The Greens will not be happy. The push for pointless decarbonization inexorably leads to nuclear power. The UK is not only about to sign deals for 16 small nuclear reactors, they are shortlisting sites for a fusion plant. It’s another unintended consequence the Greens did not see coming.
UK to put nuclear power at heart of net zero emissions strategy
Jim Pickard and Natalie Thomas, Financial Times
U.K. ministers will put nuclear power at the heart of Britain’s strategy to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 in government documents expected as early as next week, the Financial Times reported.
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng is to unveil an overarching “Net Zero Strategy” paper as soon as Monday, along with a “Heat and Building Strategy” and a Treasury assessment of the cost of reaching the 2050 goal, the report said.
The main strategy will have a heavy focus on Britain’s nuclear power program. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was expected to give the go-ahead to the documents on Friday, according to the report.
The catch, consumers will have to pay a levy years before they get the electricity:
The creation of a “regulated asset base” model will be key to delivering future large atomic-power stations. Under the plan, households will be charged for the cost of a plant via an energy levy long before it begins generating electricity, the report said.
The nuclear levy is still a “Green Fee” or a “carbon tax”. But at least it won’t leave the country facing an energy crisis every time the wind slows. The UK still has plenty of shale gas to be fracked if only they’d let themselves use it.
Half of Australians already support nuclear power
A recent Essential poll shows that without any public debate at all, 50% of voters already support nuclear power. When the undecideds (18%) hear that there are 450 nuclear plants around the world, the number of supporters can only grow.
Australia will “go Nuclear” too if the Green Blob pushes us to adopt the witchcraft Net Zero goal that uses power plants as “weather changing” machines.
The thing slowing nuclear power in Australia was that coal power was so much cheaper. There is an opening here for one of the big parties to pull a nuclear rabbit out of their hats. The Coalition may lose the coal territory seats of Queensland and the coming election, especially given how unpopular they are in WA too. The Australian Workers Union now backs nukes. Imagine if the Labor Party planned for nuclear power which would allow them to offset the emissions from an extension of coal stations. The Labor Party would suddenly look pragmatic, differentiate itself from The Greens, and the Liberals would be left holding the “Green Hydrogen” and Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro fantasy bag that no one believes in.
One third of the Greens might even vote Labor because they support nukes.
Essential Poll https://essentialvision.com.au/support-for-nuclear-energy-in-australia
Half the Greens are totally against nuclear power, while the other half are considering their future.
133
You’re wrong Elgordo,
The other half of the greens are totally opposed to any form of energy!
490
I am putting together a nice range of Hair shirts. Please order two sizes smaller than you would normally as you will grow into it as food supplies diminish as we reduce our energy consumption, fertilisers dimnish and less co2 reduces plant growth
470
In that same poll 12% of Greens strongly support nuclear power.
41
Wow! Precisely what they were told in 2010.
Virtually all renewables has to be backed up by reliable generation.
Derek Birkett in When will the lights go out? and 11 years later when the lights start going out somebody in Government wakes up.
There is also a problem of too much renewables i.e. have more generation than the grid can absorb, also causing blackouts.
Some people think that batteries are the answer but never explain what they would cost (or the problems).
470
“Virtually all renewables has to be backed up by reliable generation.” Totally correct Graeme No.3
So that raises the question, why have so called renewables. Why duplicate your power generation plant?.
310
Hmmmm! Because (as we all know) it
saves the planetmakes money for those people who build and operate renewable energy systems…Greed trumps common sense on a daily basis.
180
Industry in China is toast!
The high cost of coal there can’t make anything that needs it do to this extreme premium price on it.
https://www.howestreet.com/2021/10/trading-desk-notes-for-october-16-2021/
20
China will go nuclear — very fast. Just watch.
They built a liquid fuel reactor to test a few months ago.
10
Great timing. Just in time for COP 26.
Wouldn’t it be nice to think that Morrison was convinced to attend to applaud this announcement there?
Cheers
Dave B
300
Politicians like to ease the masses into new ways gently using the ‘thin-end-of-the-wedge’ technique. And given that several conservative politicians and media outlets (who understand the importance of reliable, cheap energy) in Australia have started talking positively about reducing CO2 output, I can’t help but wonder if nuclear generation is being planned for.
The usual mobs will hurl paint bombs and scream, but I feel a majority of Aussies will think it’s time has well and truly arrived.
140
Nuclear powered submarines were probably a bit of a test case – see how the public reacts, and take it from there. Then again, perhaps this ascribes too much strategy to politicians who do not tend to think too far into the future.
230
G’day J M,
You give them more credit for foresight than I do. I reckon Dutton saw the stupidity of the proposed SA-built, nuclear-to-diesel conversion, not yet started monstrosities to be a strategic error with China already pissing all over us, and initiated the swap to off the shelf nuclear.
Then they were all surprised that the only people to scream “Wrong” were the CCP.
Is that enough for the next step? Only time will tell I suspect.
My view of a decent approach for now is to refurbish our ageing coal fleet, expand if necessary and introduce nuclear as it becomes price competitive. Main aim: ensure low priced, reliable power suitable for industry as well as hot water.
Cheers
Dave B
160
I don’t trust croweater industry to account for this. Enough said over the d3cades about the inefficient and fluffy state of SA.
00
yes, I dont imagine Scomos enthusiasm for so called “nett zero” is based on so called “RE”
10
Reuters have issued a fact check on the rumour that the Scottish government have purchased 20 Tesla EVs for the COP 26 dignitaries, and they won’t be charged with diesel generators.
They say the truth is that it will be 120 Jaguar Land Rover EVs. The article says they are still working on the charging problem, but if they do need generators then they’ll use vegetable oil discarded from the fish and chip shops.
So now I’m totally convinced everything will be eco-friendly. What a relief!
I hope the fish and chip shops aren’t pressured into donating their oil before they have served their hungry customers.
420
Reuters fact check… the antithesis of fact !
290
if its canola oil by all means burn it before they cook in it.
180
Why use carbon fuels at all? Why not hand cranked vegetarian power? But then the vegetarians will be burning carbohydrates which are the same thing and outputting CO2. And it’s the concept of avoiding deadly CO2 which matters. But the vegetarians will output just as much CO2, even more with their low efficiency. Avoiding CO2 is so difficult, so use nuclear energy. At least it is totally emission free. Now that’s irony. Only nuclear emission free energy can save us.
160
The Greens have painted themselves into a corner with anti fossil fuel, anti CO2 arguments for 33 years. Now with the absolute failure of so called ‘renewables’ to provide reliable, cheap, commandable, adequate power, the world has no choice but nuclear. More irony than a foundry.
310
It’s a case of “Be careful what you wish for” but in this case their disappointment is our relief.
70
“Why use carbon fuels at all?” Absolutely TdeF. Just give the canola plants to a few horses to eat and they can use to pull the Tesla cars to and from the venue. Much more efficient.
100
How about their jets to get there ?
00
Australia does not need to go nuclear.
They need to solidify and increase their coal and gas fired electricity supply.
Become a country that can actually make something again.
That requires plentiful reliable electricity and other fossil fuels.
