Gem Romuld and Jim Green

Friends of the Earth has been organising Radioactive Exposure Tours (‘radtours’) since the 1980s. In that time, the tours have exposed thousands of people first-hand to the realities of the nuclear industry. This year’s radtour travelled for 10 days from Melbourne to Adelaide then into the heart of the SA nuclear industry and back.

We stopped in Port Augusta to meet with Sandra Dingamen at the site of the Gugada Tent Embassy and visited Emily Austin, one of the senior Aboriginal women of the Irati Wanti campaign that stopped the Howard government building a nuclear waste dump in SA in 2004. Mrs Austin and the other kungkas (women) beseeched the politicians to ‘get their ears out of their pockets’, and after a six-year campaign the politicians finally gave up on the plan.

Another highlight of this year’s radtour was the participation of Maralinga nuclear bomb test veteran Avon Hudson for the whole 10-day trip. Visit the Woomera Missile Park and you’ll see big chunks of metal − but Avon brings them to life with his encyclopaedic recollection of the history of missile testing in the region. Avon refuses to visit the Woomera cemetery these days − the large number of infant and childhood deaths points to the dark side of the nuclear bomb tests further west at Maralinga and Emu Field.

We drove past Roxby Downs and up Borefield Road into Arabunna Country, visiting the Mound Springs, desert oases that are very important for Arabunna people and host unique flora and fauna. These springs have suffered dramatically, some drying up almost completely, because of the water usage of the Olympic Dam uranium mine further south on Kokatha country. Small consolation that the problem would be still worse if not for the ongoing efforts of Arabunna Traditional Owners and ‘greenie’ groups like Friends of the Earth to hold BHP to account for its unsustainable water extraction.

We stopped for a swim at the Coward Springs on the Oodnadatta Track and camped for two nights on the edge of Lake Eyre South, witnessing two stunning sunsets and sunrises. The ‘Old Lake’ is different every time we visit it. It’s beautiful when full of water, even more beautiful in the dry years when thick layers of salt naturally form an endless array of knee-high sculptures. This year, stretches of dry salt were interspersed with water from recent rain.

We back-tracked for a tour of the Olympic Dam mine, owned and operated by BHP Billiton. Olympic Dam is the largest uranium deposit in the world and was constructed in the early 1980s without proper consent of the Traditional Owners. BHP’s monolithic expansion plans for the mine were shelved in August 2012 but the mine remains an environmental and social disaster in itself.

Back up the Borefield Road and onwards east through Marree, after a stop at the Marree Cultural Centre to meet with Reg Dodd, brother of Kevin Buzzacott. We visited the spectacular ochre cliffs and ate quandong pies in Copley before making camp for two nights in the Gammon Ranges on Adnyamathanha country. Visiting the Beverley in-situ leach uranium mine provided the opportunity to see how the mine works and grill staff on many topics.

We were privileged to hear from Marg Sprigg at the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary − land that is 1.8 billion years old. The Spriggs − descendants of famous rock star (geologist) Reg Sprigg − are celebrating a successful campaign to prevent Marathon Resources from establishing a uranium mine inside the precious sanctuary. Marathon did itself no favours by illegally disposing of hundreds of low-level radioactive drill samples inside the Sanctuary; the company was caught out by brilliant detective work by Marg and Doug Sprigg.

After a camp-fire debrief and a good sleep we ventured south to camp in Brachina Gorge in the Flinders Ranges. After farewelling the desert we spent our last night in Adelaide watching anti-nuclear films.

On the trip we also heard about many other related campaigns including the battle to protect Walmadan at James Price Point (which has recently been won!) and the ongoing fight to protect Muckaty from a radioactive waste dump. The radtour group included visitors from Vietnam, India and Germany. Bhargavi Dilipkumar joined us from India before travelling to Sydney and Canberra for meetings regarding massive campaigns in her home country against poorly-managed nuclear power reactors − a problem exacerbated by the Australian Government’s decision to permit uranium sales to India.

We organised in affinity groups, practiced consensus decision-making, experienced desert camping and vegetarian, communal cooking while amongst some of the most beautiful and ecologically significant environments in Australia.

Stay tuned for the Radioactive Exposure Tour 2014!

Contact: ace@.foe.org.au

Gem Romuld and Jim Green are members of FoE’s Anti-nuclear & Clean Energy campaign.

Jim Green

Nuclear apologists around the world are peddling the following dishonest arguments concerning the Fukushima nuclear disaster:

• it was caused by a natural disaster and no-one is to blame;
• it resulted from problems specific to Japan and is of no relevance to nuclear power elsewhere;
• it has not caused and will not cause any radiation-related deaths;
• low-level radiation exposure is harmless;
• the nuclear accident has caused a great deal of psychological suffering but that should be blamed on nuclear critics spreading ‘radiophobia’; and
• lessons will be learned from the accident and nuclear power will be even safer than it already is. 

Let’s take each of those arguments in turn.

An Act of God?

Spin: “It was therefore a sequence of extraordinary forces unleashed by an unprecedented natural disaster which caused the accident at the reactors, not any operating failure, human error or design fault of the reactors themselves.” − Uranium junior Toro Energy, 2011.

The 3/11 earthquake and tsunami were Acts of God but the nuclear disaster was an Act of TEPCO. The July 2012 report of Japan’s Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) concluded that the accident was “a profoundly man-made disaster that could and should have been foreseen and prevented” if not for “a multitude of errors and wilful negligence that left the Fukushima plant unprepared for the events of March 11”.

Made in Japan?

Spin: The fundamental causes of the Fukushima are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture.

The otherwise excellent NAIIC report makes the questionable claim that the disaster can be attributed to problems specific to Japan. Kiyoshi Kurokawa, Chair of the Commission, said: “What must be admitted – very painfully – is that this was a disaster ‘Made in Japan.’ Its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture: our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to ‘sticking with the program’; our groupism; and our insularity.”

Certainly those factors were at work − but they are not unique to Japan. Academic Benjamin Sovacool has documented 99 accidents at nuclear power plants worldwide from 1952 to 2009 that resulted in the loss of human life and/or more than US$50,000 of property damage. Of those 99 accidents, 56 were in the USA, 10 in France, seven in both Japan and India, and the remaining 19 accidents in 11 other countries.

Chernobyl was dismissed as an aberration involving dated technology in a closed Communist society. Fukushima shows that nuclear disasters can happen in the most technologically advanced Western societies.

No radiation deaths?

Spin: “There have been no harmful effects from radiation on local people, nor any doses approaching harmful levels.” − World Nuclear Association, January 2013.

Long-term studies are unlikely to demonstrate statistically-significant increases in cancer incidence from Fukushima fallout, because of the high incidence of cancers in the general population. Nevertheless, some preliminary scientific estimates of the long-term cancer death toll are available, based on information about radiation releases and exposures. These range from a cancer death toll of 130 (a Stanford University study) to 3,000 (radiation biologist Ian Fairlie − ianfairlie.org).

Indirect deaths must also be considered, especially those resulting from the failure of TEPCO and government authorities to develop and implement adequate emergency response procedures. A September 2012 Editorial in Japan Times notes that 1,632 deaths occurred during or after evacuation from the triple-disaster; and 160,000 of the 343,000 evacuees were dislocated specifically because of the nuclear disaster. A January 2013 article in The Lancet notes that “the fact that 47% of disaster-related deaths were recognised in Fukushima prefecture alone indicates that the earthquake-triggered nuclear crisis at the Fukushima power plant caused extreme hardship for local residents.”

Low-level radiation exposure is safe?

Spin: “If the most highly exposed person receives a trivial dose, then everyone’s dose will be trivial and we can’t expect anyone to get cancer.” − US Health Physics Society

The Health Physics Society redefines the problem of low-level radiation exposure as a non-problem involving “trivial” doses which are, by definition, harmless. It would be too kind to describe that as circular logic − it is asinine.

The overwhelming weight of scientific opinion holds that there is no threshold below which ionising radiation is without risk. For example:

• The 2006 report of the Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation of the US National Academy of Sciences states: “The Committee judges that the balance of evidence from epidemiologic, animal and mechanistic studies tend to favor a simple proportionate relationship at low doses between radiation dose and cancer risk.” It states that claims that low-level radiation exposure is beneficial are “unwarranted at this time”.
• A 2011 report by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation states that “the current balance of available evidence tends to favour a non-threshold response for the mutational component of radiation-associated cancer induction at low doses and low dose rates.”
• And to give one other example (there are many), a 2003 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences states: “Given that it is supported by experimentally grounded, quantifiable, biophysical arguments, a linear extrapolation of cancer risks from intermediate to very low doses currently appears to be the most appropriate methodology.”

Radiophobia?

Spin: ‘Radiophobia’ spread by nuclear critics is responsible for most of the suffering resulting from the nuclear accident.

The spin is disingenuous but we should acknowledge a thin thread of truth − claims that the Fukushima disaster will lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths have no credibility and must be causing some distress in Japan.

However, vastly more suffering can be attributed to Japan’s corrupt nuclear industry and its many accomplices. As the NAIIC report notes, the Fukushima disaster was the result of “collusion between the government, the regulators and TEPCO” and evacuees “continue to face grave concerns, including the health effects of radiation exposure, displacement, the dissolution of families, disruption of their lives and lifestyles and the contamination of vast areas of the environment.”

Lessons learned?

Spin: Lessons will be learned from the Fukushima accident and improvements made. Nuclear power − already safe − will be safer still.

If the nuclear industry learned lessons from past mistakes, the Fukushima disaster wouldn’t have happened in the first place. Too often, lessons are learned but then forgotten, or learned by some but not by those who really need to know, or learned too late, or learned but not acted upon. The Chernobyl accident certainly led to improvements but complacency set in as memories of the disaster faded, and the same can be expected in the aftermath of Fukushima.

A report by the IAEA and the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency covering events from 2002-2005 states that “corrective measures, which are generally well-known, may not reach all end-users, or are not always rigorously or timely applied” and “operating experience feedback needs to be much improved in the international arena.”

There is no clearer example of the industry’s failure to learn than Japan’s nuclear industry. Countless subsequent accidents, incidents and scandals would have been averted had the lessons of the fatal 1999 Tokaimura accident been properly learned and acted upon (and Tokaimura wouldn’t have happened if earlier lessons about the need for adequate operator training had been acted upon). In 2002 and again in 2007, details of several hundreds safety breaches and data falsification incidents were revealed, stretching back to the 1980s. But nothing changed.

It has become increasingly obvious over the past decade that greater protection against seismic risks was necessary − especially in the aftermath of the July 2007 earthquake that caused radioactive water spills, burst pipes and fires at TEPCO’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant. But the nuclear utilities didn’t want to spend money on upgrades and they weren’t forced to act.

Nuclear apologists have learned the wrong lessons altogether. Dr William Sacks argues that an important lesson from Fukushima is the need to convince people that low-level radiation exposure is harmless. Rod Adams states: “The lesson that the world needs to take away from Fukushima is that it is okay to build hundreds or thousands of new nuclear power stations and to place them quite close to the backyards of millions of people.”

Tell that to the family and friends of the Fukushima farmer whose suicide note read: “I wish there wasn’t a nuclear plant.”

Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth, Australia. jim.green@foe.org.au

More lies and conspiracy theories from Geoff Russell.

Russell claims in New Matilda in March 2016 that the “livestock industry is a major source of funding” for Friends of the Earth (FoE) “so it isn’t surprising that they give Australia’s greatest source of climate warming (the meat industry) a free ride …”

FoE doesn’t get any funding from the livestock industry or anyone or any organisation connected to the livestock industry. And the claim that FoE gives the meat industry a free ride is an unhinged, untrue conspiracy theory.

Liars and deranged conspiracy theorists will always be with us. The blame rests with those who give them a platform – in this case New Matilda.

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Lies, dangerous lies and WMD

Some of Russell’s misinformation is harmless, e.g. his incessant, dishonest attacks on environmentalists. But some of his misinformation is dangerous, no more so than his attempts to deny and trivialise the obvious connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons proliferation.

Here’s a link to a detailed article which debunks misinformation from Russell and others on the nuclear power/weapons problem:

http://www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/804/myth-peaceful-atom

Here are a few snippets from that article:

Nuclear advocate Geoff Russell states that we have been 100% successful at preventing further use of nuclear weapons since World War II and that a “rational person would conclude that preventing nuclear wars and nuclear weapons proliferation is actually pretty easy, otherwise we wouldn’t have been so good at it.” He further notes that “ladders are more dangerous than nuclear electricity plants, and cars are more dangerous than ladders.”

So perhaps ladders and cars should be classified as Weapons of Mass Destruction? Nuclear weapons are unique in their destructive potential − even more destructive than ladders. As former US Defense Secretary Robert MacNamara said: “In conventional war, mistakes cost lives, sometimes thousands of lives. However, if mistakes were to affect decisions relating to the use of nuclear forces, there would be no learning curve. They would result in the destruction of nations.”

Russell states: “The proliferation argument isn’t actually an argument at all. It’s just a trigger word, brilliantly branded to evoke fear and trump rational discussion.” One of the rabidly anti-nuclear organisations evoking fear and trumping rational discussion is the US State Department, which noted in a 2008 report that the “rise in nuclear power worldwide … inevitably increases the risks of proliferation”. And the anti-nuclear ideologues at the US National Intelligence Council argued in a 2008 report that the “spread of nuclear technologies and expertise is generating concerns about the potential emergence of new nuclear weapon states and the acquisition of nuclear materials by terrorist groups.”

Russell argues: “Over 90 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions come from countries which already have nuclear reactors. So these are the countries where the most reactors are needed. How is having more reactors, particularly electricity reactors, going to make any of these countries more likely to build nuclear weapons? It isn’t.”

The premise is correct − countries operating reactors account for a large majority of greenhouse emissions. But even by the most expansive estimate, less than one-third of all countries have some sort of weapons capability (they possess weapons, are allied to a weapons state, or they operate power and/or research reactors). So the conclusion − that nuclear power expansion would not lead to a large increase in the number of countries with access to nuclear resources and expertise − is nonsense.

There is another thread to the argument. It is true that the expansion of nuclear power in countries which already operate reactors is of little of no proliferation significance. It is of still less significance in countries with both nuclear power and weapons. Incremental growth of nuclear power in the US, for example, is of no proliferation significance. That said, US civil nuclear policies can (and do) have profound proliferation significance. The US-led push to allow nuclear trade with India has dealt a cruel blow to the global non-proliferation and disarmament architecture and to the NPT in particular. And the US government’s willingness to conclude bilateral nuclear trade agreements without prohibitions on the development of enrichment and reprocessing is problematic (and conversely, the agreement with the United Arab Emirates, which does prohibit enrichment and reprocessing in the UAE, is helpful).

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What nuclear conspiracy theories?

Jim Green, Climate Spectator, 23/4/2013

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/business-spectator/news-story/6a7d37d9e46b14f690af5e6b0f66b714

or

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/4/23/energy-markets/what-nuclear-conspiracy-theories

Conspiracy theories conjured up by nuclear advocates are mostly harmless fun. But not when they involve trivialising the suffering of victims of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Political demagogue Lyndon LaRouche is the most colourful of the conspiracy theorists. Here’s his take on the anti-nuclear movement: “This utterly depraved, dionysian cult-formation found its echoed, more violent expression in late 1980s Germany, where the anti-nuclear, fascist rioting reached near to the level of outright civil war …”

Australia’s Leslie Kemeny (think Lord Monckton) agrees: “Radical green activism and global terrorism can form dangerous, even deadly, alliances. The ‘coercive utopianism’ of radical greens, their avid desire for media publicity and their hidden socio-political agendas can produce societal outcomes that are sometimes violent and ugly.”

