[Green-Activist] Nuclear "Review"

[Anne Goddard]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Anne Goddard 
To: Redfern-Waterloo at yahoogroups.com 
Cc: Group 1 ; Group 4 ; G_C_A_ at yahoogroups.com.au 
Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2006 8:56 PM
Subject: Nuclear "Review"


From: Hillel Freedman 
Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2006 7:32 PM
Subject: sham nuclear inquiry

Hello, submissions to the governments sham inquiry are due this Friday.
Enclosed is a form letter people can sign. Also attached is an explanation by one NGO as to why they arent putting in a submission. If You would like to write a submission below are some suggestions.
Also This Friday from 8am till 10 am - Sham nuclear power action. 
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The terms of reference of the governments so called nuclear power inquiry are sham. They hardly consider the possibility of environmental impacts, and don't allow for the possibility of alternative solutions. We can see from the fact that the enquiry isn't an inquiry just into nuclear power that its very deceptive. Included in the terms of reference are consideration of how to expand all aspects of the nuclear industry in Australia.
 
We will be destroying the terms of reference and creating a new one.

Federal government Melbourne office 1 Treasury Place Melbourne (the street that runs at the back of the treasury gardens melways 43 k8) 
Friday  
August 18th 
8am till 10am
 
Please email me or call me 0417506150 if you can come
Please consider putting in a submission to the government's nuclear inquiry - the Uranium Mining Processing and Nuclear Energy Review (UMPNER) being headed up by Ziggy Switkowski. 

The deadline for submissions is August 18. 
Email or post submissions to: 

Uranium Mining Processing and Nuclear Energy Review Secretariat 
c/- Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet 
3-5 National Circuit, Barton ACT 2601. 
Email: umpner at pmc.gov.au
The website for the inquiry is: www.pmc.gov.au/umpner/index.cfm

Some points you might like to raise: 

LIMITED TERMS OF REFERENCE 
* The inquiry ought to include consideration of sustainable energy options - renewable energy and energy efficiency/ conservation measures. 

PROPOSED NUCLEAR WASTE DUMP IN THE NORTHERN TERRITORY 

* The Howard government's plan to dump nuclear waste in the Northern Territory is a direct breach of unequivocal promises made before the 2004 federal election. 

* None of the sites under consideration in the NT were short-listed when environmental and scientific criteria were used to locate potential dump sites in the 1990s, and there are serious concerns as to the suitability of all of the short-listed sites in the NT. 

* Draconian legislation was passed through the federal parliament in 2005 to by-pass normal decision-making processes in relation to the proposed nuclear waste dump. This legislation undermines environmental, public safety and Aboriginal heritage protections. The UMPNER panel should register its strong objection to this thuggish behaviour by the Howard government. 
  
WEAPONS PROLIFERATION 

* Nuclear power is the only energy source with a direct and repeatedly demonstrated connection to the production of Weapons of Mass Destruction. For example, India , Israel , Pakistan , South Africa and possibly North Korea developed arsenals of nuclear weapons under cover of a 'peaceful' nuclear program. The current tensions around the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea further highlight the potential use of 'peaceful' nuclear facilities for nuclear weapons production. 

* Former US Vice President Al Gore noted in May, 2006: 
"For eight years in the White House, every weapons-proliferation problem we dealt with was connected to a civilian reactor program. And if we ever got to the point where we wanted to use nuclear reactors to back out a lot of coal ... then we'd have to put them in so many places we'd run that proliferation risk right off the reasonability scale." 

* The peaceful and military nuclear programs of the five declared nuclear weapons state - the US, UK, Russia, China and France - are interconnected to varying degrees. For example, in the US , a power reactor is used to produce tritium for nuclear weapons. 

* The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty enshrines an 'inalienable right' of member states to all 'civil' nuclear technologies, including dual-use technologies with both peaceful and military capabilities. In other words, the NPT enshrines the 'right' to develop a nuclear weapons 'threshold' or 'breakout' capability. 

* Proliferation concerns have led a number of nation states to use conventional weapons to attack nuclear facilities. Iraq 's nuclear facilities have been bombed by Iran , Israel and the US , and Iraq itself targeted a nuclear plant in Iran in the 1980s and claimed to have targeted Scud missiles at Israel 's Dimona nuclear plant in 1991. 

* In stark contrast to Australian government and industry propaganda, Dr. Mohamed El Baradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is responsible for safeguarding Australian uranium, says that the basic safeguards system is "fairly limited" and efforts to improve it have been "half-hearted". He stresses the difficulty of safeguarding nuclear materials on the IAEA's "shoestring budget", which, he says, is comparable to that of a "local police department". 

* Australia 's uranium exports have produced over 80 tonnes of plutonium in nuclear power reactors - enough for over 8,000 nuclear weapons. 

* The claim from the so-called Australian Safeguards and Nonproliferation Office that Australia only exports uranium to countries with an "impeccable" non-proliferation/disarmament record is demonstrably false. Australia has uranium export agreements with a number of nuclear weapons states (USA, UK, France, China), nation states with a history of covert nuclear weapons research (e.g. South Korea, Taiwan), nation states which refuse to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (e.g. USA, China) and nation states blocking progress on a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (e.g. USA). 