Wind and solar can never lead us down that path, only down the path to poverty and social decay.
642
ps.. I have nothing against nuclear… its just not necessary.
390
It could be prudent for us to keep our reserves of high grade coal for as long as possible as this might encourage the main overseas coal users to convert to nuclear. We could then supply uranium ‘yellow cake’ AND clean coal to countries deemed naughty and not to be trusted with nuclear plants.
Or does my plan fly like a pig?
100
Whatever the market will bare, we should continue to sell our high grade coal until fusion power comes on tap in the 21st century.
12
bear
30
I can’t blame auto correct.
31
I feel naked.
50
I’ve just been made aware of a declaration made on behalf of a large number of doctors and medical professionals regarding what’s happening with CV19 treatment.
A meeting in Rome has been the focus for this development and Dr Robert Malone reads it.
It’s off topic for this thread but seems important.
https://globalcovidsummit.org/
11
clarence.t
The big reason to use nuclear is because it is better than any other way at national grid scale.
People who have not studied (in depth) the topic of what is best tend to have 2 objections.
1. Too costly. But it is not if you use sensible, known engineering and throw out the thousands of high cost, low need safety provisions that opponents have added over decades. France showed that national coverage at low cost is easily possible.
2. Bombs. So remote a scenario that it can be viewed as the objection of last resort when all other whinges have failed.
Note: my own participation in nuclear started in 1970 and it required continued awareness of many aspects of nuclear. Scientifically, it is simple, understood and elegant. Nothing not to like. Geoff S
140
As I said, if you want to go nuclear, build a processing plant first.
Silly to send it overseas then buy it back, when we “should” be perfectly capable of doing the processing ourselves.
40
The two concerns you raise do come up (though bombs is too stupid for words) but you’ve left off the two I hear most, and which constitute the major reasons for “not in my backyard”.
1.Waste production, transport and storage.
2.Safety.
If you can address those two then cost melts away especially to the people who don’t want CO2 emissions and who see wind turbines as being an awful option.
15
G A…. catch up with current Nuclear tech, and historic safety comparasons .
You will be pleasantly surprised on both issues.
60
Chad… you didn’t read what I wrote. It is not me who needs to catch up with it (did you read where I wrote NIMBY?)
This is an issue of communication and an issue of leadership and your ESP about what I know or don’t changes nothing.
01
GA,…
…..if you know the answers, why ask someone else to address the questions. ?
20
Geoff conveniently missed the actual reasons for community hesitancy and answered them as though the matter was done. it’s not.
Education and leadership.
11
GA is correct. The issue is communcation and leadership.
Communication is stifled by the MSM including the ABC.
Leadership is minimal for nuclear power at present, however there has been some movement with the adoption of the nuclear submarines proposal which seems to have been broadly accepted.
Leadership on reforming the ABC is nowhere to be seen from the government.
UAP and PHON are rattling the cage.
10
This is a problem for Australia?
o.0
00
If Australia cannot handle the waste/storage/safety aspect there is no hope for the nuclear industry
30
I never said it couldn’t but who is out there proposing it?
00
Yes but coal is pretty good at grids as well.
20
Possibly one of the issues is the “economies of scale” factor. Can put nukes near the existing coal-fired behemoths and use the existing transformers/UHV networks. Renewables come in smaller output capacity units “randomly” located so will need more UHV points of input to grid. Suspect this extra transmission expenditure adds significantly to the $M per GWh of energy supplied and is a barrier to the cost-effectiveness of a renewables-based grid.
20
I’ve noticed the people who vigorously protest against nuclear power mostly seem uneducated about the technicalities of it. And I’m talking about just a ‘general knowledge’ level of understanding here, not PhD level.
It reminds me of a stunt by American magicians Penn and Teller who sent out a young attractive woman with a petition calling for an immediate ban on dihydrogen monoxide. She urged support for a ban because – It’s found now in even the remotest of locations from mountain tops to the depths of the oceans, and is being added to our foods and causes thousands of deaths each year.
Many people signed the petition, concerned that such a dangerous chemical was being used without our consent. Dihydrogen monoxide is water. And yes, it causes thousands of deaths per year – floods and drownings plus transporting disease causing bacteria.
30
tis the path of least resistance to a reliable electricity grid
I dont think the big issues will be the Greens, just NIMBY ism
00
As the Newcastle song had it –
“Don’t you ever let a chance go by”
Foot in the door then get started
70
Nuclear….good
Anything is better than relaughables
230
Yes, but sadly there are many even here who are against it. Chicken little would be a good description, but of course I could come up with many others.
50
Sorry but if you believe putting those small nuclear terrorist targets in your backyard is a good idea then go ahead. I’ll take coal any day, thank you.
44
I’d be happier to work in a nuclear facility than a coal one.
91
What exactly is your problem with coal? Our biggest trading partner is building new coal fired power plants and we should do the same.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/12/china-coal-fired-plants-uk-cop26-climate-summit-global-phase-out
Don’t fall into the trap of paying through the nose for something we don’t need.
33
Nothing. What is your problem with nuclear energy? In any case, you are still missing the point. It’s not about CO2. It’s about tyranny. SO, it’s moot as to whether we use coal or not. As for paying through the nose, we are already doing that with renewables. Nuclear is far cheaper option than renewables for achieving the same energy output over time. It appears you prefer renewables because it not nuclear, not because it’s cheaper as you stated in the past. WAKE UP!
30
The Linglong One design sounds promising and as they intend using it along the Belt and Road we should wait awhile.
‘The China National Nuclear Corporation has started building its first small modular reactor (SMR) on the island province of Hainan, at its Changjiang nuclear power plant.
‘It will be China’s own Linglong One design, it will be about 125 MW, it will take about 5 years to build, and it will generate about a billion kWh/year.’ (Forbes)
If the electorate choose to go nuclear, then that is fine by me, but its going to be a fierce debate. Renewables are with us now and the government is underwriting a gas fired power plant as a transition.
02
These days, political policy, and strategic planning can change fast.
That Gas plant could dissapear off the radar overnight with a change of government, and equally Nuclear could become front and center
( Note, the UK have just placed orders for a dozen SMRs )
And as time distroys the existing Solar and Wind installations, even their supporter may begin to realise the folly of that route and support other options.
30
No party wants to think of the nuclear option if they could possibly avoid it. The government hoped the market would build the gas plant, but it wasn’t interested, which is why its being underwritten.
That will go ahead because its relatively cheap and a quick build, its only a transition until renewables are laughed out of the industry.
02
Im just being realistic..
If the Government should change next year and (god forbid) we end up with Labour ,…..that Gas plant will be forgotten.
Likewise, if Morrison is returned , i can see Nuclear being on the table big time.
10
The entire Energy argument is nonsense and dilute, TOXIC Ruinables should be ignored and therefore the choice should be Coal, Gas or Nukes.
Myself I think we should quickly build new HELE Coal or Gas plants and perhaps Nukes in the future.
So far Green Hydrogen is total BS and so is pumped Hydro.
470
Agree completely.
Coal for good solid reliable baseload.
Gas for load-following and peakers… like SA uses a lot of the time.
Nuclear, once we establish a processing industry for either conventional or thorium.