Kemeny believes the anti-nuclear movement is “supported by immense funds from affluent right-wing interests” and is also tied to the “political left”. Go figure. With such a grab-bag of extreme − and extremely contradictory − views, Kemeny might be considered a good candidate for Bob Katter’s political party … but he’s already joined Fred Nile’s.

A recent convert to nuclear conspiracy theories is Adelaide-based nuclear advocate Geoff Russell. Russell has no time for the euphemisms of ‘dionysian cult-formation’ or ‘coercive utopianism’. He gets straight to the point: nuclear critics are responsible for all of the death and suffering resulting from the Fukushima nuclear disaster and much else besides. Ouch.

How does he arrive at those conclusions? One part of the intellectual contortion concerns the role of environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth. To the limited extent that environment groups influence energy policy around the world, the result is a greater role for renewables, less nuclear power and less fossil fuel usage. But for Russell, being anti-nuclear means an implicit endorsement and acceptance of fossil fuels and responsibility for everything wrong with fossil fuel burning.

That contorted logic will come as a surprise to Friends of the Earth campaigners risking life, limb and heavy penalties in their efforts to shut down coal mines and ports; and to everyone else engaged in the fossil fuel and climate problems in many different ways.

A second intellectual contortion concerns the cancer risks associated with radiation exposure. Russell’s view is that long-term exposure to low levels of radiation “does sweet fa”. In a submission to a South Australian Parliamentary Committee, he writes: “Let’s suppose that if 1000 people drink a glass of wine a day then eventually 10 will get cancer due to that wine. I just made those numbers up, they are to illustrate the method … So how many people will get cancer if a million people drink 1/1000 of a glass per day? The anti-nuclear logic … estimates 10,000 cancers. The population is consuming 1000 times the alcohol that produced 10 cancers, therefore there will be 10,000 cancers.”

Russell gets his simple calculations wrong by three orders of magnitude − three more than you’d expect from a self-described mathematician. In any case the link between wine and cancer tells us precisely nothing about radiation.

Russell and science are at odds on the question of the cancer risks associated with low-level radiation exposure. The 2006 report of the Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation (BEIR) of the US National Academy of Sciences states that “the risk of cancer proceeds in a linear fashion at lower doses without a threshold and … the smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans.”

Likewise, a 2010 report by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation states that “the current balance of available evidence tends to favour a non-threshold response for the mutational component of radiation-associated cancer induction at low doses and low dose rates.”

It’s a big step, but once you’ve convinced yourself that radiation is harmless, a world of possibilities present themselves. Scientific estimates of the Chernobyl death toll range from 9,000 to 93,000, but Russell claims the Chernobyl death toll was “three tenths of a half of a sixth of bugger all” or “a few dozen deaths”. Another step gets you to this: “It is far worse than flippant to risk the destabilisation of the unusually benign climate of the past 10,000 years because of a few dozen deaths. That’s nutter stuff.”

Likewise, early estimates of the long-term Fukushima cancer death toll range from 130 (pdf) to 3,000, but if radiation is harmless the radiation-related death toll will be zero. Or as Russell bluntly puts it, Fukushima was “deathless“.

Russell claims the performance of the Fukushima nuclear power plants in the face of the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami was “a spectacular success and one of the biggest unreported good news stories of the decade.” And it was indeed a spectacular success except for the explosions, meltdowns and fires.

Russell wants us to contrast the Fukushima nuclear accident with “actual suffering” from the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami. Tell that to the family and friends of the Fukushima farmer whose suicide note read: “I wish there wasn’t a nuclear plant.”

The Fukushima disaster has caused an immense amount of suffering, particularly for the 160,000 evacuees who remain homeless two years after the disaster. The Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) − established by an Act of Parliament − notes that evacuees “continue to face grave concerns, including the health effects of radiation exposure, displacement, the dissolution of families, disruption of their lives and lifestyles and the contamination of vast areas of the environment.” The nuclear disaster is also responsible for nearly half of the estimated 1,632 indirect deaths associated with the evacuation from the 3/11 triple-disaster.

Importantly, the NAIIC report − along with every other report into the Fukushima disaster − is clear that whereas the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami were Acts of God, Fukushima was an Act of TEPCO. Russell and like-minded apologists fudge or ignore the distinction. The NAIIC report states that the Fukushima disaster was “a profoundly man-made disaster that could and should have been foreseen and prevented” if not for “a multitude of errors and wilful negligence that left the Fukushima plant unprepared for the events of March 11.”

That wilful negligence is responsible for all the suffering and deaths associated with the evacuation and ongoing dislocation; radiation exposure likely to lead to a cancer death toll ranging from 130 to 3,000; and economic costs that will total several hundred billion dollars.

Russell has another intellectual contortion to perform. If radiation is harmless, there is no need for an exclusion zone to be maintained around Fukushima. Sometimes he goes so far as to say the initial evacuation was “unnecessary” − though of course he never said any such thing in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear disaster.

So why is the evacuation zone still in place two years after the nuclear accidents? Russell argues: “The panic whipped up by the anti-nuclear movement completed the devastation began by the tsunami and prompted an unnecessary evacuation that killed people.” And still more bizarrely, “the people who are still living in temporary housing in Japan should be running a class action against the anti-nuclear movement for its role in the wasting of so much money when there are serious needs to be met.”

Russell never explains how NGO views (which he misrepresents) translate into government policy. As best as one can work it out, environment groups pump “radiophobia” into the ether and governments (and radiation scientists) absorb it by osmosis − hence the “unnecessary” Fukushima exclusion zone. Either that or shamanic transmutation.

To accuse greenies of being responsible for the death and suffering resulting from Fukushima places Russell alongside LaRouche, Kemeny and other comedians and demagogues. But there’s nothing funny about his distinction between the easily-preventable Fukushima nuclear disaster and “real problems“, or his distinction between the suffering of Fukushima evacuees and “actual suffering“, or his description of the Fukushima disaster as “benign“. Those statements are disgusting and disgraceful.

Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth, Australia.

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Russell the Racist

Aboriginal First Nations and Australia’s pro-nuclear ‘environmentalists’, Jim Green, 3 July 2018, Online Opinion, http://onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=19825&page=0

The plan to turn South Australia into the world’s nuclear waste dump has lost momentum since 2016 though it continues to be promoted by some politicians, the Business SA lobby group, and an assortment of individuals and lobbyists including self-styled ‘pro-nuclear environmentalists’ or ‘ecomodernists‘.

In its 2016 report, the SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission established by the state government promoted a plan to import 138,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste (about one-third of the world’s total) and 390,000 cubic metres of intermediate-level waste. The state Labor government then spent millions on a state-wide promotional campaign under the guide of consultation.

The government also initiated a Citizens’ Jury process. However two-thirds of the 350-member Citizens’ Jury rejected the waste import proposal “under any circumstances” in their November 2016 report. The Jury’s verdict was non-binding but it took the wind out of the dumpsters’ sails.

A key factor in the Jury’s rejection of the waste import plan was that Aboriginal people had spoken clearly in opposition. The Jury’s report said: “There is a lack of aboriginal consent. We believe that the government should accept that the Elders have said NO and stop ignoring their opinions. The aboriginal people of South Australia (and Australia) continue to be neglected and ignored by all levels of government instead of respected and treated as equals.”

The respect shown by the Citizens’ Jury to Aboriginal Traditional Owners had been conspicuously absent in the debate until then. The SA government’s handling of the Royal Commission process systematically disenfranchised Aboriginal people.

The Royal Commission

Royal Commissioner Kevin Scarce ‒ a retired Navy officer ‒ didn’t appoint a single Aboriginal person to the staff of the Royal Commission or to his Expert Advisory Committee. Aboriginal people repeatedly expressed frustration with the Royal Commission process.

The Royal Commission acknowledged the opposition of Aboriginal people to its nuclear waste import plan – but it treated that opposition not as a red light but as an obstacle to be circumvented. The Commission opted out of the debate regarding land rights and heritage protections for Aboriginal people, stating in its report: “Although a systematic analysis was beyond the scope of the Commission, it has heard criticisms of the heritage protection framework, particularly the consultative provisions.”

Despite its acknowledgement that it had not systematically analysed the matter, the Royal Commission nevertheless arrived at unequivocal, favourable conclusions, asserting that there “are frameworks for securing long-term agreements with rights holders in South Australia, including Aboriginal communities” and these “provide a sophisticated foundation for securing agreements with rights holders and host communities regarding the siting and establishment of facilities for the management of used fuel.”

Such statements were conspicuously absent in submissions from Aboriginal people and organisations. There is in fact an abundance of evidence that land rights and heritage protection frameworks in SA are anything but “sophisticated.”

Enter the ecomodernists

Ben Heard from the ‘Bright New World’ pro-nuclear lobby group said the Royal Commission’s findings were “robust”. Seriously? Failing to conduct an analysis and ignoring an abundance of contradictory evidence but nevertheless concluding that a “sophisticated foundation” exists for securing agreements with Aboriginal rights-holders … that’s “robust”? Likewise, academic Barry Brook, a member of the Commission’s Expert Advisory Committee, said he was “impressed with the systematic and ruthlessly evidence-based approach the [Royal Commission] team took to evaluating all issues.”

In a November 2016 article about the nuclear waste import plan, Ben Heard and Oscar Archer wrote: “We also note and respect the clear message from nearly all traditional owner groups in South Australia that there is no consent to proceed on their lands. We have been active from the beginning to shine a light on pathways that make no such imposition on remote lands.”

In Heard’s imagination, the imported spent nuclear fuel would not be dumped on the land of unwilling Aboriginal communities, it would be processed for use as fuel in non-existent Generation IV ‘integral fast reactors‘. Even the stridently pro-nuclear Royal Commission gave short shrift to Heard’s proposal, stating in its final report: “[A]dvanced fast reactors and other innovative reactor designs are unlikely to be feasible or viable in the foreseeable future. The development of such a first-of-a-kind project in South Australia would have high commercial and technical risk.”

Heard claims his imaginary Generation IV reactor scenario “circumvents the substantial challenge of social consent for deep geological repositories, facilities that are likely to be best located, on a technical basis, on lands of importance to Aboriginal Australians”.

But even in Heard’s scenario, only a tiny fraction of the imported spent fuel would be converted to fuel for imaginary Generation IV reactors (in one of his configurations, 60,000 tonnes would be imported but only 4,000 tonnes converted to fuel). Most of it would be stored indefinitely, or dumped on the land of unwilling Aboriginal communities.

Despite his acknowledgement that there was “no consent” to proceed from “nearly all traditional owner groups in South Australia”, Heard nevertheless wrote an ‘open letter‘ promoting the waste import plan which was endorsed by ‘prominent’ South Australians, i.e. rich, non-Aboriginal people.

One of the reasons to pursue the waste import plan cited in Heard’s open letter is that it would provide an “opportunity to engage meaningfully and partner with Aboriginal communities in project planning and delivery”. There is no acknowledgement of the opposition of Aboriginal people to the waste import plan; evidently Heard believes that their opposition should be ignored or overridden but Aboriginal people might be given a say in project planning and delivery.

A second version of Heard’s open letter did not include the above wording but it cited the “successful community consultation program” with Aboriginal communities. However the report arising from the SA government’s community consultation program (successful or otherwise) stated: “Some Aboriginal people indicated that they are interested in learning more and continuing the conversation, but these were few in number.”

Geoff Russell, another self-styled pro-nuclear environmentalist, wrote in a November 2016 article in New Matilda:

“Have Aboriginals given any reasons for opposing a waste repository that are other than religious? If so, then they belong with other objections. If not, then they deserve the same treatment as any other religious objections. Listen politely and move on.

“Calling them spiritual rather than religious makes no difference. To give such objections standing in the debate over a repository is a fundamental violation of the separation of church and state, or as I prefer to put it, the separation of mumbo-jumbo and evidence based reasoning.

“Aboriginals have native title over various parts of Australia and their right to determine what happens on that land is and should be quite different from rights with regard to other land. This isn’t about their rights on that land.

“Suppose somebody wants to build a large intensive piggery. Should we consult Aboriginals in some other part of the country? Should those in the Kimberley perhaps be consulted? No.

“They may object to it in the same way I would, but they have no special rights in the matter. They have no right to spiritual veto.”

Where to begin? Russell’s description of Aboriginal spiritual beliefs as “mumbo-jumbo” is beyond offensive. He provides no evidence for his claim that Traditional Owners are speaking for other people’s country. Federal native title legislation provides limited rights and protections for some Traditional Owners ‒ and no rights and protections for many others (when the federal Coalition government was trying to impose a national nuclear waste dump on Aboriginal land in SA in 2003, it abolished all native title rights and interests over the site).

National nuclear waste dump

The attitudes of the ecomodernists also extend to the debate over the siting of a proposed national nuclear waste dump. Silence from the ecomodernists when the federal government was passing laws allowing the imposition of a national nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory without consent from Traditional Owners. Echoing comments from the Liberal Party, Brook and Heard said the site in the Northern Territory was in the “middle of nowhere”. From their perspective, perhaps, but for Muckaty Traditional Owners the site is in the middle of their homelands.

Heard claims that one of the current proposed dump sites, in SA’s Flinders Ranges, is “excellent” in many respects and it “was volunteered by the landowner”. In fact, it was volunteered by absentee landlord and former Liberal Party politician Grant Chapman, who didn’t bother to consult Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners living on the neighbouring Indigenous Protected Area. The site is opposed by most Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners and by their representative body, the Adnyamathanha Traditional Lands Association (ATLA).

Heard claims there are “no known cultural heritage issues” affecting the Flinders Ranges site. Try telling that to the Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners who live on Yappala Station, in the Indigenous Protected Area adjacent to the proposed dump site. The area has many archaeological and culturally-significant sites that Traditional Owners have registered with the SA government over the past decade.

So where did Heard get this idea that there are “no known cultural heritage issues on the site”? Not from visiting the site, or speaking to Traditional Owners. He’s just repeating the federal government’s propaganda.

Silence from the ecomodernists about the National Radioactive Waste Management Act (NRWMA), which dispossesses and disempowers Traditional Owners in every way imaginable. The nomination of a site for a radioactive waste dump is valid even if Aboriginal owners were not consulted and did not give consent. The NRWMA has sections which nullify State or Territory laws that protect archaeological or heritage values, including those which relate to Indigenous traditions. The NRWMA curtails the application of Commonwealth laws including the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 and the Native Title Act 1993 in the important site-selection stage. The Native Title Act 1993 is expressly overridden in relation to land acquisition for a radioactive waste dump.

Uranium mining

Silence from the ecomodernists about the Olympic Dam mine’s exemptions from provisions of the SA Aboriginal Heritage Act.

Silence from the ecomodernists about sub-section 40(6) of the Commonwealth’s Aboriginal Land Rights Act, which exempts the Ranger uranium mine in the Northern Territory from the Act and thus removed the right of veto that Mirarr Traditional Owners would otherwise have enjoyed.

Silence from the ecomodernists about the divide-and-rule tactics used by General Atomics’ subsidiary Heathgate Resources against Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners in relation to the Beverley and Four Mile uranium mines in SA.

Adnyamathanha Traditional Owner Dr Jillian Marsh, who in 2010 completed a PhD thesis on the strongly contested approval of the Beverley mine, puts the nuclear debates in a broader context: “The First Nations people of Australia have been bullied and pushed around, forcibly removed from their families and their country, denied access and the right to care for their own land for over 200 years. Our health and wellbeing compares with third world countries, our people crowd the jails. Nobody wants toxic waste in their back yard, this is true the world over. We stand in solidarity with people across this country and across the globe who want sustainable futures for communities, we will not be moved.”

Now, Traditional Owners have to fight industry, government, and the ecomodernists as well.

