Ever since the discovery of the massive Prudhoe Bay oil field on Alaska's North Slope in 1968, the oil industry has longed to search for and develop offshore. Extreme Arctic conditions and the immensely powerful and shifting Arctic ice pack meant that exploration, and particularly production, would be extremely expensive and risky. Flying in the face of it's 'green' rhetoric and pronouncements on the dangers of climate change, BP Amoco is now trying to move offshore, to develop new oil which will inevitably add to the burden of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The 1997-1998 El Nino event with its fires, floods and outbreaks of disease and pestilence, offers a glimpse of the future in a 'warmed' world and illustrates vividly the disastrous consequences that even minor fluctuations in the climate system can bring.
Scientists warn that the rates of climate change are likely to exceed any in the last 10,000 years, making it impossible for many ecosystems to adapt and survive.
The South Pacific Sanctuary will protect the breeding grounds of whales whose feeding grounds are within the Southern Ocean Sanctuary, thus ensuring that whaling is prohibited on these populations where ever they might be.
Some populations of whales within the South Pacific Sanctuary were devastated by commercial whaling. For example, the humpback whales around Tonga were virtually wiped out by commercial whaling.
There is no safe dose of radiation. Exposure to radiation at any level can increase the risk of developing radiation-linked diseases like cancer. The way to minimise the risk is to minimise exposure to radiation as far as possible.
DURING the week beginning July 12th, two ships carrying a secret cargo of dangerous, nuclear weapons-usable plutonium fuel will leave ports in Britain and France and sail around the globe to Japan. On board will be fuel containing more plutonium than in the entire Indian nuclear weapons program.
On the 21st of July, two ships carrying a cargo of dangerous, weapons-usable plutonium fuel left Europe to sail around the globe, via Cape of Good Hope and the South West Pacific Ocean, to Japan. On board is nuclear fuel containing more nuclear weapons usable material than in the entire Indian and Pakistan nuclear weapons programmes.
There is currently considerable concern amongst BNFL employees, and most people living in West Cumbria, that ending nuclear reprocessing at Sellafield would mean massive job losses and be devastating to the local area. Stopping nuclear reprocessing is nevertheless essential to protect the environment and the health of future generations, and to end the nuclear proliferation threat caused by separating nuclear weapons-usable plutonium.
BNFL often claims that reprocessing must continue because contracts between them and their customers (the nuclear utilities) are legally binding. In addition, because large quantities of spent nuclear fuel have already been sent to Sellafield, and money has been paid up-front for this spent fuel to be reprocessed, it is sometimes argued that reprocessing this fuel is a commitment that cannot be broken.
The reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel was always at the heart of the civilian nuclear enterprise. Separating plutonium and unburned uranium from the fuel matrix was regarded as indispensable. This was because uranium would become scarce, fast breeder reactors (dependent on large amounts of plutonium as a fuel) would come to dominate, and radioactive waste management (RWM) would become easier with the smaller volume of high level waste (HLW) that reprocessing would isolate...