* The claim that the safeguarding of Australia 's uranium exports is subject to the most stringent safeguards of any uranium exporting country is false. There are some useful clauses in bilateral agreements - such as requirements for prior consent before reprocessing or enrichment beyond 20% uranium-235 - but permission to reprocess spent fuel (thereby separating plutonium) has never once been denied even when it leads to plutonium stockpiling (as in Japan), and permission to enrich beyond 20% U-235 has never once been sought. All countries rely on the inadequate and underfunded IAEA safeguards system. 

URANIUM SALES TO CHINA 

* China is a nuclear weapons state which has not signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and has an appalling record of exporting WMD technology to Iran , Pakistan , North Korea and Libya . 

* Proponents of uranium sales to China overlook the fundamental difficulty of assuring peaceful uses of Australian uranium in a closed and secretive society. The Chinese regime has a track record of gross violations of human rights, and China still ranks in the worst ten countries in the world for press freedom. No uranium sales to mass murderers. 

INTRACTABLE RADIOACTIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS: 

* The Roxby Downs (Olympic Dam) mine has a radioactive tailings stockpile of over 70 million tonnes, and the Ranger uranium mine has a radioactive tailings stockpile of over 30 million tonnes. 

* At the Beverley uranium mine, radioactive and acidic liquid waste is simply dumped in an aquifer with no attempt at remediation. 

* Australian uranium is converted into high-level nuclear waste in power reactors around the world, yet there is still not a single repository anywhere in the world for the disposal of this waste and there is growing pressure on Australia to host an international high-level nuclear waste dump. 

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS 

* The Roxby Indenture Act provides a series of overrides and exemptions from key South Australian legislation - the Environmental Protection Act, the Water Resources Act, the Aboriginal Heritage Act and the Freedom of Information Act. The UMPNER panel should recommend the repeal of these outrageous legal privileges. 

* The 2003 Senate Inquiry into the regulation of uranium mining in Australia reported "a pattern of under-performance and non-compliance", it identified "many gaps in knowledge and found an absence of reliable data on which to measure the extent of contamination or its impact on the environment", and it concluded that changes were necessary "in order to protect the environment and its inhabitants from serious or irreversible damage". 

URANIUM ENRICHMENT - WEAPONS AND WASTE 

* A uranium enrichment plant would produce large volumes of depleted uranium waste which would pose public health, environmental and security risks (DU has been used by the US and NATO in munitions in Iraq , Afghanistan and the Balkans). 

* It would undermine efforts by the UN/IAEA and the US government to limit the spread of enrichment (and reprocessing) technology. In February 2004, President Bush proposed to cap the group of enriching states. In February 2005, Mohamed El Baradei, the IAEA Director General, proposed a five-year moratorium on building new enrichment and reprocessing facilities, and that during the five-year period options for multilateral or international control of these facilities should be developed. A similar proposal was put forward in the 2004 report of the UN High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. 

* Australian capacity to produce fissile material (highly-enriched uranium) would not go unnoticed in the region, e.g. Indonesia . 

* And an Australian enrichment plant would undermine Australian objections to enrichment programs elsewhere, e.g. in Iran and North Korea . 

INADEQUATE REGULATION 

* As an example of lax regulation, the Howard government allowed the CEO of ANSTO to play a direct role in the selection of the CEO of ARPANSA. Dr Johnston on the UMPNER panel would be exceedingly well versed in another, recurring regulatory problem - the revolving door between regulators and the institutions they regulate. 

NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS 

* Chernobyl and Three Mile Island are only the best-known of hundreds of nuclear accidents. There have been at least eight accidents involving damage to or malfunction of the core of nuclear power or research reactors. At least five nuclear research reactor accidents have resulted in fatalities. There have been other serious reactor accidents which did not involve core damage or malfunction, and a number of 'near misses' with power reactors found to be in a serious state of disrepair - one such incident was discovered in 2002 at the Davis-Besse reactor in the United States . There have been many accidents involving reprocessing plants, waste stores and other nuclear facilities. 

* Applying the standard risk estimate to the IAEA's estimate of human exposure to radiation from the Chernobyl disaster gives a figure of 24,000 fatal cancers. While the death toll is subject to uncertainty, the broader social impacts are all too clear, including those resulting from the permanent relocation of about 220,000 people from Belarus , the Russian Federation , and the Ukraine . 

* Safety concerns are not limited to the ex-Soviet states. For example, the Japanese nuclear power industry has been in turmoil since the August 2002 revelations of 29 cases of false reporting on the inspections of cracks in numerous reactors. There have also been a number of serious accidents, including fatal accidents, at nuclear reactors and other nuclear facilities in Japan in the past decade. 

ROUTINE EMISSIONS FROM NUCLEAR FACILITIES 

* An important study by the US National Research Council has added significant weight to the Linear No Threhold model of risk assessment. Chair of the Council's research panel, Professor Richard Monson, concluded: "The scientific research base shows that there is no threshold of exposure below which low levels of ionizing radiation can be demonstrated to be harmless or beneficial." (National Research Council, 2005, "Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation, < www.nap.edu/books/030909156X/html >.) 

