These items deal with "Green" issues.
The new head of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) announced a war crimes investigation into the killing of five Australian journalists by Indonesian forces invading East Timor in 1975.
Obtaining "Justice" (ie punishment) might come at the cost of further bloodshed. Indonesia is a fragile state; its dismemberment would lead to chaos in SE Asia.
The East Timorese and Australian Governments have allowed two likely targets of the AFP probe to escape, to the chagrin of the Greens.
But the Australian Government, having loosened Asylum Seeker laws (partly at Greens bequest) would be electorally vulnerable should large numbers of "boat people" arrive. Indonesia has the power to stop them - or let them come - just as Gaddafi recently stopped African Asylum Seekers heading for Europe.
The Greens can't have everything their way.
The "Copenhagen Protocol" is likely to lead to renewed interest in Nuclear Power (items 4-8). Plus novel schemes: claims of Cold Fusion have re-emerged as Low-Energy Hydrogen ("Hydrinos") (item 9).
(1) UN criticises ETimor over militia leader's release
(2) Australian Greens say Gov't aided escape of E Timor war criminal (from AFP probe)
(3) Anger as alleged war criminal 'flees'
(4) Canada's nuclear reactors
(5) GE Hitachi advances new nuclear reactor design
(6) A Preassembled Nuclear Reactor
(7) A micro nuclear reactor in your garden?
(8) Disposal of Nuclear Waste in Subduction Zones
(9) Free Energy? Cold Fusion re-emerges as Low-Energy Hydrogen ("Hydrinos")
(10) Farmers are still not allowed to kill Fruit Bats, to stop Hendra virus spreading
(11) Green jobs dopey, says CFMEU leader, Tony Maher
(1) UN criticises ETimor over militia leader's release
(AFP) – 23 hours ago
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gIo4k3-247ORdKeGDlkM-4gYFT4g
DILI — The United Nations' human rights representative in East Timor criticised Tuesday government "interference" in the release of an Indonesian militia leader accused of crimes against humanity.
The government of former rebel leader Xanana Gusmao went outside the law in freeing militia leader Martenus Bere last month, Louis Gentile, the local representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters.
"What we know is that the legal means to release someone from prison were not followed, so whatever has happened must be therefore something that is political and there must be some kind of interference," Gentile said.
"If there is no trial in East Timor and there is no adequate trial in Indonesia then the (UN) Security Council... has to consider what other option is available to bring those people to justice, including an international tribunal," he said.
The government has been under fire for its decision to release Bere, who was arrested after crossing into East Timor on August 8 for his alleged involvement in the 1999 Suai church massacre in which up to 200 people died.
He was released during commemorations marking 10 years since East Timor won independence from a brutal 24-year Indonesian occupation in a UN-backed vote amid militia violence that killed around 1,400 people.
The opposition Fretilin party moved a censure motion in parliament this week over Bere's release, aimed at giving President Jose Ramos-Horta the authority to dismiss the government.
However, Ramos-Horta is a strong supporter of forgiveness for those accused of rights violations during the Indonesian occupation, during which at least 100,000 people are estimated to have died due to violence, preventable disease and starvation.
Only one person is currently in prison in East Timor over violence committed around the 1999 vote. No one has been successfully prosecuted in Indonesia, according to rights group Amnesty International.
(2) Australian Greens say Gov't aided escape of E Timor war criminal (from AFP probe)
War crimes probe: Brown accused government
CATHARINE MUNROSeptember 16, 2009 - 2:13PM
http://www.smh.com.au/national/war-crimes-probe--brown-accused-government-20090916-fr05.html
An East Timorese national who was being investigated for war crimes by the Australian Federal Police has left Australia.
The Herald understands Guy Campos flew to Indonesia via Singapore on Monday.
Greens Senator Bob Brown has accused the Rudd government of aiding Campos to leave the country.
"Mr Campos has been allowed, and I would say aided and abetted, to leave this country by the Rudd government," he told Parliament.
