source said.
"Informal discussions have been held with the Federal Government and the South Australian and Victorian state governments."
Mr Walker, a former federal treasurer of the Liberal Party, is a close acquaintance of Prime Minister John Howard.
The push comes
at a sensitive time for the Howard Government as it examines the
recommendations of the Switkowski report on Australia's nuclear future.
Mr Howard has
become an enthusiastic proponent of examining nuclear power generation
for Australia, and has endorsed it as a clean, environmentally friendly
form of energy.
"We need an
approach that tackles the problem of greenhouse gas emissions and that
is why we need to keep the nuclear option on the table," he told
Parliament this month.
Earlier this month Labor premiers warned the
Howard Government it should temper its support for nuclear power.
Premier Steve Bracks vowed in December to put any proposal for a
nuclear plant to a referendum.
A nuclear reactor is also likely to
face strong opposition from the Rann Government, which fought off a
Federal Government bid to place a low-level radioactive waste dump in
the state's outback in 2004.
In December, the Federal Government's
expert review of the potential for nuclear power generation, headed by
former Telstra chief Ziggy Switkowski, recommended Australia could have
25 nuclear plants by 2050.
Dr Switkowski said the first reactor could
be operating within 10 years. His report said proximity to the east
coast national electricity grid would be a key to determining the
location of nuclear stations.
That has put the Latrobe Valley and
Hastings at the top of the list of ideal Victorian sites.
A study
published last month by the Australia Institute identified Portland as
a potential site.
Governments in Europe, Asia and North America are
accelerating the roll-out of nuclear reactors to reduce their reliance
on coal-fired power stations, which are a major source of greenhouse
emissions.
According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development, there are 223 nuclear reactors under construction
around the world.
The most aggressive expansion is in China where 63
plants are being built, followed by Russia (26), South Africa (25) and
India (24).
Australia has the world's largest low-cost reserves of
uranium ore, prompting Chinese and Indian interest in local exploration.
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CLEAN ENERGY VS. NUCLEAR POWER - PUBLIC OPINION
------------------->
Wind, solar power find favour in poll
Wendy Frew, Environment Reporter
February 27, 2007
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/wind-solar-power-find-favour-in-poll/2007/02/26/1172338547126.html
AUSTRALIANS
want to see greater investment in renewable energy, such as wind and
solar power, and cuts in the amount of coal used to generate
electricity, an opinion poll suggests.
Support for
nuclear power came a distant last, with only 33per cent of 1200 people
polled by the Australian Research Group supporting uranium as a power
source.
A greater
reliance on clean energy was gaining support among Australians
regardless of the positions taken by political parties, said the
Climate Institute's chief executive, John Connor, who commissioned the
poll.
"Australians
are saying they want to embrace new, clean renewable-energy
technologies to deal with the challenge of climate change," Mr Connor
said. "Our political leaders need to catch up with the Australian
community on this issue and introduce effective policies which
encourage significant clean energy investment."
The poll
results follow news at the weekend that the Opposition Leader, Kevin
Rudd, said a Federal Labor government would create a billion-dollar
fund to include clean-coal technology in the national electricity grid
by 2020.
Mr Rudd pledged
$500 million to kick-start a fund that would reward business investment
in experimental technology such as "cleaning" coal before it was burnt,
and capturing carbon dioxide generated when it was burnt and burying it
underground. CO 2 is one of several key greenhouse gases linked to
climate change.
The Federal Government has already granted money to experimental projects such as drying brown coal.
Environmentalists
and energy experts said researching technologies that could improve
combustion efficiency was worthwhile, but warned that the greenhouse
gas emission reductions would be minimal and nowhere near enough to
make much difference to climate change.
Technology that
could capture and store CO 2 also remained commercially unproven, they
said, and was unlikely to be ready in time to tackle the immediate
challenge posed by rising global temperatures.
The Australian
Research Group poll found 91 per cent support for installing more solar
panels, 82 per cent for more wind farms, and 70 per cent support for
investments in clean-coal technology.
Reducing the
amount of electricity used in the first place was supported by 78 per
cent, while only 46 per cent of people supported a carbon trading
scheme.
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NUCLEAR POWER FOR AUSTRALIA - PUBLIC OPINION
------------------->
See also the survey comparing opinions on nuclear power vis a vis clean energy in this issue of No Nukes News.
------------------->
The Oz gets creative with the numbers on nuke support
Crikey 6/3/07
<www.crikey.com.au>
Thomas Hunter writes:
Are Australians
for or against nuclear power? It’s one of the big questions rolling
around the nation right now, and a question the pollsters have sought
an answer to, but the answer isn’t as obvious as this morning’s
Australian suggests:
"Fear of global
warming has dramatically reversed Australians’ attitude to nuclear
energy, with more people supporting nuclear power for the first time.
In the past four months, support for nuclear power has risen from just
35% to 45%, and opposition has fallen in the same time from 50% to 40%."
That a 10% rise
constitutes a dramatic reversal in The Australian's view is one point.
The other is more serious. The conclusion itself is massively flawed.
The Oz draws that conclusion from the responses to two different
questions. Here's the December question:
"Currently,
while there is a nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney used for
medical and scientific purposes, there are NO nuclear POWER STATIONS in
Australia (capitalised for emphasis by interviewers). Are you
personally in favour or against nuclear power stations being built in
Australia?"
And the March question:
"Thinking now
about reducing greenhouse gas emissions to help address climate change.
Are you personally in favour or against the development of a nuclear
power industry in Australia, as one of a range of energy solutions to
help reduce greenhouse gas emissions?"
That last
clause alone changes the context of the question from nuclear energy
for medical and scientific purposes to nuclear power as a broader suite
of energy solutions, which could account for the so-called "dramatic
reversal".
This morning,
Newspoll Chairman Sol Lebovic told Crikey that the debate had changed
since December, hence a different question needed to be asked.
“The question
itself has changed. It was asked in the context of climate change. What
we are seeing now is a change in the climate of debate and that has led
to a different answer from the public."
Lebovic added that re-asking the original question would be a worthy exercise.
Meanwhile,
rival pollster Roy Morgan Research conducted research on this issue in
both NSW and Victoria last week. The result, to be released next week,
will show that there has been little change in the balance of support
and opposition to nuclear power from last year.
------------------->
Unpublished letter
Public opinion and nuclear power
Twice the
Australian has reported a survey showing 45% support for nuclear power,
and 40% opposition, without noting that the survey question linked
nuclear power to climate change (Editorial, March 7; French minister
plants nuclear hope, March 9).
This is sloppy
journalism. No doubt the result would have been drastically different
if people were asked if they support or oppose nuclear power given that
power reactors have produced over 200,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear
waste and that there is not a single permanent repository for any of
this waste anywhere in the world.
Respondents
might also have been asked if they support or oppose nuclear power
given that five of the ten countries to have built nuclear weapons did
so on the back of their 'peaceful' nuclear programs (Israel, India,
Pakistan, South Africa, North Korea). As former Prime Minister Paul
Keating noted last year, any country with a nuclear power program "ipso
facto ends up with a nuclear weapons capability".
Respondents
might also have been informed that a global doubling of nuclear power
output would reduce greenhouse emissions by 5% at most, and that the
reactors required to achieve that modest climate dividend would produce
over one million tonnes of nuclear waste and enough plutonium to build
over one million nuclear weapons.
A survey
conducted in February by the Australia Research Group found that 91% of
1,200 respondents support solar power as a climate change abatement
strategy, 82% support wind power, and 78% support energy efficiency
measures. Nuclear power came dead last with only 33% support.
Jim Green
Friends of the Earth
Melbourne.
------------------->
Nation Cools to Nuclear Future
by Imogen Zethoven — posted at 06-03-2007
http://www.nuclear.wilderness.org.au/blog
March 06, 2007
Today’s
Australian newspaper carries the headline: Nation Warms to Nuclear
Future. The headline refers to the results of a Newspoll about nuclear
power, but the trend is all down, down, down for the Federal Government.
The Newspoll
question was: Are you personally in favour or against the development
of a nuclear power industry in Australia, as one of a range of energy
solutions to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
Fortyfive per
cent of Australians said yes, they are in favour of nuclear power. Not
exactly a majority. Forty percent said no, with 15% uncommitted.
Interestingly,
Roy Morgan did a poll on 7-8 June 2006 and asked a very similar
question: Do you approve or disapprove of nuclear power plants
replacing coal, oil, and gas power plants to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions?
The results: 49% said yes; 37% said no; and 14% said they couldn’t say.
It looks the nation is cooling to a nuclear future.
But there’s
worse news for the Federal Government. When people were asked in
today’s Newspoll: are you personally for or against a nuclear power
station being built in your local area, a mere 25% said yes and a
whopping 66% said no.
It looks like the Prime Minister’s campaign for public support has a very long way to go.
------------------->
Nation warms to nuclear future
Dennis Shanahan and Sid Marris
March 06, 2007
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21331917-601,00.html
FEAR of global
warming has dramatically reversed Australians' attitude to nuclear
energy, with more people supporting nuclear power for the first time.
In the past
four months, support for nuclear power has risen from just 35 per cent
to 45 per cent, and opposition has fallen in the same time from 50 per
cent to 40 per cent.
But people are still overwhelming opposed to having a nuclear power plant in their backyard.
The Newspoll
survey, taken exclusively for The Australian last weekend, is the first
survey showing more support for, than opposition to, nuclear power
stations in Australia.
Previous
Newspoll surveys, in May and December last year, had the highest
support at 38 per cent and lowest opposition at 50 per cent, with 40
per cent being "strongly opposed".
The key difference in the survey results stems from the question of trying to reduce greenhouse gases.
John Howard has
been campaigning for a nuclear debate in Australia and ordered a report
on nuclear power on the basis of fighting global warming.
The Prime
Minister has constantly referred to nuclear power as "clean and green"
and an option that has to be considered to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions from fossil fuels.
From strong
opposition to nuclear power, the balance of opinion has turned to being
slightly in favour when linked with cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Strong opposition to nuclear power plants remains among women, Labor voters and those aged between 35 and 49.
The strongest support for nuclear energy is among men, Coalition supporters, people aged 18-34, and those over 50.
Previously,
young people had been more opposed to nuclear power but the linking
with greenhouse gas emissions seems to have swung their opinions.
Mr Howard has
been running a campaign on the benefits of nuclear power in fighting
greenhouse gas emissions, although Labor is opposed to nuclear energy.
The Government commissioned a study into nuclear options for Australia by former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski.
Yesterday,
Labor launched an extraordinary attack against the integrity of the
businessman, claiming he had been put in charge of the nation's nuclear
research organisation to campaign for nuclear power.
Opposition
industry spokesman Kim Carr said Dr Switkowski could not be trusted as
the new chair of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology
Organisation because he had accepted an invitation to write a report on
the prospects for nuclear power.
