I promised to find good news. It’s not that easy. But – Sir David Attenborough says ’Human activity has created a new era, yet climate change can be stopped. And, again, I am struggling with the reality that it is nearly, perhaps already is, too late, to stop the progress of global warming. Which makes climate change a more urgent problem than the nuclear threat.
Even if climate change is now irreversible, it’s no time to give up: the effort now must be to slow its progress, and to plan and adapt to its impacts.
Latest nuclear news indicates that Britain’s nuclear dream is collapsing. Japan’s plans for selling nuclear reactors overseas are collapsing. USA is embroiled in nuclear waste problems. Not so in totalitarian Russia and China, where the State runs the nuclear industry, education, and the media, and maintains secrecy about nuclear costs, unsafety, and waste problems.
AUSTRALIA
NUCLEAR Nuclear lobby wants to overturn Australia’s law prohibiting nuclear power.
ANSTO nuclear waste will compromise safety and security in South Australia. About nuclear wastes: Ignorance, incompetence and hypocrisy of Dan van Holst Pellekaan, South Australian Minister for Energy and Resources. Both Liberal and Labor keep mum about South Australia nuclear waste issue.
Ranger mine closure costs to hit more than $800m .
CLIMATE Australia leads the world in global warming – with the 15 hottest sites. Australia bakes as record temperatures nudge 50C. Australia faces ‘new normal’ of year-round bushfires . Heat in New South Wales – bushfires, health impact, and roads melting.
Canberra aware of climate change, but heatwave adds urgency. How Canberra can lead the way in cutting carbon emissions to zero.
Fiji PM tells Scott Morrison– Australian coal is killing the Pacific.
Adani still under investigation by Queensland government, over groundwater bores.
Crisis in Australia’s one great river system: climate change a factor. “Don’t leave Dracula – Murray Darling Basin Authority Water management – in charge of the Blood Bank”.
On NITV A feast of films celebrating indigenous Australia, in leadup to 26 January.
RENEWABLE ENERGY South Australia’s second big battery goes live, charges up. Construction begins on 336MW Dundonnell wind farm – one of biggest in Victoria. Northern Territory on track for 10% renewables by 2020, with two new solar farms announced.
INTERNATIONAL
GREENLAND. Greenland ice melt is happening at an unexpectedly fast rate.
ASIA. The threat to millions of people, as glaciers in Central Asia melt.
USA.
- Increasing rate of melting in North American glaciers.
- USA to begin pullout from Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, rejecting Russian offer.
- How US and China’s African nuclear mission could provide model for disarming North KoreaSC. Trump plans North Korea nuclear summit with Kim Jong Un for February . The Trump administration’s dangerous strategy of provocation – led by John Bolton.
- The nuclear lobby has “zero chance” of nuclear getting into a Green New Deal in USA.
- The ‘fatally flawed’ nuclear waste storage facilities at the decomposing San Onofre nuclear site. Federal Plan Could Reclassify Hanford Nuclear Waste — And Leave it in the Ground.
- Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board says that Los Alamos National Laboratory still has long-standing safety problems. T
- rump signs new bill to weaken nuclear energy regulation. USA’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission extending license for Seabrook nuclear power BEFORE THE HEARING ON ITS SAFETY PROBLEMS.
NORTH KOREA. Kim Jong Un continuing to play to the vanity of Donald Trump?
UK.
- Britain’s severe nuclear financial headache. UK government’s proposed ‘Regulated Asset Base’ (RAB) financing – a cover-up for a nuclear bailout. Costly saga of Hitachi nuclear power project in North Wales comes to an end. UK Secretary for Energy reveals the staggering amounts of tax-payer money offered to Hitachi to build nuclear reactors in Wales. Why the UK government is losing its enthusiasm for nuclear power.
- Dungeness B nuclear station – safety problems, reactors still shut down.
- Wind energy ready to supply UK electricity: time to remove the ban on onshore subsidies. Renewable energy can replace UK’s Moorside, Wylfa and Sizewell C nuclear power at a much cheaper cost. Offshore wind leads, as UK’s renewable energy is on course to overtake fossil fuels. UK govt’s plan to let down solar householders has not gone down well.
- UK government waits for nuclear test veterans to die, prevents research on genetic effects.
TAIWAN. The pitfalls of Direct Democracy- Taiwan’s referendum and the vote on nuclear power.
ISRAEL. Super Weapon: Israel Could Arm Stealth F-35s with Nuclear Weapons. Secret Handwritten Memos Reveal How Israel’s Nuclear Program Came to Be.
JAPAN. High radiation levels in Fukushima area, but the Japanese government is pushing people back there. Time to retire Japan’s aging nuclear reactor at Genkai. Nagasaki: Life after Nuclear War – the past and the future.
RUSSIA. Russia’s plans for nuclear-powered unmanned underwater weapons.
CHINA. Pentagon report on China’s nuclear weapons program, still “significantly below” the U.S. Concerns about safety of China’s planned 46 nuclear reactors within a radius of about 100 km from Hong Kong and Macau. Chinese residents concerned over imports of rice produced near Fukushima disaster area.
GERMANY. Germany urges Russia to destroy missile to save nuclear treaty.
FINLAND. Wild mushrooms in Finland still containing high radioactive cesium from Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986.
Nuclear Australia 
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