(at the moment, we would have to send it OS, then get it shipped back in a usable form.. d’oh)
170
“Ruinables”
Genius!
80
Totally agree
I have been saying this for quite some time
50
You and others are ignoring the elephant in the room. It says NO! to coal. Our masters have decided. The only thing we can do now is convince them to go nuclear so they can save face. Personally I too would prefer we build new HELE plants but unless PM Morrison does a 180, I can’t see it ever happening. Perhaps he can change (again). For now going nuclear would be the easier option for him, and just as good for the rest of us if not better since it would give us a new and viable industry.
93
“NO! to coal.”
That is only in a dream/nightmare state of mental derangement named AGW.
Once the elephant wakes up to the reality that atmospheric CO2 is a blessing, not a curse, …
… coal will be the go-to source of reliable energy again.
122
That’s the much bigger elephant outside the room that will smash the whole building not just the contents after the initial elephant inside the room has done its job. You still don’t get it. It’s not about CO2, it’s about power and control by tyrannical governments.
91
Rubbish, that is irrational.
Its all about CO2 and whether it has the ability to warm the planet. At this rate you will fail political and atmospheric science.
12
If it was about CO2 then even the greenies would have adopted nuclear decades ago; certainly governments would have. You are not only irrational you are gullible for believing it’s about CO2 and not about a more power and control by governments.
60
The government is looking at nuclear.
‘Experience in other countries where nuclear reactors are introduced indicates that initially costs and lead times may exceed expectations.
‘A skilled work force is required to construct, operate and maintain the facilities. In addition, any reactor construction in Australia would likely need to be in a coastal location to assure cooling water.
‘In due course, a permanent repository for high-level reactor waste would need to be identified, constructed and operated, quite distinct from current efforts to develop a repository for low and intermediate level waste.
‘The example of the United Arab Emirates, where a Korean consortium is building four reactors, may prove instructive in how a modern nuclear industry could function.’ (aph.gov)
01
PeterS:
Is it possible that the best PM we’ve got has changed his mind? I mean, his thought bubble about going with more renewables in combination with gas (lower emissions than that naughty coal but don’t mention the higher cost) hasn’t quite worked out in The UK or Germany?
So go with EMISSION FREE NUCLEAR & Renewables.
Unfortunately the 2 don’t complement each other as one is best for continuous generation and the other is best for generating money for the insiders. We would still wind up needing batteries, pumped storage and ‘peaking’ gas plants which The Greens think are wonderful despite the high operating cost and much higher emissions.
42
It’s like déjà vu all over again …
1980, Queensland’s first hydrogen car to combat the energy crisis:
Horvath’s hydrogen Fairlane
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9he4Pyqffrk
10
Yes, the Deep Greens with red interiors will be livid at this news.
The whole idea of pushing “renewables” was to weaken the West.
Now if the West goes nuke it will grow stronger – they will have to do all they can to stop the building of the nuke plants.
240
Cue Bob Brown….enters stage left
00
The most important issue around nuclear power generation is of course safety. If public opinion is to be well-informed, this is THE pivotal question, and data is readily available that shows very clearly how dangerous it is – or isn’t. Nuclear power stations have been in operation for long enough now that we can determine exactly what the safety issues are/aren’t and what the environmental impacts are. It goes without saying that ALL human activity, even making a vegan sandwich, has environmental impact, but discussion should be based on empirical fact, with meaningful data.
Simple. No need to guess. Just the lack of horror stories from places like France tell us that nuclear plants are safe, but let’s do it right.
Of course this won’t change the minds of the welded-on activists whose agenda goes beyond just protecting the environment. Nevertheless, the voters need to hear it. Just how we get that message and information to them in useful terms is the key. We cannot of course rely on Their ABC.
160
Nuclear is safe if it is done right, and the French have done it right and one thing they did right is to have a fleet all the same, like Qantas used to have when it was run sensibly, an all 747 fleet, that’s what the French have done and it’s what almost everybody else HAVEN’T done, we should learn from this, pick a great design and stick with it.
10
The greens have two choices
Either persist in their current irrational and narrowly focused policies, watch energy costs soar as supplies dwindle and take the consequences as their political movement falls apart.
Or accept nuclear power as part of a green energy policy. That would go against decades of irrational hate but Shellenberger and Michael Moore have made the transition because they can see it is the only logical way out of our energy dilemma
There is a third option I suppose, which is to embrace fossil fuels but that isn’t going to happen unless there is some radical new way of carbon capture and storage. Bearing in mind how much Australia has to lose as regards its valuable coal reserves I am surprised there is no some big programme going on to try to achieve this. Having said that you have giant reserves of uranium.
Whatever route the UK and the West generally take there is likely to be at least a 10 year energy shortfall as nuclear power plants take a long time to get up and running
160
“Either persist in their current irrational and narrowly focused policies, watch energy costs soar … “
That isn’t an unintended consequence, I can assure you.
120
tonyb:
The best use for brown coal is chemical. Use it to produce hydrogen** if that keeps the gullible turkeys quiet, but use the by-product carbon oxides either as building blocks e.g. for domestic diesel fuel or burn it generating electricity, with lower emissions.
**We were supposed to be spending $400 million in Gippsland on a pilot plant to send hydrogen to Japan. Maybe they found out what that would cost.
20
Tonyb said:
Really?
Is 4 – 5 years a long time?
… because Terestrial Energy say they can do it in 3 – 4 years.
(see https://terestrialenergy.com)
Liquid Fuel Thorium Reactors are easy … clean and very safe.
You’re probably still thinking in terms of the 1950’s and 1960’s pressurised water cooled reactors — piles of carbon and lots of fuel rods.
Ancient Technology.
10
spelling:
grrr.
Terrestrial Energy
00
A fusion plant!! Ha Ha Ha, ROFL, BOJO’s really off to the fairies. Gotta laugh at the complete stupidity of UK politicians. They believe anything. Net zero 2050? Hey I’ve got a used starship going cheap….
190
Rob
The UK has been spending billions on fusion research for the last 50 years. I used to live near two of the research facilities.
https://ccfe.ukaea.uk/fusion-energy/fusion-in-brief/
More research is being put in at present, obviously in response to the governments mad net zero policies and a growing realisation ( I hope) that we need to do something drastic as wind and solar (at our latitude!1) are peripheral. So nuclear reactors hopefully will be part of the proven programme. Fusion is a back up that is not quite pie in the sky but is many years off, should it ever be possible.
110
You would have to conclude, based on the way they behave, that they know some genuine cataclysm is coming and they simply have stopped caring about day-to-day politics. They just say anything, switch back and say something different next week … whatever gets the press conference over with.
I wonder what they are actually planning? It can’t be good.
I suppose the people need to be punished for Brexit, Trump, and not buying into the whole central planned vision. Socialists always double down, they don’t negotiate, expect them to escalate wherever possible.
90
Go back in time to the end of the UK coal miners’ strikes and and Margaret Thatcher put in place NFFO (Non Fossil Fuel Obligation) to fund Nuclear power to replace coal and potentially other fossil fuels. This was an eminently sensible move albeit initially moved as a response to break the power wielded by the coal miners’ unions. It long pre-dated ‘Green’ moves by the rest of the world and setting, as she believed, Britain on the path to energy independence through Nuclear. It has been recorded that she, as a trained scientist, was sceptical of the UN’s Global Warming movement.