"Once again, Mr
Howard has put his own political interests ahead of the nation's,
appointing a cheerleader for nuclear power as chair of the board for
the nation's only research organisation devoted solely to nuclear
science and technology," he said.
"There is no
doubt Dr Switkowski has qualifications in the area - in nuclear
engineering and high-level management - and Labor does not call those
into question.
"However, Dr
Switkowski has also earned his political stripes writing the recent
report for the PM recommending that nuclear power is imposed on
Australia."
Opposition
spokesman on national development, resources and energy Chris Evans
said the appointment was meant to accelerate the push to nuclear power
because Education Minister Julie Bishop had stated that Dr Switkowski
was "an ideal choice to head up ANSTO as we move into this period of
seriously discussing nuclear power as an alternative to coal".
WA Liberal
backbencher, physicist and advocate of nuclear energy Dennis Jensen
said Labor had been playing personal politics, attacking anyone who was
not opposed to nuclear power.
Dr Switkowski's
interim report found that nuclear energy would not be competitive
against coal and gas power for at least a decade, but by the middle of
the century the nation could feasibly host 25 nuclear power stations
along the eastern seaboard.
------------------->
Support for nuclear power growing: poll
AM - Saturday, 3 March , 2007 08:04:00
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2007/s1862112.htm
ELIZABETH JACKSON: A new opinion poll shows that Australians are becoming more accepting of nuclear power.
The McNair
Gallup survey of 1,000 people found that 41 per cent support the
construction of nuclear power plants in Australia, while 53 per cent
are opposed.
The greatest
opposition was found in Victoria and South Australia, two states which
have been identified as potential sites for nuclear power stations.
Jennifer Macey reports.
JENNIFER MACEY: There's been a re-occurring nuclear debate in Australian for more than 60 years.
Our exposure to
nuclear matters began in the 1940s, with the first uranium mines, and
then in the 1950s with the testing of nuclear bombs by the British
army.
Australia's
first nuclear reactor was built in 1958 at Lucas Heights as a research
facility. Plans to build a power station at Jervis Bay emerged a decade
later, but were dropped for largely economic reasons.
The 70s were
marked by mass protests and union-led strikes against uranium mining,
which later led to the Labor Party adopting its three mines policy in
1983.
In the 90s, the
French conducted nuclear tests in the Pacific and the Australian public
responded by boycotting French products.
Now climate
change is driving the renewed debate over nuclear energy, and a new
poll suggests Australians are warming to the idea.
Matt Balogh is the Managing Director of McNair Ingenuity Research, which conducted the study.
He says claims that most Australians oppose nuclear power are no longer valid.
MATT BALOGH: About 40 per cent, or 41 to be exact, per cent of adult Australians are in favour, and 53 per cent opposed.
So while it's a majority, it's a pretty narrow majority, and it certainly puts the issue square on the agenda.
JENNIFER MACEY:
Did you also ask whether people approved of nuclear power stations in
their local areas, and did the numbers then change?
MATT BALOGH:
What we did is we asked the poll nationally, and we can see differences
in results in areas which are potential candidates for nuclear power
stations.
So at the
moment one of the high options is South Australia, and we can actually
see that in South Australia the level of resistance to the idea of
nuclear power is slightly higher than average, so 57 per cent compared
to the Australian average of 53 per cent.
So, yes, to some part we can see that there is greater resistance if it's going to be in your backyard.
JENNIFER MACEY: Are people becoming more accepting of nuclear power?
MATT BALOGH: I
think they are, partly because there's a lot more concern about fossil
fuel power, which contribute to the greenhouse effect and to climate
change, and the concerns that existed around nuclear power are fading,
and there has not been a major nuclear accident for some time now, not
since Chernobyl.
And so the
safety thing is sort of moving away in that sense, and also since the
end of the Cold War, the whole sense that nuclear power would lead to a
nuclear arms race has faded back too.
JENNIFER MACEY: There's still a majority of Australians, though, who are opposed to nuclear power.
MATT BALOGH:
Mmm, but it certainly shows that as we debate it, and I think with 53
per cent opposed, it's going to be a very important debate because it's
a, you know, it's a relatively borderline issue and we've got four in
10 Australians thinking one way, a little bit more than five in 10
thinking the other way.
So, for a very
small number of people to change their views on it would have a
significant effect, 'cause it would move from a minority to a majority
view.
JENNIFER MACEY:
However, recent surveys show that while more people may favour nuclear
energy, when respondents are asked whether they'll accept a power plant
in their backyard, opposition increases to over 60 per cent.
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NUCLEAR POWER FOR AUSTRALIA - LOCATIONS
------------------->
27 February 2007
Media release
Nuclear Power Plants
Port Augusta most likely
Following
reports that Australian Nuclear Energy Pty Ltd is examining the
viability of setting up Australia’s first nuclear power plant in
Victoria or South Australia, the Australia Institute today named Port
Augusta as the most likely site.
“The available
information indicates that if a nuclear power plant is going to be
built in Victoria or South Australia, Port Augusta would be the most
logical site”, Institute Deputy Director Andrew Macintosh said.
“Port Augusta
meets all of the basic criteria for siting a nuclear power plant and we
have been unable to identify any factors that would exclude it from
consideration.
“A nuclear
power plant at Port Augusta could provide electricity to surrounding
mines and other industry. There is also a possibility it could be
co-located with a desalinisation plant that would provide an additional
source of freshwater for the Adelaide region,” Mr Macintosh said.
The
identification of Port Augusta as the most likely site draws on a
report that was recently released by the Australia Institute, titled
Siting Nuclear Power Plants in Australia, which identifies 19 likely
areas for nuclear power plants inAustralia.
The other sites
identified in South Australia were Mt Gambier/Millicent and Port
Adelaide. The sites identified inVictoria were South Gippsland, Western
Port, Port Phillip and Portland.
“The economics
of the nuclear industry mean there won’t be just one or two nuclear
power plants. As the Switkowski report identifies, the more likely
number is somewhere between 12 and 25 by 2050”, Mr Macintosh said.
“These power
plants are likely to be located along the eastern and southern coast of
Australia, between Townville and Port Augusta.
“If a company
with close links to the Federal Government is looking into the
viability of nuclear power plants, the public deserves to be told
exactly which sites are being considered,” Mr Macintosh said.
Copies of the report Siting Nuclear Power Plants in Australia are available on the Australia Institute website.
Andrew Macintosh
Deputy Director
The Australia Institute
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NUCLEAR POWER FOR AUSTRALIA - TIM FLANNERY ARTICLE
------------------->
Nuclear energy brings responsibilities with it
Tim Flannery
March 12, 2007
<www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/nuclear-energy-brings-responsibilities-with-it/2007/03/11/1173548016353.html>
News that a
company has been formed that aims to build nuclear power plants in
either Victoria or South Australia has added a new dimension to the
nuclear power debate. Is nuclear power a good option for Australia, and
how should we approach our already large (and growing) trade in
uranium? These are vital questions that may be decided at the 2007
election.
There are
varying economic analyses of the viability of nuclear power generation
in Australia. My own view is that, when properly costed, nuclear power
will not be an economically viable option. In part that's because we
are so blessed with other means of generating electricity, including
world-class wind, solar and geothermal provinces that are all greatly
under-utilised. It is true that present wind and solar technologies are
limited in the extent that they can contribute to (or offset) baseload
power, and thus do not play precisely the same role as nuclear power.
Their technology, however, is developing rapidly and within a decade
the picture may be very different. Australia may also be able to
implement some "clean coal" (placing the carbon dioxide underground)
within this time frame.
I suspect that
some of the lower costings of nuclear power do not take fully into
account the cost of waste disposal, nor of gaining public acceptance of
proposed facilities. An additional cost, which will loom ever larger in
future, is that of water.
Coal-fired
power plants have large water requirements for cooling and steam
generation, but these are dwarfed by the water needs of nuclear power.
Some nuclear power plants can use seawater for cooling, but problems
emerge when they are situated on bays and gulfs, for there the warm
discharge water can accumulate and have a large impact on the local
marine ecology. Both Melbourne and Adelaide sit beside enclosed
waterways, making the location of proposed plants (if they use seawater
for cooling) near these cities problematic.
One of the
determinants of how competitive nuclear power will be in Australia is
the cost of carbon emissions under any trading scheme. The owners of
conventional coal-fired power plants would be required to pay around
$35 per tonne for their carbon dioxide pollution if nuclear power (even
if given subsidies for waste disposal and gaining public acceptance) is
to be competitive. If they pay about $40 a tonne, however, a large
array of renewables become competitive. Electors who oppose nuclear
power as an option for Australia would thus be wise to vote for a party
that endorses a carbon tax of $40 a tonne or more.
Would a carbon
tax of $40 a tonne have an impact on the average consumer? To gain some
idea of what the cost might be, we can look at the recent rises in the
cost of petrol and calculate them as if they had been caused by a
carbon tax. It would have taken a carbon tax of about $300 a tonne to
cause the rise in petrol prices seen last year. A $40 a tonne penalty
on carbon dioxide pollution is only one seventh as large as this. This
indicates that with a modest energy saving scheme at home (such as
turning off that second fridge, moving to compact fluorescent lights,
or turning off appliances at the switch), most customers could easily
offset the small price rise caused by such a carbon tax. Indeed, they
may even end up saving money.
Domestic
electricity generation, however, is only half of the nuclear story for
Australia has 40 per cent of the world's reserves of uranium, and we
are large exporters. I have argued in the past that Australia's uranium
has a role to play in combating climate change. That's because parts of
the world are far less blessed with potential sources of energy than we
are, and for them nuclear power appears to be the only currently viable
option, apart from coal. Such areas include large regions of China, the
eastern part of North America, and parts of Europe. Large populations,
with large electricity requirements, live in these areas, and all of
them already have some nuclear power.
The challenge
for all Australians, I believe, is to conduct our export of uranium at
the highest ethical and moral level. What are we doing to support
international agencies such as the UN, which fosters peace rather than
war? Is our support of the International Atomic Energy Agency
appropriately large? Is our condemnation of all nuclear weapons
(including those held by allies such as the United States and Israel)
loud enough? Are we playing a sufficient role in investing in the safe
disposal of waste?
These
questions, I believe, should form the sharp end of the nuclear policy
discussion for Australians. At the moment I feel that we're taking the
money earned from the uranium trade, and conveniently avoiding the hard
questions. It's very much like we have done with coal - taking the
cash, yet avoiding Kyoto and climate change. And we now know how
dangerous such a path can be.
Tim Flannery is 2007 Australian of the Year.
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NUCLEAR POWER FOR AUSTRALIA - ZIGGY SWITKOWSKI / UMPNER FOLLOW-UP
------------------->
Switkowski appointed ANSTO chairman
Last Update: Sunday, March 4, 2007. 12:04pm (AEDT)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200703/s1862432.htm
The Federal
Government has appointed Ziggy Switkowski as the chairman of the
Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO).
