Home > Wrap up of the week’s nuclear news
Wrap up of the week’s nuclear news
by Christina Macpherson - Open-Publishing - Tuesday 7 February 2012Australia: By far the most important nuclear news for this week is the Bill before the senate tomorrow February 8, - the National Radioactive Waste Management Bill. This will impose a nuclear waste dump on Aboriginal land in the NT. It’s likely to be rubber-stamped by the Senate, as the Australian media dutifully shuts up about this – as usual. Only the Greens will fight this one.
Grattan Institute, largely funded by BHP, comes out with a pro nuclear report, and subtly downgrades renewable energy.
Australia to get compulsory airport security scanning. However, as far as I can tell, it is the apparently harmless “millimetre wave” technology, and NOT the X-ray type “backscatter” – therefore airline travellers will not be subjected to ionising radiation.
Australian company Lynas gets “temporary license” for its planned rare earths plant in Malaysia, despite having no plan for long term disposal of radioactive wastes. Growing opposition in Malysia, but Australian government supports Lynas. The plan is the world’s biggest rare earths refining project. It is being watched as the precursor for nuclear power in South East Asia.
International: In the USA - where the greatest number of nuclear reactors are sited, nuclear secrecy is becoming an ever greater concern. The Department of Energy resists any disclosure of the costs to tax-payers of commitments in the loans guarantees proposed for the controversial Vogtle nuclear project, and resists any monitoring of the radiation hazard at Savannah River nuclear site. Revelations of the cosy insider arrangements between former U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham and French nuclear corporation AREVA, concerning that same failed nuclear project. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission getting more worried about earthquakes and floods.
The Iran nuclear question bubbles on. And Iran gets an earthquake rather near to its nuclear reactor.
In Asia – anti-nuclear public opinion rises. The nuclear lobby watches anxiously the Malaysian public opposition to Lynas rare earths company and its plans regarding radioactive wastes.
Russia to privatise its nuclear corporation, Rosatom. Safety anxieties in Russia, following a fire at its Moscow nuclear institute.
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Christina Macpherson
Antinuclear Australia