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Two years from Fukushima and we know the truth

Jim Green, 11 March 2013, The Punch

www.thepunch.com.au/articles/two-years-from-fukushima-and-we-know-the-truth

Today is the second anniversary of the Fukushima disaster and it promises to be another silly-season for Australia’s nuclear apologists. They have form. While the crisis was unfolding in March 2011, Ziggy Switkowski advised that “the best place to be whenever there’s an earthquake is at the perimeter of a nuclear plant because they are designed so well.” Even after the multiple explosions and nuclear meltdowns, Adelaide-based nuclear advocate Geoff Russell advised: “If you are in a quake zone and have time to seek shelter, forget hiding under door jambs and tables, find a nuke.”

Even as nuclear fuel meltdown was in full swing at Fukushima, Adelaide University’s Prof. Barry Brook reassured us that: “There is no credible risk of a serious accident… Those spreading FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt] at the moment will be the ones left with egg on their faces. I am happy to be quoted forever after on the above if I am wrong … but I won’t be.” Eggs, anyone?

Last year, Brook and Russell insisted that the Fukushima disaster was “deathless“. Yet the World Health Organization released a report last week which takes us a step closer to understanding the likely death toll. To quote from the report:

In terms of specific cancers, for people in the most contaminated location, the estimated increased risks over what would normally be expected are:

• all solid cancers – around 4% in females exposed as infants;
• breast cancer – around 6% in females exposed as infants;
• leukaemia – around 7% in males exposed as infants;
• thyroid cancer – up to 70% in females exposed as infants (the normally expected risk of thyroid cancer in females over lifetime is 0.75% and the additional lifetime risk assessed for females exposed as infants in the most affected location is 0.50%).

For people in the second most contaminated location of Fukushima Prefecture, the estimated risks are approximately one-half of those in the location with the highest doses.

The report also references a section to the special case of the emergency workers inside the Fukushima NPP [Nuclear Power Plant]. Around two-thirds of emergency workers are estimated to have cancer risks in line with the general population, while one-third is estimated to have an increased risk.

Indirect deaths must also be considered, especially those resulting from the failure of plant operator TEPCO and government authorities to develop and implement adequate emergency response procedures. A September 2012 Editorial in Japan Times notes that 1,632 deaths occurred during or after evacuation from the triple-disaster; and nearly half (160,000) of the 343,000 evacuees were dislocated specifically because of the nuclear disaster. A January 2013 article in The Lancet notes that “the fact that 47% of disaster-related deaths were recognised in Fukushima prefecture alone indicates that the earthquake-triggered nuclear crisis at the Fukushima power plant caused extreme hardship for local residents.”

The claim by Barry Brook and Geoff Russell that Fukushima was “deathless” has no basis in truth.

Russell wants us to contrast the Fukushima nuclear accident with the “actual suffering” from the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami. Tell that to the family and friends of the Fukushima farmer whose suicide note read: “I wish there wasn’t a nuclear plant.”

The Fukushima disaster has caused an immense amount of suffering, particularly for the 160,000 evacuees who remain homeless two years after the disaster. The Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) − established by an Act of Parliament − notes that evacuees “continue to face grave concerns, including the health effects of radiation exposure, displacement, the dissolution of families, disruption of their lives and lifestyles and the contamination of vast areas of the environment.”

Importantly, the NAIIC report − along with every other report into the Fukushima disaster − is clear that whereas the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami were Acts of God, Fukushima was an Act of TEPCO. Brook, Russell and like-minded apologists fudge or ignore the distinction. The NAIIC report states that the Fukushima disaster was “a profoundly man-made disaster that could and should have been foreseen and prevented” if not for “a multitude of errors and wilful negligence that left the Fukushima plant unprepared for the events of March 11”.

The nuclear apologists’ indifference to science and logic, and their indifference to human death and suffering, are stronger arguments for a nuclear-free Australia than anything I could come up with. A large majority of Australians share my distrust − a 2011 poll found that just 12% of Australians would support a nuclear plant being built in their area, 13% would be anxious but not oppose it, and 73% would oppose it.

Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth and editor of the World Information Service on Energy’s ‘Nuclear Monitor’.

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China’s small modular reactor program

Edited version of letter published in Crikey 11/3/2013: Very generous of Crikey to let Geoff Russell to have two fulminating pro-nuclear rants in the same week (‘Greener pastures’, Crikey letters, 8/3). In his latest offering he opines that China is “gearing up to produce small modular reactors by 2020 or thereabouts”. This is the standard ‘look over there’ tactic of the nuclear zealots. What is actually happening in China, as Russell well knows, is that dozens of ‘Generation 2’ reactors are under construction or in planning − reactor technology that wouldn’t be licenced in the West. Regulation is a joke, staff training standards are inadequate, press freedoms are non-existent, and whistleblowers − if they’re lucky − are imprisoned. — Jim Green, Friends of the Earth

2023 update – Russell’s BS about China’s SMR program proven to be just that … BS

China General Nuclear Power Group plans to use floating nuclear power plants for oilfield exploitation in the Bohai Sea and deep-water oil and gas development in the South China Sea. China’s interest in SMRs extends beyond fossil fuel mining and includes powering the construction and operation of artificial islands in its attempt to secure claim to a vast area of the South China Sea.

China’s one operating SMR

China has one operating SMR (loosely defined) and one under construction. The operating SMR (loosely defined) is China’s demonstration 210 MW (2 x 105 MW) high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR). A 2016 report said that the estimated construction cost was about US$5 billion (A$7.2 billion) / GW ‒ about twice the initial cost estimates ‒ and that cost increases arose from higher material and component costs, increases in labour costs, and project delays. The World Nuclear Association states that the cost of the demonstration HTGR is US$6 billion (A$8.6 billion) / GW, roughly twice the cost of larger Chinese ‘Hualong’ reactors (US$2.6‒3.5 billion / GW). Those figures (US$5‒6 billion / GW) are 2‒3 times higher than the US$2 billion (A$2.88 billion) / GW estimate in a 2009 paper by Tsinghua University researchers.

Wang Yingsu, secretary general of the nuclear power branch of the China Electric Power Promotion Council, said in 2021 that HTGRs would never be as cheap as conventional light-water reactors.

In 2004, the CEO of Chinergy said construction of the first HTGR would begin in 2007 and it would be completed by the end of the decade. However, construction of the demonstration HTGR did not begin until 2012 (with an estimated construction time of 50 months) and it was completed in 2021 after repeated delays. This nine-year construction project ‒ more than double the construction time estimate in 2012 ‒ undermines claims that SMRs could be built in as little as 2‒3 years.

China’s HTGR is said to be operational but the November 2022 edition of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report indicates that problems have arisen:

“The first of two High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor (HTGR) units at Shidao Bay (Shidao Bay 1-1 and 1-2) ‒ IAEA-PRIS considers these as one plant ‒ was connected to the grid on 20 December 2021. As of the time of this writing, there is no public announcement that the second unit has been connected. Further, between January and June 2022, there was no power fed to the grid from this site, according to China Nuclear Energy Industry Association (CNEIA). No information has been published about the reasons for the additional delays in commissioning the second unit and for the shutdown of the first unit in the first half-year of 2022.”

However a December 2022 World Nuclear Association article was more upbeat, citing Chinese project partners stating that the HTGR reached “initial full power” on 9 December 2022, thus “laying the foundation for the project to be put into operation”.

Neutron Bytes reported in June 2020: “It has been reported by several sources that the high cost of manufacturing the HTGR reactor components and building it are caused, in part, by the need for specialty materials to deal with the high heat it generates, and by the usual first-of-a-kind costs of a new design which have contributed to the schedule delay. In any case, China’s ambitious plans to make Shandong Province a showcase for advanced nuclear reactors have been put on hold.”

NucNet reported in 2020 that China’s State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. dropped plans to manufacture 20 HTGRs after levelised cost of electricity estimates rose to levels higher than a conventional pressurised water reactor such as China’s Hualong One.

Likewise, the World Nuclear Association states that plans for 18 additional HTGRs at the same site as the demonstration HTGR have been “dropped”.

Multiple nations have tried to develop high-temperature gas-cooled reactors but then abandoned those efforts.

China’s one under-construction SMR

In July 2021, China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) New Energy Corporation began construction of the 125 MW pressurised water reactor ACP100 at Hainan with an estimated construction time of just under five years (58 months). CNNC says it will be the world’s first land-based commercial SMR. The ACP100 has been under development since 2010. Construction was supposed to begin as early as 2013 (and, later, 2015 … and 2016 … and 2017) but did not begin until 2021. According to CNNC, construction costs per kilowatt will be twice the cost of large reactors, and the levelised cost of electricity will be 50% higher than large reactors.

Prof. Marcia Langton’s 2012 Boyer Lectures are posted at https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/boyerlectures/series/2012-boyer-lectures/4305696

Prof. Langton used to sit on the Australian Uranium Association’s so-called ‘Indigenous Dialogue Group’. Other mining companies support her work as discussed below.

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Indigenous communities, conservation and the resource boom

Nick McClean and Dawn Wells

Chain Reaction #117, April 2013

In the recent Boyer Lectures, Prof. Marcia Langton argued that mining is providing Indigenous communities with an opportunity to move out of the economic margins and grow into a new middle class of wealth and opportunity. But is mining the only way forward for Indigenous communities seeking to develop economically sustainable futures? And are supporters of conservation committing an act of racism, as she suggests?

We can begin by looking to Prof. Langton’s own publications. In an article published in the Journal of Political Ecology in 2005, Prof. Langton and her colleagues brought together research from across Australia, the Middle-East, Indonesia and the United Nation’s chief conservation agency, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Assessing the benefits and pitfalls of developing community-based conservation programs in partnership with Indigenous peoples, the conclusions were clear − Australia is currently one of the few countries where Indigenous led conservation programs are proving successful.

To quote: “Australia has in relation to certain key national parks, taken a lead role in the development of joint management agreements with Indigenous groups” (p.35) and “we also argue, in contrast to many critiques of community-based conservation elsewhere, that community-oriented protected areas are delivering significant benefits to Indigenous peoples in Australia” (p.24).

Based on a number of detailed examples, Prof. Langton and her colleagues argued that Australia’s Indigenous Protected Area (IPA) program in particular provides significant potential for Indigenous communities to develop livelihoods that are economically sustainable and culturally relevant. It’s hard to argue with her either, when we consider that IPAs now make up 25% of the National Reserve System, and include the country’s largest single conservation reserve, the massive Southern Tanami Indigenous Protected Area. This alone indicates that conservation is no longer solely the domain of city-based environmentalists, but is an increasingly important component of the Indigenous estate, and of Indigenous economic life.

Moreover, the IPA program is only one example of conservation done in partnership with Indigenous communities, with all states and territories except Tasmania and the ACT instituting legislation for the joint management of national parks. It is through these arrangements that Aboriginal ranger groups are being set up across the country, providing meaningful, ongoing employment for young Aboriginal men and women, and a forum within which elders can guide the management of their country according to cultural knowledge and community priorities.

While these schemes are in many cases still developing, Prof. Langton’s argument in favour of IPAs revolves around the fact that Indigenous land owners can maintain ownership and full control over their country and the programs developed to manage it. The secure tenure that underpins the IPA program is one of its biggest strengths, with communities nominating land they own outright as conservation reserves. Her point about the environment movement historically disregarding Indigenous interests is undeniable, but according to Prof. Langton’s research, emerging forms of conservation are neither racist nor economically useless.

It can be argued that these programs exist in no small part due Indigenous advocates such as Prof. Langton and Noel Pearson mounting a public critique of the wilderness concept and mainstream environmentalism almost 20 years ago, a critique she foregrounds in the Boyer Lectures. Joint management schemes and the IPA program, as well as the many Indigenous engagement programs run by influential environmental NGOs today, exist not because of epiphanies among politicians and activists, but because of the well made arguments of Aboriginal people, acting as major rural landholders who in many cases seek out conservation as a viable option for managing their futures.

What is surprising about the Boyer Lectures is the lack of acknowledgement that these developments also represent a significant, if incomplete, process of cultural change among Australian conservationists, in direct response to Indigenous criticism and innovation. After all these programs, like Indigenous mining ventures, require collaboration and mutual endeavor to succeed.

What about mining itself? Is it the golden egg Prof. Langton would have us believe? A 2011 survey by the Australia Institute suggests a wide divergence between the mining industry’s perceived and real economic benefits. Those surveyed thought the mining industry employed nine times more workers than it does; accounted for three times as much economic activity than it does; and was 30% more Australian-owned than it is. These findings represent an emerging field of research which is bringing the mining industry’s self-styled image as the backbone of the Australian economy and sole provider of Aboriginal economic development under increasing scrutiny.

In regards to mining on Aboriginal land, there are two primary concerns. Firstly, are the economic benefits as good as they sound? And secondly, what power do Aboriginal communities have in the agreement-making process?

Prof. Langton’s 2010 Griffith Review article ‘The Resource Curse’ raises many of these issues. She asks, “are there any policies to counter the growing disparities in income and living conditions and opportunities in the mining provinces?”. She goes on to argue, “until this is resolved and other inequities addressed, there is a ticking time bomb in the remote economic heart of the nation”

Referring to the localised inflation which occurs in mining towns, Prof. Langton highlights where it hits remote Aboriginal communities hard – housing, goods and services. She refers to rental increases in which caravan parking births cost up to $1000 per week. This high inflation has a flow-on effect on the services sector, as businesses are not able to provide housing for staff, and the community is deprived of basic services. Meanwhile, state and federal governments pull back on spending in these communities, and have a bad track record of providing sufficient public housing. The hardest hit are the people who are not directly employed by the mining industry. Not earning the higher wages provided by this industry, they are paying the same inflated rents, food and services costs. This is especially significant when we consider that the mining industry is one of the least labour intensive industries in the country. Finally, Prof. Langton draws attention to the fact that these towns become wholly reliant upon foreign-owned multinational corporations, which can decide at any moment to close mining operations if they are not profitable.

While Prof. Langton has convincingly argued for many years that Aboriginal communities are not receiving their fair share of mining revenues, in the Boyer Lectures her proposed solutions to this economic vulnerability are largely to maintain the power of the mining industry. While she discusses Indigenous disadvantage across the lectures, she doesn’t discuss in detail the limited power Aboriginal communities frequently have in forming agreements with mining companies. It is common knowledge that Native Title, for example, provides for an uneven negotiating ground between resource companies and traditional owners, as it does not confer outright land ownership to traditional owners. Moreover many Aboriginal communities simply do not have any rights to land at all. This situation is the same as Prof. Langton herself found when looking at Aboriginal involvement in conservation. Those communities with more secure forms of tenure are able to negotiate good economic outcomes more often, while those without it are dependent on the ethics of those they do business with in order to safeguard their economic security.

Prof. Langton argues for Aboriginal communities’ right to pursue mining projects, yet questions remain regarding their economic, social and environmental sustainability. In many cases mining companies remain as capable of disregarding Indigenous interests as conservationists, yet communities will no doubt continue to choose mining as a basis for their economic future. Nevertheless in many cases there appears to be no guarantee that it will provide an even or fair distribution of wealth, and in choosing mining many communities may well choose against conservation options with the potential to provide economic security over the long term. This is some of what we can glean from Marcia Langton’s research.

Nick McClean works as a heritage consultant with Aboriginal ranger groups in NSW and is completing a PhD at the Australian National University. mcclean.nick@gmail.com. Dawn Wells is commencing a PhD at Rutgers University, New Jersey. dv_wells@hotmail.com

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Australian Nuclear Free Alliance response to Prof. Marcia Langton’s Boyer Lectures

We write as co-chairs of the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance (ANFA) in response to recent comments by Professor Marcia Langton in her Boyer Lecture series “Indigenous People and the Resources Boom”. ANFA brings together Aboriginal people, environment, health groups and trade union representatives to discuss the impacts of the nuclear industry on land and communities. ANFA opposes uranium mining, exploration and the dumping of radioactive waste on Aboriginal land.