Mr Switkowski
was appointed to the board of ANSTO in 2006 and headed up Prime
Minister John Howard's task force into nuclear energy last year.
The federal Science Minister, Julie Bishop, has told Channel Nine that Cabinet approved the appointment on Friday.
"He is a very fine Australian," he said.
"He brings a
great intellect and commitment to his work and I believe he will be an
ideal choice to head up ANSTO as we move into this period of seriously
discussing nuclear power as an alternative to coal."
------------------->
Nuclear committee under tight deadline
February 15, 2007 - 11:29PM
http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Nuclear-committee-under-tight-deadline/2007/02/15/1171405377193.html
The federal government appears to be racing towards making recommendations on developing nuclear power generation in Australia.
Officials say
an inter-departmental committee (IDC) has been given a tight deadline
of just a few months to make recommendations to government on a
response to the Switkowski report into the viability of nuclear energy.
The
government-appointed taskforce headed by former Telstra chief Ziggy
Switkowski has suggested 25 nuclear reactors could produce a third of
Australia's electricity by 2050.
The
controversial report, released in November, found nuclear reactors
would need to be built close to population centres, mainly on the east
coast, but that nuclear power would not be competitive with coal unless
a price was placed on carbon emissions.
The Department
of Industry, which heads the IDC, revealed late Thursday it was working
at breakneck pace to provide recommendations to government.
"We're working towards the first quarter of this year," department deputy secretary John Ryan said.
He could not
reveal any detail of what the advice might be, but said the committee's
recommendations would form the basis of the government's formal
response to the Switkowski report.
"The nature of that advice to government we can't comment on," Mr Ryan said.
"It's bringing forward on a whole of government basis a series of recommendations as to how it might deal with those issues."
As well as Dr Switkowski's report, the IDC is also considering options for the future of uranium mining in Australia.
Dr Switkowski has tipped that Australia could have nuclear reactors up and running in 10 years.
© 2007 AAP
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ELECTRICITY OPTIONS FOR AUSTRALIA - '0.55 TO STAY ALIVE'
------------------->
Cutting emissions: the new power ploy
George Wilkenfeld
March 12, 2007
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/cutting-emissions-the-new-power-ploy/2007/03/11/1173548016344.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
There can no
longer be any doubt that rising concentrations of greenhouse gases are
leading to dangerous change in the global climate. Not surprisingly,
the confusion and misinformation that formerly surrounded climate
change has now shifted to the debate on how to tackle it.
If there is to
be an effective response (and the odds do not look good at present)
very large changes are required in the global economy, and especially
the global energy system.
For Australia,
the central issue is electricity generation. Coal is the dirtiest of
all fuels when it comes to greenhouse emissions, and a greater share of
our electricity comes from coal than in any other developed country.
Fortunately, we can start to address this today without waiting,
possibly decades, for new baseload technologies such as "clean coal",
for agreement on controversial options such as nuclear power, or for
the type of renewable energy technology that can make a serious
contribution to baseload.
There is no
such thing as "clean coal" from a greenhouse perspective. While some
coals contain lower non-greenhouse air pollutants (e.g. sulphur), all
coals lead to much higher greenhouse pollution than other fossil fuels.
Generating
electricity from coal with today's technology gives at least 75 per
cent more greenhouse gas emissions than generating from natural gas.
The difference is even greater for Victorian brown coal, which consists
of more than 50 per cent water. In 2005, the average emissions
intensity for Australian black coal-fired power stations was 0.95 kg
carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour sent out. For brown coal
power stations it was 1.34 kg/kWh and for natural gas power stations it
was 0.55 kg/kWh.
The only way
that coal's greenhouse pollution can be significantly reduced is by
techniques that are highly energy intensive (e.g. drying, liquefaction
or gasification of the fuel) or that capture and then securely
sequester the emissions. None of this can be done commercially at
present, so when will we know that "clean coal" has become clean enough?
Until a
coal-fired power station can achieve a greenhouse intensity equal to
today's natural gas power stations - 0.55 kg/kWh - it cannot possibly
be said to be "clean" in greenhouse terms.
Some carbon
dioxide capture and sequestration technologies could eventually achieve
intensities of 0.2 to 0.25 kg/kWh, but this remains to be demonstrated.
The probability of achieving near zero emissions from coal can be
discounted, given that almost any conceivable technical alternative
would be cheaper.
Once a baseload
power station is built, very little can be done to reduce its emissions
over its life, which could be from 25 to 40 years. Therefore, the only
prudent policy is not to build any new coal-fired power stations until
they can match the greenhouse intensity of the alternative we already
have: natural gas, which is plentiful and readily available throughout
Australia. Technology is not an issue. There have been natural
gas-fired baseload power stations in Australia since the 1960s.
Natural gas is
more expensive than coal because there is no price on greenhouse gas
emissions. Most policymakers accept the need for a "carbon price
signal", but it will take years to agree on how to implement it.
Adopting a limit of 0.55 kg/kWh for all power stations built from today
would, in effect, set an immediate carbon price signal in the area
where it is most urgently needed - for decisions about new power
stations. It would not affect fuel costs for existing power stations,
so the overall price impact on electricity users would be small.
The higher cost
of energy from new plants would also provide an incentive to use
electricity more efficiently, to delay new baseload investments. If we
still need new baseload power stations before coal is "clean" enough,
we can use natural gas.
A mandatory
limit of 0.55 on the emissions intensity of new power stations would,
no doubt, redouble the efforts of the coal industry to develop
sequestration technology, so new coal-fired power stations would again
become possible. Of course, 0.55 should be a genuine intensity limit
based on a thorough analysis of the fuel cycle from coal preparation to
sequestration, and not a sham limit that can be circumvented by
planting trees or buying "credits" or "'offsets".
Mandating this
is no more difficult than regulating a phasing out of inefficient light
bulbs. The states could do it now using their existing pollution
control legislation. Or the Commonwealth could impose the standard
using its corporations or external affairs powers.
This is a
decision we can make today. If it avoids just one new dirty coal power
station, it will save more emissions than all the solar water heaters
and compact fluorescent lamps ever installed in Australia. We can even
give the limit its own slogan: "0.55 to stay alive".
George
Wilkenfeld is a Sydney energy policy consultant who is involved in the
preparation of the Federal Government's National Greenhouse Gas
Inventory.
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NUCLEAR TEST VETERANS
------------------->
British nuclear test survivors denied benefits
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/british-nuclear-test-survivors-denied-benefits/2007/03/11/1173548023018.html
Linton Besser
March 12, 2007
ALMOST 500
people who say they were affected by the nuclear tests that
contaminated the Monte Bello Islands and large parts of South Australia
have been refused benefits under a landmark health scheme that is less
than a year old.
Fifty years
after the British detonated 12 atomic bombs on Australian soil, 1185
people have applied for a "white card" to subsidise the treatment of
malignant cancers.
Following a
cancer incidence study commissioned by the Department of Veterans
Affairs and published last June, the Australian Participants in British
Nuclear Tests (Treatment) Bill 2006 was passed to provide subsidised
care for those who were still alive.
Of the 17,000 Australians involved in the British testing program during the 1950s, it is estimated about 5500 are still alive.
As of last
month the department had approved 681 applications under the scheme,
with 240 of these for men who had previously received no formal defence
health cover.
But the Department of Veterans Affairs has rejected just over 40 per cent of applicants under strict eligibility criteria.
The
department's official definition of an eligible "participant" excludes
men like Mervin Heath, who still has his Box Brownie photograph of the
first mushroom cloud seen on an Australian horizon.
The then
19-year-old was standing on the upper deck of HMAS Tobruk, 97
kilometres from the Monte Bello Islands, when a 25-kiloton atomic bomb
was detonated.
"The captain came over: 'Attention on deck, turn around, hands in front of eyes'," Mr Heath said.
"It went off and you could see your bones, and light through your hands."
The surviving
crew members of some of the ships that guarded the Monte Bello site
during the test, including the Tobruk, have been ruled out of the
program.
The Government
says no link exists between the radiation released in the experiments
and cancer. It describes the scheme as, "non-liability health treatment
for all malignant cancers irrespective of causation".
It has also stripped eligibility from servicemen who were not within a set distance from the blasts.
Ann
Munslow-Davies, the daughter of a test participant, was a member of the
scientific advisory committee that took part in the cancer incidence
study last year. She condemned the study's findings and said the
Government's exclusions demonstrated the inherent contradiction of the
scheme.
"The minister can not have it both ways," she said.
"If radiation is not responsible for the increases in cancer, then all nuclear veterans should be covered for a white card."
The Minister
for Veterans Affairs, Bruce Billson, said the health study was a
peer-reviewed "world class" report and the Government's decision to
create a compensation system provided both treatment and a level of
certainty to ageing test participants.
"While the
cancer incidence is unrelated to radiation, the Government has
responded positively with a $15.9 million initiative," Mr Billson said.
"[It] gives security that regardless of the cause of cancer, they will get treatment."
------------------->
Govt urged to ease access to payouts for veterans affected by nuclear tests
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200703/s1869561.htm
Last Update: Monday, March 12, 2007. 7:34pm (AEDT)
Veterans who
say they were affected by nuclear tests 50 years ago in South Australia
and the Monte Bello Islands say the Federal Government is making it
difficult for them to access financial help for their health costs.
A 'white card'
scheme established a year ago by the Veterans Affairs Minister, Bruce
Billson, requires applicants to have been within a certain set distance
of the British nuclear tests.
Ric Johnstone from the Australian Nuclear Veterans Association says the criteria are very strict.
"This all
happened 50 years ago and people at the tests were not running around
with measuring tapes or rulers or distances to try and work out where
they were at any given time, they just tried to make sure they weren't
under the site when it went off," he said.
The
Opposition's veteran affairs spokesman, Alan Griffin, says the
Government should come clean about why people are being refused the
white card.
"It's very
disturbing that with a new scheme coming into place, that so many
people are applying and yet being rejected," he said.
"We've sought
details from the Government regarding the operation of this scheme
because we think they need to come clean about why the level of
rejection is so high."
But Mr Billson
says out of more than 1,000 applications only 103 were rejected,
because they were either outside the geographical criteria or the
applicants already had other government assistance.
He says anyone
who falls outside the designated area but has health concerns can apply
for assistance through a number of other avenues.
"The zones have
been designed to accommodate the most generous interpretation of where
radiation contamination may have travelled," he said.
"This is a
scientific exercise that has been peer reviewed and found to be
accurate and reflecting the actual nature of the blasts themselves, the
type of the blast and the distance the contamination may have
travelled."
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URANIUM MINING IN AUSTRALIA - VARIOUS
------------------->
Green energy be dammed
March 3, 2007
<www.smh.com.au/news/environment/green-energy-be-dammed/2007/03/02/1172338885190.html>
In the rush to
promote nuclear power as a clean alternative, the pitfalls of uranium
mining are being ignored, writes Wendy Frew.
