Love for Life

Hands up all those who got their share of Uranium laden dust over the last few days
(Around September 23rd 2009 on the NSW East Coast Of Australia)

Wasn't it a spectacle though

Some years since we had such a load

But those of you who have been around for a while will recall the 'dust-storms' of past years.

Anyway, I would like to take this opportunity to re-issue my rant of May-June 2009. To see how easily we can be effected.

Watch for the increases in cancers and respiratory problems over the next few years --- then reflect on my rant --- go see your political bods & get them to STOP THE MINING -- or is mining more important than our health????

Lynn ---- out

_____________ Here's a repeat of the May 2009 rant: _____________

THE ROARING FORTIES

By Lyn Stanfield
May-June 2009
Australia

[An enhanced colour satellite image shows the dust storm covering over eastern Australia in this handout picture dated September 23, 2009. An outback dust storm swept across eastern Australia and blanketed Sydney on Wednesday, disrupting transport and placing health authorities on alert for widespread respiratory illness. dailytelegraph.com.au/news/gallery]

Some Geography

Australia is an island continent of the Southern hemisphere.

It spans, West to East: from 110deg (east) to 155deg (east) longitude. From North to South it runs: 10deg (south) to 45deg (south) latitude.

This puts it smack in the path of the ‘Roaring Forties’.

Some Terminology

The ‘Roaring Forties’ was a term used by mariners of old ‘square rigged’ sailing ship days and is the descriptive name they gave to the natural flow of air from West towards East, across the surface of the Planet Earth. In the forty degree South latitudes, this air-flow completely encircles the Earth over oceans of water, with only Africa and South America jutting into its path. Here, ships could ‘run’ for mile after mile with a steady wind behind them to drive them along.

Some Physics

As the Earth rotates on its axis towards the East, the Sun progressively warms the surface areas; radiant heat is absorbed by the adjacent air, causing it to expand and become thinner and thus, lighter (a Low Pressure zone).

Atmospheric air above the Earth surface when it is in darkness, is relatively cooler and therefore denser and heavier (a High Pressure zone). Heavier night air over the dark Western surfaces (yet to receive the sun-rays), tend to move as a large air mass, towards the warmer and lighter Eastern region (heated by the Sun); individual spots of differential heating across the land-mass (light coloured areas reflecting the suns heat, darker colours, such as ploughed fields and paved urban areas, absorbing the heat), produce a complexity of highs and lows in ‘local weather’ patterns across the continent; the close proximity of Australia to the Antarctic ice adds to the energy of the flow as chunks of cold, dense air, break away from the polar region and bulge into the already cool night air; the intrusion of polar air masses enhance and modify the air movements, all carried along by the predominant West-to-East air movements of our atmosphere and weather systems. The movement of an air mass is wind.

Some History

From the bottom of the African continental land-mass right across the Indian Ocean, is open water; winds meet no obstruction till they reach Australia.

Early mariners, in their sailing ships, could sail from the old world ports of Spain, Holland, Portugal and England in search of new lands and vast treasures.

The old salts would endure the vagaries of the Atlantic Ocean till they rounded the Cape of Good Hope, where they would pitch all available canvas to the yard arms and run before the steady, sometimes violent ‘Roaring Forties’.

Reaching for thousands of leagues, these early mariners were able to explore right across the Indian and Pacific Oceans before encountering the rugged coastlines of Chile, Peru, Ecuador or Columbia in the Southern Americas.

Round-the-world yachtsmen still, today, follow this path for the obvious reasons.

More Physics

So, having established the natural phenomena of our Earthly Atmosphere, let us examine some other interesting and pertinent matters.

Our habitat (Lynn and Joan) is basically bounded by, but not limited to:

Noosa: 153(e), 26(s); Taree : 153(e), 32(s); Sydney: 152(e), 34(s). Note the similarities of longitude.

Now, let us look at some other coincidental numbers of reference:

Taree is on a similar latitudinal line as Perth: 116(e), 32(s).

Broken Hill also shares a similar latitude: 142(e), 32(s).