Uranium mining, exploration and the dumping of radioactive waste on Aboriginal land is detrimental to the health of Aboriginal people, Aboriginal lands and our collective environments. Mining generally is an extractive industry that by its very nature destroys land often at the expense of spiritual and cultural connections of Aboriginal people. Income generated from mining comes at a cost and often ignores the possibility of creating alternative sustainable economic opportunities that need not rely on extraction as its primary economic base.

As Aboriginal community based leaders we take issue with Professor Langton’s suggestion that embracing mining is a positive option for Aboriginal people if they are to engage with the modern economy. In her lectures Professor Langton paints a rosy picture of the services and employment which some mining companies offer Aboriginal people as part of Native Title ‘agreements’. There is only passing reference to the fact that Native Title does not allow Aboriginal people to say no to mining. Professor Langton suggests that “translating the recognition of their Native Title rights into tangible economic and social benefits” by supporting mining on country will lead to positive outcomes for Aboriginal communities. This is clearly not the case as can be attested by the many communities divided over the comparatively meagre spoils offered through such agreements and the the intergenerational legacy of extractive industries on our lands, people and culture.

Mining is not a panacea for addressing the social, cultural and economic disadvantage of Aboriginal people. Governments must be held to account to meet their responsibility to provide the roads, schools, housing, health services and other infrastructure that people in cities and towns take for granted.

It is important that Aboriginal people have the opportunity to participate in economic development on their country but this must never be at the expense of custodial responsibilities or community wishes. Mining is inherently short term but the problems it brings to country last well beyond the life of any mine.

Peter Watts (Arabana)
Mitch (Aranda/Luritja)
Kado Muir (Wongutha)

February 4, 2013

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Green movement is here to help, not hinder, Aborigines

December 21, 2012

Leah Talbot and Dave Sweeney

The Age

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/green-movement-is-here-to-help-not-hinder-aborigines-20121220-2bpim.html

A CONSISTENT theme running through Professor Marcia Langton’s recent Boyer Lectures is the idea that the environment movement is standing in the way of indigenous empowerment and that conservationists are ”new colonisers under a green flag”. The accusation is way off the mark.

Long ago, the Australian Conservation Foundation recognised that the best way to protect the environment in this country was in partnership with those who have done this for thousands of years, the Aboriginal traditional owners.

We have a positive vision for northern Australia that aims to respect culture, protect the environment and put forward appropriate solutions to issues affecting indigenous communities. The policy of free, prior and informed consent from traditional owners underpins our work.

Knowing that language is an important tool that can empower or oppress, the ACF has communications protocols that dictate, for example, that when describing landscapes that have been occupied by indigenous people, ”the word ‘wilderness’ should not be used as it incorrectly denotes a place that is uncultivated and uninhabited and reinforces the fallacy of Terra nullius”.

Across the country, and particularly in the north, there is an increasing number of collaborations between indigenous Australians and conservationists.

Since 2004 the ACF has worked closely with traditional owners and the Queensland government to redress an injustice that Langton correctly identifies in her essays – that national parks legislation was used to deny Aboriginal ownership of land.

On Cape York Peninsula there has been a remarkable transformation in land ownership. Since 2004, the Queensland and Commonwealth governments have spent more than $30 million buying pastoral leases of high cultural and natural significance. Together with the existing national parks, these Aboriginal homelands are being returned to their traditional owners.

To right the wrongs of the past – particularly those of the Bjelke-Petersen government – the ACF has supported the return all national parks on Cape York to Aboriginal ownership and securing consent for any new national park from the traditional owners of that area.
Queensland’s land tenure resolution process has returned more than 2 million hectares of land to Aboriginal ownership. About half is now Aboriginal-owned.

This shows what is possible when people of good faith from environment, government and indigenous communities and organisations come together with a vision for a ”culture and conservation economy”.

Langton’s promotion of the resource industry as the primary way to empower indigenous communities is a dangerous and fraught path. The historical experience of the interface between the resource sector and our first peoples is one of profound and adverse impact.

White occupation of Australia was based on the legal fiction of Terra nullius, coupled with a utilitarian economic thinking that saw this ”empty land” as fair game for any activity that could generate ”ownership” and income. Then, as now, mining could do that. Times, people and expectations have changed, but there is still a massive structural imbalance weighted in favour of mining giants.

Langton’s lack of rigour in assessing the heavy footprint of the mining sector is compounded by scant mention of the legal limitations of the native title regime, the often controversial and secretive nature of mining ”agreements” and the fact that the cards are heavily stacked against Aboriginal people who are concerned about or would prefer to see no mining on their country.

The Mirarr people who lead a potent effort to stop uranium mining at Jabiluka on their traditional lands in Kakadu, are dismissed as ”dissident” in Langton’s analysis and the current conflict over Kimberley gas processing is avoided, as are continuing concerns over the Fortescue Metals Group’s controversial approach to Aboriginal consultation.

And underpinning all is a more fundamental question: why should indigenous communities have to trade away their land for basic citizenship entitlements that other Australians take for granted?

What about the many, many indigenous communities that do not have mineral riches underneath their country or who cannot prove to the satisfaction of a non-Aboriginal court that they have a connection to that country? Is that just their bad luck?

None of these issues is easy, straightforward or one-dimensional. Langton hits on one of the pertinent challenges facing Australia today – how can we have a mining boom alongside deeply entrenched indigenous disadvantage and how can we ensure healthy country and communities for future generations?

We share her concerns about the social and economic issues faced by indigenous communities. We accept the need to tackle the profound and shameful legacy of hundreds of years of dispossession, denial and despair but we do not accept that the best way to close the gap is by digging a deeper hole.

We believe Australia can and must forge a future that embraces indigenous cultural and ecological knowledge and heritage and takes a different approach to managing our precious country for all generations to come – and we believe this is a journey that must be taken together.

Leah Talbot, who has a masters in environmental science, is a Kuku Yalanji woman from the Bloomfield River area, and works for the ACF. Dave Sweeney works on nuclear, resource and Indigenous issues with the ACF’s north Australia program.

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Marcia Langton defends non-disclosure on mining cash before Boyers

Andrew Crook

Crikey senior journalist

22/2/13

Marcia Langton defends non-disclosure on mining cash before Boyers

Indigenous leader Marcia Langton and the ABC have defended a lack of disclosure over last year’s Boyer Lectures, despite tens of thousands of dollars in cash for Langton’s academic research being sourced from resources giants Rio Tinto, Woodside and Santos.

The series of five Boyers, titled “The Quiet Revolution: Indigenous People and the Resources Boom”, were delivered late last year by Langton at the ABC’s Brisbane studios and beamed around the country on Radio National.

They argued the boom had substantively benefited indigenous communities, with Langton lauding the work of a number of corporate behemoths — notably Rio — in providing job opportunities and friendly chop-outs. One lecture featured a full frontal attack on the “conceit” of anti-mining greenies.

But what listeners weren’t aware of was that two of the companies Langton praised were also bankrolling her.

The Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, where Langton serves as chairperson of the Australian Indigenous Studies, shows in its 2010 annual report that $480,000 in funding had been secured over four years for Langton’s joint Australian Research Council project “Poverty in the Midst of Plenty: Economic Empowerment, Wealth Creation and Industrial Reform for Sustainable Indigenous and Local Communities”. The cash was provided by the federal government, corporate partners Woodside, Rio and Santos, and the Marnda Mia Central Negotiating Committee, a company that represents traditional owners in deals with Rio management.

According to a project outline, the study aimed to “promote economic empowerment for sustainable indigenous and local communities” by, among other things, removing the barriers to indigenous participation in large-scale resources projects. While a funding breakdown is not provided, Woodside confirmed it had provided $30,000 over three years. The project ran from 2009 until 2012.

Crikey asked Langton, the University of Melbourne and the ABC to explain the lack of disclosure. The university referred all queries to Langton. In an emailed statement, Langton told Crikey she had delivered the Boyers in a “private capacity”:

“I and the other members of the research team have complied with the university’s and ARC requirements for publications. The Boyer Lectures, however, are not subject to the university statutes.”

She says full details of the grant are available on an indigenous website, www.atns.net.au.

University of Melbourne researchers are required, under an official code of conduct, to ensure all:

“… publications must include information on the sources of financial support for the research and must include a disclosure of any potential conflicts of interest.”

The ABC’s Editorial Policies require the national broadcaster to:

“… ensure appropriate disclosure of any external funding arrangement … where the arrangement or acceptance, if it were not disclosed but later became public, may reasonably be perceived to distort the editorial content or otherwise undermine the ABC’s independence or integrity.”

In its statement, the ABC said that “in previewing the lectures, the ABC referred to Professor Langton’s position as chair of indigenous studies at the University of Melbourne”:

“The university has its own rules on funding disclosure. The treatment of Professor Langton was no different to that applied to other respected Boyer lecturers, including … Rupert Murdoch, General Peter Cosgrove, former prime minister Bob Hawke and author Geraldine Brooks.”

The Boyers continue to feature prominently in audio and transcript form on the ABC website and were also republished last year — without disclosure — as opinion pieces in the Fairfax press.

In her first lecture called “Changing the paradigm: Mining Companies, Native Title and Aboriginal Australians”, Langton fondly recalled her experience dealing with a sympathetic manager at a Rio-owned Argyle Diamond Mine in Western Australia in the early 2000s. She said the manager:

“… became a champion for the Aboriginal people of the east Kimberley. He revolutionised the culture of the Argyle Diamond Mine by opening the doors to Aboriginal people. Today, the rate of Aboriginal employment at that mine stands at 25% of the total workforce.”

Despite the industry’s historical intransigence, Langton said Rio and Woodside had recently done stellar work in the outback, offering indigenous entrepreneurs “unprecedented opportunities to tender for contracts”:

“In the last decade, mining companies and ancillary services have employed Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders in larger numbers than ever before in Australian history. Some mining companies, for example Rio Tinto Ltd, Fortescue Metals Group and BHP Billiton, have developed recruitment and other labour force strategies in the last few years that have contributed to creating the largest Australian Indigenous industrial workforce ever …

“Mid last year, in the Pilbara alone, Rio Tinto Iron Ore had over 1000 indigenous employees and Fortescue more than 300. As proportions of the total workforce in both these companies, about 8% of the employees are indigenous. Nationally, Rio Tinto had about 1500 indigenous employees and is the largest private sector employer of indigenous people …

“Rio Tinto Iron Ore has provided literacy and numeracy programs, family and community support programs and mentoring of indigenous employees. These have all been critical to increasing indigenous employment.”

In her third Boyer, titled “Old barriers and new models: The private sector, government and the economic empowerment of Aboriginal Australians”, Langton explains how former Rio chairman Leon Davis “made a headland speech that shifted the industry’s paradigm” to break with the approach of Western Mining’s Hugh Morgan:

“Davis’ acceptance of native title and tilt towards respect for traditional owners enraged Morgan and other industry leaders but led to the sophistication in agreement making that we witness today.”

Rio’s landmark 2011 Gove Mining Agreement with the Yolngu people provided “outstanding long-term financial terms and opportunities to tap in to the regional economy created by the mine”, Langton said.

A fourth lecture, “The conceit of wilderness ideology”, took aim at leading environmentalist and climate change commissioner Tim Flannery. Langton wondered aloud whether Flannery was “racist” because he had argued in Quarterly Essay that a Bligh government decision to hand back a part of a national park to its traditional owners for mining may have trumped the interests of nature:

“For 40 years this racist assumption in the green movement about Aboriginal people being the enemies of the wilderness is a leitmotif of deals between conservation groups and state governments to deny Aboriginal people their rights as landowners and citizens of Australia.”

Simon Longstaff from the St James Ethics Centre told Crikey that although Langton had long held views similar to those expressed in the Boyers, she — and the ABC — should have disclosed the funding because of the specific and ongoing nature of the tie-up.

“If you’re going to mention specific organisations, either to endorse them or to criticise them, and if there’s a financial relationship of support, then it’s just a matter of prudence to advise those who might be broadcasting or publishing those views that that forms part of the background to your thinking,” he said.

“If there’s a direct and ongoing monetary relationship it’s a wise thing to disclose that so the public is aware.”

Rio, which did not respond to requests for comment, is also involved in Langton-linked projects elsewhere at the University of Melbourne — it is the foundation corporate partner of the Murrup Barak Melbourne Institute for Indigenous Development, at which Langton is a graduate course co-ordinator.

An interview for a 2011 Monthly feature on Langton penned by Peter Robb was conducted at Rio Tinto’s Australian head office in Collins Street.

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Langton failed to disclose mining company funding

March 2, 2013

Gina McColl

http://www.theage.com.au/national/langton-failed-to-disclose-mining-company-funding-20130301-2fbtx.html

LEADING environmentalists have criticised the ABC and Professor Marcia Langton after revelations her recent ABC Boyer Lectures, in which she praised the mining industry’s role in the emergence of an Aboriginal middle class and delivered a broadside against the green movement, drew on research partially funded by big mining companies.

Santos contributed $45,000, Woodside $30,000, and the federal government’s Indigenous Affairs Department $300,000 to a four-year research project led by Professor Langton into economic empowerment in indigenous communities.

Rio Tinto contributed an undisclosed sum to the $480,000 project, while Marnda Mia, a company that represents local indigenous communities in deals with Rio, offered non-cash support.

Scientist and former Australian of the year Tim Flannery, whom Professor Langton accused in one lecture of racism, said the lectures ”take on a different light” since the big resource companies’ contribution was highlighted by website Crikey.

Professor Flannery said the views expressed were consistent with those of the mining industry in their criticism of environmentalists and advocacy of indigenous development and mining expansion going hand in hand.

”This goes to the heart of the credibility of the Boyer Lecture series,” he said. ”There should be requirements for disclosure of this sort of thing and they should be abided by.”

While detailed on the University of Melbourne website, where Professor Langton is foundation chair of Australian indigenous studies, the industry funding was not disclosed to listeners when the lectures were delivered in the ABC’s Brisbane studios late last year, broadcast on Radio National or extracted in Fairfax Media.

Disclosures have since been added to ABC and Fairfax sites, and will be included in a book of the series, due to be released by ABC Publishing in March.

The Boyer lecturer is selected each year by the ABC board, rather than an editor, but policies that the broadcaster must ”ensure” independence and disclosure of any conflicts still apply. An ABC spokesman declined to answer questions about what steps were taken to conform with this policy, and whether its practices were being reviewed as a consequence of the controversy.

”The ABC constantly reviews its policies and procedures to ensure best practice,” the spokesman said.

Professor Langton, who did not respond to Fairfax requests for comment, defended herself on Twitter last week. ”Double standards and disinformation from Crikey. Boyers are not my university research but my private opinions.”

Associate Professor Peter Christoff, an expert in environmental politics at Melbourne University and former vice-president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, said he didn’t think his colleague’s research would have been influenced by her funding sources, but the lack of disclosure was still damaging. ”Perception is fundamental,” he said.

”She’s undermined her case because there’s an apparent conflict of interest there.”

However, an academic with experience researching the Western Australian mining regions said the commercialisation of research did raise questions about independence.

Dr Sarah Holcombe, at the Australian National University, said access to staff and mine sites are controlled by the companies, and that accommodation outside of their mining camps is often non-existent. ”Without their support, this sort of research could not happen.”

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Marcia Langton sparks academic spat over charges of ‘racism’

Andrew Crooks

Crikey, Feb 27, 2013

Marcia Langton sparks academic spat over charges of ‘racism’

Marcia Langton has been accused of ditching serious debate for name-calling. Crikey finds there is much criticism of her approach among academic peers.

Indigenous academic Marcia Langton has again accused a prominent rival of “racism”, using an internal university mailing list to sledge a critic of her controversial ABC Boyer Lectures.

