Besides its collateral damage to Australia's security, commercial and diplomatic interests, the soon-to-be ratified Australia-India nuclear cooperation agreement notably fails to meet its objectives. The aim was to give a green light to Australian uranium exports to India. Two objectives were to be served, one commercial, the other diplomatic. A vast new market was to be opened for Australian uranium exporters and India was to be convinced Australia was a reliable partner, worthy of a closer relationship.
By Ron Walker, currently a visiting fellow at the Asia Pacific College of Diplomacy at ANU. Ron is a former DFAT officer who worked for 20 years in Australia's nuclear diplomacy. Among the positions he occupied were the first Head of the Nuclear Safeguards Branch and Chairman of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency
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Instead, as has been exposed in the Joint Parliamentary Committee, the Australian side gave away so much in the course of the negotiations on safeguards against nuclear proliferation and left open such loopholes for Australian uranium to end up in bombs or otherwise help their manufacture, that this proposed treaty does not do what Australia's 23 existing nuclear safeguards treaties do.
Unlike them, it does not give Australian exporters legally watertight guarantees that the trade will be subject to effective controls against misuse of the uranium in ways Australian companies neither want nor could afford. So many deficiencies in the proposed treaty have been exposed it amounts at best, not to a greenlight but to a blinking yellow one. Not 'all is guaranteed safe' but 'proceed carefully at your own peril'. And JSCOT's main recommendation is a red light: no uranium exports to be permitted for the foreseeable future.
How Australian companies will respond and what risks they will be prepared to take remains to be seen, but no responsible government would have placed them in this situation.
The Indian Government has every reason to feel it too has been dudded. Instead of a reliable supply, there is a big element of precariousness. As for a demonstration of the Australian Government's trustworthiness as a close partner, the contrary impression is conveyed of a bumbling inability to manage our own end of the deal.
Australia
Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission hears Adelaide Hills site earmarked
as suitable for nuclear reactor
September 18, 2015. SITES in the Adelaide Hills and Port Augusta have been
earmarked as suitable for a nuclear power plant should one be built in South
Australia, a royal commission has heard.
Too dangerous to sell India uranium
Dave Sweeney
Our Parliament has provided a welcome circuit breaker to a very dangerous
government proposal. After examining the controversial plan to sell
Australian uranium to India, the influential Joint Standing Committee on
Treaties has found that unresolved safety, security, legal and nuclear
weapons issues need to be addressed
before any uranium is sold or supplied
to India.
IAEA holds briefing on Fukushima
accident report
September 18, 2015. The International Atomic Energy Agency has briefed its
members on its report on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident
in 2011. It says an assumption that nuclear power plants are safe meant
Japan was unprepared for a severe accident.
The IAEA held the briefing at its headquarters in Vienna, Austria, on
Thursday. The 1,200-page-plus report was put together by about 180 experts
from more than 40 member countries.
IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said the report will be useful for all
countries that either have, or are planning to build, nuclear power plants.
Experts pointed out in the report that Japan was not sufficiently
prepared
for a severe nuclear accident due to the assumption that nuclear
plants were
safe.
Koizumi calls for national movement to
lead fight against nuclear power
September 13, 2015. Although he has no plans to return to national politics,
former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi tells the electorate not to lose
hope in the campaign against nuclear power.
Reactor Next to a Volcano? Japan’s New
Nuclear Gamble
Japan’s post-Fukushima safety guidelines are being ignored and face a
possible trial by fire, by law and maybe by terror.
Massive earthquakes, volcanoes, tidal waves, and natural disasters
galore - Japan would seem a rather precarious perch for nuclear power plants.
Flooding from Tropical Storm Etau, which overwhelmed the water pumps at the
infamous ruins of Fukushima, washing more radioactive waste into the ocean,
ought to serve as yet another reminder of how fragile Japan’s atomic
energy
program really is.
More than 300 bags from Fukushima
cleanup washed away during Tochigi floods
September 18, 2015. NIKKO, Tochigi Prefecture--At least 334 bags containing
radioactive grass and soil from the Fukushima nuclear disaster cleanup have
apparently been swept into a
tributary of the Kinugawa river during recent
torrential rains, according to Nikko city.
Solar power farms grow in shadow of
Fukushima plant
Sep 16, 2015. FUKUSHIMA - Parcels of farmland totalling 250 hectares near the
crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant are returning to life and being
covered with solar panels, amid government incentives to
invest in renewable
power.
