by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 20, 2012 | Protests & Symbolic Acts, Repression at Home
By Jeemon Jacob / Tehelka
Tamil Nadu government started “operation Koodankulam “on Monday 19 March, arresting 203 protesters and blocking all entry points to the coastal villages surrounding the nuclear power plant. Police arrested 185 men including parish priest Father Suseelan at Kottupuli village where they were protesting against the deployment of police forces. They were taken to Tirunelveli Armed Reserve Camp. Later police arrested 18 men from Koodankulam on charges of staging protests and violating Section 144 of the Indian Penal Code.
Police started the crackdown on anti-nuclear plant protesters early on Monday arresting nine people including People’s Movement against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) legal advisor Sivasubramanian and Rajalingam. They are being charged with sedition including Sections 121, 121A and 153A. They were taken to Tirunelveli. Around 4000 state police and 400 central police officials have been deployed in the area. Police have set up seven more police pickets around Koodankulam nuclear plant and blocked entry points.
According to Dr SP Udaykumar, convener, People’s Movement against Nuclear Energy, who is on a indefinite hunger strike along with Pusparayan, his associate at Idinthakarai, around 5000 people assembled at the St Lourdes Church ground since Monday. “We, eight men and seven women, are on an indefinite hunger strike. The green signal for Koodankulam is a red signal for our lives. We will continue our protest till we die,” said Udayakumar.
To beat the police blockade, protesters were seen using fishing boats to ferry people to the protest grounds. “We were able to bring our people to Idinthakarai On Monday. But this morning (Tuesday) onwards, the Coast Guard and Navy used helicopters for surveillance in the area,” said Udayakumar.
Police have also intensified patrolling in the area and are waiting for orders from Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha to enter Idinthakarai. Additional Director General of Police S George is camping in the area and overseeing the Koodankulam operation.
According to a senior police official, the state government wanted a ‘silent clearance operation’ in Koodankulam. “We have requested media to vacate the premises and sealed all entry points. We will use force only as a last resort,” said the police official who wished to remain anonymous. According to sources, the police have cut power supply to Idinthakarai and are planning to delink the water supply to the village.
“We are protesting peacefully. We will continue our protests till our demands are met,” said Pushparayan. According to him, the protesters want an immediate release of people arrested and the withdrawal of Tamil Nadu cabinet resolution. “We have been ditched by the Tamil Nadu government, they will pay for the betrayal and treachery,” Udayakumar told TEHELKA.
Udayakumar asked why the state government was not ready to conduct the safety drill around the 30 kilometer radius of the power plant which is mandatory before commissioning a nuclear plant. “The government is violating basic safety requirements before commissioning the plant. In such a situation we have no other option,” said Udayakumar. He warned of public health problems and food shortage at Idinthakarai and appealed to the people of Tamil Nadu to be aware of “this assault on the Tamil community”.
“They [government] are preparing to load uranium fuel rods into the reactor without conducting safety or evacuation drills. This kind of Fascist development is taking our country to another round of New East India Companies and Neo-colonialism,” said Udayakumar. Dr V Suresh, National Secretary, PUCL, Tamil Nadu-Puducherry condemned the police action by the Tamil Nadu State Government against peaceful demonstrators.
“The police action against Idinthakarai villagers resembles the Jalianwalabagh incident and raises concerns about the state government’s intention. This action comes immediately after the Sankarankovil by-elections.” said Dr Suresh. The PUCL has demanded an immediate and unconditional release of all arrested villagers and withdrawal of police force from the area.
From Tehelka: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main52.asp?filename=Ws200312Nuclear.asp
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 13, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Toxification
By Oliver Milman / The Guardian
The Australian government has passed legislation that will create the country’s first nuclear waste dump, despite fierce opposition from environmental and Aboriginal groups.
The passage of the National Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2010 through the Senate paves the way for a highly controversial plan to store nuclear waste in Muckaty Station, a remote Aboriginal community in the arid central region of the Northern Territory.
The ruling Labor party received support from the conservative coalition opposition to approve the bill, despite an ongoing federal court case over the legality of using the Muckaty site to store radioactive material.
Currently, nuclear waste from the medical and mining industries is stored in more than 100 “temporary” sites in universities, hospitals, offices and laboratories across Australia.
Anti-nuclear protesters disrupted proceedings in the Senate as the legislation was debated earlier on Tuesday, with the group heckling lawmakers from the public gallery over their support for the bill.
