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  • Poison gas leak from Sydney nuclear reactor sparks cover up claims

     

    They were told that 36 hours earlier the first “hot commissioning trials” at ANSTO’s Lucas Heights radioisotope facility for Molybdenum-99 had taken place.

    Molybdenum-99 is produced by the fission technique – the intense neutron-bombardment of a highly purified uranium-235 – and is used in nuclear medicine.

     

    While the nuclear reactor – and the government body that oversees it – insists the release of the radioxenon by-product were no threat to public safety, no one, including neighbours of the suburban Sydney plant, were informed.

    “Xenon gases are highly volatile and, being inert, they are not susceptible to wet or dry atmospheric removal mechanisms,” a scientific report obtained by The Sunday Telegraph says.

    “Consequently, once released to the atmosphere they are simply transported down-wind while radioactively decaying away.”

    Significant amounts of the main gas detected – Xenon-133 – can be released during a nuclear reaction or a nuclear explosion.

    While it is used in medical procedures, specialists are urged not to administer it to pregnant women and children.

    Side effects of its use in medical procedures can include allergic reactions such as itching or hives, swelling of the face or hands, swelling or tingling in the mouth or throat, chest tightness, and trouble breathing.

    The report into the release from Lucas Heights says the doses were “well below the annual limit for public exposure”.

    Officials from the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency said it was notified at the time and that the emissions were within public safety guidelines.

    In 2006, ANSTO was forced to allay public fears after a leaked memo revealed xenon and krypton were released into the atmosphere following the rupture of a pipe.

    Read more: http://www.news.com.au/features/environment/poison-gas-leak-from-sydney-nuclear-reactor-spark-cover-up-claims/story-e6frflp9-1225911381815#ixzz0xxZe0IhX

  • Expert rubbishes splar storm claims

     

     

    11-year cycle

     

    The Sun goes through an 11-year solar cycle moving from a period of low activity called solar minimum to a time of heightened activity called solar maximum.

    During solar maximum there is an increase in sun spot activity, which are dark patches on the Sun’s surface caused by magnetic field lines breaking through the Sun’s surface.

    Because the Sun is not a solid object like the Earth, different parts of it rotate at different speeds, which cause these magnetic field lines to twist and stretch, eventually snapping like elastic bands.

    When they snap, they produce an eruption of electromagnetic energy called a solar flare and are sometimes accompanied by a coronal mass ejection (CME).

    If directed at Earth, charged particles within the CME slam into the magnetosphere, resulting in the northern and southern auroral lights.

    Previous CME events have damaged spacecraft, interfered with communications systems and overloaded ground-based power grids.

     

    Precautions

     

    Despite the potential threat, Dr Wilkinson says authorities are aware of them and are taking precautions.

    “We monitor solar activity and issue warnings if something is heading our way,” he said.

    “That will be at least a few hours [in advance], enough time to prepare.”

    He says while some satellites could be damaged by a future CME, others could be protected by being placed in “safe mode”.

    Dr Wilkinson adds the impact on power grids would be minimal.

    “At worst, it’s a regional thing, not a global thing as these reports imply,” he said.

    He says high frequency communications may also be affected, but it would be temporary.

    According to Dr Wilkinson, the Sun has been through a long solar minimum and appears to be heading into a low solar maximum.

    Previous observations have shown this could result in high spikes of CME activity.

    “It means we could see auroral activity over all of Australia rather than just the higher latitudes,” Dr Wilkinson said.

    “It’s unusual, but not unprecedented. James Cook made mention of just such an event off Timor.”

    Tags: emergency-planning, planets-and-asteroids, earth-sciences, physics, stars, nsw

    First posted 1 hour 39 minutes ago

  • My deep green secret

    “We’ll welcome the people in the leaky boats the same way we welcome the 450,000 immigrants on the plane, except they get a hot shower first.”

     

    The quick breath through the teeth tells me the lay of the land.

    “I don’t like it,” says Bob, “They should get out there and work like the rest of us did – Irish, Italian, Vietnamese, whatever.”

    “Ah, don’t harden your heart, Bob. These are real people with real troubles. They need help.”

    Bob’s son is in Afghanistan fighting. He can’t see why his son should risk his life, over there while the native son gets fed over here.

    He thinks we should send fighting age youth home to support the Australian soldiers.

    “It’s their fight,” he says.

    “Fair enough. If it’s good enough for our boys …”

    I let him finish the sentence in his own mind. He sips his JD and nods.

    I decide not to argue that we shouldn’t be there in the first place.

    My secret mentor, Bob is.