Campos was accused of collaborating in torture with Indonesian special forces before East Timor won independence in 1999, and bashing an 11-year-old boy to death in 1979.
The sister of the boy, Francisco Ximines, now lives in Australia and identified Mr Campos in the street, Greens Senator Bob Brown told Parliament late last night.
The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions had asked the Federal Police to continue their investigations but Campos left on Monday, two days before his visa had expired.
The Herald has confirmed that Mr Campos had also applied for refugees status in Australia but was rejected, both by the Refugee Review Tribunal and Immigration Minister Chris Evans.
Alleged victims still living in East Timor had given statements to investigating Australian police earlier this year.
Non-government MPs, including Greens Senator Bob Brown and Independent MP Rob Oakshott have rallied over the case, and accused the government of allowing Mr Campos to leave the country.
Mr Campos had been on a bridging visa as the AFP had continued its inquiries. That visa was due to expire today. The Attorney General would have had the chance to have imposed a criminal justice stay certificate on Mr Campos, should he have remained in the country after the visa had expired.
A spokesman for the Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor was not available for comment.
(3) Anger as alleged war criminal 'flees'
JULIAN DRAPESeptember 14, 2009
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/anger-as-alleged-war-criminal-flees-20090914-fnyn.html
A independent federal MP says he's surprised and angry an alleged war criminal has been allowed to leave Australia while the subject of a police investigation.
Rob Oakeshott says the fact Guy Campos was allowed to leave the country could become a "keystone cops moment" for the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
The AFP had been investigating Mr Campos over allegations relating to torture in East Timor in the 1990s.
Last week, the Australian Greens moved a motion in the Senate to prevent him from leaving the country until the investigation was finalised.
Mr Campos was in Australia on a bridging visa after attending World Youth Day in Sydney last year.
AAP has confirmed he left the country on Monday morning.
Mr Oakeshott says that's not good enough.
"It is with surprise and anger that I have been informed Guy Campos has now fled the country, one day before his World Youth Day temporary visa expired," the independent MP said in a statement.
"This now means the extensive AFP evidence-gathering process, including trips to East Timor, can no longer continue, as under relevant legislation a subject of an inquiry must be located within Australia."
The Australian government now had to act urgently, Mr Oakeshott said.
"They must establish where Mr Campos is, and under Geneva Convention principles, they must pass on any information gathered that leads to his arrest within another jurisdiction.
"This has the potential to be a keystone cops moment for the AFP if Mr Campos is lost to the criminal justice system."
A spokesman for Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor declined to comment.
Last week, the manager of government business in the Senate, Joe Ludwig, rejected the Greens' push to hold Mr Campos, saying it was misleading and inappropriate.
"As Mr Campos is currently lawfully in Australia on a bridging visa, he is free to leave the country if he chooses to do so," Senator Ludwig said on Thursday.
Australian Greens leader Bob Brown says Australia failed to act on Mr Campos because it didn't want to get Indonesia offside.
Australia had "aided and abetted" the alleged war criminal to flee - probably to Indonesia or East Timor - in contravention of its obligations under the Geneva Conventions, Senator Brown told AAP.
"It's shameful day for justice.
"It will enhance Australia's growing reputation as a haven for war criminals."
The Greens leader said the government's suggestion its hands were tied was pathetic.
"This police investigation has been going for months now," he said.
"They could have introduced legislation which would have ensured ... they could keep him in the country but they didn't.
"It's a political convenience for the government to have Guy Campos out of the country."
(4) Canada's nuclear reactors
http://www.ieee.ca/millennium/candu/candu_about.html
CANDU -- powering Canada! (Keewatin)
"Okay, let's go" was the phrase that ushered in Canada's Nuclear Age. On August 17, 1942, C.D. Howe, Minister of Munitions and Supply in the Canadian wartime cabinet gave the go-ahead to a project that would ensure nuclear development in Canada.