In fact, it was always intriguing to me whenever we would make our aviation excursions to the far West or North-Western climes, how easy the homeward legs of the journey were. One could almost drop the reins of our little plane and it would nod off to home on an almost constant track of 090 deg’s, all the way from Broken Hill to Taree. Landmarks such as Wilcannia, Cobar, Nyngan, Dunedoo, Colah, would pass under our wings, one side or the other; then on to Scone, Gloucester, Taree; all along the vicinity of the same 32(s) parallel. If we continued onwards, we would reach Lord Howe Island: 159(e), 32(s).

Why the excitement over such a triviality?

Well, it just so happens, a certain area of the state of South Australia also shares the 30- 32(s) latitudes; it is the Woomera region of our island continent.

Some Metaphysics

Sharing the Woomera location is Roxby Downs/Olympic Dam mines and Beverley mines and Honeymoon mines; heard of them? They outline an area containing the richest Uranium deposits in the World. Uranium is mined here. A lot of ‘over-burden’ is removed to expose the Uranium bearing ore. The Uranium ore is crushed and treated in a primary refinery and made into ‘Yellow Cake’. Discarded crushed materials are heaped up and are known as ‘Tailings’.

In nature, uranium atoms exist as uranium-238 (99.284%), uranium-235 (0.711%) and a very small amount of uranium-234 (0.0058%). Uranium decays slowly by emitting an alpha particle. The half-life of uranium-238 is about 4.47 billion years and that of uranium-235 is 704 million years, making them useful in dating the age of the Earth (see uranium-thorium dating, uranium-lead dating and uranium-uranium dating).

Check Out This Article Which Explains The Steps Of Uranium Mining - Includes Lots Of Photos - Does nuclear energy produce no CO2 ? by Dave Kimble at peakoil.org.au

Much of the dust which blows from these mountains of ‘tailings’, contains a high percentage of Uranium particles. Highly Radioactive particles of Uranium.

If you come into contact with this stuff, you get sick, very sick, especially if you breathe it in or ingest it.

Australia is the sixth largest producer of uranium in the world with an estimated 40% of the world's uranium deposits. Its three operating mines currently supply 30% of the world's uranium. There are around 50 known uranium deposits in Australia, although exploration is continuing.

Uranium mining creates waste in the form of mine tailings. Tailings contain 80% of the radioactivity of the original ore and must therefore remain isolated from the environment for many thousands of years. In Australia tailings are stored on the mine site in large dams. There have been many recorded leaks from tailings dams at Australia's existing mines.

Yellowcake (also called urania) is a kind of uranium concentrate obtained from leach solutions, in an intermediate step in the processing of uranium ores. Yellowcake concentrates are prepared by various extraction and refining methods, depending on the types of ores. Typically yellowcakes are obtained through the milling and chemical processing of uranium ore forming a coarse powder which is insoluble in water and contains about 80% uranium oxide, which melts at approximately 2878 °C. Although uranium is one of the densest metals on Earth, yellowcake is relatively light, with a density approximately that of elemental sulphur.

The ore is first crushed to a fine powder by passing raw uranium ore through crushers and grinders to produce "pulped" ore. This is further processed with concentrated acid, alkaline, or peroxide solutions to leach out the uranium. Yellowcake is what remains after drying and filtering. The yellowcake produced by most modern mills is actually brown or black, not yellow; the name comes from the colour and texture of the concentrates produced by early mining operations.

Initially, the compounds formed in yellowcakes were not identified; in 1970, the U.S. Bureau of Mines still referred to yellowcakes as the final precipitate formed in the milling process and considered it to be ammonium diuranate or sodium diuranate. The compositions were variable and depended upon the leachant and subsequent precipitating conditions. Among the compounds identified in yellowcakes include: uranyl hydroxide, uranyl sulphate, sodium para-uranate, and uranyl peroxide, along with various uranium oxides. Modern yellowcake typically contains 70 to 90 percent triuranium octoxide (U3O8) by weight. Other oxides such as uranium dioxide (UO2) and uranium trioxide (UO3) exist.

Yellowcake is used in the preparation of fuel for nuclear reactors, where it is processed into purified UO2 for use in fuel rods for PHWR and other systems using unenriched uranium. It may also be enriched, by being converted to uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6), by isotope separation through gaseous diffusion or in a gas centrifuge to produce enriched uranium suitable for use in weapons and reactors.