    ™

    The sad fact of this election campaign is the complete lack of leadership.

     

    We are a real nation with real troubles. We need help.

    We do not need outside help, we need to help ourselves. We need to get our act together and take responsibility for our own future.

     

    That requires a leader.

     

    This should not be a competition to identify the best manager of an enormous company that turns over 100 billion a year.

    This should be the moment when a nation chooses its leader.

    The reason that no-one can make head or tail of the 2010 election campaign, is because the parties are too busy trying to differentiate themselves from each other to recognise that they have no idea what is going on. They have no idea what is going on because they believe that running a campaign, or a political party, is so important that nothing else matters.

     

    Among the clamour of a thousand different voices, they can only respond to the most influential, the best prepared, the ones that will get them the right headline in the morning. So they do.

     

    Leaders do not do that.

    Leaders have a clear picture of what is needed and leaders say, this is what we are going to do and I need you, you and you to work out how to do it and you, you and you to help me make it happen.

    Australia is looking for a leader.

    ™

    Australia’s next leader will be Green.

    Bob Brown may not be the prime minister after this election, or the one after that. Some time in the next couple of election cycles, a leader will emerge, to show this country the way through the increasingly complex, and devastating storm of financial collapse, food shortages and global migration.

    We all know that. That’s why it is so easy to make us afraid of refugees.

    “All those poor people over there are going to come here and take all our stuff.”

    And we are afraid of that because that is exactly what we did.

     

    That leader will open up the north west of the country, connecting the nation by rail and building huge new trading ports at the point where we face the rest of the world.

    Because that leader will be Green that leader will use rail rather than road and will make the cities zero waste and fully renewable. They will be built to last centuries not years. We will learn to smelter steel by concentrating sunlight.

     

    That leader will rebuild the hospitable welcoming spirit of the Australian people, will govern in the spirit of a “fair go” and will guarantee an honest reward for an honest day’s work.

     

    That leader will refuse to sell the resources of this country as raw material so that you and I fritter away the wealth on gadgets and gismos at the cost of making our grandchildren starve.

     

    Rich nations are buying (or stealing) the land and resources of poor nations to protect their people against this difficult future. Our politicians are busy selling our resources off – often to the lowest bidder.

    That leader will be Green because only the Greens make policy based on the long term effect of government’s decisions rather than its immediate economic impact.

    The Greens say that we should not build new coal fired power stations because the only way to learn how to smelter steel using sunlight is to start developing the tools for converting sunlight to energy, right now.

    The Greens say that we should be building rail not roads because it consumes one tenth of the energy to drag along on metal wheels on metal tracks, compared to rubber on macadam.

    That leader will be Green because The Greens are the only political party that has been out in the field, with the loggers and the fishers and the farmers arguing about the future.

    Other politicians have gone out to make promises. The Greens have gone out there to argue for a better world.

    The loggers and the farmers and the fishers and the shooters might be angry, but they are engaged. They are angry because they know that the future is uncertain, that nature can be wild and cruel and that humans need to organise and work together if we are to survive.

    These people of the land and sea are angry with The Greens because The Greens want to change a whole lot of the patterns that have been learned over a lifetime.

    The people of the land and sea, though, are the first people to realise when the forest is dead, or the fish have run out or that spring that has flowed for a century has dried up.

    The people of the land and sea know that we are in trouble and unless we get it right we are going to be fighting with each other.

    The people of the land and sea are only beginning to realise that when it the going gets tough, it is The Greens who will be there with them to build a future that is different from the past.

    After all, it is The Greens who have been out there in the forests, up there on the smoke stacks, down there in the water – standing up to be counted and saying “something has got to change.”

    ™

    “So, you going to lead us out of the wilderness, son?”

    I confess personality flaws that suggest otherwise.

    “What about your man?”

    “Bob Brown?”

    Bob puts down the JD and nods. One eye finds mine.

    “I’ll never vote for you Joe. But if you need back up, yell”

    I thank him. Kerry is coming back with the take-away.

    Bob indicates I should lean closer. I don’t think he’s going to throw a surprise headlock on me, so I do.

    “There’s one thing I’ll say for Bob Brown. He is gay, that’s okay, but he’s the only real man in parliament.”

    I laugh and bang the ute top before I say good night.

    He’s my secret mentor, Bob is.

     

     

  • When is Wind Energy Noise Pollution

     

    The small island of Vinalhaven in Maine’s Penobscot Bay offers an interesting case study. Since Fox Islands Wind installed 3 GE 1.5 MW wind turbines on the island community last fall, a group of residents within a half mile of the turbines have complained that the turbines are not only too loud, but sometimes psychologically disturbing.