A recent medical study warned that transporting nuclear waste over long distances to such an isolated location, which is 75 miles north of the Tennant Creek township, could endanger public health.
“The site is in an earthquake zone, it floods regularly, there are very long transport corridors, there are no jobs being applied and it’s opposed from people on the ground, on the front line from Tennant (Creek) all the way up to the NT government and people around the country,” said senator Scott Ludlam of the Greens, which successfully added an amendment to the bill that bans the importing of foreign nuclear waste to the site.
Aboriginal groups launched legal action after claiming that traditional owners of the land around Muckaty do not approve of the dump, despite the government maintaining that the local Ngapa indigenous community supports the plan.
Under Australian Native Title law, indigenous groups recognised as the traditional owners of land must be consulted and compensated for any major new infrastructure.
Although the Australian government insists that it has not decided on a site for the dump, Muckaty is the only option under consideration and the Northern Territory government has already been offered AUS$10m if it accepts the facility.
Finding a location for a national nuclear waste dump has proved a major headache for successive Australian governments, with former prime minister John Howard rebuffed in his attempt to situate the facility in South Australia in 2004.
The Northern Territory government has complained that it is being strong-armed into taking the dump due to it being a “constitutional weak link” and not having the same rights as full Australian states.
Nuclear power remains a highly contentious issue in Australia, which, despite having the largest uranium deposits in the world, has steadfastly refused to shift its largely coal-fired energy generation to nuclear.
From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/13/australia-nuclear-waste-aboriginal
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 7, 2012 | Climate Change, Toxification
By Rob Edwards / The Guardian
As many as 12 of Britain’s 19 civil nuclear sites are at risk of flooding and coastal erosion because of climate change, according to an unpublished government analysis obtained by the Guardian.
Nine of the sites have been assessed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) as being vulnerable now, with others in danger from rising sea levels and storms in future decades. They include all of the eight sites proposed for new nuclear power stations around the coast, as well as numerous radioactive waste stores, operating reactors and defunct nuclear facilities.
Two of the sites for new nuclear stations are said to have a “high risk” of flooding now: Sizewell in Suffolk and Hartlepool in County Durham, where there are also operating reactors. Shutdown and running reactors at Dungeness in Kent are also classed as currently at high risk.
Another of the sites most at risk is Hinkley Point in Somerset, where the first of the new nuclear stations is planned and there are reactors in operation and being decommissioned. According to Defra, it already has a “low” risk of flooding, and by the 2080s will face a high risk of both flooding and erosion.
Other new reactor sites that face some risk now and high risks by the 2080s are Oldbury in South Gloucestershire and Bradwell in Essex. The huge old nuclear complex at Sellafield in Cumbria is said to face a “medium risk” of flooding now and in the future.
The analysis was conducted by officials from Defra’s floods and coastal erosion team as part of a major investigation into the impacts of climate change on the UK. But when the results were published in January, only summary numbers for the 2080s were mentioned and no individual sites were named.
Defra has now, however, released its full analysis in response to a request under freedom of information legislation. As a result, the department’s assessments of the risks faced by individual sites can be disclosed for the first time.
Many of the nuclear sites date back to the 1950s and 1960s, and are unlikely to be fully decommissioned for many decades. Seven of those containing radioactive waste stores are judged to be at some risk of flooding now, with a further three at risk of erosion by the 2080s.
Experts suggested that the main worry was that inundation would cause nuclear waste to leak. “Sea level rise, especially in the south east of England, will mean that some of these sites will be under water within 100 years,” said David Crichton, a flood specialist and an honorary professor at the hazard research centre in University College London.
Read more from The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/07/uk-nuclear-risk-flooding
Photo by Lukáš Lehotský on Unsplash
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 1, 2012 | Toxification
By Akiko Okazaki / The Asahi Shimbun
A mind-boggling 40,000 trillion becquerels of radioactive cesium, or twice the amount previously thought, may have spewed from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant after the March 11 disaster, scientists say.
Michio Aoyama, a senior researcher at the Meteorological Research Institute, released the finding at a scientific symposium in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, on Feb. 28.
The figure, which represents about 20 percent of the discharge during the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, is twice as large as previous estimates by research institutions both in Japan and overseas.
It was calculated on the basis of radioactive content of seawater sampled at 79 locations in the north Pacific and is thought to more accurately reflect reality than previous simulation results.
Scientists believe that around 30 percent of the radioactive substances discharged during the crisis ended up on land, while the rest fell on the sea.
