NUKING THE CLIMATE - STRAHLENDES KLIMA

The film-team has just come back to Melbourne from a two week filming trip to South Australia (SA). Read about our stops and adventures on the way.

The SA-filming tour took us from Melbourne to Adelaide where we stayed for a few days to get ourselves organized before heading further north into the “wild” to visit a uranium mine and the effects it is causing for the people and the environment.

Special thanks to Jim for renting us his car and special thanks to his car who unexpectedly never gave up on us.

These were our stops on the SA-filming tour:

Adelaide: Many thanks to Ruth Russell who provided a great home base to our team whilst we were in Adelaide and who spread the word of our project to the Adelaide radio audience.

Check out Ruth’s ten arguments against nuclear power.

The Australian Conservation Foundation and Friends of the Earth in Adelaide helped us to get ourselves organized for the trip up north and provided us with back ground information. We also took up the chance to catch up with the government regulators for the uranium mines in Southern Australia at the Environment Protection Agency.

Port Pirie: Just 200 km north of Adelaide, there is a former milling site for uranium on the fringe of a small town called Port Pirie. This areal contains radioactive tailings, leftovers from the uranium milling activities conducted in the 1950s and 1960s. Until the late 1970s no one cared about the radioactive waste and the site was accessible to the public. It was only after enormous protests and pressure from environmental activists and the local community that the site was properly managed and cleaned up. Even though the site is fenced today there is still no public information about possible radioactive contaminations around the site.

Port Augusta: A small town along the Spencer Gulf. We met traditional owners Rebecca Bear-Wingfield and her mother Eileen from the Kokatha people. It is on their indigenous people’s land that BHP Billiton runs the Olympic Dam mine. They both have a history of struggle against the mine and told us about their experience with the uranium companies.

Roxby Downs/ Olympic Dam mine: The copper-uranium mine Olympic Dam operated by BHP Billiton lies on a huge areal 560 km north of Adelaide. Roxby Downs is the town that was built with the mere and only purpose to serve the mine. It is just down the road from the mine. We met a family and youth worker as well as the administrator of the town. As BHP Billiton was not willing to meet us we went on a public tourist tour around the mine to get our video footage we wanted. But what the tour guide did neither mention nor show to the visitors were the huge tailing dams that contain masses of radioactive waste. And they will be even bigger, after the planned mine expansion making Olympic Dam the largest uranium mine in the world. Here is what the critics say to these plans.

The Mound Springs at Marree: Definitely the highlight of our trip. A 200 km dirt track leads you from Roxby Downs to the small township of Marree. This might not sound like a long distance but with almost 50 degrees and no aircondition this can be quite an adventure. The road takes one through stereotypical red sanded Outback-landscape known from Lonely-Planet-pictures. By the time one gets to Marree the red sand has disappeared and brownish-pale colours dominate the flat and barren-looking landscape. With its approx. 60 residents and the old Ghan-railway running through town, Marree merely lives of tourism. Many only pass through on their way to other Outback destinations. We stayed for two nights and got taken on a tour by local indigenous owner Reg Dodd, an Arabana man. He showed us the countryside of his people and we discovered that the supposed “Middle of Nowhere” is actually quite alive. Reg showed us the “Mound Springs”, prestine water holes that are fed by the Great Artesian Bassin, Australia’s largest under water lake. The Mound Springs are endangered of drying out due to the extensive use of BHP´s water use for its mining activities. Special thanks to Prof. Gavin Mudd from the Monash university for his academic advice on the Mound Springs and of course to Reg Dodd for showing us around and telling us stories from his childhood of what the Mound Springs mean to his people and the environment.

When the film team got to know that Kevin Rudd, the new Prime Miniser of Australia was going to offer the first official apology to the Aboriginal people in Australia, we decided spontaneously to travel to that historic moment in the capital town. Together with thousands of people we gathered in front of the Parliament in Canberra to listen to Rudd´s speech that was shown on big screens.

The apology was offered to all Aborigines and especially the “Stolen Generation” for their “profound grief, suffering and loss” in a statement held in Parliament. It was being televised all over the nation with public screenings in several towns.