    While it is a small group of people being affected by the turbines, the issue has gotten a lot of attention – even attracting experts from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory who have gone to the island to study both objective sound levels and subjective reactions to the turbines.

    Vinalhaven is a very peaceful, rural community. One of the main contentions of the affected residents is that the Maine state compliance level, 45 decibels, is too loud for such a rural area. They also claim that the developer, Fox Islands Wind, misled them into believing that ambient sounds would cover up the turbines.

    Even though Fox Islands Wind officials say they are in compliance with state noise standards, they are looking at some possible alterations such as lowering the cut-out speed of the machines, installing noise cancellation equipment in homes or changing out parts on the turbines.

    Of course, any changes would affect the economics of the project and raise electricity prices for people on the island. For a fishing community dealing with a high cost of living and depressed prices for lobster, that could be a difficult pill to swallow. Because the vast majority of islanders strongly support the project, tension has arisen between the small number of impacted homeowners and the rest of the community.

    The 45 decibel limit is lower than compliance levels for airports, factories and highways. People seem to be able to live around those. So why do wind turbines make people so angry? Well, the obvious answer – at least in rural areas like Vinalhaven – is that 45 decibels is still a significant increase in sound levels. It can substantially change the local soundscape. If that reality is not properly communicated, the agitation may increase.

    But the other answer is less clear. It revolves around the quality of wind farm noise itself. Perhaps there is something in the low-frequency whooshing of a wind turbine that makes it more difficult for people to listen to.

    “It’s interesting that we’re getting such high annoyance at these lower sound levels compared to other things,” says Jim Cummings, founder of the Acoustic Ecology Institute. “There’s now research going on into the quality of this noise and how it impacts people.”

    Because industrial-scale wind within communities is so new, the research around noise problems is also nascent. Some onlookers like Cummings say the lack of a coordinated, objective look at the issue contributes to misinformation and mistrust of the wind industry.

    Last year, the Acoustic Ecology Institute put out a report looking at the scattered nature of the research.

    The American and Canadian Wind Energy Associations put together a joint study in December of 2009. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has been giving the issue more attention, undertaking projects like the one on Vinalhaven. And there have been a few notable surveys done in Europe. But there still has been no independent, comprehensive study that has “put a lid” on the issue, says Cummings.

    In the meantime, some wind advocates label people with sound complaints as “anti-wind.” At the same time, anti-wind advocates often exaggerate sound issues, saying they represent a public health problem. Without better studies and recognition of the problem, says Cummings, the misinformation and mistrust on both sides will continue.

    “The reality is somewhere between,” he says.

    For a detailed look at what’s happening on Vinalhaven, listen to this week’s podcast linked above. We’ll visit the island and talk with people on both sides of the issue. It’s not all bad – we’ll also look at how wind transformed the culture and economy of Roscoe, Texas.

  • The smearing of an innocent man

     

    It’s not just that Pachauri hadn’t been profiting from the help he has given to charities, businesses and institutions, his accounts show that he is scrupulous to the point of self-denial. After the Sunday Telegraph published its story, the organisation for which Pachauri works – a charity called The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) – asked the auditors KPMG to review his financial relationships. Today, for the first time, the Guardian is publishing KPMG’s report(1).

    KPMG studied all Pachauri’s financial records, accounts and tax returns, as well as TERI’s accounts, for the period 1 April 2008 – 31 December 2009. It found that any money paid as a result of the work that Pachauri had done for other organisations went not to him but to TERI. None of the money was paid back to him by TERI: he received only his annual salary, which is £45,000.

    His total additional income over the 20 months reviewed by KPMG amounted to the following:

    • A payment of 20,000 rupees (£278) from two national power commissions in India, on which he serves as director;

    • 35,880 rupees (£498) for articles he has written and lectures he has given;

    • A maximum of 100,000 rupees – or £1,389 – in the form of royalties from his books and awards.

    In other words, he made £45,000 as his salary at TERI, and a maximum of £2,174 in outside earnings. So much for Pachauri’s “highly lucrative commercial jobs” amounting to “millions of dollars”.

    Amazingly, the accounts also show that Pachauri transferred a lifetime achievement award he was given by the Environment Partnership Summit – 200,000 rupees – to TERI. In other words, he did not even keep money to which he was plainly entitled, let alone any money to which he was not.

    As for “how much we all pay him” as chairman of the IPCC, here is the full sum:

    £0.