Yellowcake is produced by all countries in which uranium is mined.

Some Hypothesis

It would therefore not be out of the question to consider this dusty little equation:

If a violent dust-storm were to arise in the Woomera – Roxby Downs – Olympic Dam region, then the prevailing ‘Westerly Winds’ which stream across our country at around the 30 – 32 deg (s) latitudes are bound to contain a heap of Uranium 234 particulate matter!

Such matter would be bound to contaminate all points in the described path of the wind, scattering exponentially as other weather systems influenced it, travelling in an ever-broadening swathe across the land, till passing over the East coast and on out across the Pacific Ocean, spreading mutation, death and destruction as it goes, reaching from the Galapagos to Tierra del Fuego and beyond.

Now, isn’t this something to consider?

All living things on land and in the ocean, contaminated.

All fruit and vegetables and grazing matter, contaminated.

All drinking water, contaminated.

Video: Amazing Red Dust Storm - Australia 23rd September 2009 - 2 Minutes 25 Seconds

Some Facts about Uranium Mining - You might like to think about these:

1. Tailings Waste
Even the highest grade deposits contain less than 1% uranium, so huge amounts of ore have to be processed to get useful quantities of the uranium. The leftover 'waste' rock is called tailings. In the course of processing, it is crushed to a fine powder, which is almost as radioactive as the uranium itself. It is hazardous for more than 250,000 years, which might as well be forever. These tailings need to be isolated from the environment to prevent a cancer epidemic, and there are already more than 50 million tonnes of uranium tailings on Australian soil.

2. Radon Gas
As uranium emits radiation; it transforms itself into a new element, which in turn emits radiation and decays, and so on through 14 steps until it eventually - after hundreds of thousands of years - becomes a stable form of non-radioactive lead. One of the elements along the way is Radon, a radioactive gas which can travel for hundreds of kilometres before decaying. Mine workers and others who breathe this gas, risk developing lung cancer and other forms of lung disease.

3. Environmental Contamination
Uranium mining contaminates the air, water and earth with radioactive chemicals and heavy metals which can never be properly cleaned up. In addition to the radiation hazard, mining is also associated with poisonous processing chemicals, heavy metals and the use of huge quantities of water. In the short term, uranium mine sites wreck the ecology of the local region; in the long term, they pose a risk to a much broader area.

4. Health risks
The health risks of uranium mining are by now quite well known, although still aggressively disputed by the mining industry. Collectively, uranium miners suffer the highest radiation doses of all workers in the nuclear fuel chain (apart from accident cleanup crews). The main problems are inhalation of dust and radon gas, which leave alpha radiation emitters lodged in the body where they can do most harm. As the contamination from the mines spread away from the mine site, local people are also exposed to contamination. While uranium mining is most commonly associated with cancer, low level radiation is also implicated in birth defects, high infant mortality and chronic lung, eye, skin and reproductive illnesses.

5. Nuclear Waste
There is a massive amount of high level nuclear waste still being spewed out by reactors around the world and there is nowhere safe to put it. Pangea Resources actually has a plan to bring a lot of this waste into Australia. Nuclear power stations create this waste as part of normal operations; but there are also risks of reactor accidents; the explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 killed many people, spread nuclear pollution right around the planet and forced the permanent evacuation of the surrounding area.

6. Nuclear Weapons
While the mining companies do not like to admit it, nuclear power is a military technology designed to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. Thousands of these weapons are still on hair-trigger alert, more than ten years after the Cold War, and they are spreading slowly to new countries. What do we need to do to stop this toxic trade?

Some Startling Developments

News to hand: the South Australian State parliament and the Commonwealth of Australia parliament have given approval for a Chinese mining company, to buy out the existing mining companies around Woomera / Roxby/ Olympic Dam and other Uranium deposit sites in South Australia.

Further, approval has been given for this Chinese company to undertake the biggest Uranium mining development / expansion in history.

An Environmental Impact Statement has been published, outlining the proposed development plans.

These plans describe the establishment of: two new large city complexes to cater for the number of workers involved (wow!); a complete International Airport (more wow!); a road and rail link to the coast with a complete Deep-Sea Loading Port Facility (golly!)