Civil Servants then cleverly used the regulations to provide a funding route for ‘renewables’ including biomass burning from intensive chicken farms, wood chip and more during the ’90s. Somehow in this process, and in the face of ‘Green’ opposition the Nuclear industry got sidelined. Around 1990 the EU pushed through a Directive that mass incineration of waste, whether or not used for power generation, counted as ‘recycling’ which further pushed the use of NFFO away from Nuclear.
Finally as chickens are coming home to roost UK politicians – and this may not include civil servants – are seeing the light and moving towards sensible small scale, localised Nucleasr. Rolls Royce whose small nuclear plants power submarines have developed factory built, modular small scale reactors for civilian use. Designed specifically so that the compnent parts can all be transported in 40 ft containers they will be easy to deliver anywhere and, being modular, will be very quick to build and get operating on site.
170
G’day Roger,
Any idea of lead time from signed order to delivery, to, say dockside UK? And what power output are the current models?
Cheers,
Dave B
50
Hi David, although I had lengthy discussion with the CEO of RR a couple of years ago I don’t have that info in front of me at the moment, it’s in my office. An ex-colleague (Brexit party candidate for UK Parliament as I was) is one of the UK nuclear regulators, has chapter and verse on the regulatory aspects and is fully aware of where RR are in development / availability. There are some significant differences between the regulation of nuclear power plants in subs and ships compared to domestic generation – RR have dealt with these.
If you have a serious interest I can dig that out tomorrow and give you outputs and some ballpark cost figures – basically the cost of electricity is highly dependent on the interest rate applied to a plant funding package. From memory at zero to 1% it becomes more competitive than renewables (taking their actual true cost and subsidies), as interest rate applied rises above 3% it becomes less competitive. I looked into it as a possibility for part of an aid package I was trying to pull together for a responsible African nation. If you want to email me I can send you more info early in the week, use ‘info’ at ‘stable-mirrors’ dot co dot uk. A closed business for many years but we keep the website up as an information source for horse owners, and I can access emails.
I think, again from memory, you would be looking at minimum 18-24 month lead time.
Best regards
R
100
Thanks Roger,
That lead time is much shorter than I expected.
Cheers
Dave B
30
Not wanting to contradict or throw cold water on Those comments, the official recent RR press release states..
https://www.rolls-royce.com/media/press-releases/2021/17-05-2021-more-power-and-updated-design-revealed-as-nuclear-power-team-targets-first-place.aspx
So RR are saying roughly 10 yrs before the FIRST unit is operational !
Note,… other companies, and China,.. have modular designs currently under construction and due in service within 18 months.
00
You also need to factor in a considerable amount of time for planning permission and the inevitable local protests by people who might object to having a nuclear power plant in their locale.
30
Thanks IC,
Agree. But those issues are local, and have to be resolved before placing an order.
Perhaps replacing an “old, polluting” coal fired plant with a shiny, new, non-polluting nuclear one could be seen as a benefit?
Cheers
Dave B
30
What Boris is now admitting is that he got it all wrong before and the taxpayers now need to pay for a whole new nuclear grid. Whilst the nuclear plan is one that will actually work, will the voters punish him for wasting all their cash on wind and solar ?
On a positive note, Australia should now assist GB by providing the uranium and we should use Boris’s change of plan to push nuclear down here. Imagine how much better it would be if we could boycott all China’s RE crap and maintain energy independence with home grown nuclear instead.
130
Sites for nuclear power reactors were already chosen in Australia in the 1960’s. They are probably still appropriate choices.
French Island in Afdanistan.
Jervis Bay in New South Walestan.
In fact, the Jervis Bay reactor was going to be capable of producing weapons grade materials as well. Australia was then keeping its options open for nuclear weapons.
See: Wayne Reynolds, “Australia’s bid for the atomic bomb”, Melbourne University Press, 2000.
120
I love it.
The greens/Left have made coal unviable so it has to be replaced with something they hate even more.
Nuclear!
Windmills and solar produce no genuinely useful or economical power. They are virtue signaling devices only to make a few Leftist Elites very rich and everyone else poor.
Ultimately the power has to come from an economical, reliable, always-available real power source such as coal, gas, nuclear or proper hydro (not Snowy Hydro 2).
170
I can see it coming. As things become desperate for our governments, they will opt for the only viable alternative to renewables and at the same time not lose face and not appear as bigger hypocrites than they already are. Nuclear is the obvious choice.
91
The obvious choice for Australia is gas fired power stations supporting renewables until a cooler climate sets in, then Hele coal fired power plants will become fashionable again.
I’m not against nuclear power as such, but it’ll be a hard sell.
63
Everything is a hard sell, except renewables. Don’t you and several others here get it yet? WAKE UP!
31
Global cooling has begun, so coal fired power stations are cheaper and faster to construct. Its an emergency and clearly you are not taking it seriously.
63
You are still missing he point. It’s not about CO2. You are so dumb.
31
Another top couple of interviews with Prof Ian Plimer on Cory Bernadi’s Sky News show.
The first is an audio file and Cory has a sharp summary of the energy BS and then at 10 + minutes he interviews Ian and this is very informative.
Then in an earlier video below audio he interviews Ian again and most of us will learn something about Hydrogen problems and even an explosion at a filling station.
But making Hydrogen wastes energy big time and at every stage and what’s left is VERY EXPENSIVE.
https://morningmail.org/cory-bernardi-interviews-professor-ian-plimer/
80
That comment highlights the problem that more people than you imaging simply do not understand what is being proposed with the. “Hydrogen Economy”.
Whilst it is presented as a clean energy source, in reality it is nothing more than a very expensive, wasteful, complex means of energy STORAGE.
In its typical use in a “fuel cell car” , of each kW of electricity used to produce the hydrogen, you only get less than 50% energy back ( 0.5kW) to propell the car .
And if that energy is produced from Wind or solar, ..it would need 4 kW of installed generation to provide that 0.5 kW at the FC car motor. ,!
00
I hope we go the same way. Even if we do , we are still in deep do do, because Australia/incompetence/toxic greens/unions. Why do I say that? Sydney second airport, assorted failed dam proposals, Adani. The time to maybe actually do is probably 1-2 decades minimum and we are already in a perilous state. So lets go , and lets also have an interim plan.
90
“shortlisting sites for a fusion plant”
ready to go in 30 years?
115
“ready to go in 30 years?”
Yep, just like it was 30, 60 years ago…
81
Unless Australia has a company that can build one…
I’m afraid that back of the pack is in its future.
Better stick with coal fired power or wait decades for an available company.
Right now, I don’t think their is enough raw materials mined to go this route right now as the politicians have been decimating steel mills and foundries to China as we de-industrialized.