The term “Stolen generation” refers to a government practice that took place until 1970: Under a policy of “assimilation” children have been taken away from their Aboriginal families and were put into institutions or white families. This caused a lot of pain and suffering to the Aboriginal people and the long term effects can still be seen today.

The official apology of the government for this practice is meant to help with an emotional reconciliation with the past.  But “saying sorry is not enough” is a slogan that we read several times in Canberra. Claims for compensations and calls for improving the situation of Aboriginal people in Australia were getting loud.

When we first met the organizers of “Footprints for Peace Australia”, we knew that our goal is a similar one. Marcus and KA from Footprints for Peace take three months to travel from the UK through France to Geneva in Switzerland. As the name of the project suggests, the means of transport is “per pedes”, by foot.Their walk will start in the end of April in London and will end in Geneva, covering more than 1500 km in 84 days. Merely a support vehicle is accompanying them.

We interviewed Markus and KA just before leaving for their big trip. Asked why they are marching, they answered walking was a very good method to raise awareness on a grassroots level. Through meeting people personally, it would easily be possible to connect diverse groups with similar goals.

“Think globally, act locally” could be the header for their as well as our project. Our film as well as the Footprint-Hikes are showing what we tend to neglect too easily when switching on the light bulb: That nuclear power is embedded into a global production chain that starts with uranium mining e.g. in Australia (one of the main suppliers of Uranium to the world). Users of nuclear energy e. g. in France (one of the largest nuclear energy user) should know about the consequences of uranium mining for the environment and the people directly affected by it.

Sharing this common goal we agreed very quickly on working together:

The walkers are distributing flyers for our film in French throughout their way. The french Flyer production is currently organised by the German part of the youth project and will be sent to London on April.

We hope that through Footprints for Peace we will be able to reach many French communities where our film will be shwon. France has more than 50 nuclear power plants, drawing around 80% of it’s electricity from nuclear power. The public awareness of the risks of this technology not to say about the risks of uranium mining is tending towards zero.

The Peacewalkers make use of the camera to document their own walking activities and the interaction with local communities on their way. For a copy of their films or more information on the project visit: http://footprintsforpeace.tripod.com

The film team has finally arrived Down Under.

Many environmental groups, different independent media groups and other organisations from all over the country have given us a very warm welcome in Australia. We would like to thank everyone for their support
Four of has have travelled to the other side of the world to show that nuclear power is embedded into a global production process. For us, weighing up the pros and cons of nuclear power has to include weighing up all aspects of nuclear power that arise at any step of the production chain.

What do we know about the steps of the global nuclear process? We have heard a lot about global warming and climate change in the last month. What has nuclear power got to do with all this? Some say, nuclear power is the solution to climate change. That it emits almost no CO2 – even less or about the same as wind power. Is nuclear power really the solution to our future energy needs?

We want to show that the nuclear power we are using in Europe is embedded into a production process that spans the globe. Uranium is the fule for nuclear power. The mining of uranium is the first step of a nuclear production process.

What is uranium? Where does it come from? What advantages and disadvantages does it’s mining hold for people affected by it? We are here to find out.

Uranium mining in Australia

Australia holds the world’s largest uranium deposits and is the world’s second largest export nation of the nuclear fuel. Australia is currently looking at widely expanding it’s uranium mining activities.

What does uranium mining mean for Australians both in cities and in the Outback, for indigenous people and non-indigenous Australians alike, both for industry and politics? What economic advantages do people see in it? And what about environmental and health impacts?

Our film team has travelled to Australia to ask different people from different backgrounds these questions. We are interviewing decision makers from governmental and non-governmental organisations, science, the uranium industry as well as traditional landowners.

Whilst we do have our own point of view on the issue, we try to keep our approach as balanced as possible:

What we think:

Alone taking the risks of nuclear energy itself into account, such as waste management and the constant risk of an accident, we do not believe that this is a save, clean or cheap source of energy. 1000 nuclear power plants would have to be build in order to reduce the world’s green house gases by 5-7% . A realistic and affective way to stop Climate Change?

