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"THE Rudd Government has refused to help Australian veterans who are suing the British Government over radiation exposure during atomic bomb tests in the 1950s and 60s. A group of survivors and their families are joining a class action after 800 British nuclear veterans were granted permission to sue their own Ministry of Defence."

"A blighted site is handed back to the people displaced by British bombs FROM the air, Maralinga looks much like the rest of Australia's outback: vast, red and empty. Up close, there are differences. Its long, quiet airstrip recalls a time when this was an unlikely epicentre of the cold war. Parrots and wedge-tailed eagles cruise above a desert still littered with radioactive plutonium and other fragments of atomic weapons that Britain exploded more than 50 years ago. Newspix Staking claim on a humble plot of Hiroshima Once teeming with nuclear scientists and British and Australian servicemen, Maralinga fell into eerie silence when the tests ended, in the early 1960s. Then just before Christmas 2009, it returned to life."

"More than 100 people have attended a public meeting in Tennant Creek about a proposed nuclear waste dump near the Northern Territory town. Muckaty Station, 120 kilometres north of Tennant Creek, is the only site currently under consideration to be Australia's radioactive waste repository. Ngapa traditional owners signed an agreement with the previous federal government to nominate the site in exchange for about $12 million in compensation."

"BHP Billiton says it will step up security at an old uranium testing site in Kalgoorlie after concerns children are accessing the area. Labor's candidate for the federal seat of O'Connor, Ian Bishop, says damage to a security gate has allowed children to enter the site at Hannan's north on dirt bikes. More than 5,000 tonnes of tailings from the Yeelirrie uranium deposit, near Wiluna, were buried in the area after BHP stopped testing ore-processing there in the 1980s."

"Traditional land owners from the Northern Territory have visited Australia's only nuclear reactor to see what they are in for if a radioactive waste dump is built on their land. The owners come from Muckaty Station, 120 kilometres north of Tennant Creek. They say they want the waste site because it will provide jobs now and for generations to come - but they are insisting on a thorough environmental assessment."

"Traditional owners of land that could house a nuclear waste dump have protested against the plan, saying they were excluded from the process. The federal government is considering Muckaty Station, near Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, for a facility that would store low and intermediate level radioactive waste. The land was nominated by the Ngapa traditional owners, one of five family groups who are custodians of the land, however, others oppose the dump. About 250 people including traditional owners and anti-nuclear campaigners marched in Tennant Creek on Saturday, directing their anger at both Resources Minister Martin Ferguson and the Northern Land Council (NLC) - who they say overlooked them."

"A leading academic predicts that global ( demand for mined uranium will rise ( at least fourfold over the next 30 years, driven by rising electricity demand and scaling back on fossil fuel dependence. Addressing the first day of the Paydirt 2010 Australian Uranium Conference, Professor Barry Brook, who holds the Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change at the University of Adelaide, said that, should the contributing factors be as acute as predicted, the con-(tinuing surge in demand for uranium would be extended by a further 20 years. "Despite rapid advances in more-efficient Generation 4 reactors that can consume all the waste and depleted uranium from thermal reactors, the continuing growth in these thermal reactors would ensure a steady (demand for mined uranium that would continue for many decades.""

"The slide in uranium prices from the June 2007 record $US136 a pound continues, with the radioactive material last quoted on a spot basis of $US41.75 a pound. The promised boom in prices as the world soaked up the stuff to fuel an explosive growth in greenhouse gas friendly nuclear power has not happened, not yet anyway. Local investors in the sector know that all too well. The producers are down by 25-35 per cent from their 52-week highs and the explorers are generally showing falls of 50 per cent from their 52-week peaks."

""We don't need nuclear power", Sam Watson, Aboriginal community leader and Socialist Alliance Senate candidate, told a picket against the proposed nuclear waste dump at Muckaty in the Northern Territory, held outside PM Kevin Rudd's electorate office in Norman Park on April 12. "It is a fundamental principle of Aboriginal culture that you preserve the land and the environment, to hand on to future generations. Nuclear waste means radioactive poison for hundreds of thousands of years. "This nuclear dump would mean toxic waste would be returned to Aboriginal land, to permanently contaminate the water table. There are much cheaper and cleaner options for generating electric power. "

"There are new calls for an independent audit into the Lucas Heights nuclear facility, with a whistleblower claiming staff are at risk from serious safety breaches. A suspended employee of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) facility in Sydney's south has gone public with claims a worker was exposed to a "massive" dose of radiation in a 2008 accident. David Reid was a health and safety officer at ANSTO's Radiopharmaceuticals and Industrials business, ARI, and says a vial of highly radioactive material was dropped, but wasn't reported for hours."