40
Yep, might as well be planning for harnessing unicorn farts instead
19
” might as well be planning for harnessing unicorn farts instead”
Well Done… You have just defined COP26 to a “t”.. 🙂
00
Core elements of “RE” mixed with wishful thinking and fairy dust
00
It’s never a good idea for government to pick technological “winners”. The disasters of wind, solar, NBN, issues related to certain covid “vaccines”, “green” hydrogen, Snowy Hydro 2, diesel submarines (fortunately now corrected at huge expense), other numerous military projects, desal plants, Singapore’s solar farm which was to be built in Australia 4000km away from Singapore, etc. etc. etc. proves that. All done with the money of what few of us hardworking taxpayers who are not welfare-dependent, public serpents or politicians there are left.
70
Aloha! None of this will work unless all the power grids for every country are completely replaced and modernized using superconductor transmission lines. As it is there is up to a 60% loss of power in transmission. The transmission towers are antiquated as well and during the last hurricane in Louisiana the more rusted ones collapsed. There has to be a distribution network that is modern. If all your life will depend on electricity then there needs to be a distribution network that meets those new demands. Current grids do not. I know from the 1990s when I invested in American Superconductor company that a normal grid from the 20th century will severely restrict any further economic growth. About ten years a go I heard NASA working on a project that distributes the electrical grid from space, but that requires just as much funding for R&D as a new grid. What we have now is cart before the horse mentality. Joe biden wants 550,000 new charge stations across the USA. Right now biden offers huge incentives to EV car manufacturers but nothing for the US grid in comparison.
The estimated cost to superconductor modernize 100% of the US grid is $4tril, but to just cover the major cities which is where most electrical power is consumed it is $3tril. Yet those costs now keep rising as inflation drives costs of metals and wire insulations and components for superconductor transmission and storage keeps rising. Then there will be the competition with China, the CCP, and India, and the EEM for ever scarcer resources.
The final nail in the green coffin is the foolishness of the past 40 years of democrat marxist wasteful spending on cradle to grave social programs. US voters have grown government not the US economy. The US debt service has risen dramatically due to covid and out right fraud. Add in the never ending cost of policing the World. Now with the insane biden marxist regimes $3.5tril added debt the US will need to collect $2tril just to pay the “minimum due”! Nothing ever gets paid. The principle has never been paid. The last time the principle was paid down to $0 was in 1837 under President Jackson. The lie that any of that $3.5tril is paid for is fraud. If anything ever got paid then we would not have $28tril in debt. If debt was paid we’d have $0 debt. That is the BIG LIE!
Climate change further diverts payments on the debt. If there is a “climate ROI” I have yet to hear it. Every person who wakes up in the morning has to assess their own ROI. What do I do today that will give me the biggest return? Do I go to work? Do I go steal money and rob a bank? Do I sell illegal drugs? Do I join a union to get higher pay? Do I study to become an activist so I can get paid by George Soros? Where is my return on my labor? That is pure “capitalism” that is practiced all over the world every day whether communists like the CCP are the dominate political party or whether it is the marxists in Washington DC. Given that we are told “climate change” causes hurricanes and fires and Arctic ice melt what is the ROI if we put $50bil into climate change? Do we get three less cat 5 hurricanes in 2022? Do we get four less fires in California in 2022? Do we get 10% more Arctic Ice by 2023? Define the ROI. If there is no ROI then its not science. To qualify for a SBA loan in the USA you need a business plan that shows ROI. Why is politics exempt from ROI? Why is “climate change” exempt from ROI? If its not replicable or scalable its not science. Its just politics and if its just politics then that won’t get a loan from the SBA.
The truth is none of the Western countries will be ever be able to achieve “greendom” because they’re all too broke to modernize their existing roads, bridges, ports, airports, prisons, schools and most important their electrical grids. The US middle class has been decimated over the many decades by the fraud of career politicians. In 2007 there was a major attack by US banks against the US middle class. The banks won. How many of the middle class have recovered from losing their houses and jobs since then? We don’t know since there really aren’t any statistics to show that part of the pseudo recovery. You can see it though. Go to any big US city and there is a section where nobody lives because the houses and neighborhoods have collapsed and are abandoned. Now under biden there is yet another huge assault on the US middle class. The cost of everything has risen and is rising at an ever faster pace. For the first time in my life I have seen store shelves in the USA emptier than ever. Not since I lived in Venezuela in the 1960s did I see this marxist phenom. Back then it was a marxist junta.
If you can’t figure out who the marxists are then they will sow you their “marxist tattoo”. Any time you hear “build back better” that’s a marxist. That is their tattoo! You can’t build back better unless you get rid of the marxist politicians and their policies.
160
Of course it can work, all we are talking about is replacement of generation sources. It works today and we didnt get to 2021 by accident. Could it be more efficient? probably. Would it be worth it? dunno , my instinct says probably not.
10
Great question in Quadrant Magazine, maybe a question for David Evans: is water vapour from hydrogen cars just as much, or more, of a greenhouse gas emission as CO2 from petrol or gas?
I thought of that before I saw it in Quadrant. It’s pretty obvious.
70
More, if you believe the Greenhouse theory. But to save some who will object please FIRST define how you think CO2 affects the climate.
50
Well, a basic fact is that Britain’s Industrial Revolution and expansion to be the “Workshop of the World” was fuelled mainly by coal, British coal, from Wales, the North of England and even Scotland. That coal is now largely but not completely worked out, and the same is true for Germany (which still has substantial coal reserves and France (Alsace Lorraine) and so on. Coal is a very dense fuel and it is very storable in the form of piles of coal, and transportable by sea. It is not all that heavy. The North Sea oil and gas discoveries were was a godsend, but these too are well past their peak production. A new and substantial opportunity exists with a big shale gas field or two in the north of England (?) which would be wise to develop to diversify supply and make production of energy cheaper and more reliable than solar and wind. This is a big factor in such a wet, cold country, whose industrial competitiveness has greatly withered with the high cost of energy now and many other factors.
Nuclear reactors take a very long time to construct and are very expensive and have a finite life. They also bear extreme dangers in certain circumstances. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima as examples.
Coal is available with long haul from Australia and South Africa, but it is in very high demand just now. Russia has indicated it might help in the short and the UK has many LNG terminals doing nothing much around the coast. It would come from the new arctic fields which British Multinationals had a substantial interest in but were forced to withdraw by the usual suspects. More fool you, British policymakers.
91
Like all tech nuclear reactors do have a finite life, but the windmills in the harsh marine environment of the North Sea are posited at just 15 years I think. The bills for that are another ‘accident waiting to happen’ to the nation’s finances; and you can bet that decommissioning will be subsidised too. They are the complete snake oil from start to finish; construction, operation, productivity, reliability, environmentally; obscenely subsidised and criminally hyped to profit a few and make many of little brain feel good. And they threaten the stability of the grid, through government policy, to boot.
120
Bruce:
What happened to the billion tons of coal under the North Sea?
40
Death toll from all three headline nuclear disasters is less than the number of people who die mining coal every year.
You can of course select from a number of studies and models that predict modest to extravagant numbers of future deaths that they can of course tie straight back to those incidents. I know for certain that 100% of the people within 100KMs of those plants eventually died.
Its a great pity that we know these names quite well yet we dont know the names of the many reactors in France that have been reliably and safely pumping out electricity for decades. Something I will be looking up for the coming nuclear power hysterical debates.
