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Forestry Tasmania stonewalling attempts: Allston’s intervention followed several point-blank refusals by Forestry Tasmania to supply details of its deal with Gunns after an initial application by Greens native forests spokesman Tim Morris in July last year. Both Gunns and Forestry Tasmania "strongly objected" to the wood contract Memorandum of Understanding, signed in April 2004 between then-Forestry Tasmania chief Evan Rolley and Gunns chairman, John Gay, being made public. The two companies claimed the contract was commercial-in-confidence" and its publication would harm both companies’ competitive advantages.

Ombudsman decision to open up debate: But the Ombudsman has now decided this is not sufficient grounds for keeping the entire deal top secret. But he agreed to continue to conceal the key price paid per tonne of timber and the timber volumes involved. However, the ruling is expected to reveal how Gunns has convinced Forestry Tasmania to give it cheaper access to the state’s native timber if the world pulp price falls below a certain level.

Forestry Tasmania loses FoI exemption claim: Forestry Tasmania indicated it would supply the document immediately. Allston specificially pointed out in his finding that since July 2005, Forestry Tasmania had lost any special status exempting it from the state’s FoI laws.

The Mercury, 13/4/2007, p.13

Citipower proposes $72m in new cables, substations, isolators for for Melbourne central business district

CitiPower has proposed a project to enhance the security of the electricity supply to the Melbourne central business district (CBD). CitiPower’s current CBD network security planning standard, at the zone substation and sub transmission system level, was to deliver a network that is capable of withstanding a single contingency event at the 50th percentile of forecast demand without interruption (i.e. an N-1 security planning standard). These works were estimated to cost approximately $52 million ($2006). See citipower.com.au the final report can also be downloaded from NEMMCO’s website: http://www.nemmco.com.au/transmission_distribution/179-0402.htm
The proposed major works include:

• new 66kV 120MVA cable between Brunswick Terminal Station and Victoria market substation.

• 2 66kV 120MVA cables from Queensbury substation to Victoria Market substation;

•  Replacement of 9 66kV isolators with 19 GIS CBs and isolators at Victoria Market substation;

•  Replacement of 7: 66kV isolators with 7 GIS CBS and isolators at Waratah Place switching station; and

• 2 66kV 120 MVA cables running from Queensbury substation to Waratah Place switching station.

Erisk Net, 12/4/2007

New work by Kai Rothkamm and Markus Loebrich show that low level ionising radiation may be more likley to cause cancer than previously thought.

Until now the response ofthe human body to radiation has been based on studies of people at Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl, who were exposed to extremely high levels of radiation. The effects of low levels of radiation has been calculated by extrapolating thedata from those studies.
The new work indicates that the body responds quite differently to low levels of radiation, and that response means that the way DNA is repaired is more likely to cause mutation of cells possibly leading to cancer.

Details of how the body heals breaks to both strands of DNA in a cell are available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_repair#Double-strand_breaks and http://theoncologist.alphamedpress.org/cgi/content/full/10/5/361
The new research which indicates that low levels of radiation my lead to higher than predicted rates of cancer is available  at

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=154297&blobtype=pdf 

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