Olympic Dam, 560 kilometres north-west of Adelaide, is a mine like no other in Australia.
Hidden under
South Australia's dusty red plains is a Tolkien-like labyrinth of
tunnels carrying monster trucks and an underground train that
transports hundreds of tonnes of minerals to the surface every day.
Above ground,
the copper, gold, silver and uranium gouged from Australia's largest
underground mine are processed in a mega metallurgical complex that
sprawls across the arid countryside.
The millions of
tonnes of waste material - much of it radioactive - piles up in giant
open-air tailings dumps that can reach as high as 30 metres and cover
hundreds of hectares of land.
Those who have
seen the radioactive waste say it has the consistency of powder, and as
it dries, it takes on a range of colours from a rusty red to sulphur
yellow or salty white.
The mine
consumes millions of litres of water every day and a huge amount of
fossil-fuel electricity. It generates an estimated 1 million tonnes of
greenhouse gases every year, and has displaced many square kilometres
of native vegetation to make way for the processing plants and tailings
dumps.
The uranium is
used to generate power in a nuclear reactor, power that the Prime
Minister, John Howard, says is "cleaner and greener than just about any
other form of energy".
But in the rush
to embrace nuclear power as a way to combat climate change, the damage
uranium mining does to the environment seems to have been all but
forgotten.
Australia has
some of the world's best and biggest uranium reserves and the industry
represents a rich seam of export dollars and regional jobs. Mine
operators are already gearing up to expand existing mines, which will
further boost outback economies in the Northern Territory and South
Australia. Supporters say expansion of the industry would also mean a
guaranteed long-term supply of fuel for generating electricity should
Australia ever decide to abandon coal.
However,
environmentalists and scientists say those benefits must be weighed up
against an industry that relies on a fuel that will eventually run out;
that generates toxic, long-lasting waste, both when the ore is mined
and when the yellow cake is processed; and that contaminates water and
soil.
"Any nuclear industry would be 20 years away," says the Australian Conservation Foundation campaigner David Noonan.
"We don't see
any reality in the attempt to get nuclear power up in Australia but we
are very worried about the expansion of the uranium industry … we would
just become a quarry for the global nuclear industry," he says.
Australia has
three operating uranium mines: Olympic Dam and Beverley in South
Australia, and the Ranger mine in the Northern Territory.
It is difficult
to comprehend the scale and breadth of the operations at Olympic Dam.
The BHP-Billiton mine is open to visitors, but in such an isolated
location few Australians would have taken the tour. Fewer still would
have any inkling of what it takes to get uranium out of the ground, the
complex and expensive task of managing the contaminated rock and water
waste, and the rehabilitation of the land that must be done after a
mine has closed down.
The massive
mineral deposit 350 metres below the surface contains the world's
largest known uranium ore body and the world's fourth-largest remaining
copper deposit.
The mine's rock
waste and coarse tailings are used as mine backfill. Fine tailings
material is dumped above ground in an area that covers about 400
hectares.
According to
BHP, radiation in the tailings is as low as reasonably achievable and
much less than levels considered acceptable, as determined by
international standards. The waste is extensively monitored and the
results reported on a regular basis to South Australian Government
regulators, it says.
BHP says it is still developing a final rehabilitation plan for the tailings storage at the end of the mine's operational life.
Despite these assurances, the tailings dump is a major concern for people such as Noonan.
In 1994, the
then mine owner, Western Mining Corporation, revealed that up to 5
million cubic metres of contaminated liquid had leaked from the
tailings dams, a potential threat to the quality of groundwater
immediately below the dams.
The industry's
Uranium Information Centre says studies demonstrated that the
pollutants in the seepage were quickly adsorbed by clays and limestone
in the soil and rock under the tailings dams. Because of the low
permeability of the rock, there was "no potential harm to the
groundwater resource".
According to
Ian Hore-Lacy, a spokesman for the Uranium Information Centre, the
tailings dumps don't represent a risk to workers or the environment.
"If you have radioactive tailings then you just cover them with more cover … the level of radioactivity is negligible," he says.
"You could set up camp and live on top of them for a year and not get any serious radioactivity, not that that is recommended."
But Noonan says the risks associated with tailings will only grow because of BHP's $5 billion expansion plans for Olympic Dam.
The expansion,
which is likely to see the underground mine converted to an open pit,
would be one of the biggest of its type in the world and require the
removal of a million tonnes of rock waste every day for four years,
according to the company.
The company will have to drill and blast its way down 350 metres before it even reaches the ore body.
Friends of the Earth has estimated the expanded dam would probably contain the largest uranium tailings repository on earth.
In a submission
on the expansion plan's draft environmental impact statement the
organisation said the tailings storage facilities would be so big they
would be among the largest structures on earth.
"The main
problem is that the integrity of the [facility] must actually be
guaranteed not for a mere 200 years, nor even for 1000 years … we would
need to reasonably assure containment of the tailings for a minimum of
230,000-300,000 years," it wrote.
"This is five
times as long as Aboriginal occupation of Australia, which is in turn
longer than any other human group has survived. It is a period of time
in which major climatic, and indeed, geological changes can be expected
to take place, not to mention changes in land-use, population, etc."
Olympic Dam's
expansion would also see the mine's current water use surge from 35
megalitres a day (taken from the Great Artesian Basin at no charge to
the company). Another 120 megalitres per day will be needed for the
expansion, which would be produced by a desalination plant the same
size as the one planned for Sydney.
At the Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory, the issue is not too little water but too much.
After several
days of record-breaking monsoonal rainfall, the mine's operator, Rio
Tinto's subsidiary Energy Resources Australia, stopped mining on
Tuesday. The processing plant was closed a day later. Widespread
flooding is also making it difficult to get into or out of the mine and
the nearby town of Jabiru.
As the Federal
Government described it in 2005, "the operation of a uranium mine and
mill in a region which is World Heritage listed, subject to seasonal
extremes in rainfall typical of monsoonal climates and which represents
at least 40,000 years of habitation by the Aboriginal people, provides
many environmental challenges".
The Ranger lease covers 7860 hectares, of which about 500 hectares are directly disturbed by mining.
"Water
management at Ranger is seen as an intractable and growing problem,"
says the Australian Conservation Foundation's Dave Sweeney.
"The area
around the stockpiles, the processing facilities and the tailings
corridor [where slurry is piped from the mill to the tailings dam] is a
restricted-release zone and all the water that falls in those areas has
to be managed because it becomes contaminated," Sweeney says.
Water is
shunted around the site, from the pit after heavy rainfall, through
retention ponds and into the giant tailings dam. Ranger has built a $25
million plant to help make sure all the water is treated.
Managing water
is the No.1 issue for the mine, says an Energy Resources Australia
spokeswoman, Amanda Buckley. Much of the mine operator's time and
energy is expended coping with the large amount of water onsite and
driving in heavy rain represents a higher risk to workers than exposure
to radiation.
But Buckley
says the company has invested heavily in water infrastructure and the
mine operates under the toughest regulations in Australia.
"If you ask the
technical people, they will say it is like other kinds of mines, such
as copper and nickel," says Buckley about the environmental hazards at
Ranger.
"You are
digging the ore out with the same kind of equipment, all the processes
are the same. The difference is the radiation, but it is not a very
high level of risk [for workers]."
Buckley explains the mine often closes after heavy rainfall, but this week's deluge posed no environmental issues.
The Uranium
Information Centre's Hore-Lacy says Australian regulations for uranium
mine operations and worker safety are so high you could never get a
really harmful level of radioactivity. He dismisses the 1994 tailings
dam leakage at Olympic Dam as more an engineering than an environmental
issue.
Australian
standards are high compared with many overseas mines, says Dr Gavin
Mudd, a uranium mining expert and lecturer in engineering at Monash
University.
"But we still
cannot answer the fundamental questions about rehabilitation [of land
after mining ceases], and we still have accidents. So, from a
scientific point of view, it is still not good enough."
The Rum Jungle
uranium mine, which is about 64 kilometres south of Darwin, is one
example of how not to manage a site, critics say. At Australia's first
large-scale uranium mine, the dams, which were meant to prevent acidic
materials and heavy metals used in the milling process from reaching
rivers and streams, frequently overflowed during the wet season. The
environmental damage it caused has still not being fully repaired since
the mine was closed in 1971.
Mudd supports
Energy Resource Australia's investment in a sophisticated water
treatment facility. But he says it is not without its problems because
of the nature of some of the highly contaminated water it deals with.
He is also concerned that tailings being dumped back into an old mine
pit could leach out because the upper parts of the pit walls are
permeable.
The academic,
who has visited many existing and disused mines here and overseas,
remains sceptical about rehabilitating land after uranium mining has
ceased because of the industry's poor track record so far.
"You need to
keep an eye on the old uranium sites to see how they are being
rehabilitated and how water was used, so that you can draw conclusions
about current mines," he says.
"Give me 100 years and then let's see how good today's standards are."
He says that because Ranger is planning to extend the life of the mine out to 2011, more room will be needed for the tailings.
"Tailings dams are not cheap to build … and it is going to be a huge problem rehabilitating them."
------------------->
There must be something in the water
March 2, 2007
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/there-must-be-something-in-the-water/2007/03/02/1172338882707.html
Wendy Frew
AUSTRALIA'S
uranium mines and tailings dumps have a history of leakages and spills;
many of the accidents have been minor but a few have been serious.
The most
notable in recent years involved the contamination of workers' drinking
water at the Ranger uranium mine in the Northern Territory in 2004.
Energy
Resources Australia admitted it accidentally contaminated the mine's
water, with 28 workers suffering a range of complaints such as
vomiting, gastric upsets, headaches and skin rashes after drinking or
showering in the water. The water contained 400 times more uranium than
the recommended safety level.
It happened when water used during the uranium extraction process was mistakenly connected to the drinking-water supply.
The Northern
Territory Government viewed the breaches of regulations at the mine
"very seriously". It recommended the first prosecution against Energy
Resources Australia since it had begun operating the mine in the
world-heritage Kakadu National Park in 1980.
Doctors were
unable to advise the workers about the long-term effects on their
health because no one in the world had ever drunk such large amounts of
uranium-contaminated water.
The company was
fined $150,000 for the contamination and was also convicted on a charge
relating to contaminated vehicles leaving the mine site. The mining
giant had pleaded guilty on both counts and was ordered to pay $25,000
in costs.
------------------->
Now uranium is flavour of the month
George Liondis
February 11, 2007
http://www.smh.com.au/news/investment/now-uranium-is-flavour-of-the-month/2007/02/10/1170524337374.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
But there could be too much heat building up in the market.
Once a political hot potato, uranium is now hot property.