40
China seem to lose 40 odd every 6 months or so.
10
Reality begins to dawn. Now they should go on to admit – snowball’s chance in Hell – that there is no dangerous warming (in fact it is likely to get colder over the next 30 years with the sunspot minimum) and that a modern economy and comfortable citizens need a broad mix of sources; horses for courses. And most of all aim for energy self-sufficiency and resilience and the security that gives.
Gas is clearly the optimal solution for most central heating in the UK, balancing cost, convenience and practicality. Diesel for haulage and agriculture, etc, and the heavy lifting of industry. Small nuclear reactors, gas, and some residual coal to hedge against the unknown, for electricity generation. By all means let folk use electric vehicles where practical for their needs; but as a choice. Ditch all subsidies for solar and wind; if they are financially viable standing alone, by all means let them contribute a fraction when the wind blows and the sunshines to eke out other resources. And most of all ditch the carbon tax which is simply a brilliant con to funnel taxpayers money into the coffers of the ‘great and good’, and produces nothing, absolutely nothing; not even the false premise of cutting ‘carbon’ which is just out sourced.
110
No, No Phil;
You have to use “renewables” to generate electricity, which can be used to make hydrogen, which can then be used to heat water, and converted back to electricity to make the heat pumps work (which they won’t in cold weather).
Up in Shetland they have a lot of wind and a (smallish) 3 turbine wind farm. Rather than trying to disrupt their reliable diesel powered electricity generators they planned to use it to heat water in large tanks. Thus hot water that could be circulated to warm houses and reduce electricity demand, hence emission. Also it would enable storage of variable input and cover for periods of little wind (rather rare up there). So it doesn’t really matter if the water is heated to 65℃ or 45℃ the house will still be warm (although you probably shouldn’t plan on growing tropical orchids). I wonder what happened to that plan?
60
Apparently they are planning ‘tidal powered cars’.
12
Bit of a long read but from what I’ve seen no wonder Prince Charles is pushing the climate barrow .
https://redd-monitor.org/2017/11/15/prince-charles-offshore-investment-in-sustainable-forestry-management-ltd-a-cautionary-tale-featuring-conflicts-of-interest-a-web-of-offshore-companies-carbon-credits-transfer-pricing-and-tax-a/?fbclid=IwAR3-hSR2fyCo4-6ec_qH8mcbrRPxR1zibiIan24amCS_tHkwtFwPR8Rzv7k
50
He has the same “investments, just like Australian royalty MalEx444, John Hewson etc.
50
OT – German broadcaster declares he can no longer continue lying about CoViD and the lab leak source, coverup of effective treatments by the WHO and media, the lack of serious appraisal of the vaccines and general repression of free speech and action.
h/t ZeroHedge
https://multipolar-magazin.de/artikel/i-cannot-do-it-anymore
81
That’s very good. The lack of balance shown by public broadcasters shows up in both the Covid ‘pandemic’ and the ‘vaxxes’ as well as the long-standing push to so-called net-zero.
40
So all we have to do in the UK is to survive long enough for any nuclear plant to actually be completed. It will be a very long dark and cold decade – if it is that soon.
40
Great to see a good part of Europe re-embracing nuclear power.
The USA is screwed if it fails to recognize nuclear as the primary long-term source of electricity.
31
Regardless of what you think of nuclear, I would wager a pretty penny that not one of those nuclear plants will be onstream by 2035. Not one. That’s only 13 years away and most people don’t want one built anywhere near where they live … and the UK is a small country with nearly 70 million people.
41
Researchers find few adverse health effects in wildlife exposed to low levels of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear accident
60
I’m all in favour of a new nuclear plant at Moorside in Cumbria. I own a property just up the road at Egremont and the value will soar if they go ahead!
83
I would love to have one built near where I live so I can apply for a job there.
70
“The nuclear levy is still a “Green Fee” or a “carbon tax”. But at least it won’t leave the country facing an energy crisis every time the wind slows.”
It is indeed a new tax, and that may well be the real reason behind it, regardless of any outcome on electrical energy production, promised or provided. However, I can not see any relevance between the tax and future energy problems for the next 20 years. New nuclear plants might be a long term solution but how can they possibly help anything between now and when they become reality? As far as anything I’ve read goes, it is likely to be 6 or 10 years before the first of these “small nuclear reactors” is ready for its first real test, then, assuming the bugs are worked out, another decade or two to get enough of them installed to actually make a difference.
20
There are some people/minions (Bill Gates and friends) who are trying to sabotage the nuclear option. Gates is pushing a change to higher enrich uranium (current enrich limited to 5%.) which would enable the reactors to be smaller. The problem is enriched uranium can also be used to produce a dirty bomb.
To kill the nuclear option… Lots of stupid reactor designs are pushed (these designs should have been compared on paper first).. The purpose of this tactic… Is to hide the nuclear reactor design which is as cheap as coal to build, because that design does not require a containment building and the extraordinary backup system required to avoid a reactor explosion.
Comment: The purpose of CAGW is to destroy our economies. The green scams cannot be used to get to zero CO2 emissions. Nuclear power optimized can produce electricity CO2 free as cheap as coal. This is the best engineering option but it is hidden as the controller of the scam wants the nuclear option to fail.
A second issue is that fuel rod reactors are inherently dangerous and inefficient because the fuel rods will melt if the cooling system fails.
About 50 years ago, the designer of the light water reactor, stated that light water, fuel rod reactors where inherently dangerous and that there was a significantly more efficient reactor design that solved all of the safety issues of the light water reactor and of fuel rod reactors. This design was tested about 50 years ago. The test was a complete success.
The test results were then hidden and the Director of the Oakridge lab was forced to resign and of course to stop saying that large fuel rod reactors were inherently dangerous.
A Canadian based company, Terrestrial Energy, has copied the Oakridge molten salt pot design. Their design is walk away safe (cooling system can fail, power can fail, operators can leave, and the reactor stops and cools itself using a passive backup system) and does not require a containment building because there are no exothermic reactions (the reactor is just a pot filled with molten salt) and the design has a passive backup cooling system.
https://www.terrestrialenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/IMSR-Total-Life-Cycle-Emissions.jpg
https://www.terrestrialenergy.com/technology/advantage/
Fuel rod reactors are inefficient and dangerous because of basic safety issues which the public are not aware. Fuel rod reactors require constantly flowing cooling water to avoid the fuel rods melting. If the cooling water flow stops, the fuel rods start to melt in about 15 minutes.
To stop the fission reaction, neutron absorbers are injected into the reactor and control rods are inserted which also absorb neutrons. This easily and always, stops the fission reaction. Stopping a fission reactor is easy. The problem is the residue waste heat.
All fission reactors, continues to produce a large amount of heat even though the fission reaction has been stopped, because the highly radioactive, short lived, fission byproducts, continue to produce 7% of the thermal output of the reactor, before the reactor was shutdown, for a period of about 48 hours.