850 tons of decontaminated Fukushima
water dumped into ocean
15 September 2015. The first batch of radioactive groundwater
filtered below
‘measurable limits’ at Japans tsumani-stricken Fukushima nuclear power
plant has been dumped into the ocean, as TEPCO seeks to ease toxic water
building-up at the site.
TEPCO dumps treated water in sea to ease
toxic water buildup
Sep. 14, 2015. FUKUSHIMA The operator of
the crippled Fukushima Daiichi
nuclear power plant on Monday discharged groundwater
filtered after being
pumped up from wells around damaged reactor buildings into the ocean, in an
effort to curb the amount of toxic water building up at the complex.
TEPCO releases first batch of
decontaminated Fukushima groundwater to sea
September 14, 2015. Tokyo Electric Power Co. was set to release 850 tons of
treated radioactive groundwater into the sea off the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear
power plant by sundown on Sept. 14.
The discharge marks the first release under the utility's “subdrain plan,"
an
additional measure conceived to help diminish the build-up of contaminated
groundwater at the crippled facility.
North Korea's renewed nuclear threat
keeps experts guessing
Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons complex relaunch seen as sabre rattling - or the
prerequisite for another
nuclear test.
Norway, Russia sign deal on nuclear
accidents
Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority and Rosatom have signed a set of
joint notification procedures in
case of nuclear incidents.
South Africans denied nuclear cost
reports
THREE reports by top international consultancies which explore the cost of
building 9,600MW of nuclear power in SA have been classified as secret
and
will not be made available to the public, the Department of Energy has said.
Five reasons not to build Hinkley
Sep 11, 2015. The endgame for the UK’s new reactor project at Hinkley Point
is nearing. A Chinese state visit to the UK in October may be the
make-or-break point for the project to get the go-ahead. As that moment
approaches, we give five reasons
not to build the plant. This is an excerpt
from our EU Power Weekly, which is available to our BNEF EMEA and BNEF All
clients.
Last week, French energy giant EDF
announced delays to two key new reactor
projects. Firstly, Flamanville 3 in France will only come online in 2018,
six years behind the initial plan and three times over budget. Also, Hinkley
Point C in the UK will not be completed by 2023 due to delays in reaching a
final investment decision. This adds to the uncertainty around the 3.2GW
reactor project. Here are five reasons not to build Hinkley.
Query over UK’s civil and military
nuclear links
13 September, 2015. Experts are asking whether the UK government’s
determination to build more nuclear power stations is linked to its wish to
maintain its nuclear deterrent.
Britain's nuclear plans: the Corbyn
factor
17 September 2015. In the debate about replacing the Trident nuclear system,
there is space for options that link British to international
experience.
Entergy’s FitzPatrick Reactor May Be
Next Nuclear Casualty
09/14/2015. Entergy’s 850-MW James A. FitzPatrick nuclear plant located near
Oswego, N.Y., may be the next reactor doomed to close
on profitability woes.
Nun who broke into nuclear weapons
complex resentenced
September 15, 2015. NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- An 85-year-old nun and two fellow
Catholic peace activists have been resentenced to time served for
vandalizing a storage bunker
that held much of the nation's
bomb-grade uranium.
Last bid to kill Iran nuclear deal
blocked in Senate
Sep 17, 2015. U.S. Senate Democrats on Thursday blocked legislation meant to
kill the Iran nuclear deal for a third time, securing perhaps the greatest
foreign policy win of President Barack Obama's six years in office and
clearing the way to implement
the accord.
‘I was only 50/50’: Russian who saved
world from nuclear war
FRYAZINO, Russia - The elderly former Soviet military officer who answers
the door is known in the West as ‘the man who saved the world.’
A movie with that title, which hits theaters in the United States on Friday,
tells the harrowing story of Sept. 26, 1983, when Stanislav Petrov made a
decision credited by many with averting a nuclear war.
An alarm had gone off that night, signaling the launch of US
intercontinental ballistic missiles, and it was up to the 44-year-old
lieutenant colonel to determine, quickly, whether the attack on the Soviet
Union was real.
‘I realized that I had to make some kind of decision, and I was only 50/50,’
Petrov told the Associated Press.
Read more & view movie
trailer here:
(For details of other films to be shown at the International Uranium Film
Festival Berlin 2015, September 24 to 30, go to: http://uraniumfilmfestival.org/en/programm-berlin-2015)