    It wouldn’t have been difficult for the Sunday Telegraph to have discovered this. It’s well known that the IPCC does not pay its chairmen. His job at TERI is not a “sideline”, as many of his opponents maintain. It is his livelihood.

    This is a reflection of the lack of support given by governments to the IPCC. Its opponents like to create the impression that it’s an all-powerful body on the verge of creating a communist/fascist world government. In reality it’s a tiny, underfunded organisation which can’t even pay its own chairman.

    Compare Pachauri’s total earnings to the kind of money made by the head of any of the UN agencies, or of the World Bank or the IMF, and you’ll see that he receives one-fifth or one-tenth of the cash raked in by his peers.

    KPMG concluded:

    “No evidence was found that indicated personal fiduciary benefits accruing to Pachauri from his various advisory roles that would have led to a conflict of interest.”

    The Sunday Telegraph, in other words, maligned a scrupulously honest man.

    How could the newspaper have got it so wrong? Was it because neither the journalists, nor anyone else at the paper, contacted Pachauri to check their claims?(2)

    When Pachauri approached the Sunday Telegraph, asking for a retraction, he was rebuffed. Far worse, the journalists continued the attack in a series of further articles and blogposts(3). To me it look as if Richard North was pursuing a vendetta against the IPCC chair. In a post in February, he wrote:

    “Pachauri is on the ropes but he ain’t down yet. The view is it will take one more ‘killer blow’ to fell him .. and it looks as if its been found! … R K Pachauri needs to be acquainted with the first rule of politics – DFWN … since it is a family blog, you’ll have to work it out for yourselves.”(4)

    The abbreviation stands for “Don’t fuck with North”. In truth Pachauri had done no such thing: he had merely asked, politely and mildly, for the false allegations to be corrected.

    Repeatedly stonewalled when he tried to clear his name, Pachauri found he had no option but to instruct a firm of libel lawyers. Now, after months of refusing to back down, the Sunday Telegraph accepted the KPMG finding that Pachauri has not made “millions of dollars” in recent years and has apologised to him(5).

    Because the issue took so long to resolve, the total legal costs for the paper – the fees for its own lawyers and Pachauri’s – run into six figures.

    Has the Sunday Telegraph’s apology solved the problem? Some hope.

    North has reacted to it with a new blogpost, also widely reproduced on the web, in which he refers to the Sunday Telegraph apology as a “non-apology”(6). He claims: “the article was sound, all the substantive facts are correct and the paper stands by them.”

    He goes on to suggest that Pachauri was indeed “corrupt or abusing his position as head of the IPCC” and maintains that the accusation that Pachauri has made millions of dollars “stands uncorrected”. North fails to provide any evidence to support this falsified claim.

    North also suggests that Pachauri’s hiring of a firm of libel lawyers in order to obtain this apology “tells you all you need to know” about him. In reality it tells you that Pachauri had exhausted his other options. He was desperate to put the record straight, but despite the incontrovertible evidence he provided, which showed that the story was false, the paper had refused to published a retraction. Pachauri threatened legal proceedings as a last resort.

    So what can Pachauri do? There is now a large community of people – those who deny that man-made climate change is taking place – who appear to be out to get him. His crime is being chairman of the IPCC. That, as far as they are concerned, makes him guilty of any charge they wish to throw at him. They appear determined to keep repeating the falsehoods they have been circulating since December. We can expect this smear campaign to continue, and to become ever more lurid as new charges are invented.

    The best we can do is to set out the facts and appeal to whatever decency the people spreading these lies might have, and ask them to consider the impact of what they have done to an innocent man. Will it work? I wouldn’t bet on it. As we have seen in the United States, where some people (often the same people) continue to insist that Barack Obama is a Muslim and was born abroad(7), certain views are impervious to evidence.

    www.monbiot.com

     

  • Upper atmosphere shrinking say scientists

     

    Related Coverage

    “Our work demonstrates that the solar cycle not only varies on the typical 11-year time scale, but also can vary from one solar minimum to another,” said study lead author Stanley Solomon.

    A narrower, less dense thermosphere is good news for satellites orbiting Earth, including the International Space Station, since reduced friction means they can remain aloft longer, said University of Colorado professor and study co-author Thomas Woods.

    “This is good news for those satellites that are actually operating, but it is also bad because of the thousands of non-operating objects (debris) remaining in space that could potentially have collisions with our working satellites,” he added.

    Professor Woods said the research shows the sun could be going through a period of relatively low activity, as it did in the early 19th and 20th centuries.

    “If it is indeed similar to certain patterns in the past, then we expect to have low solar cycles for the next 10 to 30 years,” he added.