Transcripts of an Australian Anthropological Society debate — obtained by Crikey  — reveal a heated exchange between Langton and her academic peers over an article by Professor Boris Frankel published in the latest Arena Magazine, “Opportunity Lost“. It is Langton’s third public accusation of racism in the last three months, a serious charge in the modern academy.

In Arena, Frankel, an honorary fellow at the University of Melbourne, wrote of his disappointment over Langton’s “simplistic narrative of goodies and baddies based on an equally simplistic political geography”, noting Langton’s characterisation of the Left as new racists who wanted to keep keep Indigenous people uneducated and living in poverty. He argued the ABC, by failing to broadcast a Boyer rebuttal, had failed to adhere to the “balance” obligations of its charter.

But Langton’s riposte published last week on the AASnet mailing list says Frankel’s critique could not be taken seriously because he is “racist”:

“History will judge Frankel’s attack on me as dubious, questionable critique with no evidence to support his outrageous claims … like some of you, Frankel believes that it is legitimate to say anything at all, even with no evidence, about me. The racism is obvious and, as I said, I will respond fully in due course.”

In her fourth Boyer broadcast on ABC Radio National in December, Langton accused climate change commissioner and prominent environmentalist Tim Flannery of harbouring “racist” thoughts because he suggested indigenous communities weren’t capable of protecting nature.

And earlier this week she assailed two prominent critics — journalism academic and New Matilda contributing editor Wendy Bacon and former ABC investigative journalist Wendy Carlisle — of failing to grasp the “invisibility of racism” because they had not “hounded” other Boyer lecturers over conflicts of interest. The bitter exchange occurred after Crikey drew attention to the fact both Langton and the ABC had failed to disclose tens of thousands of dollars in research cash provided by resources giants, including Rio Tinto and Woodside, that she later singled out as indigenous employment champions.

Professor Jon Altman, the ARC Australian Professorial Fellow at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University, told AASnet name-calling was being employed as a means of silencing dissent.

“While I do not agree with everything in Boris’ essay … my view is that it constitutes robust critical review. I also followed with interest the AASNet debate on the first Boyer lecture and spotted nothing ‘racist’ there. These views constitute disagreement, not racism! … Such labelling should not be condoned, even with polite silence, in an ‘open society’.”

Former University of Sydney anthropology lecturer Thiago Oppermann was also having none of it: “It’s characteristic that ML’s [Langton’s] defenders should cry about her being mauled in the press, when what we have here is a single negative review in a tiny publication [Arena], whilst she just gave the Boyer lectures, supposedly a thing of prestige and wide reach…

“And of course, having a single argument raised against one’s views in the marginal press is Stalinist censorship. We are allowed to have ‘diversity’ in anthropology so long as nobody ever steps on anyone’s toes, it seems. Let 100 flowers bloom, all of them pulled by a mysterious heliotropism towards our glorious mineral-driven future …”

Professor Andrew Lattas of the Department of Social Anthropology at Norway’s University of Bergen said the frenzied reaction was “just the usual nonsense that I have come to expect along with the personal accusation of Stalinism by email when you challenge arguments”.

He defended the questioning over conflicts and disclosure: “There is nothing scurrilous in the criticism of Marcia Langton and noting her alignment with the mining lobby, they are long overdue. Asking for disclosure of how her research is funded by mining companies is certainly proper.

“It is not surprising that the criticisms are coming from outside of anthropology whilst the defence is coming from the usual crowd in Australian Aboriginal anthropology. Embarrassed by having strongly defended her and now not able or willing to respond to the substantial criticisms of her in any direct way, they resort to mourning the loss of meaning and objectivity in a post-modern world of mass communication. They generalise the problem, making the medium the problem — well this is not going to work, it is just fudging.”

Langton received some cautious support from Professor Diane Austin-Broos from the University of Sydney, who says while Frankel might not be guilty of racism he failed to produce sufficient evidence.

“Rather than ‘racist’, Frankel’s contribution exhibits a new type of comment in scholarly journals that I call ‘death by opinion piece’,” she told colleagues. “The so-called review is not grounded in citations from the relevant criticised text and relies on general political assumptions to bolster its argument. Moreover, the empirical stuff that grounds a real exchange of views is most often missing.”

But Dr Stephen Johnson, a South Australian-based On Country planning consultant, formerly of the University of Queensland’s Heritage Unit, said it was Langton who resorted to kneejerk accusations whenever she cops criticism.

“As just about anyone who has worked with or in close proximity to the professor will attest — and even those who have simply followed various debates from afar — Marcia Langton appears free to deploy at will the argumentative and rhetorical device taught and learned in a Western philosophical/academic tradition, but when challenged in kind will invariably resort to accusations of racism, often couched in terms of ‘what would a whitefella know?'”

Late last year Langton sarcastically referred to herself as a “nig nog” in response to a tweet from prominent industrial relations barrister Josh Bornstein, who said he was sick of her abuse and invective.

Meanwhile, the full extent of the mining industry’s financial support for Langton’s research — undisclosed in her Boyer Lectures — is becoming clearer. Rio Tinto has contributed two major cash tranches in last six years to the Agreements, Treaties and Negotiated Settlements Project at which Langton is a chief investigator.

Another funder of Langton’s research is the Marnda Mia Central Negotiating Committee — a local company that negotiates with Rio on behalf of the indigenous community. As this 2007 press release shows, Marnda Mia was the recipient of $2 million in funding from Rio Tinto Iron Ore at its inception. A year later, Langton and co-researcher Ciaran O’Faircheallaigh allegedly produced an internal report for Rio and ran seminars for the indigenous community in the Pilbara with whom Rio Tinto was negotiating (Crikey asked O’Faircheallaigh, Langton and Rio for clarification on this and other matters — Rio declined, O’Faircheallaigh and Langton didn’t respond).

Another mining behemoth plugged by Langton in her Boyer lectures was Twiggy Forrest’s Fortescue Metals, which Langton lauded for helping to create “the largest Australian indigenous industrial workforce ever”. But most listeners would have been unaware of Langton’s position on the steering committee for the Australian Employment Covenant, founded and co-funded by Forrest. There was also no mention in the Boyers of Fortescue’s pitched battle with the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation over negotiating rights for the Solomon Hub and the Firetail mine, which has since been resolved in Yindjibarndi’s favour by the Federal Court.

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Langton gets her fact wrong

Unpublished letter.

Marcia Langton cites only one specific example in her tirade against environmentalists (‘Start of a long fight back’, The Age, Nov 24). She complains about “environmentalists and “wilderness” campaigners … attaching themselves to dissident Aboriginal groups at Jabiluka in western Arnhem Land.” In fact, Mirarr Traditional Owners were (and are) unanimously opposed to mining at Jabiluka; there is no dissident group.

Langton ignores countless real-world examples which disprove her thesis about white-knight mining companies rescuing Aboriginal people from poverty and from self-interested greenies. One such example concerns BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam mine in SA. BHP Billiton refuses to relinquish indefensible exemptions from the SA Aboriginal Heritage Act. Those exemptions were extended last year, with an SA government representative saying that BHP “insisted” on retaining the exemptions and that “the government did not consult further than that.”

Both Langton and BHP Billiton are heavy on rhetoric and light on delivery.

Jim Green
Friends of the Earth
Melbourne

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Marcia Langton Should Go Back To The Drawing Board On Mining

Dave Sweeney, 6 March 2015, New Matilda
https://newmatilda.com/2015/03/06/marcia-langton-should-go-back-drawing-board-mining-agreement-praise

Declaring mining agreements a success in Aboriginal communities after reviewing less than two percent of agreements seems a stretch, writes Dave Sweeney.

Earlier this month mining executives mingled with politicians in federal Parliament’s Mural Hall as Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion launched a new publication from the Minerals Council of Australia.
From Conflict to Cooperation, by Melbourne University’s Professor Marcia Langton, sets out to examine the “transformations and challenges in the engagement between the Australian minerals industry and Australian Indigenous peoples”.
Professor Langton’s main contention is that there has been an enormous improvement in relations and outcomes between miners and Aboriginal peoples over the past two to four decades. Aboriginal communities have experienced significant economic benefit and these now need to be consolidated through regulatory reform and a new economically driven Aboriginal financial trust and organisational structure.
Professor Langton has fulsome praise for the collaborative, indeed transformative, nature of the new era of Industry-Indigenous relationships and lauds mining companies and executives.
None of this is surprising. It is, after all, a Minerals Council publication and Professor Langton has a long connection with the big end of Shoveltown.
Two aspects of this paper are surprising.
One, Professor Langton sharply identifies the institutional bias and capacity constraints that work against Aboriginal communities and organisations in complex negotiations processes, yet she still claims the system delivers.
Two, her enthusiasm about the benefits of mining agreements is based on surprisingly scant information.
Late last decade the Native Title Working Group identified obstacles that frequently get in the way of successful agreements between Indigenous communities and mining companies. The working group noted that “there are only a limited number of good agreements to provide models… The reasons for the absence of more agreements containing substantial financial and other benefits for traditional owners after almost 15 years of the operation of the Native Title Act 1993 (NTA) is, in itself, deserving of inquiry”.
Indeed, it still is. This fact is highlighted by the confusing data on Aboriginal employment in the resources sector and the lack of detail on economic benefits.
The plentiful talk of jobs and dollars is not backed up with many hard facts.
Mining Agreements are rarely agreed and seldom seen. In the everyday world an agreement is a deal based on shared understanding, but in the world of the Native Title Amendment Act (1998) and the mining sector it means the right to negotiate, but not to say no.
As veteran Aboriginal activist Gary Foley tirelessly points out, “Native Title ain’t Land Rights folks”.
Deal making where one party has no legislative option not to deal markedly increases the odds of a poor deal.
Professor Langton states that few Native Title Corporations ‘have the resources for the basic administration of their duties’ and that most NTCs and Prescribed Body Corporates ‘are insufficiently resourced to attend to their responsibilities’. One wonders whether the same assessment applies to the legal and Aboriginal liaison units of BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto. The miners might move on to break the earth but from day one the playing field is not level.
The institutional bias in the current system was also highlighted by Noel Pearson in a 2008 commentary in The Australian newspaper.
In ‘Boom or dust lifestyle’ Pearson wrote the “mining lobby has been quiet on land rights for the past decade. Having secured an advantageous legal framework through the bitter conflicts over the Native Title Act in the ’90s, they have learned that ideological opposition to land rights is unproductive for its members. As long as member companies are winning hands-down through the so-called agreement-making process, they have had no interest in conflict.”
Add commercial-in-confidence and secrecy provisions to this and you have a fundamental power imbalance.
Professor Langton acknowledges this, stating that ‘little is known about the details of commercial contracts due to the commercially sensitive nature and confidentiality of arrangements’. Her own research has ‘been able to identify and publish only 15 full or partial texts of agreements out of a total of 930’.
On the basis of an analysis of 1.6 per cent of existing agreements Professor Langton gives a glowing endorsement of the current arrangements. Smart, driven, full time, feted by the miners and still only able to access well less than 2 per cent of the paperwork. What chance of meaningful access by an Aboriginal advocate from what Professor Langton calls the ‘pockets of resistance toward this collaborative approach’, let alone the odds for ‘metropolitan environmentalist campaigners’?
Given this paucity of data Professor Langton polishes the old case studies in defence of the new mining regime.
Rio Tinto’s diamond operations at Argyle and in Canada sparkle while Comalco and Newmont feature large. I doubt many around Borroloola would currently be citing McArthur River mine as a great case study.
The inclusion of a focus on royalty flows from the troubled Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu is an odd choice in a paper on mining agreements given the Mirarr Traditional Owners’ objections to the mine were legislatively overridden.
There are issues and observations of real merit in this paper and any discussion of the money flows in mining is welcome, as there is a genuine shortage of both dialogue and detail. Professor Langton identifies the disjunct between much government funding and co-ordination, the power imbalances and capacity constraints facing Aboriginal negotiators and the need for greater transparency and consideration of new approaches to Trusts and financial mechanisms to help Aboriginal people get into the driver’s seat.
Professor Langton concludes that the history of mining agreements shows ‘that the social licence for the minerals industry to operate in cooperation with Aboriginal communities is achievable’.
No argument there. But, like her paper, it’s going to require a fair bit more effort.

Nuclear medicine radioisotopes are sourced as follows:

• 70% of nuclear medicine procedures use technetium-99m (Tc-99m) produced in nuclear research reactors.
• 20-25% of nuclear medicine procedures use radioisotopes produced in particle accelerators (mostly cyclotrons).
• 5% of nuclear medicine procedures use reactor-produced isotopes other than Tc-99m.

A large majority of Tc-99m is produced in nuclear research reactors. More precisely, the reactors produce Tc-99m’s longer-lived parent isotope molybdenum-99 (half life 66 hours) with neutron bombardment of enriched uranium targets. There is a long-established worldwide trade in Mo-99. It is supplied in the form of generators (or ‘cows’) from which Tc-99m is ‘milked’.

There are two problems:

• reliance on a relatively small number of reactors, and occasional disruptions to supply.
• WMD proliferation risks associated with research reactors, exacerbated by the frequent use of highly-enriched uranium (HEU) fuel and/or HEU irradiation targets.

There are ongoing efforts to reduce the reliance on HEU fuel and targets in reactors producing Mo-99/Tc-99m − though HEU is still used in some cases, and substituting HEU with low-enriched uranium does not entirely negate WMD proliferation risks.

A better solution would be to use non-reactor technologies (particle accelerators or spallation sources) to produce Mo-99 or Tc-99m.

Large-scale non-reactor production of Mo-99 would be ideal, as the produce could be shipped around the world. Tc-99m can be distributed locally/regionally − for example a network of cyclotrons in most of Australia’s capital cities could satisfy Australian requirements.

Below are links to literature about non-reactor methods of Mo-99/Tc-99m (and some other issues such as efforts to replce HEU with LEU).

— Electron accelerator method: Ralph G. Bennett et al., A System of Tc-99m Production Based on Distributed Electron Accelerators and Thermal Separation, Nuclear Technology, Vol.126, April 1999.

— Spallation system for Mo-99 production: Belgian Nuclear Research Centre SCK-CEN www.cen.be (type Myrrha or Adonis into SCK-CEN’s search engine).

— Aqueous homogenous nuclear reactor technology: “The aqueous homogenous nuclear reactor technology being developed by Babcock & Wilcox relies on low-enriched uranium and promises to produce only 1% of the radioactive waste that accompanies the production of Mo-99 in a conventional reactor. This week the company, a subsidiary of McDermott International (NYSE:MDR), announced receiving $9 million in funding for the alternative Mo-99 technology, which the company is developing jointly with Covidien. Adding credence to the Babcock & Wilcox effort is the award of a publicly undisclosed amount of funding to GE and Hitachi, also to develop technology capable of making Mo-99 from low-enriched uranium.” (Greg Freiherr, 27 Jan 2010, ‘Nuc med isotope supply: Perfect storm sends Covidien to cover’, http://www.diagnosticimaging.com/display/article/113619/1515968?verify=0)

— Report of the Expert Review Panel on Medical Isotope Production

Presented to the Minister of Natural Resources Canada, 30 November 2009

http://www.cins.ca/docs/panrep-rapexp-eng.pdf

See esp. Chapter 5: Assessment of Options

5.1 Overarching Discussion
5.2 New Multi-Purpose Research Reactors Option
5.3 Dedicated Isotope Facility Option
5.4 Existing Reactors Option
5.5 Linear Accelerator – Photo-Fission Option
5.6 Linear Accelerator – Mo-100 Transmutation Option
5.7 Cyclotron Option

— IAEA Nuclear Energy Series, Technical Reports, No. NF-T-5.4, 2013
Non-HEU Production Technologies for Molybdenum-99 and Technetium-99m

See esp.:

4. REACTOR BASED PRODUCTION

5. ACCELERATOR BASED PRODUCTION
5.1. Fission based (n, f) production using accelerators
5.2. Photon based (γ, n) production using electron accelerators
5.3. Neutron induced process 100Mo(n,2n)99Mo
5.4. Direct production of 99mTc using proton accelerators

— Future Supply of Medical Radioisotopes for the UK Report 2014
Report prepared by: British Nuclear Medicine Society and Science & Technology Facilities Council.
December 2014

See esp.