A combination
of surging prices, supply shortages and growing political acceptance of
nuclear power to combat climate change fears has made uranium stocks
one of the most sought-after sectors in the sharemarket.
Globally,
another 223 new nuclear power reactors are planned, compared with the
442 now in operation, bolstering the worldwide demand for uranium.
In Australia,
Prime Minister John Howard is throwing his weight behind nuclear power
as a solution to future energy needs and expectations are building that
the Labor Opposition will abandon its longstanding policy banning new
uranium mines at its national conference in April.
To top it off,
flooding has delayed the opening of what was to be the world's biggest
uranium mine at Cigar Lake in Canada, making production unlikely until
2010 and adding to the supply shortage as more nuclear power plants
come on stream.
All this has pushed the spot price for uranium up from $US47.50 to $US75 a pound in the past six months.
And analysts
believe it could go as high as $US100 a pound by the end of this year
as growing demand worldwide outpaces limited global supply.
That's good news for almost 100 stocks listed in Australia with uranium exposure.
But while many
are basking in the glow of the sector's good fortune, only three -
Energy Resources of Australia, Paladin and BHP Billiton - are producing
uranium.
Of the rest,
mostly junior explorers, only a handful will be able to move into
production within a few years to take advantage of higher prices.
John Wilson, an
analyst with Resource Capital Research, says investors need to tread
warily to avoid speculative exploration companies that are riding the
uranium wave, but don't have a realistic chance of starting to mine any
time soon.
"Selectively,
there are good risk/reward opportunities in the uranium sector," Wilson
says. "But only selectively. Look for those companies that have
completed a lot of their exploration work and are about to start
ticking off the production development milestones.
"These will give people exposure to uranium prices with less exploration risk."
Of the
companies already mining, only Paladin, which started production at its
mine in Namibia in December, is in a position to take full advantage of
the run up in uranium prices.
BHP is tied to
fixed-price contracts lasting until 2010, which require it to sell
uranium produced at its Olympic Dam mine in South Australia at well
below current trading levels.
ERA is in a similar situation, although it is exploring ways to lift production levels to take advantage of higher prices.
Brendan James,
an analyst with Deutsche Bank, says uranium miners, even those that
can't fully exploit higher prices, will continue to benefit from
positive sentiment towards the sector.
But he says the
uranium market is also carrying a lot of speculative heat and positive
attitudes will evaporate quickly if there is bad news on the political
front.
Political
opposition to uranium mining has eased, but state Labor governments in
Queensland and Western Australia, where most deposits are located,
maintain an anti-uranium mining policy in line with their federal Labor
counterparts.
Queensland Premier Peter Beattie has indicated he will change his stance if federal Labor drops its ban in April.
But Alan Carpenter in Western Australia remains steadfastly opposed to uranium mining in the state.
James also
warns that while the uranium price will remain high for some time, it
will ultimately fall back to between $US40 and $US50 a pound.
"In the short
term, the price of uranium can go to $100 a pound and I wouldn't be
surprised if it hit that rate by the end of this year and maybe into
next year," he says. "But long-term, I don't think that's sustainable."
How our major miners stack up
Energy
Resources of Australia Era, the world's third-largest uranium producer,
has been mining at Ranger in the Northern Territory since 1981.
In January, it
reported record quarterly production from the mine. But the company is
not a major beneficiary of the increase in the uranium price because,
like BHP, it is tied into fixed-price contracts to sell existing
production at well below current trading levels.
However, it is
exploring options to lift production at Ranger to take advantage of the
higher prices. ERA shares are up about 80 per cent in the past year to
around $21. Resources giant Rio Tinto owns 68 per cent of the company.
Paladin Resources
This time last
year, Paladin's shares were trading at $3.10. They are now above $9.50.
The catalyst for this extraordinary growth has been the company's
successful commissioning of a mine in Namibia, which started producing
uranium in December.
The fact that
Paladin's major project is based offshore means that the company does
not have to contend with a lot of the political risk that faces uranium
miners that operate purely in Australia.
Along with its Namibian mine, Paladin has extensive uranium exploration projects in Western Australia.
But the company
would need change at political level to be able to start producing, as
the state Labor government of Alan Carpenter remains steadfastly
opposed to uranium mining in WA.
Hot property: but it could still be a political hot potato
The pros
* The price of uranium has hit $US75 a pound and could reach $US100 a pound this year.
* Prime Minister John Howard is a big fan of nuclear power.
* Uranium stocks are running hot, producing big returns for investors.
* Nuclear power is an alternative fuel source, which is being promoted as a solution to climate-change concerns.
The cons
* Uranium prices could ultimately fall back to $US40-$US50 a pound.
* State Labor governments could maintain bans on uranium mining.
* Of the 100 Australian stocks with exposure to the sector, only three are actually producing uranium.
* Green groups oppose uranium mining.
------------------->RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE
URANIUM - BURKE, GRILL, RUDD, MARN FERGO
------------------->
Did Rudd's lunch with Brian Burke turn radioactive?
Crikey 6/3/07
<www.crikey.com.au>
Sophie Black writes:
Last week the
Labor party attacked John Howard over a telephone conversation the
Prime Minister had last year with businessman Ron Walker over nuclear
power. But did Rudd have a radioactive conversation of his own? Was ALP
policy on uranium mining ever discussed in his conversations with Brian
Burke?
Clients of
Brian Burke and Julian Grill include mining companies with interests in
uranium. Did Burke the lobbyist raise his clients' interests with Rudd
over the dinner table? For over a decade Burke has sought to undermine
Labor's stance on uranium mining. Crikey understands that Burke's
business partner Julian Grill has been even more vocal in support of
uranium mining.
Then opposition
leader Kim Beazley first raised the prospect of axeing Labor's three
mines policy in July of last year. Last December, Rudd signalled the
same intention:
"I intend to
lead it in that direction when it comes to the change of what is called
the three mines, or no new mines policy," Mr Rudd said. "The no new
mines policy, in my judgment, does not make a lot of sense."
According to
uranium industry insiders it is almost certain that Labor's three mines
policy will be dropped. The head of the government's inquiry into
nuclear energy Ziggy Switkowski also believes there will be wide
support to drop the three-mines policy at the ALP's national conference
in April.
This is despite a May 2006 Newspoll showing that 78% of Labor voters were opposed to any further uranium mining in Australia.
But it’s not
the big mining companies that stand to gain from Federal Labor's shift
in policy -- uranium industry insiders have told Crikey that "it's
mostly the WA 'juniors', some of whom have been connected with, or
represented by, Grill and Burke, who would stand to gain.
The list of
Burke/Grill clients in today's Financial Review includes Precious
Metals Australia (PMA). Crikey understands that PMA has expressed
interest in acquiring the rights to the significant uranium deposit
Yeelirrie in WA.
Crikey
understands that Burke and Grill have also conducted work for Nova
Energy. Nova is in the uranium "junior" camp -- the company owns the
rights to the WA uranium deposit Lakeway.
Burke's
business partner Julian Grill repeatedly pushed at federal Labor
conferences for a change in the three mines policy. From the late 80s
to the late 90s, Grill was part of a group that came out of Kalgoorlie
which included Kalgoorlie MP Graeme Campbell called the Desert Rats. A
uranium insider told Crikey that the group "would go to the opening of
an envelope to talk up uranium."
Crikey also understands that Grill was involved with a company promoting uranium called Kalgoorlie-Boulder Resources.
The WA Labor
government currently impose a ban on uranium mining. Crikey believes
that irrespective of what happens at the national Labor conference in
April, the WA government will continue to impose the ban. Rudd has
publicly stated that he won't seek to override the WA state government
ban.
But, as Edith
Cowan University politics lecturer Peter Van Ensile suggested in
January, there's nothing to stop a newly elected Federal Labor
government attempting to overturn the ban.
Then there's
Shadow Minister for Transport, Roads and Tourism (formerly Resources
Minister) Martin Ferguson's admission that he met with Burke's business
partner Julian Grill last year.
Ferguson has
led the charge to overturn Labor's three mines policy. According to a
uranium mining insider, "without Martin Ferguson the Labor Party
wouldn’t even be voting on the issue at the upcoming national
conference."
Overturning the
uranium ban has been a "bit of a crusade and mantra…" for Ferguson,
according to the insider. The sited meeting with Grill was in relation
to Fortescue Mines, who have no interest in uranium, but what's to
suggest that the topic of uranium didn't come up?
There's a
perception problem here -- but the nuclear fallout also leaks across to
the other side of the fence: according to today's Fin Review, PMA has
also made payments to the WA Liberal Party. In 2006-06 PMA donated
$7000 to the WA Liberal Party.
Rudd's office
told Crikey that the Labor leader had already answered extensive
questions about his meetings with Burke in several press conferences
and on The 7.30 Report last night but they refused to answer the
specific question as to whether the ALP's policy on uranium mining ever
came up in Rudd's discussions with Burke.
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URANIUM - BURKE, GRILL, PROSSER
------------------->
Liberal MP hired Burke's Grill, but so what?
Crikey 8/3/07
Sophie Black writes:
After
responding to questions over WA Liberal backbencher Geoff Prosser
hiring disgraced former WA Premier Brian Burke as a lobbyist, Prime
Minister John Howard said, "So what?"
The PM's argument was that Prosser, who was spotted lunching with Julian Grill last month, was only a backbencher.
There's a
reason Prosser isn't a minister – he was forced to resign back in 1997
from his small business portfolio for improper business dealings.
And while he
may be a mere backbencher these days, he also acted as the Chair of the
House of Reps Standing Committee on Industry and Resources Inquiry into
Uranium, objectively titled Australia’s Uranium – Greenhouse Friendly
Fuel for an Energy Hungry World.
So what? As
Crikey pointed out on Monday, Brian Burke and his business partner
Julian Grill have links to and have represented mining companies with
interests in Uranium. Specifically, WA mining companies like PMA and
Nova Energy, with a special interest in dumping the WA government's ban
on uranium mining.
Prosser's Uranium Inquiry reached the same conclusion:
The Chairman of
the Committee, Geoff Prosser (Member for Forrest, WA), said: “The
Committee has reached a unanimous and bipartisan position on the need
to remove all impediments to the further development of Australia’s
uranium resources. All members are agreed that present restrictions on
uranium exploration and mining are illogical, inconsistent and
anti-competitive. State policies preventing development of new uranium
mines should be lifted and legislative restrictions on uranium mining
should be repealed.”
And Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane heartily endorsed Prosser's statement in this December press release:
Australian
Resources Minister, Ian Macfarlane, today called on State Governments
to repeal laws strangling Australia's uranium export industry.
"Uranium is one
of Australia's most promising export industries, worth $743 million in
2005. But, despite having close to 40% of this sought-after resource,
Australia's future as a uranium exporter is being threatened," Mr
Macfarlane said.