This makes it especially difficult to accurately evaluate the total amount of radioactive materials released. Thus, seaborne data is essential to the process.
The scientists measured cesium concentrations in seawater as of April and May last year. They then used a model of diffusion in the atmosphere and the oceans to evaluate the total amount of cesium released. The calculation produced estimates of 30-40 quadrillion becquerels.
The researchers also estimated that 24-30 quadrillion becquerels of that cesium reached the sea.
That combines the roughly 70 percent of the total discharge, which is thought to have reached the ocean, and the cesium content of radioactive water that Tokyo Electric Power Co., the nuclear plant operator, released from the plant to the sea.
While the latest study said 15-20 quadrillion becquerels of cesium-137 was released into the atmosphere, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency estimated the amount at 8.8 quadrillion becquerels. Similar data released by other researchers both in Japan and overseas ranged between 7 quadrillion and 35 quadrillion becquerels.
In the meantime, TEPCO on Feb. 28 began pouring cement on a trial basis from a marine platform onto the seabed in the port at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. The work is intended to cover 7 hectares of seabed inside the breakwaters.
The aim is to prevent radioactive cesium that accumulated there from spreading offshore. The project is expected to take 3-4 months to finish.
During the trial, TEPCO will determine what thickness of cement cover is effective for the purpose. Choppy waters due to adverse weather conditions had obstructed the work.
From The Asahi Shimbun
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 17, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Obstruction & Occupation
By John Vidal, The Guardian
Environmental activists have occupied the site of what is planned to be Britain’s first new nuclear power station since 1995, and on Friday accused EDF of “ignoring democracy” and starting work on the £10bn project without permission to build the station.
Eight people have occupied the semi-derelict Langborough farmhouse on land due to be cleared within weeks to make way for the twin-reactor Hinkley Point C power station. The £100m preparatory earth works, which were formalised today in Paris with David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy signing an agreement, will remove a volume of soil and rock four times the volume of Wembley stadium from the 500ha site, destroy a site of special scientific interest and several historic buildings.
EDF today admitted they did not have permission to start building the power station but said the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) had accepted their application for a Development consent order (DCO). The IPC will take around a year to decide on the DCO and, if EDF’s bid is successful, would allow the company to build on the site. In addition, a spokesman said the company had received permission from West somerset district council to begin “preparatory works”.
“We have consent for site preparatory works, which is essentially doing the levelling and putting in infrastructure like roads. We have a separate application with the IPC. If we do not get the DCO then we would reinstate the earthworks,” said a spokesman. “We hope to start work soon, in the spring.”
But the protesters said the preparatory works were so large they constituted the effective start of the power plant construction and rendered the consultation period, when arguments for and against the power station could be heard, meaningless. “The government has steam-rollered this through. Either EDF is behaving in a grossly insensitive way by clearing 500 hectares of land, or they know that they will get permission to build the nuclear station. If it is a done deal then the consultation is bogus. The democratic process has been dispensed with completely”, said Theo Simon, one of the eight protesters now in the farmhouse.
The group, who call themselves the Barnstormers, have been issued iodine pills in the case of a nuclear accident by the local council. “We are here for the long haul. We have a lot of support from local people who have brought us food and wood. We are hoping other people will come to the site,” said one.
The IPC’s examination and decision making is likely to take nearly a year, by which time the site will have been cleared of all vegetation.
“This is like someone who has not got planning permission digging the foundations of a new house. The extent of the activity, the clearance of most vegetation, hedges and trees, the excavation of more than 4 million cubic metres of soil and rocks, the re-routing of underground streams, the creation of roads and roundabouts, major changes to the landscape … mean it is effectively the beginning of construction of the proposed Hinkley C nuclear power station,” said the Stop Hinkley C spokesman Crispin Aubery.
In a separate development, the local authority warned EDF that the planning process for the reactor had stalled because the company had not given them the money to allow them to scrutinise the planned work.
“There are still key issues to be resolved at a local level before this development [of the building of the reactor, not the preparatory work] can take place. The legitimate rights and concerns of the local community are far from settled – in fact, the planning process is currently stalled while we wait for the developer, French company EDF, to agree vital funding for the necessary scrutiny of the development process,” said the Sedgmoor district council leader, Duncan McGintty.
“This scrutiny is fundamental to make sure that the interests of the residents who will bear the impacts of the development are fairly and properly represented. It is also a part of a legal requirement under the formal consent procedure set out by the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC).”
From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/17/activists-occupy-nuclear-site-edf