After the heavy water and uranium dioxide research establishment was moved from Oxford to Canada, Canada's researchers and engineers proceeded to take the world stage by storm with their nuclear development. By 1945, Canada had developed the first nuclear reactor outside of the United States. Today, CANDU's environmentally-sensitive reactors consistently lead the world in productivity, safety, and ease of use. ==
http://www.ieee.ca/millennium/candu/candu_about.html
All CANDU 6 power plants are highly automated, requiring only a minimum of manual operator action. Each plant has two independent digital computers which operate continuously, one operating and one on standby. ...
A CANDU 6 produces about 24 cubic metres of used fuel bundles per year, a volume that would fit into a small room. ... The 700 MWe class CANDU 6 nuclear power plant saves the burning of about 84 million tonnes of coal or about 330 million barrels of oil over a 40-year period and the millions of tonnes of acid-producing atmospheric pollutants these fossil fuels would generate. A CANDU 6 also avoids the release of 196 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over its lifetime, an amount that would be produced by a fossil-fuelled plant of equal size. ...
Used nuclear fuel has been stored in water-filled pools at CANDU nuclear generating stations for 25 years and can be stored in this way for many decades. The use of concrete canisters for "dry storage" of used CANDU reactor fuel is now coming into wide use because it provides safe storage at lower cost than water-filled storage pools. At the Point Lepreau plant, for example, after at least seven years under water, the spent fuel (which has seen a decrease in radioactivity of about 99 percent) is moved to on-site dry-storage canisters, where each year's discharge fills about 10 canisters. ...
(5) GE Hitachi advances new nuclear reactor design
Wed Sep 9, 2009 8:05am EDT
http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-GreenBusiness/idUSTRE5882M020090909
HOUSTON (Reuters) - GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy said on Wednesday it has submitted the revised design documents for its Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
GE Hitachi said the submission marks a milestone in the company's effort to move forward with the 1,520-megawatt design which two U.S. utilities have selected to use for two new nuclear plants, some of the first reactors proposed after a three-decade lapse in U.S. nuclear expansion. ...
GE Hitachi, a venture of General Electric Co and Hitachi Ltd, said that the ESBWR design's advanced safety features and cost-saving advantages "are key in delivering the next generation of nuclear reactors worldwide." ...
(6) A Preassembled Nuclear Reactor
A new modular design could make building nuclear reactors faster and cheaper.
By Kevin Bullis
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22867/
A new type of nuclear reactor that is designed to be manufactured in a factory rather than built at a power plant could cut construction times for nuclear power plants almost in half and make them cheaper to build. That, in turn, could make it possible for more utilities to build nuclear power plants, especially those in poor countries. The design comes from Babcock and Wilcox, a company based in Lynchburg, VA, that has made nuclear reactors for the United States Navy ships for about 50 years.
Typically, the nuclear reactors found in commercial power plants are large, each generating more than 1,000 megawatts of electricity. That's because overall, it's cheaper to build a single, large power plant than several smaller ones, in part because it's not necessary to duplicate components such as containment walls and control rooms. But this approach also requires taking a big financial risk, which is one of the reasons that it's been decades since the last nuclear power plant was built. Each plant can cost $9 billion or more--too much for all but the largest utilities to afford--and it can take more than five years from the time that construction starts to the time that the plant starts generating electricity and providing revenue to cover construction costs, says Andrew Kadak, a professor of nuclear engineering at MIT.
The new Babcock and Wilcox reactor design could make nuclear power plants less of a financial risk, Kadak says. The reactors are much smaller, designed to generate 150 megawatts each, but could also be strung together to generate as much as a conventional nuclear power plant. They also integrate two separate components of a conventional power plant in a single package: the reactor itself and the equipment used to generate steam from the heat that the reactor produces. As a result, the entire system is small enough to be shipped on a railcar. And because the system can be shipped, it can be manufactured at a central facility and then delivered to the site of a future power plant.
