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Following the latest spill of radioactive material at ERAs Ranger uranium mine he ABC has an opinion piece wondering if it is time to decommission the industry - Is time up for Australias uranium industry ?.

IN THE EARLY HOURS of December 7, a crack appeared in a large leach tank in the processing area of the Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu National Park. The area was evacuated, the tank completely failed, the containment system was inadequate and one million litres of highly acidic uranium slurry went sliding downhill — taking Energy Resources of Australias credibility with it.

The spill has left traditional owners who live and rely on creeks only kilometres downstream angry and "sick with worry" and raised profound concerns about the management culture and integrity of infrastructure at the mine.

Operations at Ranger are now halted. The mine operates inside Kakadu National Park — Australias largest park and a dual World Heritage listed region. It, and its people, deserve the highest standards of protection, but sadly Ranger is a long way short of this.

The Australian uranium industry has long been a source of trouble. Now it is increasingly in trouble. The commodity price has collapsed, projects across the country have been stalled, deferred or scrapped and the recent Kakadu spill has again raised community attention and concern.

At least the absence of a nuclear power industry in Australia means we dont have stories emerging like this one from the US - U.S. Dumped Tens of Thousands of Steel Drums Containing Atomic Waste Off Coastlines .

More than four decades after the U.S. halted a controversial ocean dumping program, the country is facing a mostly forgotten Cold War legacy in its waters: tens of thousands of steel drums of atomic waste.

From 1946 to 1970, federal records show, 55-gallon drums and other containers of nuclear waste were pitched into the Atlantic and Pacific at dozens of sites off California, Massachusetts and a handful of other states. Much of the trash came from government-related work, ranging from mildly contaminated lab coats to waste from the country’s effort to build nuclear weapons.

Federal officials have long maintained that, despite some leakage from containers, there isn’t evidence of damage to the wider ocean environment or threats to public health through contamination of seafood. But a Wall Street Journal review of decades of federal and other records found unanswered questions about a dumping program once labeled “seriously substandard” by a senior Environmental Protection Agency official…

ReNew Economy has a report on research that may result in a massive tax bill for the coal seam gas industry - Gas industry rattled by findings of triple normal levels of methane.

LEVELS of the potent greenhouse gas methane have been recorded at more than three times their normal background levels at coal seam gas fields in Australia, raising questions about the true climate change impact of the booming industry.

The findings, which have been submitted both for peer review and to the Federal Department of Climate Change, also raise doubts about how much the export-driven coal seam gas (CSG) industry should pay under the country’s carbon price laws.

Southern Cross University (SCU) researchers Dr Isaac Santos and Dr Damien Maher used a hi-tech measuring device attached to a vehicle to compare levels of methane in the air at different locations in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales. The gas industry was quick to attack their findings and the scientists themselves.

The Queensland government has already approved several major multi-billion dollar CSG projects worth more than $60 billion, all of which are focussed on converting the gas to export-friendly liquefied natural gas (LNG).

More than 30,000 gas wells will be drilled in the state in the coming decades and the industry has estimated between 10 per cent and 40 per cent of the wells will undergo hydraulic fracturing.

The industry and state and federal ministers have claimed that electricity derived from coal seam gas will help slow growth in carbon emissions but, so far, no comprehensive independent lifecycle assessment of emissions has been carried out.

Last August, a Right to Information request submitted by me and reported in the Brisbane Times revealed that the state’s government was prepared to rely on industry-funded research when it came to understanding the industry’s carbon footprint.

A later report from the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, which looked at emissions from CSG when burned for electricity in China, was produced by Worley Parsons, a company which had won a $580 million contract to work on a major CSG-to-LNG project in the state.

The Federal Energy Minister Martin Ferguson has also waved away suggestions that the government should commission its own independent research into CSG emissions, and was reported as saying such a study was “unnecessary”.

The work at Southern Cross University is arguably the first attempt to independently measure levels of methane coming from gasfield areas.

Dr Santos said in a university release: “The current discussions on CSG are often based on anecdotal evidence, old observations not designed to assess CSG or data obtained overseas. We believe universities are independent institutions that should provide hard data to inform this discussion. The lack of site-specific baseline data is staggering.”

In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Dr Maher said while it was not possible yet to say “definitively” that the raised levels of methane were due to leaks from the CSG facilities, “we have multiple lines of evidence to suggest that that is what is causing it”. He said the initial findings pointed to the CSG operations as a likely source of the raised methane levels – in particular, from “fugitive emissions.

Mark Lewis has an article at The FT on this years IEA World Energy Outlook - Toil for oil means industry sums do not add up - noting it highlights that high oil prices and massive increases in capital spending by oil firms are not resulting in significant increases in production (probably the best harbinger of peak oil).

Lewis notes this "should be a reality check for those now hyping a new age of global oil abundance".

The ABCs "7:30 Report" program has an update on the state of the Australian geothermal power industry - Geothermal industry pushes for more power.

MIKE SEXTON, REPORTER: Every year thousands of punters head to Birdsville in Outback Queensland for the annual races. Perhaps few would be aware though their tinnies are being kept on ice in part thanks to electricity generated from scolding hot water coming from deep beneath the desert floor.

CHRIS SMITH, ERGON ENERGY: The water comes up from the Artesian Basin at 98 degrees Celsius. The water then passes through a gas field heat exchanger which heats the gas and pressurises it and then it goes through a turbine and produces electricity.

MIKE SEXTON: The engineerings relatively simple and the outcome is emission-free power 24 hours per day that doesnt rely on the wind blowing or the sun shining.

CHRIS SMITH: The plant at Birdsville was custom-made when it was done, so its done quite some time ago. But technologys changed now and theres - this sort of plant is readily available and is being used throughout the world.

MIKE SEXTON: This is just one form of whats known as geothermal energy where the heat stored in subterranean rock formations is harnessed to generate electricity. Although the Birdsville plant is tiny, the geothermal potential in Australia is huge.

SUSAN JEANES, AUST. GEOTHERMAL ENERGY ASSN: The resource is vast. If we mined just one per cent of the national - the nations geothermal heat, in the top five kilometres of the crust we could make 26,000 times Australias annual energy supply. So theres no limitation on the resource.

MIKE SEXTON: Given the need for clean baseload power and the size of the resource, its no surprise that more than 50 geothermal licences have been issued in Australia. One of the more advanced is Petratherm, which has drilled shafts into hot rocks at Paralana in outback South Australia. The next step is to pump water down which converts to steam which is then used to drive turbines.

TERRY KALLIS, CEO, PETRATHERM: We estimate at Paralana alone we could produce 13,000 megawatts of power. Now thats about four times the power requirement of South Australia.

MIKE SEXTON: Excitement about the potential initially attracted investors prepared to take a risk on a new industry. But drilling wells hundreds of metres into granite in remote locations is a difficult and expensive business, and after years of promise, the industry has delivered only modest results. That, coupled with the GFC, has seen investors turning their backs on geothermal companies.