The EIS describes, almost excitedly, how the new mine will be: “....the biggest man-made hole on Earth... an enormous amount of over-burden will be removed, enough to build a new mountain range........”.

WTO And GAT

Now, some years ago, I was part of a small organizing group, which put together the only public consultation forum to expose and discuss the impending signing, by Australia, of the World Trade Organization (WTO) ‘General Agreement on Trade in Service’ (GATS). It is still, the only public discussion on this treacherous treaty to have been held, anywhere in Australia, despite the claims by our lying, treasonous government which claimed an ‘extensive’ public consultation had been conducted.

One of the major concerns with this treaty (and there were many), was the cunningly hidden clause, buried within the gobble-de-goop, which was to allow for foreign companies who were contracting or carrying on business in Australia, to bring what was referred to as ‘Natural Persons’ as workers.

What this really means, of course, is the allowance of foreign workers to be brought into our workplaces at rates of pay and entitlements and under site conditions far and away contrary to our established Australian Workplace Regulations.

Without any doubt, we are seeing, with the huge Chinese Uranium mining venture at Roxby Downs, the first large-scale operation of this very clause from the 2003 GATS agreement.

Further - I would like to share another experience

Back in the 1960’s, there was almost an ‘epidemic’ of youngsters contracting Leukemia, right along the Eastern regions of Australia (and elsewhere). Our Apex Clubs worked hard, raising money and doing what we could to assist families with Leukemia affected children. It was a recurring ‘Service Scheme’.

Fruit Bats, Banana farmers, Aerial top-dressing and a whole host of ‘things to blame’ as the cause of the epidemic, were hypothesised.

We now know it was the Depleted Uranium, Plutonium and other Nuclear ‘fall-out’ from Atomic bomb testing in the Montebello Islands, off the north west coast of Australia (in Oct,1952; a bomb which was four times as big as the one dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945) and further tests done (hundreds of them) in the Maralinga desert areas of South Australia, just to the west of Woomera.

Maralinga is positioned at: 131.37(e), 30.09(s). There’s the 30 degree latitude again!

Since then, the mining of Uranium deposits has been happening, big-time, in the Woomera/ Roxby Downs / Olympic Dam region of S.A. and the dusty ‘Tailings’ have been piling up and the prevailing westerly winds have transported the fine radioactive particles right across our continent in huge dust-storms. Some of these storms have reached out across the Pacific. Contamination of land, water, air, fruit, vegetation and milk, has been inescapable as the dust settled or was rained out of the atmosphere. Eat the fruit or meat, drink the water or milk (remember the compulsory milk scheme in schools back then?), eat the fish, the veggies or whatever and you are consuming radiation. Above all else, none of us can escape the air we breathe which is loaded with the contaminants.

There is no hope: for man or beast, tree or trout, veggie or vine, bird or billabong; all become contaminated.

But wait, there’s more!

Further concerns are listing themselves in this Global Recession Year of 2009.

For example: the head-over-heels manner in which our political leaders (state and federal), are borrowing huge quantities of money, particularly from China. Billions of (US) dollars have been taken up. We are now indebted to China so deeply, we can never recover.

Remember the old cliche, “...when you are in their debt, you are in their control...”.

Who amongst you can imagine any Australian authority saying NO to Chinese take-over and ownership of huge mining and pastoral operations in our country?

The Chinalco-RioTinto buy-out proposal for example; the Chinese buy-out of Australian Mining Corp with its Roxby Downs / Olympic Dam Uranium mining project already mentioned; huge pastoral areas of the Ord River Irrigation Scheme have been allowed for the Chinese to grow HEMP! This crop has been denied approval when Australians contemplated it, but the Chinese have no worries, a full stamp of approval.

The mind boggles at the opportunities which now exist with the lousy ‘Global Recession’.

Queensland parliament has borrowed seventy four billion dollars (USD) from China. Do you really think we are in any position to refuse the proposed Chinese take-over and ownership of the vast Queensland Coal deposits? Of course not: “.....when you are in their debt, you are in their control...”.

Breathe deeply folk, it’s probably the quickest way to end the lingering agony of watching our great little country being gutted by foreign owners.

Lynn Stanfield.
May, 2009