An expansion of nuclear power on this scale would mean that the world’s uranium reserves would be finished in a few decades.

What others think:

The number of people who believe in the nuclear industry as a solution to climate change seems to be growing. In their eyes, uranium mining is not different to other forms of mining, let’s say coal or copper.

Uranium mining certainly does provide Australia with economic advantages. We are here to document these advantages, as well as the negative aspects.

What is the film team doing Down Under?

The first two weeks of our arrival in Melbourne were reserved for research and networking.

One major event in recent Australian politics that affected us definetely was the new Labor government’s apology to the Stolen Generation of indigenous people.

Soon you can read about this journey of ours to the Tent Embassy in Canberra where we documented the government’s Apology to the Stolen Generation and interviewed Traditional Landowners.

For further reading on the Sorry speech go to:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/sorry-speech-revealed/2008/02/12/1202760289239.html
****** Background information nuclear power in Europe******************************
About 30% of Europe’s electricity derives from nuclear power. Some countries using nuclear power as their main source such as France with over 50 nuclear power plants, others only having a few reactors such as Switzerland and again other countries having none at all such as Denmark or Italy. The latter pulled out of nuclear power after the devastating accident in Chernobly in 1986.

On the contrary, Great Britain just decided to build new nuclear power plants replacing the old ones, thus committing themselves to at least another 70 years to nuclear power.

Despite a phase-out legislation in Germany according to which we are slowly pulling out of nuclear power, the issue is not totally banned yet: We still have 17 operating nuclear power plants today. With climate change and the nuclear lobby’s claim of being able to reduce green house gasses on a large scale, this policy might change again: Chancellor Angela Merkel has already stated at several occasions that she would like to rethink the nuclear issue and possible let the existing nuclear power plants run longer.

With about 1 Million Euros profit from a nuclear power plant per day the nuclear industry’s interest of sticking to nuclear power is understandable – from an economic point of view at least. Yet, when a nation admits oneself to nuclear power all the chances as well as the risks for everyone involved have to be weighed up.

Keeping in mind that nuclear power is a global product starting with uranium mining, we must stop thinking nationally: Not only must we weigh up the pros and cons involved for the country that uses nuclear energy. We have to start thinking on a global scale and put the pros and cons of uranium mining on the scale as well.

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Die Organisation wurde nach dem Super-GAU in Tschernobyl gegründet. Damals hat die französische Regierung behauptet, die radioaktive Strahlung käme auf keinen Fall nach Frankreich und es bestünde keinen Grund zur Sorge. CRIIRAD hat sich gegründet um diesen Behauptungen mit wissenschaftlichen Messungen auf den Grund zu gehen. Und sie haben festgestellt: Der saure Regen kam eben doch. Wie auch in Deutschland sind die Auswirkungen noch heute zu spüren: Einige Regionen zeigen besonders erhöhte Werte auf.

Noch heute können sich Privatpersonen an die Organisation wenden und untersuchen lassen, ob und wie hoch Pflanzen und Lebensmittel, der Grund und Boden ihres Hauses oder andere Dinge des alltäglichen Lebens radioaktiv belastet sind. Die Organisation ist seit einigen Jahren sogar staatlich anerkanntes Labor - ihre Messungen gelten als wissenschaftlich unanfechtbar. CRIIRAD finanziert sich jedoch nur aus Spenden und aus den Erträgen der Aufträge, die die Organisation erhält.

Eine der größten Messungen machte die Organisation vor einigen Jahren, als sie die Strahlenbelastung von Abfällen aus dem Uranabbau im Niger untersucht haben. Ein Großteil des französischen Urans kommt aus dem Niger. Aber auch an ehemaligen französischen URanminen, derer es im Übrigen knapp 200 gibt, hat CRIIRAD bereits Messungen durchgeführt. In allen Fällen konnten erhebliche Belastungen mit radioaktiver Strahlung festgestellt werden, die ein vielfaches über den inernational empfohlenen Richtwerten lagen.

Mehr über CRIIRAD und Bruno Chareyron unter: www.criirad.org