Chapter 3: Alternative Strategies for Imaging Diagnostics in the UK

3.2 Alternative Modalities / 3.3 Use of Other Radionuclides

Chapter 4: Non-Reactor Production of Technetium-99m

4.1 Reactor Fission vs. Other Methods /

4.2 Particles and Reactions / 4.2.1 Neutron-Induced Fission / 4.2.2 Neutron Capture / 4.2.3 Photonuclear Transmutation / 4.2.4 Proton-Induced Transmutation / 4.2.5 Summary /

4.3 Particle Source Technologies / 4.3.1 Electron Accelerators / 4.3.2 Low-Energy Proton Accelerators / 4.3.3 High-Energy Protons / 4.3.4 Neutron Production / 4.3.5 Laser Acceleration

Chapter 5: Radiochemical, Pharmaceutical, Dosimetric, and Operational Considerations for Cyclotron Produced 99mTc

Chapter 8: UK Delegation to assess the viability of the Canadian schemes for cyclotron production of Na99mTc04

8.9 Conclusion: Two 99mTc production methodologies using the 100Mo(p,2n)99mTc reaction on high powered cyclotrons have been accomplished. The key innovation for the implementation of this technology resides with the target plate technology. These methods have the potential for routine production of TBq amounts of GMP product and could be established in the UK along similar lines to those using regional cyclotrons for the production of positron emitting radiopharmaceuticals. The technology represents a valuable opportunity for UK science and technology, however the reliability of routine production and backup arrangements are still to be evaluated. Further commercial investment will be requited to develop operational stability and to secure the necessary regulatory approvals before this technology is suitable for routine medical use.

— OECD/NEA (2010) Interim Report on High-Level Group on Security of Supply of Medical Radioisotopes, The Supply of Medical Radioisotopes.

http://www.oecd-nea.org/med-radio/reports/HLG-MR-Interim-report.pdf

— OECD/NEA. (November 2010). The Supply of Medical Radioisotopes. Review of Potential Molybdenum-99/ Technetium-99m Production Technologies.

http://www.oecd-nea.org/med-radio/reports/Med-Radio-99Mo-Prod-Tech.pdf

— Gregory Morris and Robert J. Budnitz (Future Resources Associates, Inc.), 2001, “Alternatives to a 20 MW Nuclear Reactor for Australia”,

https://nuclear.foe.org.au/wp-content/uploads/Morris-Budnitz-isotopes-2001.pdf

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New life-saving medical isotopes

February 2021, Sharon Oosthoek

https://www.cheminst.ca/magazine/article/new-life-saving-medical-isotopes/

Cyclotron technique for producing technetium-99m receives Health Canada approval

In 1971, researchers with the University of Miami published a proof-of-concept showing how a small particle accelerator known as a cyclotron could produce the world’s most commonly used medical isotope. For the next four decades, the paper sat on a shelf.

In 2009, University of British Columbia radiologist Dr. François Bénard dusted it off and thought, ‘Why not try to develop that technology?’

By then, a fragile supply chain for technetium-99m – used in medicine as a radioactive tracer – was threatening delays in diagnosing a range of deadly illnesses, including bone and cardiac diseases and cancer.

That’s because the short-lived isotope is largely a side project for a small number of aging nuclear reactors around the world … As these reactors were taken offline for maintenance, the supply of technetium-99m fluctuated wildly. Plus, many reactors were approaching the end of their lifespans.

So Dr. Bénard, who is also a senior executive director of research at BC Cancer, teamed up with Dr. Paul Schaffer, associate professor at UBC’s faculty of medicine and associate laboratory director, life sciences at TRIUMF. The pair pulled together a team of scientists and explained to them how they might perfect the decades-old approach to making technetium-99m.

Dr. Schaffer remembers clearly the conference call during which Dr. Bénard proposed the project: “The chemists and nuclear chemists on the call literally paused, and then said ‘Why didn’t we think of that?’”

The team would go on to spend the next decade figuring out how to purify the isotope for medical use, scale up production and commercialize it.

Getting the green light

Late last year, the hard work paid off – their approach to making technetium-99m received Health Canada approval.

The isotope can now be produced at regional cyclotron facilities in Canada. It means dependence on nuclear reactor technology can be reduced, helping create a stable, and more environmentally friendly supply chain.

“The goal is to decentralize production and reduce the risk of making these isotopes,” says Dr. Bénard.

The reduced risk is in part because when nuclear reactors produce technetium-99m, they create a wider range of longer-lived radioactive elements than do cyclotrons. Nuclear reactors start with enriched uranium-235 and induce fission to produce radioactive molybdenum-99 (among several hundred other radioactive products). Molybdenum-99 then decays naturally into technetium-99m.

Cyclotrons, on the other hand, work by accelerating particles to very high speeds and focusing them on a target substance, triggering a reaction that produces a radioactive element. To produce technetium-99m, the team irradiated non-radioactive molybdenum-100 with protons.

Many large medical centres already have cyclotrons, which are traditionally used to make isotopes that are shorter-lived and lighter than technetium-99m – carbon, fluorine and nitrogen-based isotopes. While these isotopes are an important part of nuclear medicine, technetium-99m is even more important. It accounts for 80 per cent of all nuclear medicine procedures worldwide.

The BC Cancer cyclotron is the first in Canada to be retrofitted to produce technetium-99m and the team hopes there will be many more.

As Drs. Bénard and Schaffer are quick to point out, the achievement is based on a nation-wide effort, including BC Cancer, TRIUMF, UBC, Lawson Health Research Institute and the Centre for Probe Development and Commercialization.

The clinical trial, meanwhile, was conducted across multiple hospitals in Canada. Vancouver General Hospital and St. Paul’s Hospital were supplied with technetium-99m produced at BC Cancer while St. Joseph’s Health Care London and the Hamilton Health Sciences Centre were supplied from the cyclotron facility at Lawson Health Research Institute.

Beyond understanding the importance of teamwork, there is another significant lesson in the achievement, says Dr. Schaffer: “Funding basic research can yield results that can’t be anticipated. I don’t think anyone was thinking of technetium-99m when TRIUMF was built.”

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First neutron accelerator delivered to Mo-99 facility

19 October 2018

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/First-neutron-accelerator-delivered-to-Mo99-facili

The first production accelerator has been delivered to Shine Medical Technologies’ isotope production campus in Janesville, Wisconsin. The unit will be used to gain operating experience, train employees and develop maintenance procedures at the plant, which at full capacity will be able to supply over one third of world demand for molybdenum-99 (Mo-99).

The accelerator system has been designed and built specifically for the Shine project by Phoenix LLC, also of Wisconsin, and will produce radioisotopes for use in medical imaging. Phoenix has previously designed prototypes to demonstrate the neutron output and up-time required for medical radioisotope production, but this is the first system designed for regular commercial use, Shine said yesterday.

“This delivery represents the culmination of almost a decade of joint work between Phoenix and Shine, moving from proof of concept, to proof of scale, and now to a commercial-ready unit that can produce thousands of doses of medicine per day when paired with the Shine target,” Shine CEO Greg Piefer said. The tests will prove the technology is ready for production and provide important maintenance and operational data well in advance of starting up the actual plant, he added.

Ross Radel, CEO of Phoenix, said the company’s mission is to tackle “humanity’s greatest challenges” with nuclear technology. “Through our partnership with Shine, our neutron generators will support production of enough Mo-99 to provide millions of people a year with the critical imaging procedures they need,” he said.

Mo-99 is the precursor of technetium-99m (Tc-99m), the most widely used isotope in nuclear medicine. With a half-life of only 66 hours, Mo-99 cannot be stockpiled, and security of supply is a key concern. Mo-99 has primarily been produced by a limited number of research reactors, many of which have been operating since the 1960s, and at times supply has been subject to disruptions and significant radioisotope shortages following outages at those reactors.

There has been no commercial production of the isotope in the USA since 1989. Since 2009 the US Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has been working in partnership with US commercial entities to accelerate the development of technologies to produce the radioisotope domestically, without the highly-enriched uranium (HEU) targets from which most Mo-99 is currently produced. The HEU targets are themselves seen as a potential nuclear proliferation risk.

Shine’s system uses low-energy, accelerator-based neutron source to fission a low-enriched uranium target dissolved in an aqueous solution. The company in 2016 received approval from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct the facility, and announced the completion of the first building on its Jamesville campus – Building One, where the first production unit is to be installed – earlier this year.

Construction of the commercial facility, which will contain eight isotope production units each with its own Phoenix neutron generator, is to begin in next spring. Commercial production of Mo-99 is scheduled to begin in 2021.

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Canada: Progress with non-reactor isotope production

A research team at the University of British Columbia is making progress developing non-reactor methods to produce technetium-99m (Tc-99m), the isotope used in around 80% of diagnostic nuclear imaging procedures. Using its Triumf cyclotron, they produced enough Tc-99m in six hours to enable about 500 scans, thereby creating a “viable alternative” to the NRU reactor which is scheduled to close in 2016.¹

Clinical trials involving 50−60 patients are expected to begin this year to prove that the cyclotron-produced Tc-99m behaves in the same way as that from nuclear reactors. If the three-month trials are successful, the university says, one of Triumf’s cyclotrons “would likely be dedicated to medical isotope production”, possibly as soon as 2016.

Only a small number of research reactors around the world produce molybdenum-99 (Mo-99), the parent of Tc-99m. The supply chain has been vulnerable to interruptions from unplanned reactor outages.

The Canadian government has invested around C$60 million  in projects, including Triumf, to bring non-reactor-based isotope production technologies to market through its Isotope Technology Acceleration Program initiative.

Production of Tc-99m using cyclotrons does not require the highly enriched uranium targets that are commonly used in reactors to produce Mo-99 (and Mo-99 production has sometimes been used to justify the use of highly enriched reactor fuel). Instead, technetium-99m is produced directly by bombarding a Mo-100 target with a proton beam.

Another technique that is showing some promise uses the Canadian Light Source in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.² The accelerator bombards a target of enriched Mo-100 with high-energy X-rays, which knock a neutron out of some of the Mo-100 atoms to produce Mo-99. If all goes to plan, two or three accelerator systems like the Canadian Light Source facility could produce enough isotopes to supply Canada’s domestic needs. Production of the parent isotope Mo-99 is preferable to direct production of Tc-99, as its longer half-life (66 hours vs. 6 hours for Tc-99m) facilitates more widespread distribution.

Numerous non-reactor methods of Mo-99/Tc-99m production have been proposed over the past few decades, and some methods have been proven on an experimental scale. There is a reasonable chance that the looming closure of the NRU reactor will result in viable, affordable methods of large-scale Mo-99/Tc-99m production.

1. WNN, 9 Jan 2015, ‘New record for cyclotron isotope production’,

www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-New-record-for-cyclotron-isotope-production-0901158.html

2. WNN, 17 Nov 2014, ‘Canada ships first synchrotron isotopes’, www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Canada-ships-first-synchrotron-isotopes-1711148.html

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Canada funds hunt for new isotope sources

05 March 2013

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Canada_funds_hunt_for_new_isotope_sources-0503138.html

Three projects to develop new supply sources for the key medical isotope technetium-99m (Tc-99m) have been selected to receive over C$21 million ($20 million) in funding under Canada’s Isotope Technology Acceleration Program (ITAP).

ITAP was set up by the Canadian government to invest some C$25 million ($24.3 million) over four years to advance non-reactor-based technologies for Tc-99m supply and optimise the processes to help bring them to market. The three selected projects are to receive a total of C$21.45 million ($20.9 million), with the remaining C$3.55 million ($3.46 million) covering support costs for the program.

Two cyclotron projects, at the University of Alberta and the Triumf consortium in British Columbia, are to receive C$7 million ($6.8 million) each, while the Prairie Isotope Production Enterprise linear accelerator project in Manitoba will receive C$7.46 million ($7.26 million). The three projects have all shown promising results under an earlier Canadian government initiative to diversify sources of Tc-99m using cyclotron and linear accelerator technologies, the Non-reactor-based Isotope Supply Contribution Program (NISP).

According to Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), these projects have shown promising results including small-scale demonstration of Tc-99m production, but more work is required to bring the technologies to commercial-scale production and to meet regulatory requirements.

Tc-99m is the most widely used medical isotope, employed in about 80% of nuclear medicine diagnostic procedures. As the isotope itself has a very short half-life of only six hours, the longer-lived molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) is used to generate Tc-99m at the point of treatment. Mo-99 is produced in a handful of research reactors around the world: the NRU facility at Canada’s Chalk River Laboratories produces around 40% of world supply.

Mo-99 itself also has a relatively short half-life of 66 hours, so reliable, regular supplies of the isotope are essential. However, recent years have seen global shortages when several of the handful of ageing research reactors used to produce the isotope have been out of action, prompting interest in investigating alternative sources. Tc-99m can be produced directly in a cyclotron by bombarding a molybdenum-100 (Mo-100) target with a proton beam, while linear accelerators can be used to generate Mo-99 by bombarding a Mo-100 target with high-energy X-rays. Such methods are also seen as presenting non-proliferation benefits as they do not require the use of high-enriched uranium either for fuel or targets for isotope production, although  LEU reactor fuels and targets are increasingly being used in reactor-based Tc-99 production.

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HEU-Free Medical Isotope Project Wins U.S. Financial Support

May 9, 2012

http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/heu-free-medical-isotope-project-wins-us-backing/

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration on Tuesday said it has agreed to help fund a medical science center’s efforts to refine an accelerator-centered means for generating a key medical isotope without relying on weapon-usable uranium (see GSN, Feb. 7).

The Morgridge Institute for Research in Wisconsin is expected to expedite preparation of the system under the equal cost-sharing deal, which is valued at $20.6 million.

Molybdenum 99 through the decay process produces technetium 99m, which is employed widely in U.S. medical procedures, particularly for identifying heart ailments and cancer. The United States today cannot produce its own molybdenum 99, and international manufacturing sites in recent years have faced closures and problems that have contributed to the material’s scarcity. In addition, production at the non-U.S. sites generally depends on use of highly enriched uranium suitable for use in bombs.

The National Nuclear Security Administration has so far reached deals with four firms in the United States as part of an effort to speed up the creation of varied, dependable molybdenum resources within the nation’s borders. Non-U.S. manufacturers also receive the agency’s assistance in modifying their mechanisms to use low-enriched uranium without potential weapon applications.

“The production of this medical isotope without the use of highly enriched uranium is essential for advancing our nonproliferation commitments and minimizing the use of HEU in civilian applications worldwide,” NNSA Deputy Administrator Anne Harrington said in released remarks. “The significant technical advancement of our domestic commercial partners is critical for achieving a diverse, reliable supply of molybdenum-99 for the U.S. medical community” (U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration release, May 8).

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Canadian government reports:

http://www2.nrcan.gc.ca/sr/index-eng.cfm?searchType=basic&page=1&text=technetium-99m&Submit=Search&language=eng

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National nuclear medicine shortage could have a Wisconsin solution

Tom Still, August 17, 2009, http://wistechnology.com/articles/6407/

An average of 40,000 Americans per day are given a radioactive isotope that acts as a light source within their bodies, illuminating cancerous tumors and heart problems that doctors otherwise couldn’t detect – short of surgery and other procedures that are riskier, more costly and less effective.
The supply of that isotope, used widely and safely for decades, is now threatened by a shortage of the core material – Molybdenum 99 – used to produce it for hospitals and clinics. It’s an emerging crisis with national and even international dimensions, yet a dilemma that could be solved by a Wisconsin company called Phoenix Nuclear Labs.