* Yet the risks of exposure to low levels of radioactivity, whether from routine emissions or accidents, are often ignored in risk assessments e.g. by science minister Julie Bishop. 

* The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation has estimated the collective effective dose to the world population over a 50-year period of operation of nuclear power reactors and associated nuclear facilities to be two million person-Sieverts. Applying the standard risk estimate to that level of radiation exposure gives an alarming total of 80,000 fatal cancers. 

* Over the years the permitted levels of radiation exposure for workers and the public have dropped dramatically as research, particularly from radiation biologists, indicates harmful effects still exist at much lower exposure levels. For workers, the permitted dose was set at 500 millisieverts per year in 1934, 150 mSv in 1950, 50 mSv in 1956, and 20 mSv (averaged over five years) in 1991. The limit for members of the public is just 1 mSv. 

NEW REACTOR TYPES 

* The hype about future reactor designs with supposedly 'passive' safety systems has attracted scepticism and cynicism even from within the nuclear industry, with one industry representative quipping that "the paper-moderated, ink-cooled reactor is the safest of all." 

* For example the claim that pebble bed reactors are 'walk away safe' rests on the assumption that no fuel melting will occur below a certain temperature, and on the assumption that that temperature will not be exceeded. 

* All existing and proposed reactors types (including breeders, thorium, fusion etc) risk contributing to the proliferation of nuclear WMD. 

NUCLEAR IS NO SOLUTION TO CLIMATE CHANGE 

* In a 2003 report, the Australian Ministerial Council on Energy identified ways to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse emissions in the manufacturing, commercial and residential sectors by 20-30% with the adoption of commercially-available technologies and with an average payback time of four years. To achieve a comparable reduction of greenhouse emissions through the introduction of nuclear power would be far more expensive, much slower, and would generate large volumes of high-level nuclear waste and plutonium. 

* Nuclear power is used almost exclusively for electricity generation, but about two-thirds of Australia 's greenhouse emissions arise in other sectors. Energy efficiency and conservation measures can be applied across all sectors - transport, agriculture/land clearing, industry, commercial, residential, etc. 

* Numerous scientific studies show that clean energy solutions, comprising renewable energy sources and a wide array of energy conservation and efficiency measures, can meet energy demand and reduce greenhouse emissions and do so at modest cost. 

(my note...Please see (and endorse) the Global Climate Change Mitigation Petition. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/737214963
Feel free to use the wording in your submission if you wish... pasted below this message)

JOBS AND ECONOMICS 

* Renewable energy sources in general employ far more people than more polluting sources. Typically, nuclear power sustains around one sixth of the jobs sustained by wind energy, per unit of power produced. 

* Uranium exports in 2005 accounted for less than one third of one percent of Australia 's total export revenue ($573m/$176,700m). 

Uranium Mining Processing and Nuclear Energy Review Secretariat 
c/- Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet 
3-5 National Circuit 
Barton ACT 2601. 
Email: umpner at pmc.gov.au 
-----------------------------------------------
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/737214963
Global Petition for the implementation of sustainable energy production and living systems
TO: The Honourable Elected Representatives of the Government(s) of our Nation.

We, as global citizens, having the right to decide where our taxes are spent, and being increasingly concerned about our taxes and research funding being invested into subsidizing unsustainable and polluting energy production methods which induce climate change (for example the coal and nuclear industries) hereby request that those tax dollars and research funds be RE-CHANNELED into sustainable energy production that will protect the planet and benefit all its inhabitants, indefinitely.

Due to Climate Change through high levels of CO2 being released into our atmosphere (and overwhelming information from the scientific community confirming this) we believe that our taxes and research funding would be better spent in reducing CO2 emissions if they were invested into clean, sustainable energy production methods and living systems.

We believe our tax dollars and research funding, which are currently spent on the production of energy for our use, must increasingly be used for the development and supply of the following sustainable energy production methods and living systems:

1. Research and development of government owned geothermal energy production. 
2. Research and development of Tidal; Wind; and Solar Power energy production. 
3. More Government-funded scientific investigations to support infrastructure for local, clean, sustainable energy supplies.
4. The re-installment and/or continuation and/or the immediate development of a solar energy rebate scheme and the creation of subsidies and/or rebate scheme(s) for other alternative clean and sustainable power supply systems. 
5. The development of Government funding support (at all levels) for sustainable living education programs for individuals and families. 
6. Improved and affordable family oriented local and national public transport, funded by all levels of Government, which remain in the hands of the people of our nation.
7. Adequate Government funding (from all levels) for the maintenance and upkeep of our existing public transport systems and infrastructures. 
8. No further privatisation of our existing rail systems and publicly owned transport infrastructures.

We also request that taxes currently spent on scientific research into polluting, toxic and CO2 producing industries be re-channeled into scientific research leading to the rapid and immediate development of CLEAN, NON-POLLUTING, SAFE and SUSTAINABLE energy production methods and living systems. 

We thank you for your attention.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/737214963
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