If the cooling water or cooling sodium flow, stops during this period, the fuel rods melt, destroying the reactor vessel. This is the reason why there needs to be a containment vessel around fuel rod, nuclear reactors. Fuel rod reactors have almost melted down because of blocked cooling water intake. Because of operator errors and maintenance errors and wiring errors and so on. There was a long list of almost nuclear reactor failures which has disappeared.
The second problem is radiation in the reactor, causes water to separate into hydrogen and oxygen. To avoid a hydrogen explosion the hydrogen must constantly be removed from the cooling water. If power is lost to the reactor the hydrogen removal system does not work. The hydrogen then builds up and an explosion will occur. To contain hydrogen explosions or pressure explosions is the reason why a containment building is required.
The third issue is water cool reactors must operate at high pressures and will exploded if pressure control is lost. The change in pressure changes the density of the water and its neutron absorption which causes pressure water reactor to surge in power output which causes an increase in pressure which causes more heat to be generated. Fuel rod reactors because they operate at 110 atmospheres, are extremely difficult and dangerous to operate/control. Problems in water cooled high pressure reactor can happen very fast.
The molten salt reactor operates at atmospheric pressure. The molten fuel reactor is like controlling a toaster. Turn it on and it automatically and naturally (do to physics) follows load. There are no pressure changes during operation. There is no build up of neutron absorbing material in the reactor. This reactor design can be stop and restarted with no difficulty which makes it a great option to be used with the green scams.
Terrestrial Energy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgTgV3Kq49U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpSUX-g7Jug
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nuclear-reactors-of-the-future-have-a-fuel-problem/604707/
But HALEU is not currently produced for commercial purposes anywhere in the world outside of Russia, and building new facilities to make it can take around seven years, according to Kirk Schnoebelen, head of sales at Urenco, one among the small group of companies that operates uranium enrichment facilities in the U.S. Another nuclear fuel supplier, Centrus Energy, signed a three-year agreement with the DOE in 2019 to produce HALEU on a pilot level, and after receiving a federal license, the company says it will begin HALEU production in 2022.
Of the seven advanced reactor designs that are engaged in “pre-application activities” with the NRC, all but one would use HALEU. Oklo, a startup that became the first advanced reactor design to formally apply to the NRC for a license for its 1.5-MW “micro-reactor” design, also plans on using HALEU.
The one design not relying on HALEU is Terrestrial Energy’s Integral Molten Salt Reactor, which uses a salt-cooled rather than water-cooled core, but would run on the same uranium that conventional reactors use.
10
These clowns signing up for ‘zero net CO2 by 2050’, have they not read the paper, seen the news, Europe and UK gonna be freezing this winter if it’s a cold one and all indications are that it will be.
Nats being bullied to comply but are taking their time to decide if they will support the madness.
110
Ronin, net zero and fusion power, both 30 years away and both as likely to meet that goal
313
No, Both impossible to meet that goal. A fantasy, !
Fusion power is still nothing but a pipe dream , and there is absolutely no way of maintaining reliable electricity in Australia without using coal and gas.
Even nuclear power would take far longer to build up to the required level.
61
Not correct. Barakah units 1 and 2 were up and running in 8 years each. The Chinese SMR is expected to be operational in five years.
00
So tell us how to meet our goal Peter F?
And what is that goal, how much it will cost and what difference it would make to climate or temp?
Would it be 0.001 c or less by 2100?
And how many billions or trillions $ would we WASTE by 2050 or 2100?
50
Neville don’t forget the cost to society with frequent blackouts mass job losses and all the anguish that follows , will there be food shortages , will there be limits on travel , will each person or household have a carbon budget passport much like the Covid one we were told would never happen etc etc .
60
Why ask me?
All I’m saying is that 30 years is a stupid timeframe
28
The 30 year timeframe is realistic and includes oceanic oscillations which are an integral part of climate change.
12
30 is the baseline for climate averages, why is it important for action, to paraphrase, less talk more action is what is required.
04
Action for what ? An imaginary problem ?
30
“more action is what is required.”
Yep, renewal of our coal-fired electricity fleet should be the number one priority. !
30
tonyb
The French plants did not take a long time to get up and running. They are a clear example of needless cost demands invented since then by those who do not like nuclear. These enormous new safety and compliance costs are not needed now, never were, as the near-perfect French safety record shows. They were built without these needless frills. Geoff S
70
Maybe I’ll still be here in 30 years…
…. but how many nuclear power plants do people think Australia will have up and running by 2050?
I’m going to say 2-3 at most.
And coal/gas will still be providing a large percentage of the base-load of electricity to the three main states.
30
If common sense prevails and Parliament goes back to the Howard Government commissioned report on nuclear power the plan would be for, from memory, about fifty small modular generators located all around Australia, even in the Outback where diesel generators of various sizes are used and quite a few consuming thousands of litres every week.
40
Yes, unicorns and rainbows, if Scomo hasn’t got anything to take to Glasgow, then cough, cough, ring in sick.
70
We need a costed roadmap with benefits defined before heading over the cliff to net zero with nuclear or hydrogen.
Liberal senator Alex Antic said net zero by 2050 was an “absolute folly”. “It is nothing more than a catch cry and a slogan for the ruling class and political elites.”
It’s so easy to do as Albo said and simply legislate a net zero target.
Finance Minister Simon Birmingham, the leading Liberal moderate in parliament, said both a plan and a target were important.
Liberal MPs will be briefed on the net-zero plan on Monday morning.
But without a costed roadmap to get there it is pie in the sky.
It’s not enough to repeat the mantra that unreliable renewables will get cheaper. We need to know how every coal power station will be replaced with dispatchable electricity supplies and at what cost. Promising more government handouts to regions and industries (and consumers?) is not a satisfactory answer. In fact it implies that Australia will become less competitive and we will all pay.
110
Robber if the Nats hold out and refuse to be a part of net zero on the grounds that its an uncosted economy wrecking boondoggle and the only thing that is net zero is the benefit to Australians I predict the Libs will implode .
100
What the Liberals disagree? How unlike our dear old party in South Australia.
I guess it’s not big news in Eastern States but they’ve lost the majority and now have only 22 out of 47 with 6 Independents.
60
It is hard to see why that simple and logical and necessary idea is so hard for people (eg parliamentarians and renewable energy enthusiasts) to understand.
60
I suspect, but are not certain, that a majority of voting Australians are not so stupid as to prefer to “freeze in the dark” with expensive unreliables when they know they can be warm and cosy and employed at a low cost with fossil fuel, nuclear or proper hydro.
The greens/Left hate coal, gas and real hydro so have left the civilised rational thinkers among us with no other option but for clean, practically inexhaustible, cheap nuclear energy.
Hopefully the inhabitants of Once Great Britain will think similarly.
Also, the strategy is not dissimilar to when Margaret Thatcher said there was anthropogenic global warming (recanted in her autobiography) and that Britain must go nuclear. The real purpose there was to break the coal mining union lead by Arthur Scargill. Now the nuclear strategy is similarly to break the greens/Left.
80
Test.
20
I suspect, but are not certain, that a majority of voting Australians are not so stupid as to prefer to “freeze in the dark” with expensive unreliables when they know they can be warm and cosy and employed at a low cost with fossil fuel, nuclear or proper hydro.