Scientists working with the Madison-based company believe they can generate the neutrons necessary to create Mo-99, an essential nuclear medicine tool, without using a nuclear reactor to do so. It’s a safer and more sustainable method than the status quo, which relies on production of Mo-99 from five retirement-age nuclear medicine reactors – two of which are now shut down, one perhaps permanently.

The idled reactors in Canada and the Netherlands supply 92 percent of all Mo-99 used in the United States, where some 25 million doses are given each year. Eighty percent of nuclear medicine scans use the isotope, called Technetium-99 after refined for clinical use, to detect cancer, heart disease or kidney illness.
The isotope allows physicians to examine bones and blood flow, among other things, then disappears within hours from the body, minimizing the dose of radiation received by the patient. Because of its short half-life, the Mo-99 isotope cannot be stockpiled and must be used within a week after it is produced.

Already, nuclear medicine doctors and pharmacists nationwide are reporting widespread shortages, with thousands of procedures delayed each day. While they can handle part of the caseload in other ways, doctors say it’s only a matter of time before more patients miss necessary scans – or pay much more to get them.

“It’s possible some deaths could occur,” Dr. Michael Graham of the University of Iowa, president of the nation’s largest nuclear medicine association, told the Los Angeles Times.

Enter Phoenix Nuclear Labs, a company with ties to scientists such as Dr. Paul DeLuca, a nuclear medicine pioneer at the UW-Madison and its current provost; Dr. Thomas “Rock” Mackie, co-founder of TomoTherapy; and Dr. Harrison Schmitt, one of the last astronauts to walk on the moon in 1972 and an adjunct professor of nuclear engineering at UW-Madison. The company president is Dr. Greg Piefer, who holds a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the UW-Madison.

The technical details of how the company would produce Mo-99 would fill a book, but imagine a device through which electrically charged particles bombard a specific type of “plasma,” or hot, ionized gas. That produces neutrons which in turn strike a low-grade uranium solution, which produces the Mo-99. There is almost no long-lived nuclear waste, no risk of an explosive accident, and it’s about 20 times less expensive to construct than a nuclear medicine reactor – if one could be approved at all.

The process may also benefit national security: The Phoenix Nuclear process could be operated at home or abroad without fear of the waste being reused to make atomic weapons. That’s not true of the current isotope production process, which some observers believe is vulnerable to nuclear terrorism.
The security angle is one reason why Piefer and Phoenix Nuclear were selected to present at the third annual “Resource Rendezvous,” a conference that attracts federal science and technology experts to review Wisconsin technologies and companies. The conference, organized by the Wisconsin Security Research Consortium, will be held Wednesday at UW-Milwaukee.

“This system offers a near-term solution for a very real problem that is affecting patients today,” Piefer said. “The core technology has been demonstrated over decades. Now, we’re putting it to use to improve nuclear medicine. Over time, there will be energy and security applications, as well.”

As the isotope shortage gains national attention, look for a Wisconsin company to be a part of the solution.

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General Electric Abandons Plan for HEU-Free Medical Isotope Production

Feb. 7, 2012

http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/general-electric-abandons-plan-heu-free-medical-isotope-production/

Business considerations have prompted General Electric not to move forward with a system it devised in 2010 to produce a key medical isotope without weapon-usable highly enriched uranium, the New York Times reported on Monday (see GSN, Nov. 2, 2011).

Molybdenum 99 through the decay process produces technetium 99m, which is employed widely in U.S. medical procedures, particularly for identifying heart ailments and cancer. The Chalk River nuclear site in Canada now produces the bulk of the material used in North America, but that site is due in four years to lose its operating permit. Safety concerns prompted the Canadian site’s temporary closure in 2009, and maintenance requirements prompted a Dutch production site to suspend operations at roughly the same time.

The U.S. Energy Department has sought a means to produce Molybdenum 99 without bomb-capable material or potentially dangerous atomic systems.

General Electric vetted its new manufacturing method in test reactors and selected the Clinton Power Station in Illinois to stage the process on a larger scale. The company established plans to outsource components of the operation to various enterprises, including the Atlanta-headquartered firm Perma-Fix, which had developed a material to increase the efficiency of the technetium 99m conversion process.

The Chalk River site’s reopening, though, prompted General Electric to reassess the viability of its business model. The company said it and the Illinois plant’s operator believe “large quantities of molybdenum 99 could safely be produced” with the new method, but calculations “do not support the remaining cost.”

“We’ve put all the engineering aside” for the time being, though changing business conditions could prompt General Electric to again pick up the project, said Kevin Walsh, renewable energy head for GE Energy Financial Services.

The establishment of a new molybdenum 99 production method could be impossible as long as some facilities continue to create the material with bomb-grade uranium, according to specialists.

“The economics is key,” said Parrish Staples, who heads European and African threat reduction for the Energy Department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration.

Staples has held talks with European government representatives in an effort to end use of weapon-capable material in the isotope production process. The old manufacturing sites receive state funding, he said.

Separately, NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes of Wisconsin and the firm Babcock and Wilcox have also received NNSA backing for their own processes for generating Molybdenum 99 without highly enriched uranium (Matthew Wald, New York Times, Feb. 6).

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Faster, safer medical isotopes

U of W pins hopes on linear accelerator

Hilary Roberts, 03/3/2012

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/faster-safer-medical-isotopes-141281583.html

Researchers at the University of Winnipeg are preparing to commercialize a new manufacturing process for producing medical isotopes that doesn’t use uranium — and doesn’t produce radioactive waste.

It’s a breakthrough that could have significant medical benefits for Canadians while producing millions of dollars of profits a year for the university.

Instead of using a nuclear reactor to produce the isotopes, researchers found a machine called a linear accelerator can produce the isotopes needed for many medical diagnostic tests without yielding any radioactive waste, said project co-leader Prof. Jeff Martin, a U of W physicist.

“You switch them off and they’re off,” he said. “You can walk right in (to the room). There’s no residual activity around.”

A medical isotope is a radioactive substance injected into a patient’s body to help diagnose a range of illnesses, Martin said. Doctors then use a camera that detects radiation to find the problem.

Martin and his team used a linear accelerator to produce these isotopes, a device that “takes electrons and pushes them to high speeds using radio waves,” Martin explained. For this project, the electrons come out the other end and hit a target, a metal called molybdenum-100.

“We fire (the electrons) into molybdenum and initiate nuclear reactions that change molybdenum-100 into molybdenum-99,” Martin said. “Molybdenum-99 actually itself decays into technetium-99m, and that’s the real isotope that everybody uses for imaging.”

One such accelerator can be found in Pinawa, about 114 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, but it’s not powerful enough to produce medical isotopes, Martin said. He and other researchers travelled to Ottawa to test the process on a faster accelerator.

“We think that with one accelerator running at the University of Winnipeg or in Pinawa, we would have certainly enough to do the province of Manitoba and probably more than that,” said Martin, who believes three accelerators would be enough to meet the demand for medical isotopes across Canada.

In 2009, a temporary halt in the production of medical isotopes at the nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ont., caused an isotope shortage.

The Chalk River reactor may be shut down in 2016, but even if it isn’t, Canada may no longer have access to the United States’ stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which is used in nuclear reactors to produce medical isotopes, Martin said.

In 2011, the federal government, searching for a safer, non-reactor-based source of medical isotopes, gave funding to four projects across Canada.

U of W researchers joined with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and Acsion Industries to form a company named the Prairie Isotope Production Enterprise (PIPE) for this project. PIPE received $4 million from the federal government to do its research.

Unlike the medical isotopes made with cyclotrons, isotopes made with linear accelerators don’t produce any nuclear waste but do last longer, making them safer and more easily transportable, Martin said.

For PIPE to reach its goal of commercial production by the fall, the group will need to purchase a linear accelerator, at a cost of $6 million, or upgrade the accelerator in Pinawa, which would cost $2 million, Martin said.

The group wants to meet with provincial officials next week to ask for funding to set up a suitable linear accelerator in the province, he said.

Production of isotopes could make $2.5 million to $3 million per year from one linear accelerator if sales of the isotopes are expanded beyond just the Winnipeg market, said Jeremy Read, a U of W senior executive officer.

PIPE is also looking to manufacture and sell systems that would allow hospitals and other groups to produce their own linear accelerator-produced medical isotopes, Martin said.

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Radioactive medicine can be made without nuclear reactors, scientists show

February 20, 2012

By Margaret Munro, Postmedia News

http://www.canada.com/mobile/iphone/story.html?id=6181757

Canadian scientists have shown they can make radioactive medicine without the headache of using aged nuclear reactors.

The new process, which could go a long way toward solving the world’s shortage of medical isotopes, uses hospital cyclotrons to make the compounds and bypasses the need for reactors.

“It’s essentially a win-win scenario for health care,” Dr. Francois Benard of the BC Cancer Agency told a news conference Monday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “We have found a practical, simple solution that can use existing infrastructure.”

The team, led by the TRIUMF nuclear lab based at the University of B.C., has produced technetium-99m in cyclotrons in Ontario and B.C. The scientists describe it as a “major milestone” in the international race to come up with new ways to make the critically important isotope.

Technetium-99m is used to help detect cancers, blocked arteries and heart disease in millions of people around the world each year. The supply is, however, often disrupted because 75 per cent of the technetium-99m is now made at the trouble-prone Chalk River reactor near Ottawa and another aging reactor in the Netherlands.

Canada, which pioneered nuclear medicine, is seen as largely responsible for the precarious state of the global supply. New MAPLE reactors built at Chalk River were to supply the world with medical isotopes, but were mothballed, at a cost of over $500 million to Canadian taxpayers, because of technical flaws.

Several countries are now looking for new ways to make the isotope, and the Harper government last year handed the country’s nuclear medicine whizzes $35 million. It challenged them to produce the isotope without using a reactor or weapons-grade uranium, which is now imported from the U.S. to make isotopes in the Chalk River reactor.

“It’s a friendly competition,” Benard said of the competing Canadian teams.

One of the big advantages of his team’s approach is that they can use existing cyclotrons — there are 12 across Canada — regardless of brand or type of machine.

“The goal was to develop a technical solution that would work for many people, not just one machine or one brand of machine,” said Benard.

Cyclotrons are essentially large electromagnets that accelerate streams of charged particles to incredibly high speed.

The technetium-99m was made in the cyclotrons from molybdenum-100, a naturally occurring compound mined in many parts of the world. Small discs of molybdenum-100 were strategically placed in the cyclotrons and the beams of energy stripped off subatomic particles, transforming the molybdenum-100 into technetium-99m.

It has been known since 1971 that it was possible in principle, but the idea was shelved. “A lot of people were saying this cannot be done, there were too many obstacles,” said Benard.

Paul Schaffer, head of TRIUMF’s nuclear medicine division, said it was quite a technical challenge. The team had to figure out how to package molybdenum-100 to withstand the intense irradiation and devise a way to automatically extract the radioactive disc and move it so it could be clinically processed.

The researchers don’t see scaling up production as a problem.

“One of these cyclotrons can supply a metro area such as Vancouver and there are more than a dozen of these cyclotrons in hospitals across Canada,” said Tom Ruth, a senior scientist at both TRIUMF and the BC Cancer Agency and the team’s principal investigator.

Discussions are underway with several industrial partners and regional health authorities about ramping up isotope production, said Ruth. “The science and the technology are essentially ready.”

The technetium-99m from the cyclotrons appears to be identical to isotopes made from enriched uranium in nuclear reactors, Benard said, but he expects Health Canada will require clinical trials. The trials could start within a few months, he said, and commercial production could begin in a few years.

He said Canada might need a few new cyclotrons if the technique is embraced in a big way. Cyclotrons are not cheap, at $1.5 to $3 million a piece. “But that’s a far cry from the $1-billion price tag of a new nuclear reactor,” Benard said.

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Funding for Canadian isotope-producing accelerator

29 June 2010

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Funding_for_Canadian_isotope-producing_accelerator-2906107.html

A new advanced electron linear accelerator facility that will be able to produce medical isotopes will go ahead with the announcement of funding from the government of British Columbia.

The C$62.9 million ($60 million) Advanced Rare Isotope Laboratory, given the acronym Ariel, will be built at the Triumf subatomic physics laboratory in Vancouver. It will feature an underground beam tunnel surrounding a state-of-the-art electron linear accelerator (e-linac) capable of producing what Triumf describes as one of the most powerful beams in the world, with up to 500 kW of electron beam power. Ariel will use an e-linac that relies on superconducting radiofrequency technology to accelerate particles close to the speed of light and will provide Canada with a facility that will be at the forefront of particle and nuclear physics, according to British Columbia premier Gordon Campbell.

Construction work on the facility is due to get under way in July 2010, with the e-linac due to be installed in 2013. The facility will be commissioned for isotope production in 2014 with routine ’round the clock’ operation by 2015, according to Triumf, which is a joint venture of Canadian universities supported in its operations by the national government and in its building infrastructure by the provincial government of British Columbia.

Most of the world’s medical isotopes are currently supplied by nuclear research reactors. Over recent years, routine and unexpected outages at the world’s increasingly ageing isotope production reactors have put increasing pressure on medical supplies. Isotope suppliers have worked together to minimise the impact, and moves are under way to build new production capacity at Petten in the Netherlands.

Meanwhile, others are looking into ways of producing radioisotopes in ways that do not rely on research reactors and highly enriched uranium fuel. The Canadian government recently announced plans for a major project to promote non-reactor based routes to manufacture medical isotopes. Ariel will have a major role in producing medical isotopes, as well as producing exotic isotopes for a range of research and development purposes.

Linear accelerators are routinely used for a raft of research applications, but can also be used to produce radioisotopes. Ariel will do this by firing a beam of high-energy electrons onto converter material which in turn produces an intense proton beam. These protons are then directed onto a target of a material such as beryllium or uranium. The protons shatter the nuclei of the atoms in the target material, producing a range of radioisotopes that can be collected and separated.

University of Victoria president David Turpin said expressed excitement about the ‘tremendous potential’ of the project. “This facility will have a dramatic impact in multiple sectors of research, the health sciences and commercialization,” he said.

The lion’s share of the funding for the new facility is to come from a C$30.7 million ($29.2 million) investment from the provincial government, with Triumf and its partners providing C$14.4 million ($13.7 million) and the Canada Foundation for Innovation providing C$17.8 million ($17 million).

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Federal Government Funds Technology for Medical Isotopes

March 29, 2010

Edmonton, Alberta

http://www.wd.gc.ca/eng/77_11971.asp

The Government of Canada, through Western Economic Diversification Canada, has committed $3 million to the University of Alberta (U of A) to explore the testing and validation of processes and technologies by which medical isotopes can be manufactured and used by the health care community for medical and diagnostic purposes.

“This investment in technology commercialization will allow Canada’s best and brightest to get their products to market, and promote new approaches to isotope production,” said the Honourable Lynne Yelich, Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification.

The Government of Canada is investing in the University of Alberta’s purchase and installation of a 24MeV Cyclotron. Through the use of this equipment, the U of A will map out and patent new medical isotopes production processes and technologies using particle accelerators.

“WD’s investment in Canadian technology will enable the University of Alberta to develop and commercialize new methods of manufacturing diagnostic medical isotopes,” said Dr. Sandy McEwan, Chair and Professor, Department of Oncology, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, the University of Alberta.  “This cyclotron, located at the U of A will attract new researchers to the Province, build knowledge capacity and lead to new training opportunities for scientists, technicians and technologists.”