"Two major
reports in the last fortnight – the bipartisan House of Representatives
committee report Australia's Uranium: Greenhouse Friendly Fuel for an
Energy Hungry World and a major ABARE study – confirm that Labor States
are the only major obstacle to rapid growth in uranium exports."
So what? says
the PM. The Corporate Engagement blog, points to Prosser's comment,
when asked in October if industry was partly behind the nuclear push
given that Australia has 40% of the world's uranium resources, he told
ABC radio:
Well certainly the mining industry is keen to see those resources exploited.
The mining industry which Burke and Grill have represented.
"So what?" says the PM.
Crikey called Geoff Prosser to ask him if uranium mining policy had ever come up in his discussions with Burke and Grill.
Prosser's office responded:
His (Prosser's) response is no, on both counts.
Mr Prosser has
repeated his assertion that the last time he met with Brian Burke was
in 1985 when Mr Burke was WA Premier. He has not spoken to him at all
since then.
But he has spoken to Grill. As The West Australian reported on Monday:
...Liberal MP
for Forrest Geoff Prosser admitted his family company Citygate
Properties employed Mr Grill to "sort out" an electricity access
problem with Western Power about six months ago. He had met Mr Grill
several times over the years, including at least twice last year.
We pointed out on Monday that Grill has been an advocate of uranium mining for over a decade:
From the late
80s to the late 90s, Grill was part of a group that came out of
Kalgoorlie called the Desert Rats. A uranium insider told Crikey that
the group "would go to the opening of an envelope to talk up uranium."
So we could
take Prosser's word for it when he says that he never, in any of his
dealings with Grill, discussed uranium, or we could say, "so what?"
------------------->RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE
URANIUM - ROXBY DOWNS - DESALINATION
------------------->
BHP warned over mine's desal plant
Jeremy Roberts
March 12, 2007
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21364561-2702,00.html
A DESALINATION
plant which would supply water to an expanded Roxby Downs uranium mine
must not damage the "pristine" waters crucial to baby prawns and
sardines, BHP Billiton has been warned.
The Rann
Government has backed BHP Billiton's choice of location in the upper
Spencer Gulf for a massive desalination plant, subject to an
environmental impact statement due out this year.
The prawn and
sardine industries went public yesterday with their fears that the
plant would jeopardise the "nursery" waters in the upper Spencer Gulf,
crucial to the seafood's early life.
Samara Miller,
executive officer of the Spencer Gulf and West Coast Prawn Fishermen's
Association, said she would be "very concerned" if the decision to
locate the plant there had already been made.
"We have some
valid concerns about the potential damage to our fishery because the
northern part of the gulf is our breeding grounds," she said.
South
Australian Sardine Industry Association president Christian Pyke said
he shared Ms Miller's concerns and was "very interested in finding out
the impacts the desalination plant would have on the fisheries". He
said: "The South Australian sardine fishery is the biggest-volume
fishery in Australia and we need a pristine environment for it to be
sustainable."
The combined value of the two industries is estimated at $60 million a year.
But both representatives said a damaged gulf would create flow-on effects in the fishing centre of Port Lincoln.
The sardine industry supplies the lucrative blue fin tuna farming industry in Port Lincoln, valued at $220 million a year.
For six months
in each year the western king prawn industry employs five men on each
of 39 boats. The upper Spencer Gulf is a shallow body of water governed
by weak tidal currents and receives very little rainwater inflow from
the surrounding land. The state Environment Department last year
proposed the upper Spencer Gulf attract the highest level of zoning
protection, ER1, as part of a new state-wide marine protection system.
In a rare
alliance, the prawn and sardine industries have met with conservation
and marine biology groups to question the wisdom of locating the plant
in the gulf.
Lincoln Marine
Science Centre director Toby Bolton, a Flinders University lecturer,
said the plant would each day produce more than 200 megalitres of
"hyper-saline" water for every 120 megalitres of fresh water it
produced.
Greens MP Mark
Parnell and the Australian Conservation Foundation want the location of
the desalination plant to be re-assessed. They said the best location
was near Ceduna, on the Southern Ocean coast.
BHP Billiton
spokesman Richard Yeeles said the company's "preferred site" was on the
gulf and was subject to a final approval by the state Government.
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URANIUM - RANGER
------------------->
ERA uranium production hit as record rains flood Ranger mine
Andrew Trounson
March 08, 2007
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21343303-5005200,00.html
SHARES in
uranium miner Energy Resources of Australia are set to come under
pressure today, as analysts downgrade their profit forecasts in the
wake of heavy rains that have flooded the open pit at the Ranger mine
in the Northern Territory.
With little in
the way of available stocks on hand in a strong uranium market, ERA has
been forced to declare force majeure on sales contracts, temporarily
freeing it of obligations to deliver.
ERA yesterday
said that first quarter production was set to be down 20-30 per cent,
which, at last year's realised price, represents a loss of about $US20
million ($25.76 million).
But, more
worryingly, ERA warned that production would be affected into the
second half of 2007, as water in the pit hampers access to high grade
ore. But production in the second quarter may not be so badly affected,
as the company can process stockpiled ore. "The impact of the water
level in the operating pit is still being assessed, but production will
be impacted in the second half of 2007," ERA said.
ERA is 68 per cent owned by mining giant Rio Tinto.
Ranger was
forced to shut down operations on February 27, but yesterday the
company was able to restart mining. The processing plant is expected to
restart in coming days.
ERA's
assessment of the damage came out after the share market closed, on a
day when its shares had recovered strongly from news of the initial
shutdown, rising yesterday by almost 5 per cent to $24.60. Before the
shutdown, ERA shares had been trading above $26.00.
Last year,
cyclone Monica similarly flooded the Ranger pit, resulting in full-year
production falling 20 per cent. This time the flooding has been caused
by cyclone George, with 750mm of rain falling on the site in just 72
hours.
So far this year a massive 1.6m of rain has been dumped on the mine - more than the average annual rainfall.
The heavy rains
will concern environmental groups worried that contaminated water may
run offsite, but ERA yesterday said there had never been any prospect
of that happening. "In spite of the high rainfall, water inventories at
the mine site have been managed effectively and there has been no
adverse environmental impact," ERA said.
Access to and
from Ranger and the nearby township of Jabiru remains restricted
because of highway closures and load limitations due to the widespread
flooding in the region.
------------------->
March 8, 2007
ATTENTION: News Editors, Political, Resource and Environment Reporters
Ranger danger: Heavy rains pose radioactive risk to Kakadu
Australia’s
largest National Park faces the threat of radioactive and heavy metal
contamination from flooding at the controversial Ranger uranium mine in
Kakadu.
Operations have
been halted and workers evacuated from Energy Resources of Australia’s
mine after access was cut by rising water.
There are
serious concerns over the risk of contaminated water and mine wastes
from Ranger being spread through the wider Kakadu environment.
In 2003 a
Senate Inquiry into Ranger concluded that ‘the intense and highly
seasonal wet season of the NT makes the dispersion of mine waste waters
the main threat to ecosystems’ and found ‘a pattern of underperformance
and non-compliance’.
ACF has called
for the urgent implementation of the Senate recommendations and an
independent review of water and waste management at the Ranger mine in
the light of the latest flooding and contamination risk.
“As the flood
waters and radioactive risks continue to rise the federal government
remains complacent,” said ACF nuclear campaigner Dave Sweeney.
“For four years
the government has failed to implement a set of commonsense
recommendations. It has found time to try and dump radioactive waste in
the NT and promote domestic nuclear power but not to protect World
Heritage Kakadu.”
“This latest
flooding shows the real impacts and risks of uranium mining,” said Dave
Sweeney. “ERA wants to extend the life of Ranger mine, instead they
should be cleaning up and clearing out – this industry is neither
foolproof nor waterproof.”
“Uranium mining
is not a clean trade. Federal Labor should not consider new uranium
mines when the existing ones are leaking, dangerous and deficient.”
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URANIUM - HONEYMOON
------------------->
Broken Hill - Barrier Miner
14/2/07
Uranium One globally number two
Canadian miner
Uranium One Inc. this week announced an acquisition agreement with
UrAsia Energy Ltd, another Canadian based uranium producer, which makes
the new Uranium One the world’s second largest uranium company ranked
by market capitalisation.
Uranium One
Inc. owns the Honeymoon Uranium project in South Australia. According
to the company, despite its relatively small size, this mine is set to
become Australia’s fourth largest uranium mine by early 2008.
With the
merger, the company now has active interests not only in Australia and
South Africa but also the United States, Canada and Kazakhstan. The
combined company will continue under the name of Uranium One Inc. with
a growth profile worth approximately US $5 billion (about AU
$6.45billion).
Uranium One’s
executive vice president of Australia Asia, Greg Cochran said that it
would be “business as usual” for their South Australian operations and
at their Honeymoon site.
“UrAsia comes
with in situ leaching mining expertise which we will be able to call on
for our projects. We will be able to share skills and learn from their
expertise.
According to Mr
Cochran, Bateman’s Engineering from Brisbane has been awarded the
contract for Honeymoon and “will be responsible for taking the project
forward.
“They are
developing a full engineering understanding of the project and only the
documentation process remains to be completed.”
Honeymoon’s
output, once operations commence is expected to be relatively small by
comparison to other uranium projects as only “880 thousand pounds per
annum is expected to be produced.”
The company is
actively involved in exploration in South Australia and has projects at
Gould’s Dam, 75 kilometres from Honeymoon, on the Eyre Peninsula and
also the Sturt Shelf.
As Honeymoon
has an expected production life of seven years, Mr Cochran said the
company will be seeking other mine sites to add to their current
acquisitions. “If we see value in a project then we will certainly
consider acquiring more.
Mr Cochran, who
has just returned from a large international mining conference in
Capetown, South Africa said that opposition to uranium mining appeared
to be lessening.
“People seem to recognise that there is a positive benefit with economic and job opportunities.”
Nuclear
campaigner with the Australian Conservation Foundation David Noonan
said that such companies were “mining the stock exchange not uranium”.
“What they are really doing is swapping shares.
Mr Noonan said
he was familiar with the Honeymoon mine and its history. “There are
serious problems with in situ acid leaching used at the Beverley mine
and also in trials at Honeymoon.
“No other OECD
country has approved this method of mining. Australia has a lower
standard of environmental protection than any other country.
According to Mr
Noonan, this method of mining discharged mine waste directly back into
the aquifer producing a toxic plume which ended up near Lake Frome.
“Their waste management plan doesn’t include rehabilitation of water.”
He said uranium
mining was a low employment venture. “Exploration and mining of uranium
is illegal in NSW with few jobs and additional health risks for
workers.” He cited the example of Radium Hill in the 50s and 60s when
workers from Broken Hill spent time at the mine and some ended up
contracting cancer.
“The Beverley
and Honeymoon mine were approved under a Liberal South Australian
government which was a key policy U turn after the election.”
“Uranium mining has unique hazards and risks and no key issues or problems have been resolved.”