(7) A micro nuclear reactor in your garden?
http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=1089
November 10th, 2008
Imagine a nuclear reactor small enough to be carried by truck and buried in a garden… According to The Guardian, a U.S. company based in New Mexico, Hyperion Power Generation, has designed mini nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes. The company has already received firm orders and expects to deliver about 4,000 ‘individual’ plants between 2013 and 2023. It also said that it has a six-year waiting list. So if you want such a micro nuclear reactor, don’t expect to receive it by 2014. ...
In “Truck-delivered Micro-Nuclear Reactor for Clean Energy Within Five Years,” Edwin Black agrees. “Unlike giant nuclear reactors requiring ten years to construct under daunting conditions, these concrete ‘nuclear batteries’ have no moving parts, no potential to go supercritical or meltdown, and reportedly cannot be easily tampered with. The extremely small amount of hot nuclear fuel—too hot to handle–would immediately cool if exposed to air, technical sources assert. Moreover, it would take prodigious resources wielded by a government infrastructure to attempt to enhance the weak radioactive core into a weapons-grade component. The fact is the radioactive fuel is so weak it will have to be replaced within seven to ten years. The nuclear waste after five years of spent fuel is so negligible it will reportedly produce a mass no bigger than a softball, and that will be easily recycled, according to atomic energy sources.” (The Cutting Edge News, November 10, 2008) ...
(8) Disposal of Nuclear Waste in Subduction Zones
Sea-Based Nuclear Waste Solutions
http://www.scientiapress.com/findings/sea-based.htm
Sea-based approaches to the disposal of nuclear waste make the waste much harder for terrorists, rebels, or criminals to steal for use in radiological weapons or in nuclear bombs than than do land-based ones. This highly desirable attribute should lead those who in the past have dismissed such approaches to become willing to reconsider. The enormous volume of water in the world's oceans also has a vastly greater dilutive capacity than any single land site in the event of unintended leaks. And seawater itself contains a variety of radionuclides, so treating it as a domain in which there is no natural radioactivity runs counter to fact. ...
Four sea-based approaches recommend themselves.
Sub-Seabed Disposal in Stable Clay Formations ...
Burial in Subduction Faults ...
(9) Free Energy? Cold Fusion re-emerges as Low-Energy Hydrogen ("Hydrinos")
From: Brad Arnold <dobermanmacleod@gmail.com> Date: 15.09.2009 03:04 AM
Subject: A news tip that is incredibly high impact, but seemingly low probability (although it is independently verified)
I realize this too-good-to-be-true technology is hard to believe, but the evidence is pretty convincing, and it is extremely high consequence:
What I am about to tell you is independently verified by a respectable university (Rowan) and commercially available (six contracts have been signed so far). There has been a breakthrough in energy technology - a US company is able to get 200X more energy from hydrogen than it takes to get it from water.
The story was broke by Reuters two weeks ago. The company is BlackLight Power Inc and it's website is http://www.blacklightpower.com .
By the way, I am not affiliated with this company, nor do I have a financial interest in it. My bio is at www.myspace.com/dobermanmacleod . ==
BlackLight Power.
Sweet dreams are made of geoengineering
Thu Sep 3, 2009 5:00am EDT
By Gerard Wynn
http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-GreenBusiness/idUSTRE58202P20090903
LONDON (Reuters) - Farming plankton, sending solar panels into orbit, remodeling hydrogen -- for the latest wave of entrepreneurs suggesting easier ways out of climate change, it's all in a day's pitching.
Beyond grabbing headlines, such notions are attracting serious scientific attention and venture funding from investors who at least until the collapse of Lehman Brothers lent credibility to high-risk investment propositions.
Some plans seek radical alternatives to fossil fuels. Other businesses are dreaming of geoengineering -- planning to tweak the earth's climate by removing heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) or reflecting sunlight into space.
Among new energy fixes presented to Reuters in recent days is U.S.-based BlackLight Power.
The company says it may have tapped the energy that cosmologists have struggled to explain, called dark matter, which fills the universe. The concept involves shifting electrons in hydrogen molecules -- obtained cheaply from water -- into a lower orbit, releasing energy in the process.