The investment at the University of Alberta represents an opportunity to contribute to commercializing new processes and products in isotope production. To capitalize on this opportunity, the U of A will validate the development of a business model utilizing a cyclotron-based isotope production platform. This project will map out and patent medical isotope production processes and technologies and introduce them to the global marketplace. This model proposes to demonstrate the direct production of isotopes utilizing cyclotron technology manufactured by Advanced Cyclotron Systems Inc (ACSI), based in Richmond, British Columbia.

This initiative will contribute to strengthening the western Canadian innovation system, and more specifically, aligns with WD’s priority to support knowledge-driven and value-added economic activities, and build on both traditional and emerging industries to create a more diversified and resilient economy in Western Canada.

Western Economic Diversification Canada works with the provinces, industry associations and communities to promote the development and diversification of the western economy, coordinates federal economic activities in the West and represents the interests of western Canadians in national decision making.

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Dr Adrian Paterson, CEO of ANSTO (Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation)

Senate Economics Legislation Committee

Monday, 1 June 2009

Dr Paterson—We have very carefully followed the development of non-reactor techniques. In fact, there has been a recent series of discussions in the public domain about this. We are also tracking it through a number of bilateral interactions and discussions. At the management breakaway last week, we have decided to put together an internal paper on this so that we can understand the short-, medium- and long-term implications of the potential for developing moly-99 by alternative routes. It is just a prudent practice to know what is happening and to have a good insight into it. My belief is that we will probably, within the seven to 10 year time frame, see the first attempts to produce moly-99 on a reasonable economic basis using accelerator based techniques. My view is that the cost will be very high initially and it is unclear how long the learning curve will be. But, we are certainly well aware of these developments, we track them actively and we all understand them deeply.

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MEDICAL ISOTOPE PRODUCTION WITHOUT HIGHLY ENRICHED URANIUM

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12569&page=R1

Committee on Medical Isotope Production Without Highly Enriched Uranium

Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board

Division of Earth and Life Studies

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES

THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS

Washington, D.C.

Summary (1-6)

1 Background and Study Task (7-15)

2 Molybdenum-99/Technetium-99m Production and Use (16-30)

3 Molybdenum-99/Technetium-99m Supply (31-54)

4 Molybdenum-99/Technetium-99m Supply Reliability (55-65)

5 Molybdenum-99/Technetium-99m Demand (66-79)

6 Molybdenum-99/Technetium-99m Production Costs (80-89)

7 Conversion to LEU-Based Production of Molybdenum-99: Technical Considerations (90-100)

8 Conversion to LEU-Based Production of Molybdenum-99: Regulatory Considerations (101-107)

9 Conversion to LEU-Based Production of Molybdenum-99: General Approaches and Timing (108-113)

10 Conversion to LEU-Based Production of Molybdenum-99: Prospects and Feasibility (114-141)

11 Progress in Eliminating HEU Use (142-162)

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Partnership aims to meet US radioisotope needs

12 May 2009

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Partnership_aims_to_meet_US_radioisotope_needs-1205097.html

Shortages of medical radioisotope molybdenum-99 could be a thing of the past in the USA according to an academic-industrial partnership that claims its novel manufacturing method will meet all the country’s needs.

Positron Systems Inc and Idaho State University’s (ISU) Idaho Accelerator Center say they have developed a novel, proprietary method to produce the short-lived isotope and are currently engaged in additional research. They have now signed a letter of intent to produce and distribute Mo-99.

Mo-99 is used in medical equipment to generate technetium-99 (Tc-99), a very short-lived radioisotope with a half-life of only six hours that is widely used in diagnostic medical imaging. With a 66-hour half-life itself, Mo-99 has a shelf-life of only a few days. Supply disruptions can therefore soon have a major impact on medical provision around the world, as experienced globally in 2008 when the five research reactors producing nearly all of the world’s Mo-99, and thus Tc-99, were out of action within weeks of each other.

Now, Positron says that it has plans for a subsidiary in collaboration with the ISU Idaho Accelerator Center that will specialise in the production of commercial isotopes using particle accelerators. Positron chairman T Erik Oaas said: “Working side-by-side with ISU, we intend to replace the foreign supply of Mo-99 in the USA with a product produced here in Idaho.” Meanwhile, Pam Crowell, ISU vice president for research, said the university is on course to become a national leader in the research and development of medical radioisotopes and said the university was “excited” to be working “to help deliver vital medical products in the US.”

The Positron-ISU announcement comes days after medical isotope supplier MDS Nordiron and TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, signed an agreement to study the feasibility of producing Mo-99 by photo fission using a linear accelerator.

Mo-99 is traditionally produced by fission of uranium in research reactors, some of which use highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel. According to MDS Nordion, the photo fission technique not only eliminates the need to ship and handle HEU fuel, it also provides “a potential alternate solution through which to supplement the production capacity of Mo-99, and lessen the reliance on existing nuclear research reactors.”

A research group at the University of Delft in the Netherlands reported last year that it is also working on novel methods to produce Mo-99 from naturally occurring Mo-98 without the need for a high-flux research reactor.

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World Information Service on Energy, 2010, Medical Radioisotopes Production Without a Nuclear Reactor (PDF)

https://nuclear.foe.org.au/wp-content/uploads/NM710-nuclear-medicine.pdf

or http://www.wiseinternational.org/node/3628

LIZARDS REVENGE AT THE OLYMPIC DAM URANIUM MINE

2012 protest

500+ brave souls participated in the Lizards Revenge protest at BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam uranium mine from July 11-20. The event was a huge success in drawing attention to the many problems with the mine. Hundreds of newspaper, radio and TV items provided opportunities to hold BHP Billiton and the SA and federal governments to account for racist policies (such as the mine’s exemptions from the SA Aboriginal Heritage Act), grossly irresponsible environmental practices, and irresponsible export policies such as selling uranium to nuclear weapons states and dictatorships.

Lizard Revenge was also inspiring, educational and great fun for everyone who attended. Police behaviour was not as bad as it was at Beverley in 2000 but it was still heavy-handed, particularly the arrest of 18 protesters for innocuous stunts such as a ‘Breakfast Not Bombs’ event and a game of cricket on Olympic Way (‘uranium is unAustralian, it’s just not cricket and that’s why we picket’). One batter played a delightful tickle to the fine-leg boundary only to be arrested moments later … on 99 not out!

Huge thanks and congratulations to Uncle Kevin Buzzacott, Izzie Brown, Tully McIntyre, Nectaria Calan and Svea Pitman, and a big shout out to the Food Not Bombs kitchen crew, the Indig kitchen, the media team and everyone else who made Lizards Revenge such a success including the 500+ people who travelled huge distances to get to the gates of hell.

See www.lizardsrevenge.net for lots more information including photos, videos, media releases and media reports.

This is just the beginning of the Lizards Revenge, so spread the word, keep your eyes peeled and be ready to strike! If you’re inspired to get active today (instead of radioactive tomorrow), find your local anti-nuclear campaign group at: https://nuclear.foe.org.au/contacts/

If you’re not yet inspired then please i) browse some of the links below and ii) return to previous paragraph.

LIZARDS REVENGE WEBSITE & MULTIMEDIA

Web: www.lizardsrevenge.net

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lizardsrevenge

Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/The-Lizards-Revenge/386464501416955

Facebook event page: www.facebook.com/events/224524544273924
Event page: http://www.facebook.com/events/224524544273924/

PHOTOS

http://lizardsrevenge.net/photos

flickr.com/photos/zebparkes/sets

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/51648

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/51658

VIDEOS ABOUT LIZARDS REVENGE

http://lizardsrevenge.net/video

youtube.com search for Lizards Revenge: click here.

Uncle Kevin Buzzacott Interviewed Prior to Lizard’s Revenge

Anti-uranium protesters arrested

Protesters blockade BHP mine site

Activists break through gate at uranium mine (TV news)

Police shutting down the lizards revenge cricket game

Frocks On The Frontline

VIDEOS ABOUT OLYMPIC DAM URANIUM MINE

Interview with FoE’s Jim Green

Talk by Dr Gavin Mudd from Monash University (and see parts two and three).

David Noonan talk about Olympic Dam (and see parts two and three)

‘Olympic Dam Mega-Expansion Without Uranium’ Report Launch (and click here to download the PDF report).

All That Glitters is Not Gold

Risks of BHP’s proposed desalination plant on the Giant Cuttlefish

Impacts of the water take from the Great Artesian Basin on the precious Mound Springs

Uranium – Is it a country?

BHP Peep Show

BHP Billiton AGM – protests 27 November 2008

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam + government propaganda

Interview with SA Greens MLC Mark Parnell

Independent Daily statement

LIZARDS REVENGE MEDIA RELEASES

http://lizardsrevenge.net/media/

Medical Association for Prevention of War

Arrests Are Just Not Cricket

Breakfast not Bombs Media Release

Olympic Dam Expansion Great Debate

Lizards Revenge media update from camp

Lizards Revenge kicks off at Olympic Dam

Lizards Revenge Communique

Press Release 12.06.2012 – Lizards Revenge

LIZARDS REVENGE IN THE PRINT MEDIA

Lots of links at: http://lizardsrevenge.net/in-the-media

INFORMATION ABOUT OLYMPIC DAM

https://www.nuclear.foe.org.au/uranium

Lizards Revenge Booklet (PDF):

SA Greens MLC Mark Parnell’s detailed Q&A with the SA government

Cuttlefish Country (impacts on the Spencer Gulf and the Giant Cuttlefish)

Save the Basin (impacts on the Great Artesian Basin)

 

Jim Green

A Japanese Parliamentary report has found that the fundamental causes of the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster “are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture”. However many of the problems evident in Japan can be seen in Australia.

The 10-member Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission − established by an Act of the Japanese Parliament − states that the Fukushima disaster was “a profoundly man-made disaster that could and should have been foreseen and prevented” if not for “a multitude of errors and wilful negligence that left the Fukushima plant unprepared for the events of March 11.” The accident was the result of “collusion between the government, the regulators and [plant operator] TEPCO”.

The chair of the Investigation Commission, Kiyoshi Kurokawa, states in the foreword to the report: “What must be admitted – very painfully – is that this was a disaster ‘Made in Japan.'” However the serious, protracted problems with the nuclear industry in Japan have parallels in Australia. The uranium industry provides plenty of examples but here the focus is on the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), which operates the Lucas Heights nuclear research reactor site south of Sydney.

A 1989 review of ANSTO by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd found major problems including “poor morale and poor management-staff relations”; “a deficiency in safety culture”; key personnel not being trained; out-of-date operating manuals; poor health and safety practices; improper management of high-level radioactive waste; inadequate emergency arrangements; and the HIFAR reactor’s emergency core cooling system had been compromised resulting in unnecessary risks for two years.

On 11 June 1992, an inspection of ANSTO by the NSW Environment Protection Authority found that drums of radioactive waste were leaking, vital safety equipment was out of order, and leaking waste may have washed into the stormwater system. The federal government passed legislation making ANSTO exempt from NSW environmental and public health laws.

An internal 1998 federal Department of Industry, Science and Resources briefing document, obtained under freedom of information legislation, warns government officials: “Be careful in terms of health impacts − don’t really want a detailed study done of the health of Sutherland residents.”

Around the turn of the century, when the debate over ANSTO’s plan for a new reactor was unfolding, whistleblowers repeatedly provided public information about accidents at Lucas Heights. Whistleblowers wrote in an April 2000 letter to Sutherland Shire Council: “The ANSTO Board has a very limited idea of what is really transpiring at Lucas Heights. For instance, the radiation contamination scare last year was only brought to the staff’s attention because of a local newspaper. The incident was of such gravity, that the executive should have made an announcement over the site-emergency monitor about the incident to inform the staff. Instead the management practiced a culture of secrecy and cover-up, even to the extent of actively and rudely dissuading staff from asking too many questions about the event.”

Emergency planning is inadequate and will remain so because of the head-in-the-sand approach taken by ANSTO and by federal and state governments. Nuclear engineer Tony Wood, former head of ANSTO’s Division of Engineering and Reactors, noted in 2001 that ANSTO’s safety procedures “are so cumbersome, and they’d take so long to implement, they’d be ineffective.” Mr Wood said the Sutherland Shire Council’s emergency plans conspicuously failed to even note the existence of a nuclear reactor in the Shire: “If you look at the plan regarding the public, there’s no mention of the reactor. It’s like it isn’t there.”

In 2004, ANSTO produced a report into an accident at Lucas Heights during which five workers were exposed to radiation. The report, released after a Freedom of Information request by The Australian, identified a range of familiar problems including staff complacency, “under appreciation of the hazard”, contradictory instructions and a lapse in safety supervision.

Since 2007, ANSTO’s inadequate safety standards and its treatment of several whistleblowers have been the subject of ongoing controversy and multiple inquiries. Details are posted on the Friends of the Earth website. Suffice it here to list some media headlines from 2010−12 which provide some insight into this saga:

Lucas Heights whistleblower sparks nuclear safety fears, ABC

Report slams Australian nuclear reactor, ABC Lateline

Nuclear whistleblower treated unfairly The Australian

Nuclear safety breaches concern Opposition, ABC

Reactor staff ‘bullied over safety concerns’, The Australian

Backdown at Lucas Heights over safety claims, The Australian

Nuclear agency safety ‘stuck in 70s’ The Australian

Lucas Heights nuclear reactor bullying exposed, The Australian

Third nuclear worker in bullying claim, The Australian

In Australia as in Japan, there are patterns of inadequate safety practices stretching back for decades. In Australia as in Japan, whistleblowers have provided a great deal of information about nuclear accidents and safety problems.

Inadequate regulation

Nuclear regulation has clearly been substandard in Japan and it is clearly substandard in Australia. The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) has been compromised from the start. The CEO of ANSTO was allowed to sit on the panel which interviewed applicants for the ARPANSA CEO job when ARPANSA was created in the late 1990s. ANSTO’s communications manager / spin doctor John Mulcair could only say: “There are two views about that. There’s my view and then there’s the official ANSTO view.”

There is a revolving door between ANSTO and ARPANSA, further undermining regulatory independence. At times ARPANSA has employed as many as six ex-ANSTO employees, perhaps more. Recent controversies have been complicated by a relationship between an ANSTO employee and an ARPANSA employee.

ARPANSA’s handling of the ‘clean up’ of the Maralinga nuclear test site was its first test and it was a failure. ARPANSA’s handling of ANSTO’s applications to build and operate a new research reactor was problematic in many respects.

A 2005 Australian National Audit Office report was highly critical of ARPANSA. It said: “[O]verall management of conflict of interest is not sufficient to meet the requirements of the ARPANS Act and Regulations. … Potential areas of conflict of interest are not explicitly addressed or transparently managed.”

The Audit Office report also said that ARPANSA does not monitor or assess the extent to which licensees meet reporting requirements and that there had been under-reporting by licence holders. It also noted that ARPANSA had reported only one designated breach to Parliament despite “a number of instances” where ARPANSA had detected non-compliance by licensees.

Problems identified by the ANAO in 2005 are still in evidence. Since 2007, ARPANSA has been drawn into the ongoing saga regarding accidents at Lucas Heights and ANSTO’s treatment of whistleblowers. In 2010 ARPANSA released two conflicting reports on accidents at Lucas Heights leading to an investigation into ARPANSA itself by the Chief Auditor.

In July 2011, Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing Catherine King said in a media release that the regulatory powers of ARPANSA would be reviewed after the Audit and Fraud Control Branch of the Department of Health and Ageing found that ARPANSA’s handling of a safety incident at Lucas Heights lacked of consistency in evidence and transparency in the handling.

In June 2012 a KPMG report found that ARPANSA’s interim and final reports into contamination incidents at ANSTO did not sufficiently examine statements made by a whistleblower.

Long-standing patterns of inadequate nuclear safety practices and inadequate regulation are evident in both Japan and Australia. The difference is that Australia’s industry doesn’t have any nuclear power reactors to blow up. A good thing too.

Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth, Australia.