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AUSTRALIA - USA ANZUS ALLIANCE
------------------->
Wake up: ANZUS no security blanket
Peter Hartcher Political Editor
February 15, 2007
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/wake-up-anzus-no-security-blanket/2007/02/14/1171405299814.html
THE American
ambassador's assessment of the ANZUS treaty yesterday should be a
wake-up call for comfortable Australian assumptions that it is any sort
of security guarantee.
Since the
inception of the treaty in 1951, Australian politicians have given the
public the clear impression that the treaty is a national 000 line
which will unfailingly bring an emergency deployment of US forces to
our defence.
The Prime
Minister, John Howard, has perpetuated this idea by describing ANZUS as
our "security guarantee". Yet the treaty has never been any such thing,
and was deliberately constructed so that Washington was under no
binding or automatic obligation to use force for Australia's security.
The US
ambassador, Robert McCallum, reminded us yesterday of how lightly the
treaty rests in the consciousness of the superpower when he cheerfully
volunteered at the National Press Club that he has never read it.
It is not a
long or difficult document to read. At only 840 words, and written in
reasonably straightforward English, it would not tax the mind of a
Rhodes scholar and super-smart lawyer like Mr McCallum.
The Menzies
government, which negotiated the treaty, wanted Washington to give
Australia a document with the sort of automaticity that the US provided
to its allies in NATO - that an attack on any party would automatically
be regarded an attack on all.
Instead, the
ANZUS treaty says only that an attack on any of the signatories would
oblige the others to "act to meet the common danger in accordance with
its constitutional processes".
There is no
mention of the use of armed force. And the phrase "in accordance with
its constitutional processes" was included by the US to give it wriggle
room, says a former head of the Australian Department of Foreign
Affairs, Alan Renouf.
And when Mr
McCallum was asked yesterday exactly what those constitutional
processes might be in the US, especially in the event that the White
House and Congress disagreed over the course of action, he answered:
"I've not done
the constitutional analysis and I would imagine that there would be a
vast difference of opinions among academics and practising lawyers and
politicians as to what might be required." In other words, the response
would be confusion.
Yet, on the one
occasion where Australia sought to invoke the treaty, there was no
confusion whatsoever. As another former head of Foreign Affairs, Dick
Woolcott, recalled yesterday: "The last time we sought US assistance
under ANZUS, when our troops were in potential conflict with Indonesia
during the Confrontation crisis in 1964, it was denied to us.
"The message
came back very promptly from the White House: 'You got yourselves into
this, you get yourselves out.' A lot of Australians have been
anaesthetised into thinking ANZUS is some kind of cast-iron guarantee.
It is not."
One of the
linchpins of the unofficial relationship between Australia and the US,
the founder of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue, the
Melbourne businessman Phil Scanlan, summed up the lesson: "We need to
make sure our rhetoric about the relationship does not get ahead of the
reality." Mr McCallum has done Australians a favour in reminding us
that this is exactly what our political leaders have done.
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MILITARY BASES
------------------->
Media Release
Thursday, 15 February 2007
New US War Base Condemned
“We are
appalled by the announcement that the Federal Government has secretly
agreed to set up a new United States base at Geraldton in WA,”
Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition National Coordinator Denis
Doherty said this morning.
“We are sure
Australians do not want to supply intelligence and communications for
more Bush administration invasions or to host bases which spy on our
neighbours and training areas for Australian soldiers to practice
fighting under US command.
“The Federal
Government has dropped all pretence about ‘joint facilities’ and is
calling the new base, the first of several planned facilities, a United
States military base.
“Defence
Minister Nelson’s claim that the government will have full knowledge of
all activities at the base is unbelievable,” Mr Doherty said.
“We already have over 40 US military facilities in Australia. We cannot afford more
“This is a case where less is best!
“US bases make Australia a target for nuclear and terrorist attacks,” Mr Doherty said.
“They increase
the US hold on Australian foreign policy. They undermine Australia’s
security and add even more to the already out of control Australian
military budget which is running at $55 million every day.
“In the most recent budget the military got more money than education.
“These bases do not make Australia safer but they make us poorer,” Mr Doherty said.
“Around the
world, US bases have become the centre of major social problems.
Australia is no different. An Anglican Church report from Hobart
details frequent sexual assaults on young men and women by US service
people. US MPs assaulted Aborigines in Ipswich during 1997 war games
and two US servicemen were tried for rape in Darwin in February 2004.
“There are also major dangers to our environment of pollution from repairs and maintenance programs and from weapons firing.
“The Australian
Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition condemns this outrageous agreement and
vows to fight it in every way we can,” he said.
“Our Coalition
and other groups are preparing for a major campaign against another new
US base at Shoalwater Bay in Queensland. In June this year there
will be protests against the huge joint military exercise called
‘Talisman Sabre 07’.
“We call on the
Government to rescind this agreement and hold a public enquiry into the
US military presence in Australia,” Mr Doherty said.
For more information:
Denis Doherty 0418 290 663 or 9698 2954 (o) or 9660 7562 (h)
------------------->
AUSTRALIA PART OF NEW GLOBAL ANTI-MILITARY BASES DRIVE
“We´re
delighted that Ecuadoran President Raphael Correa will open
the
International Conference for the Abolition of Foreign Military
Bases,”
said Denis Doherty, leader of the Australian delegation to the
conference
which opens in Quito on Monday, 5 March.
“He will be joined
at the opening by Defence Minister Dr Escudero and
Quito Mayor Paco
Moncayo, showing the importance of this gathering,” said
Denis Doherty
who is the National Coordinator of the Australian Anti-Bases
Campaign
Coalition.
Over 400 delegates from Asia and the Pacific, Africa,
Europe and north and
south America will meet for three days to discuss
the social, political,
security and environmental problems posed by the
presence of foreign
military bases in their countries.
They will also
take steps to co-ordinate and organise the growing global
movement
against foreign, mainly United States, bases.
Delegates will travel to
the US military base at Manta. President Correa
has declared that the
lease on the base will not be renewed when it falls
due in 2009.
“Its
an interesting contrast,” Denis Doherty said.
“The people of Ecuador
have decided to throw out the US base at Manta. At
the same time in
Australia a new US military base at Geraldton has been
agreed after two
years of secret negotiations about which the Australian
people knew
nothing.
“However, the 30-year old campaign to rid Australia of United
States bases
will find new strength from this new global anti-bases
organisation,”
Denis Doherty said.
“Major demonstrations are already
planned against the Talisman Saber
US-Australian war games to be held
in June at the new base at Shoalwater
Bay in Queensland.
“Other
actions will take place at Pine Gap, Geraldton and others of the
almost
40 United States military facilities on our soil,” Mr
Doherty
concluded.
website Australia: www.anti-bases.org
conference website: www.no-bases.org
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ASIO INFILTRATES PINE GAP CAMPAIGN
------------------->
Security bungle leads to photo leak
Sarah Smiles, Canberra
February 21, 2007
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/security-bungle-leads-to-photo-leak/2007/02/20/1171733764483.html
TOP-SECRET
images of the Pine Gap intelligence base have been circulated to the
public after they were accidentally revealed to a group of anti-war
protesters.
The disclosure
is the latest in a series of embarrassing bungles involving the
Australian Federal Police, ASIO and the office of the Director of
Public Prosecutions in Darwin — including the unmasking of an ASIO
agent to the anti-war group.
In December
2005, four members of Christians Against All Terrorism broke into the
joint US-Australian base near Alice Springs in December 2005 to protest
the use of base's satellites during the Iraq war.
After they were
arrested and charged over the incident, they requested closed-circuit
TV footage of their arrest for use in their legal defence.
Instead, said
protester Bryan Law, of Cairns, the Director of Public Prosecutions
office in Darwin provided a written synopsis of their arrest produced
by federal police, identifying one individual at the scene as an ASIO
secret agent.
Mr Law said the
agent had appeared after he was apprehended by federal police officers
cutting a fence with bolt cutters, and identified himself as a Defence
Department official. "I had assumed he was to do with military
intelligence," he said. "The questions he was asking were of that
nature."
When the group
requested a seized digital camera, federal police released a cassette
that included 10 seconds of footage from inside the base, Mr Law said.
"What I found on that tape for some unknown reason was a series of
photographs taken from the cameras along the perimeter fence of the
Pine Gap compound," he said.
"The photos
shows the details of the fences, of the buildings adjacent to the
fences … I have made plenty of copies (and) I've distributed those
copies."
Details of the disclosures were revealed in the Cairns Post newspaper.
The protesters have been charged with unlawfully entering a prohibited area.
ASIO and the federal police declined to comment yesterday, saying the case was still before the courts.
Attorney-General
Philip Ruddock said: "It would be inappropriate to provide any further
comment. This is also consistent with long-standing practice that I am
not prepared to comment on intelligence matters."
However, a spokesman for Mr Ruddock said he was "disappointed" the images of the base had been released.
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NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS - SWEDEN
------------------->
IAEA to inspect Swedish nuclear plants
19 February 2007
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/industry/190207-IAEA_to_inspect_Swedish_nuclear_plants.shtml?jmid=734291852
[Reuters, 18
February] Following a recent series of developments at Swedish nuclear
power plants that have raised safety concerns, representatives of the
country's nuclear industry have asked the government to seek
inspections of Sweden's ten operating reactors by the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). An inspection by the IAEA could help
restore public confidence in Sweden's nuclear power industry, according
to Anders Jorle of the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate (SKI). He
said that an inspection of the Forsmark plant would be conducted first,
followed by inspections of the Ringhals and Oskarshamn plants.
Forsmark's new chief executive, Jan Edberg, said that he did not know
when the inspection could take place, but hoped that it could begin by
autumn or the "turn of the year."
Further information
Forsmark
International Atomic Energy Agency
Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate (SKI)
WNA’s Nuclear Power in Sweden information paper
WNN: Forsmark 2 shut until safety report complete
WNN: Forsmark chief resigns
------------------->
Forsmark under scrutiny
30 January 2007
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/regulationSafety/300107Forsmark_under_scrutiny.shtml?jmid=695903845
Managers at
Forsmark have faced tough questions following the release of an
internal document which revealed safety concerns, and the revelation
that subcontractors were sent home after failing alcohol and drug tests.
The spotlight
has been on the plant since the sudden shutdown of unit 1 following a
short-circuit in the plant switchyard on 25 July. A complex sequence of
over- and under-voltages caused the unit to shut down, but with only
two of four safety trains in operation. The other two were manually
started 22 minutes later, but the discovery of the design fault was a
shock to the Swedish nuclear industry.
Reactors with similar systems,
Forsmark 2 and Oskarshamn 1 and 2 were shut down as a precaution, while
Ringhals 4 was offline for refuelling. Changes have now been made to
all the units to protect against similar conditions.
