AUSTRALIA
Uranium – still being hyped up by the industry, and a few politicians – and yet – even the Australian Uranium Association is now admitting that the prospects for the industry in Queensland, in particular, are not good. By their own reckoning Queensland’s uranium would fetch less than $4 billion at the current rate for Australian uranium sales. The $4 billion figure is of little relevance since the uranium price is too low for any mines to be viable in Queensland.
Maralinga The scandal of Australian 80,000 troops used as radiation guinea pigs for British nuclear tests in the 1950′s and 60′s just won’t go away, as we await the hearing of their case, by the Human Rights Commission
Climate change and Australia’s 2013 election. As usual, the media focusses on personalities. However, there are ructions around issues of renewable energy and climate change. The fossil fuel lobby, and by consequence, the Liberal Coalition, are getting very annoyed about Australians’ new bad habit of using less electricity. Worse, Australians’ new bad habit of switching to home solar power. As well, there are those annoyingly cheap wind power sources.
So – the battle is on – to get rid of Australia’s Renewable Energy Target, and the Clean Energy Act, the carbon price and so on. Greg Hunt, Opposition spokesman on Climate Change, is pushing the Coalition’s “Direct Action” policy. Christine Milne has effectively exposed this policy – a sham that could never succeed. Which, no doubt, is the aim of it, in line with the wishes of the Coalition’s fossil fuel industry backers.
I am happy to be going to the New York Symposium on The Medical and Ecological Impacts of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident To Be Held at the New York Academy of Medicine March 11-12 nuclearfreeplanet.org . Still hoping that some other Australians will join me – to hear this most impressive array of international scientists and doctors .
INTERNATIONAL
Fukushima is in the news – much as the nuclear lobby and mainstream media like to forget it, or pretend that it’s all over. Public protests in Tokyo express the concern of Japanese people about Fukushima radiation, and about the danger inherent in the nuclear industry. Never mind, Japan’s Prime Minister Abe is determined to restart the nuclear reactors, and many are worried that the industry might somehow circumvent Japan’s new safety regulations.
The World Health Organisation has released its Health Risk Assessment on the Fukushima nuclear accident.http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/pub_meet/fukushima_report/en/index... The WHO report acknowledges the likelihood of increased cancer incidence and mortality from radiation exposure from the Fukushima disaster
It pulls together lots of information on radiation exposures from the Fukushima disaster.
It uses information / estimates on radiation exposure to predict increases in cancer incidence risks
What the WHO report does NOT do The WHO report does not consider cancer incidence and mortality statistics to see if there is a significant increase that can be attributed to Fukushima. Because of the way it is framed, it is not possible from this WHO study to come to any estimate as to the total number of cancer deaths that could arise from the Fukushima disaster.
What the WHO report finds − cancer incidence estimates 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
Christina Macpherson
Antinuclear Australia
www.antinuclear.net
www.nuclear-news.net