Well Pollyanasses

Why does Australia need a nuclear weapons capability within the NEXT 20 Years?

Because China and India already have nuclear weapons (haven't you heard?) http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com/

They are building Navies with the capability to project power as far as Australia. They will be starving for energy (coal and uranium) within 15 years because their main competitors, the Yanks and the Russians, are cornering the oil market. Have you heard of Iraq or Siberian oil?

Australia and Japan are hoping, just hoping, that Uncle Sam will deliver Middle East oil for our little defence countries.

This may or may not encroach into blinkered PRESENT THREAT imaginations but like Curtin you have to think ahead.

If anyone thinks that a poorly armed Australia is the best defence, thank Christ they'll never need to defend it.

More likely they'll have the mentality of too many "peace in our time" New Zealanders who:

- are protected by the American nuclear umbrella
- are protected by Australia
- and are oblivious to the fact that New Zealand is quietly an essential part and beneficiary of the UKUSA intelligence sharing agreement. The New Zealand Government has been playing two games - realistically working with its allies - and conning little peace hobbits.

Feel safe, green and righteous.

Pete

Oh sure - Helen Caldicott is just a silly old woman, who can't help overdramatising everything - right? WRONG!

In fact, Dr Caldicott is being quite restrained. Why? Because the truth is something that would beggar your imagination. The reality is that the nuclear cowboys have created a mess so great, that in order to justify what they have done, the only thing they can do is to keep on "failing forward" (a popular saying amongst the Pentagon Neo-Cons). Maybe they are gambling that a "nuclear surge" will somehow overcome past realities, in the manner of the Iraq invasion. In this, they are both self-deluding and self-serving, with shocking implications for our grandkids.

But hey, it's all about turning a dollar - right? Someone has to do it. It's not easy being a Captain Of Industry. Remember that, you freeloaders!

Reality check. Let's take a look at what this actually entails. Let's see who the freeloaders really are.

Begin with the Hanford site, which is the American nuclear Stonehenge:

Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/31/AR2006103101109.html

DoE website:
http://www.hanford.gov/communication/video/?video=archives

Thyroid disease management at Hanford:
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/hanford/health_care/video_presentations.html

Cheer up and look on the bright side:
http://www.archive.org/details/acc300

There is only one thing I am absolutely sure of. Neither Ziggy Switkowsky, nor Ron Walker, nor Hugh Morgan, nor Robert Champion de Crespigny, nor John Howard nor their children or grandchildren, will be within coo-ee of the Australian nuclear mess, when it's time to clean up the great malfunction. They will be far away, living off the proceeds.

I think I'll mention this again, in case you were too lazy to click onto the links:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/31/AR2006103101109.html

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Quote:

Now in its 17th year, the nation's largest and most complex environmental remediation project is costing many billions of dollars more than expected and will continue far longer than experts once predicted.

By almost every measure, except the radiation and chemical illnesses suffered by some Hanford workers, five decades of making bombs were a blessing to Pasco, Kennewick and Richland....

....cleaning up Hanford's colossal nuclear mess is proving more lucrative -- for the locals -- than making it in the first place.

"I think the cleanup will last a hundred years," she says.

The plant has already cost $3.4 billion but has yet to process a single gallon of the 53 million gallons of deadly high-level waste stored in 177 underground tanks.

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Mr Costello must be rubbing his hands together with anticipation, because according to the modern methods of national accounting, all of the above is only serving to enhance the GDP of the good old USA. Geez, I just can't wait to hop onto the gravy train myself.

Bring it on!

The Ugly "Truths" from Nuclear Experts, Ping Pong Champions, Twiddle Knobs and Other Fairy Bells.

1. 10/1976 (Source West Australian)

Dr Sabine, a NSW physicist at a WA Nuclear Emergency Seminar, pushes for uranium mining and enrichment in Australia and a "nuclear garbage dump" about 1600kms west of Alice Springs. He said: "The waste had to be capable of being buried and forgotten about because society could not monitor it for thousands of years."

2. 12/1976 (Kalgoorlie Miner)

A letter from Graeme Campbell, stating in the strongest possible terms, his opposition to the nuclear industry and the proposed use of the outback as a nuclear dumping ground. "It worries me and I tremble for my children," he said.

3. 02/1987 (Source Hansard, Nuke Science and Tech Bill)

Graeme Campbell, now Federal member for Kalgoorlie and no longer trembling for his children says "The nuclear processing and reprocessing industry would provide us with an income of a couple of billion dollars a year.

"I wonder how long we can go on pandering to the ill-informed, greedy, selfish, short sighted environmentalists and ignore this piece of economic salvation staring us in the face. As for Chernobyl, this was going to be the big one the environmentalists had all been waiting for . According to my research, no more than 4 people will get additional cancers."

4. 10/12/1985 (West Australian)

Perth millionaire, Bob Oliver believes it is feasible to create a huge inland sea on the Nullabor Plain by blasting a canal using controlled nuclear explosions, through from the Southern Ocean.

5. 11/12/1985 (West Australian)

Perth Millionaire's vision of changing Australia's climate by creating an inland sea on the Nullabor Plains has sadly evaporated. As it was pointed out, none of the Nullarbor is below sea level!

6. 30/10/1986 (Kalgoorlie Miner)

Sir Ernest Titterton at a UWA Physics Seminar said "all the nuclear waste in the world could be safely stored down an old mine shaft at Kalgoorlie."

NB: Mine blasts occur daily, cracking residents walls and ceilings and other seismological disturbances occur measuring up to 4.2 magnitude.

contd...

I'm not in favor of any long term radio-active waste storage.

If its radioactive then it is fuel and the nuclear fuel cycle can be constructed such that all waste is reprocessed.

Of course that requires a fast breeder reactor and a thorium fuel cycle but eventually we will be getting our nuclear fuel from the oceans and over time lowering the background radiation level.

For me its about design , science and responsibility.

Without a world wide nuclear renaissance 3/4 or more of the worlds population will be condemned to live in poverty for ever.

Unless of course the Malthusians get their wet dream of depopulation to come true.

> If its radioactive then it is fuel and the nuclear fuel
> cycle can be constructed such that all waste is reprocessed.

Anti-nuclear activists will fight reprocessing and the Thorium cycle bitterly. Using Plutonium as driver fuel? Burning up of the long lasting actinides? A ten-fold reduction of radioactivity in the waste products after 100 years, and a 10,000 fold reduction after 500 years?

Logic does not trump faith and their belief system cannot accommodate a modern nuclear fuel cycle. They don't care that coal fired plants release much more radioactivity into the environment that any nuclear plant. This is just heretical talk. Solution is for us to revert back to the bush and an imagined past where we were at harmony with Gaia