"A man who worked at Australia's only nuclear facility for 28 years has alleged that serious breaches of safety have occurred at the reactor. David Reid has come forward to tell Lateline that safety breaches at Lucas Heights in Sydney were being played down or ignored. He says in 2008 a vial of highly radioactive material was dropped, exposing one employee to a substantial dose of radiation. Mr Reid says the incident was not reported for hours. "

"The Federal Government says compensation outlined in the budget for Maralinga veterans was not a move to placate veterans who have been critical of their treatment. More than $24 million has been allocated for service pensions, health care cards and disability pensions for veterans or their widows. Veterans' Affairs Minister Alan Griffin says it follows through on an election commitment."

"A team of solicitors will travel to Tennant Creek today to prepare their case against the Federal Government's plan to build a nuclear waste dump north of the town. The Darwin based legal team will speak to traditional owners as part of a push to challenge the nomination of the site at Muckaty Station. A Senate committee has endorsed it as a suitable site for the facility. Solicitor George Newhouse says the Northern Land Council failed to consult with the traditional owners which makes the nomination invalid. "

"Korea Electric Power Corp., South Korea's biggest electricity provider, is in talks to buy Australian uranium assets this year to meet demand for the nuclear fuel, an executive said. "We're talking with some Australian companies, so I think we can get a result this year," Chung Jae Wan, general manager of the energy resources team at the utility known as Kepco, said in an interview today. Kepco is open to buying a stake in a project or a company, he said. South Korean uranium demand is expected to double to 8,000 metric tons a year by 2020 because of increased construction of nuclear power plants, Chung told a conference earlier in Perth. South Korea, which imports about 97 percent of its energy requirements, plans to add eight atomic plants by 2016."

My students usually identify the seven fatal flaws in nuclear energy (''Nuclear power the way to cut emissions'', October 14) within 10 minutes of discussion: 1) the still unsolved problem of safely dealing with the radioactive waste; 2) the huge amounts of carbon released into the atmosphere during the mining, transport and processing of the ore; 3) the extraordinarily high costs of building the plants; 4) the massive amounts of water required for their operation; 5) hostile attack; 6) peak uranium and, finally, what all the advocates never mention, 7) the crippling costs of decommissioning the obsolete plants that will sit where they are until kingdom come.

My students usually identify the seven fatal flaws in nuclear energy (''Nuclear power the way to cut emissions'', October 14) within 10 minutes of discussion: 1) the still unsolved problem of safely dealing with the radioactive waste; 2) the huge amounts of carbon released into the atmosphere during the mining, transport and processing of the ore; 3) the extraordinarily high costs of building the plants; 4) the massive amounts of water required for their operation; 5) hostile attack; 6) peak uranium and, finally, what all the advocates never mention, 7) the crippling costs of decommissioning the obsolete plants that will sit where they are until kingdom come.

ABOUT 80 drums of radioactive waste has been earmarked to be shifted 450km from Edinburgh RAAF base to a new waste dump at Woomera. The Defence Department is seeking licence approvals to turn an old explosives storage building into the Koolymilka Waste Storage Facility in the Woomera Prohibited area. Defence has told The Advertiser that it also plans to shift 206 44-gallon (194 litres) drums - or about 40 cubic metres - from a nearby Woomera site for the new "temporary" waste dump.

ABOUT 80 drums of radioactive waste has been earmarked to be shifted 450km from Edinburgh RAAF base to a new waste dump at Woomera. The Defence Department is seeking licence approvals to turn an old explosives storage building into the Koolymilka Waste Storage Facility in the Woomera Prohibited area. Defence has told The Advertiser that it also plans to shift 206 44-gallon (194 litres) drums - or about 40 cubic metres - from a nearby Woomera site for the new "temporary" waste dump.

There are three main problems with the nuclear "solution" to climate change - it is a blunt instrument, a dangerous one, and it is unnecessary. First, nuclear power could at most make a modest contribution to climate change abatement. The main limitation is that it is used almost exclusively for electricity generation, which accounts for about one-quarter of global greenhouse emissions. Doubling global nuclear power output by mid-century at the expense of coal would reduce greenhouse emissions by about 5%.

There are three main problems with the nuclear "solution" to climate change - it is a blunt instrument, a dangerous one, and it is unnecessary. First, nuclear power could at most make a modest contribution to climate change abatement. The main limitation is that it is used almost exclusively for electricity generation, which accounts for about one-quarter of global greenhouse emissions. Doubling global nuclear power output by mid-century at the expense of coal would reduce greenhouse emissions by about 5%.

Protestors in Alice Springs say opposition is growing to a proposed uranium mine close to the town. Jess Abrahams, from the Arid Lands Environment Centre, says they believe industries like cattle grazing and ecotourism will be at risk should the mine go ahead. He says they're calling on the government to reject any application for a mining lease at Angela Pamela, 25 kilometres south of Alice Springs.

Protestors in Alice Springs say opposition is growing to a proposed uranium mine close to the town. Jess Abrahams, from the Arid Lands Environment Centre, says they believe industries like cattle grazing and ecotourism will be at risk should the mine go ahead. He says they're calling on the government to reject any application for a mining lease at Angela Pamela, 25 kilometres south of Alice Springs.