EU citizen? You can add your name to a couple of letters about nuclear power which may affect your future.

So... I'm really bad at getting round to writing letters... that's why, when someone else has done it for me, even better than me...I'm happy...especially when I can put my name to it, too.

There are two such letter out there at the moment, both about the fact that a whole lot of us don't want nuclear power and a whole lot of us don't want to subsidise it... and probably even more don't want their energy bills to go up in the future, especially when other people's are going down.

The first is an open letter from Energy Fair to E.U. Commissioner Almunia:

“No valid justification for subsidising nuclear power”, which you can endorse. The instructions are with their letter and they will make sure that your endorsement reaches the commissioner, with copies to Günther Oettinger, Commissioner for Energy, Connie Hedegaard, Commissioner for Climate Action, and President José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission.

The link to the letter is http://www.energyfair.org.uk/home/open-letter

The letter is also in The Ecologist, http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2160503/nuclear_subsidies_open_letter_to_commissioner_almunia.html

The other E protest is a new one from Global 2000. (Their previous successful petition against nuclear power being included in the EU subsidies for renewable energy was called “My Voice Against Nuclear Power”.)

This new E protest is “Not a single cent for nuclear power!” and is against any new state aid for nuclear power.   Using the Global 2000 form you can send the EU Commissioner for Competition Almunia an email.

This is the link   http://www.my-voice.eu/

Why?

These are six relevant articles!

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/10/30/hinkley-c-nuclear-power-plant-get-twice-rate-solar-pv-uk-government/?utm_source=Cleantechnica+News&utm_campaign=07cc6df6e8-RSS_

http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/news/comment/hinkley-a-huge-contribution-towards-yesterdays-energy-thinking/ 

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2013/oct/21/nuclear-power-energy-edf-deal

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2013/sep/04/fukushima-farce-nuclear-industry-flaw

http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=208

http://cus.net/news/news4.html

CENSORED NEWS: International Uranium Film Festival coming to Navajo Nation

CENSORED NEWS: International Uranium Film Festival coming to Navajo Nation

What happens when a film is about your life?

On November 27th  the travelling Uranium film festival arrives in the USA.  The main festival takes place each year in Rio de Janeiro, when films from all over the world are entered for the festival. It's the only one of its kind, showing films about nuclear power, uranium mining, nuclear weapons and the health effects of radioactivity. You can find out a lot more from their amazing website.
The first films will be shown in Albuquerque NM, followed by screenings in Santa Fe and Window Rock.  Next year films will be shown in Washington D.C. and in New York City in February.
One of the films is 'The River That Harms'.  Just fourteen weeks after the accident at Three Mile Island, which a great many people have heard about, there was another nuclear tragedy, which I for one, did not find out out about for many years.
When I read that ninety million gallons of liquid nuclear waste and eleven hundred tons of solid mill wastes burst through a broken dam wall at the Church Rock Uranium Mill Facility, contaminating the Puerco River,  and I had never heard about it, I was bemused.
Many of the people affected were from the Navajo Nation. It was the river they lived by. It was the land that their animals grazed and the water that they drank, and the pools that their children played in....
Now we have films about children who don't play outside in Japan and children whose lives were affected by a poisoned river in the USA. But did their parents ever think it would happen to them, or that a film would be made about them? If the films weren't made, would you know about them?
The uranium that powered the plants in Fukushima, apparently, came from mines in Australia, but I also read of protests and long protest marches by Aboriginal people along with international protesters against the mining of uranium  http://indymedia.org.au/2013/05/10/wgar-news-walkatjurra-walkabout-stepping-out-against-uranium-mining-wanfa-anawa
 Our children, your children, have the right to be in happy films in a bright future.  It's up to us to see that this happens.

travelling Uranium Film Festival comes to Munich and then Bamberg and Berlin.

This is the poster for the travelling Uranium Film Festival in Munich.  It is being held from 26th to 29th September which coincides with the Beerfest in Munich.  It will be a lively time to visit the city. The films are exceptional.  A truly international film festival, it hosts films from across the world, including Germany and the programme and details of the films being shown, as well as at previous festivals can be seen at the website, http://www.uraniumfilmfestival.org/index.php/en/
The website can be read in German, English and Brazilian and if you click on the German language version you can find all the details of the festival in Bamberg, from 30th September to 1st October and Berlin, from 3rd October to 7th October.
The website is worth visiting, even if you can't make it to the cinema; it is very visual.  If you are thinking of entering the 4th international festival, entry is open until 1st. January 2014 and it's free!
At a time when the world is slowly waking up to the seriousness of the situation in Japan and the consequences of nuclear power, weapons and waste, these films have a most powerful message.

Rio de Janeiro. The International Uranium Film Festival.

Yesterday, I saw the waves breaking on the shorerline of Rio de Janeiro.  I really did! Well, it was on EarthCam  Rio de Janeiro  If you have a moment, it's a lovely sight.... If I had really been there, I would have been making my way a little further up the coast to Flamengo Park and the Museum of Modern Arts where The Third International Uranium Film Festival  is being held.  They are showing forty eight films from a large number submitted this year from around twenty countries, too many for them all to be shown in the time. I always wonder about the forty ninth film.
This is one of those rare film festivals which shows films that the mainstream frequently seems to shy away from, often made by brave, deeply committed people who are determined that the truth should be heard and the victims given a voice. Even more bravely, when the victims themselves, speak out.
Like me, you don't have to go there to find out about them, the festival has a really amazing website. http://www.uraniumfilmfestival.org/index.php/en/ and if you go to their program, you can find out about individual films.
These people are making waves.

Hot water

On April 1st, Mochizuki wrote in the Fukushima Diary that the sea water off shore Fukushima is warmer than the average of past 30 years by around 2.5 degrees C   http://fukushima-diary.com/2013/04/sea-water-offshore-fukushima-is-warmer-than-the-average-of-past-30-years-by-2-5%E2%84%83/
This dramatic rise in temperature was also picked up in the Fukushima webcam discussion thread, in ENE news.
On  April 4th, I looked at the Unisys Weather - Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies chart and it was still showing up. This is a map from their archives for April 7th 2013   http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-130407.gif
This comes from a very helpful SST anomalies archive provided by Unisys.  You can link to it from the previous map, or follow this link, http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/ to a list which is updated about weekly for sea surface temperature anomalies.  I couldn't see anything significant in the March 4th weekly map, or in the weeks just preceding it, but there is clear evidence in the week of March 11th onwards of a temperature rise.
There is also a Unisys Weather - Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies chart  (current)  http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sfc_daily.php?plot=ssa&inv=0&t=cur    and Elders has a an excellent chart of current anomalies,  http://www.eldersweather.com.au
If you are also new to this area, don't forget that these are maps of sea surface temperature anomalies, not overall sea surface temperatures.  It can be a bit confusing!
I don't think that global warming is responsible for this.

Uranium Film Festival. 2013

Last year, after a spectacular film festival, the films were taken on tour to Berlin and India. The need for films like these to be shown is becoming more and more obvious.  How many mainstream films do you see about uranium mining and nuclear accidents, and how long have we got left on this planet?
 This year, the festival will be held from May 16th to May 26th in Rio de Janeiro, at the Museum of Modern Art cinema.  If you can't get there, you can still find out about the films at http://www.uraniumfilmfestival.org/index.php/en/   About 150 films were submitted from 20 countries.  They had the hard task of picking just 48 of these for this year's festival.
The website is dramatic and you can read about every film being shown in the program, under 'Films'.  http://www.uraniumfilmfestival.org/index.php/en/programme/films 
by clicking onto each film.