When giving
permission for the reactors to restart, the Swedish Nuclear Power
Inspectorate (SKI) verified its satisfaction with the changes and
existing procedures but required further information from Forsmark to
show that management gave improvements to safety adequate priority.
At
this time, three members of Forsmark's maintenance team raised some
safety concerns with the plant manager, who asked them to compile a
report, for consideration alongside other analyses. It was subsequently
distributed within the organisation and contributed to a 60-point
program to improve safety.
The report, which was obtained by Swedish
TV channel SVT, states that:
* Internal
forms for reporting safety-related events had been redesigned without
the industry-standard 'Lessons learned' section due to lack of use.
* A 2004 peer
review conducted by the World Association of Nuclear Operators (Wano)
resulted in Forsmark being told to improve its scaffolding practices.
More strict rules were introduced in early 2005, but there were still
15 incidents involving scaffolding during the 2006 outage at Forsmark 2.
* Staff and
contractors often ignored radiation protection rules by not wearing
shoe protection and wearing gear from protected areas in declassified
areas. These violations of procedure are not a serious safety threat,
but indicate a poor safety culture among staff.
Göran
Lundgren, head of Vattenfall Nordic Generation, said in a Vattenfall
release that the report was "only one of the analyses that were
initiated following the [shutdown] events last summer," adding: "Of
these 60 points, some 20 have been fully implemented, just over 30 are
underway and those with the lowest priority will be started in 2007."
"I am convinced
that the program we have initiated will strengthen the safety of
Forsmark nuclear power plant," said Lundgren. He later told SVT that
Forsmark's management board would be reinforced with people
specifically assigned to coordinate safety improvements. Sweden's
Environment Minister, Andreas Carlgren, has said that regulations are
adequate and no changes are necessary.
SVT's reports
also revealed that some workers had failed random drug and alcohol
tests. Forsmark have said that of 380 text conducted on employees and
contractors entering the site in 2006, three were sent home for
alcohol, while three others were sent home for drugs. Al l the workers
sent home were subcontractors and not Forsmark employees. One was later
found to have taken only prescription medication.
Lundgren said:
"Forsmark performs drug tests on all new recruits, as well as
contractors. These are followed by random checks, and if anyone is
found to be under the influence of drugs they are immediately sent home
in accordance with our routines. It goes without saying that there is
zero tolerance against drugs at Forsmark."
Further information
Forsmark
Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate (SKI)
WNN Nuclear
Event Reports: INES-rating due to earlier event at Forsmark 1 - Two
emergency DG did not start when the unit was disconnected from the
ordinary off-site grid
------------------->
Forsmark 2 shut until safety report complete
15 February 2007
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/regulationSafety/150207-Forsmark-2_shut_until_safety_report_complete.shtml?jmid=734291852
The Swedish
Nuclear Power Inspectorate (SKI) has told officials at Forsmark
Kraftgrupp that Unit 2 of the Forsmark nuclear power plant will not be
permitted to restart until a thorough report on the safety controls at
the plant is presented. SKI also ordered an inspection of Unit 3.
Forsmark_small_1.JPG
Forsmark nuclear power plant (Image: Forsmark)
The decision to
keep Forsmark 2 offline will remain in force until the plant's operator
has evaluated information from tests taken from the reactor. Forsmark 1
was shut down earlier this month after a sample taken from one of three
rubber seals in the reactor's outer housing was found to have lost some
of its required elasticity. SKI sent a special inspection group to
Forsmark to investigate the incident, and assess the way the plant's
management had handled events.
The inspectors'
report is now complete, and shows that the incident did not increase
the risk of an accident, but says that it could have affected the
rubber seal's ability to handle an accident.
The incident
shows failures in Forsmark's control and testing routines, SKI said. It
therefore demanded that the company investigate documentation of tests
and maintenance procedures at the reactors.
SKI decided
that Forsmark 2 may not restart until this investigation is complete. A
similar investigation of Forsmark 3 must be carried out and a report
delivered to SKI no later than 28 February.
The move to
keep Forsmark 2 offline pending this further documentation was
triggered by plant management's disclosure that the rubber seal samples
were taken last year but the results were not reported until last
month, suggesting poor reporting and follow-up routines, SKI said.
Further information
Forsmark
Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate (SKI)
WNA’s Nuclear Power in Sweden information paper
WNN: Forsmark under scrutiny
WNN: Forsmark 1 and 2 precautions
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ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM
------------------->
Study Verifies More Hazardous Waste Facilities Located In Minority Areas
Source: University of Michigan
February 19, 2007
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070218135344.htm
Science Daily —
New research from the University of Michigan is the first known
national level study that supports environmental justice scholars'
claim that hazardous waste facilities are disproportionately placed in
poor, minority neighborhoods.
The other side
of that argument is that the hazardous waste facilities came first,
which causes the neighborhood demographics to change. As that argument
goes, the more affluent white people move out, and poorer minority
people are forced to stay or move in, said Paul Mohai, a professor in
the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment.
However, done
in collaboration with Robin Saha, a former U-M PhD student and
post-doctoral scholar, now an assistant professor at University of
Montana, shows that minorities were living in the areas where hazardous
waste facilities decided to locate before the facilities arrived. Their
study also shows that the demographics in the neighborhoods were
already changing and that white residents had already started to move
out when the facility was sited.
"What we
discovered is that there are demographic changes after the siting but
they started before the siting," Mohai said. "Our argument is that
what's likely happening is the area is going through a demographic
shift, and it lowers the social capital and political clout of the
neighborhood so it becomes the path of least resistance."
Mohai will
present the findings during a meeting of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science (AAAS) as part of a panel he co-organized,
called Environmental Justice 20 years After "Toxic Waste and Race,"
which was the name of the groundbreaking study of environmental justice
that put the movement on the map 20 years ago. Mohai's talk, "Which
Came First, People or Pollution? How Race and Socioeconomic Status
Affect Environmental Justice," is one of seven scheduled presentations.
Robert Bullard, professor at Clark Atlanta University, was the other
organizer.
The most basic
interpretation of the findings, Mohai said, is that they verify what
the environmental justice movement has argued for decades, that poorer
minority neighborhoods are more often chosen for hazardous waste
facilities than more affluent white neighborhoods. Therefore, policies
that intervene in the siting process are very important, Mohai said.
"Policies to
deal with environmental injustice by managing the siting and permitting
process could be a waste of time and money if the demographic changes
after siting explain why the disparity occurs," Mohai said. However,
based on this study, such policies are exactly what's needed.
Mohai and Saha
arrived at the numbers using a different way of analyzing the data that
more accurately reflects the populations that live within a certain
radius of the waste facility. Historically, such studies have relied on
census tract data, which doesn't always accurately reflect who is
impacted by the facility.
Using the new
method, researchers have found that racial disparities in the location
of hazardous waste facilities are much greater than previous studies
have shown. Furthermore, the disparities persist even when controlling
for economic and sociopolitical variables, suggesting that racial
targeting, housing discrimination and other factors uniquely associated
with race influence the location of the nations' hazardous waste
facilities.
Between 1966
and 1975, 81 facilities were sited nationally. These were located
disproportionately where minorities were concentrated, Mohai's study
found. Furthermore, using 1970 census data, Mohai found that whites
moved out in large numbers after a waste disposal siting in the
community. In 1970, 1.5 million whites lived within a 3 kilometer
radius of a waste facility, but in 2000, numbers had dropped to 1.1
million. By contrast, the African American population in the same areas
remained flat.
Between 1976
and 1985, 156 facilities were sited nationally, also located
disproportionately where minorities were concentrated. Although the
number of whites dropped from 2.3 million when sited to about 1.9
million in 2000, while African American numbers remained flat, it was
found that whites were already moving out before the facilities were
sited. In that same time period, the number of Hispanics in the areas
around the sites rose from 300,000 to 900,000, but again their numbers
were already changing before the facilities were sited.
From 1986-1995,
the findings were a bit different, but there were still demographic
changes happening that foreshadowed the changing demographic. Again,
the facilities were located disproportionately where minorities were
concentrated. The number of whites living within 3 kilometers of 84
waste facilities stayed flat at about 975,000 until the facility moved
in, then the white population fell to about 900,000. Hispanic, black
and Asian populations all were rising sharply before and after the
facilities moved in.
Also during the
AAAS meeting, Mohai, Bullard, (Robin) Saha, and Beverly Wright,
founding director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at
Dillard University in New Orleans, will release a comprehensive report
serving as a 20th anniversary follow-up to the original report on toxic
waste and race in the United States. The new report measures what has
happened in the last 20 years in terms of environmental injustice. The
report uses the new methods in Mohai's AAAS presentation to do a better
job of matching where people and hazardous sites are located. The
report also takes stock of the environmental justice movement itself,
presents a timeline and assessments of the movement, and gives
testimonials from key people about the impact of the original 1987
report. The title of the report is "Toxic Waste and Race at Twenty
1987-2007, Grassroots Struggles to Dismantle Environmental Racism in
the United States."
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University of Michigan.
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LUCAS HEIGHTS - PROBLEMS WITH NEW OPAL REACTOR
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Article in the St George Leader 1st March 2007
by John Mulcair
Seven Leaks in Reactor Core
Tests with
pressurise helium gas have revealed seven leaks in the heart of the new
$380 million nuclear research reactor being commissioned at Lucas
Heights.
The leaks were
found in welded structures that are part of the heavy water tank that
holds the radioactive core of the OPAL reactor, which is scheduled to
be officially opened by Prime Minister John Howard on April 18
As previously
reported by the Leader, small amounts of light water from the 13
metres-deep pool housing the overall reactor assembly are leaking into
a smaller heavy water tank at its base.
This tank, or reflector vessel, holds the reactor itself.
The heavy water
surrounding it is part of the precision control of the chain reactions
produced as uranium atoms are split. A fix for the problem has not yet
been decided, but it could cost the builder of the reactor, the
Argentine company INVAP, millions of dollars in compensation claims
from the reactor operator, the Australian Nuclear Science and
Technology Organisation (ANSTO).
A statement from ANSTO has confirmed the leaks and emphasised they are not safety related.
It said a
course of action to deal with the problem has yet to be developed with
INVAP, and it must in turn be approved by the national nuclear
regulator, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety
Agency.
ANSTO has said any costs for fixing the problem would be pursued under a warranty with INVAP.
Unofficial
sources within ANSTO said the worst-case scenario for a fix was to
remove the radioactive core of the reactor, drain the heavy water that
surrounds it and then empty the 13 metres-deep light water tank.
A waiting
period would follow to permit radioactivity to decay to levels that
would permit repairs to be made to any faulty welds. The unofficial
sources estimated this could take between one and two years.
The ANSTO
statement said the areas affected related to where neutron beam lines
join the tank which were subjected to non-destructed testing after
fabrication in Argentina.
The reactor was due to be taken back to full power on February 23 as part of its commissioning process.