"It represents a boundless form of new primary energy," Randell Mills, founder and chief executive, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
"I think it's going to replace all forms of fuel in the world." ...ZAP
Since 1991, BlackLight's founder says his company has raised $60 million from private investors who have included -- on a personal basis -- the former chairman of Morgan Stanley, Dick Fisher, and the bank's now retired head of energy. Mills says his goal is to produce a 250 kilowatt prototype by end-2010. ... ==
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/06/what-if-blacklight-power-works-in-2009.html
When the hydrino is created through a reaction between hydrogen and a catalyst, according to Mills, it lets go of more than enough energy to fuel electrolysis in common water, thus producing more hydrogen. The excess energy — the majority — would go to producing electricity. The only outside ingredients needed are a catalyst, to turn the hydrogen to hydrinos, and heat (which would also be generated once the reaction had started). And the hydrinos created by the process? They’re non-reactive and can be released to float up into space, as they’re lighter than helium. Or, even better, they can be processed into unique chemicals with a range of useful applications. ... ==
NASA Takes a Flyer on Hydrinos
Erik Baard 06.07.02
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2002/06/51792
If one of NASA's newest rocket concepts works, it wouldn't just get humans farther out into the universe, it would redefine the place.
The space agency is funding a study of an engine based on a novel conception of the structure of hydrogen, the central idea behind a maverick New Jersey researcher's Grand Unified Theory. This theory has been derided as a "crackpot idea" and "voodoo science" by respected experts in physics.
Anthony J. Marchese, a mechanical engineering professor specializing in propulsion at Rowan University, is getting modest funding ($75,000) from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts to build and test a BlackLight Rocket.
NIAC's mission is to take a flyer on wild ideas. "Don't let your preoccupation with reality stifle your imagination," is the catch phrase on the group's website, which defines its mission as finding "grand, revolutionary concepts for architectures and systems."
Randell Mills, a Harvard-trained medical doctor, has argued for over a decade that electrons aren't unpredictable "clouds" as seen in Quantum Theory, but rather defined, charged bubble-like formations, which he calls "orbitspheres," wrapped around nucleuses.
In a simple atom like hydrogen, with just one electron and a nucleus, this bubble can be catalyzed to shrink to lower than previously observed levels, Mills says, releasing copious energy in the extreme ultraviolet, or black light, spectrum. He calls the reduced energy hydrogen a "hydrino," and founded a company called BlackLight Power to develop the idea.
The trouble is, hydrogen is also the most investigated atom and leading physicists aren't convinced that Mills has found something others have overlooked over the course of a century of modern science.
It's broadly understood that while the electron orbit in a solitary hydrogen atom can be excited to higher, unstable states, it can't be lowered further than a certain point, called the ground state. But Mills claims his hydrinos are just that –- atoms with stable electron orbits below the ground state.
Nobel Laureate physicist Douglas Osheroff of Stanford University has called the hydrino a "crackpot idea," while American Physical Society spokesman Robert Park includes Mills' work in the category of "voodoo science." Park compares attempting to go below the ground state to trying to travel "south of the South Pole."
Marchese, a PhD engineer from Princeton, says NASA granted him the money to study the feasibility of the BlackLight Rocket for six months. None of the NASA money will go to Mills or BlackLight Power, Marchese says, and his work will be done independently.
Marchese's colleague at the Rowan College of Engineering, associate professor of electrical engineering Peter Mark Jansson, researched the BlackLight process while employed by Mills' backer Atlantic Energy, now part of the utility Conectiv.
"My apparatus is very similar to the BlackLight test cells, but built into a rocket thruster," Marchese said. "I'll be testing it in a vacuum chamber in the same conditions where they [Mills' research team] see the BlackLight process happen."
Nowhere on his project home page, however, does Marchese make use of the controversial buzzword hydrino. Adoption of that term could land a researcher into a quagmire over Mills' derided Grand Unified Theory, which dismisses the Big Bang theory and much of mainstream quantum mechanics. The theory is secondary to Marchese -- he's more interested in the energy that might be harnessed from a new phenomenon, even if Mills' paradigms don't bear out.
"If somebody asked me if I believe hydrinos exist, it would be very tough for me to say yes because it really goes against science theory as I know it and the whole human races knows it. But from what I can tell from BlackLight's studies -- and they've been pretty good about letting others outside verify their excess energy -- there are some things going on that people are having trouble understanding." ==
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/22820
Now another theorist has joined the debate with a different point of view. Jan Naudts of the University of Antwerp in Belgium argues that the Klein-Gordon equation of relativistic quantum mechanics does indeed permit the existence of a low-lying hydrino state, although he stops short of claiming that hydrino states really exist (physics/0507193). "In physics the experiment decides," says Naudts. "Either the hydrino exists, in which case we have to accept a small correction to the textbooks on quantum mechanics, or it does not exist, in which case we have to find better arguments to explain why it does not exist." Naudts says that results of Mills and co-workers have recently been confirmed by a group at the Technical University of Eindhoven. "Nothing is decided yet, but I think it is time to fill the holes in our theoretical understanding of the hydrogen atom."
Comment (Peter M.):
If such light H molecules drift high in the atmosphere, could they be lost forever?
(10) Farmers are still not allowed to kill Fruit Bats, to stop Hendra virus spreading
{the Hendra virus kills horses and people; it is transmitted by fruit bats (flying foxes)}
Hendra risk reduction plan targets bats
By Paul Robinson
Posted September 14, 2009 08:48:00
Map: Rockhampton 4700
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/14/2684768.htm
The Queensland Government is being urged to allow property owners to clear trees from around horse yards to reduce the risk of Hendra virus.
The Queensland Horse Council (QHC) has suggested a number of measures after outbreaks in central and northern Queensland.
Flying foxes are believed to play a part in spreading Hendra virus.
QHC president Debbie Dekker says horse owners should be able to remove flowering trees that attract bats.
"It's not just fruit trees, it's also eucalypt and native trees, melaleucas, there's a lot of things that fruit bats feed on," she said.
"We're also developing a paper on recommended plantings for trees that aren't fruit bat friendly, that they don't like, to discourage them away from those night holding areas."
Ms Dekker says covering horses' food and water containers is not enough.
"There's been situations where the horses have just been grazing horses, they haven't been fed at all," she said.
"They're obviously picking it up off their grazing things ... off maybe leaves of a tree or eating grass that's underneath a tree where a bat has been feeding, so we need to address that situation."
(11) Green jobs dopey, says CFMEU leader, Tony Maher
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,26068194-5005200,00.html
Sid Maher | September 14, 2009
ONE of Australia's most powerful union leaders has lashed out at the push for green jobs, labelling it a "dopey term", and has dismissed environmental campaigns against some of the nation's major export industries as "judgmental nonsense".
The president of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, Tony Maher, said existing industries such as coal and steelmaking would have an important place in the nation's future economic prospects and in producing a lower carbon future.
He said carbon capture and storage and other hopes for cutting emissions such as solar and thermal, would require massive amounts of steel that should be made by Australian steel workers.
Mr Maher said much of the opposition to major industries - particularly the coal industry - was "well-intentioned naivete".
"By mid-century we'll be using twice as much coal and a lot more steel and plastic and concrete that aren't the flavour of the month with environmentalists and green groups," he said.
Yesterday he dismissed a protest at Victoria's Hazelwood power station as "just silly".
His rhetoric is at odds with ACTU president Sharan Burrow, who has embarked on a campaign to argue the benefits of green jobs, including joining the Southern Cross Climate Coalition, a joint group of welfare, union, research and environmental organisations that have been lobbying the government to do more to create green jobs. ...
But while white-collar workers were more comfortable with talking about green jobs, Mr Maher said he was concerned for his blue-collar constituency, keeping existing industries and fitting them into a restructured low-carbon economy. ...
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