The greens/Left hate coal, gas and real hydro so have left the civilised rational thinkers among us with no other option but for clean, practically inexhaustible, cheap nuclear energy.
Hopefully the inhabitants of Once Great Britain will think similarly.
Also, the strategy is not dissimilar to when Margaret Thatcher said there was anthropogenic global warming (recanted in her autobiography) and that Britain must go nuclear. The real purpose there was to break the coal mining union lead by Arthur Scargill. Now the nuclear strategy is similarly to break the greens/Left.
10
Mod: I still can’t post what I wanted to post.
00
Something us very wrong.
00
Ack
30
Secret Chinese campaign poses a threat to global net zero efforts
A secret Chinese campaign to infiltrate global environmental bodies with their own agenda threatens united efforts to move to net zero.
James Morrow
A secret Chinese campaign to infiltrate global environmental bodies, including those associated with the UN, is threatening global efforts to move to net zero.
Two years after the world watched as China manipulated the World Health Organisation to promote its narrative about the pandemic, evidence is mounting that Beijing is also working to reshape the way the world regulates the environment to suit its own ends.
At the same time, China is also continuing to build coal fired power plants as energy shortages bite – and quietly easing its previous bans on using Australian coal.
Analysis by the free market Institute of Public Affairs think tank found that China operates 57 coal fired power stations for every one operated in Australia. Additionally China is bingeing on new coal fired power plants, with 92 more plants under construction and over 100 more in pre-construction phases.
As world leaders prepare to meet in Scotland for the COP26 climate summit, China’s energy agency has indicated that it will make supply stability its key priority. Critically, Chinese supremo Xi Jinping is set to snub the summit.
Experts say there is a broader program to supplant Western views of human rights, health, individual rights, and the environment with narratives favourable to the Chinese Communist Party.
“At a basic level, rather than offer a unique perspective on the environment, China wants to be seen as a leader of environmental issues, irrespective of its halting performance,” says American researcher Alexander Sullivan.
An adjunct fellow at the Centre for a New American Security in Washington, DC, Sullivan says that China is looking to become the predominant player in the world of global environmental governance, just as it is looking to supplant the US as the dominant voice in other parts of the world system.
And that, he warns, comes with a potentially heavy price.
“It’s forward-leaning promises on climate change need to be seen alongside the other philosophies it pushes in the international system: Namely, that the state’s interests predominate over those of individuals or vulnerable minorities – the real people who, after all, are most vulnerable to our changing climate.”
Just as with the way China hijacked the World Health Organisation to do its bidding at the start of the pandemic, Beijing’s activities in trying to manipulate global environmental organisations will come with a potentially very heavy price.
Most Australians likely first became aware of the international horse trading that takes place behind the scenes of environmental protection agencies more than a decade ago, when Japan was accused of using its foreign aid budget to buy support on the International Whaling Commission.
But experts say that Tokyo’s efforts were small beer compared to moves by China to take over global governance organisations to shape international regulations to its benefit while remaining one of the world’s leading polluters.
In July, when Australia narrowly avoided an attempt by the China-chaired UNESCO world heritage organisation to classify the Great Barrier Reef as endangered, many believed that the push to condemn our environmental stewardship was being engineered, hypocritically, by Beijing
“As China gets more and more into these committees, they use their well-practised consensus-based approach to drive their own agenda,” one insider says.
“They’ll say they will make a declaration and push through to where they want to go – they get more and more spots in committee structures, and then use them to distract everyone and say, ‘don’t look here, look there’.” The “look there” is the important bit, he says, as China has an increasing reputation for running global environmental committees very smoothly, but with the ultimate aim of “hijacking” their outcome
70
China are smart. We are dumb.
30
An important message from Dr Benny Peiser of the GWPF’s NET ZEROWATCH, as we approach the Glasgow COP 26 clown and con merchant’s conference in NOV.
https://www.netzerowatch.com/welcome-to-net-zero-watch/
30
The only thing that will be net zero will be our economy and energy security.
The farce has already thrown up major problems all over the planet, we don’t need to join the lemmings.
80
Australia will reach zero electricity before it reaches net zero emissions.
80
The aim of COP26 and all the other COPs was to control world CO2. Why isn’t anyone talking about the fact that there is no connection after a third of a century between anything we have done and CO2?
Firstly look at the graph of CO2 for fifty years.
Where can you see volcanoes, massive bushfires, mega events like Volcanoes or 300,000 windmills, solar farms or the total shutdown of all cars and aircraft in 2020?
What more can we do than stop all air and land passenger traffic for a year or two? Where is there any connection with human activity or even planetary scale activity?
So why does anyone think switching from coal to nuclear will make a difference? The experiment is over.
Now look at the satellite temperature for the last 40 years.
In 2021 the world temperature was precisely the same as in 1980 to within 0.001C. So why is there this war on CO2?
70
In fact the only change in the 33 years has been an increase in ocean surface temperatures. The bulk of the ocean, all 3,500 metres of it is insulated by the weight of 350x the weight of the atmosphere above. And it absorbs 75% of all the incident solar energy. And the ocean is warmer.
So the only conclusion you can draw is that a warmer ocean releases more CO2, as known in the most basic chemistry. Henry’s law. And the law of flat warm beer. To argue as NASA has started to do that the ocean has ‘stolen’ the air warming is just nuts. How can you steal something which never happened?
COP26 is phony. And everyone knows it. But the money is incredible. And everyone knows it. Big Wind and Big Solar are the new game and every bank, insurance company and opportunist in the world is on the man made Global Warming. What warming? The air temperature is the same as 1980.
70
30,000 people are going to COP26, mostly flying. Why does no one point out the temperature has not changed since 1980 according to satellite measurements?
90
I know the answer. They are working out how to prevent “Climate Change” as directed by the UN and their Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change. It’s a terrible thing Climate Change. So where has it happened? Did we miss it?
70
And is it a coincidence that Global Warming was discovered by James Hansen and announced to the US congress on June 24 1988 and in December 1988 the IPCC was created? What if he was wrong? How could a world expert on the climate of Venus be wrong?
And why on the Summer solstice. And why did he and Al Gore climb into the roof to open the windows to make the place as hot as possible?
The most costly fraud in human history needs explanation.
70
The modern climate optimum is over.
52
G’day TdeF,
Is that 30,000 a confirmed number of attendees, an average from previous years, or an organiser’s hoped-for guess?
Cheers
Dave B
40
It’s someone’s guess. Most commentators seem sure of 20,000 people. Many add another 5,000. And some another 5,000. Who knows?
Even our PM has just decided to attend, which would add a hundred more people. Glasgow is not everyone’s idea of a holiday in November at 56 North, very dark, very cold days only six weeks off the winter solstice so they would have to be very determined.
Glasgow is 10 degrees closer to the pole than even Stewart Island in New Zealand and only 7 degrees off Antarctica. Hardy people the Scots. I warrant they would like a bit of warming. And I dinna think they want to pay to stop it.
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“Full list of 22,300 parasites going to Glasgow Climate Conference, including The Taliban”
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2021/10/full-list-of-22300-parasites-going-to-glasgow-climate-conference-including-the-taliban.html
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That’s really hard on parasites. Some are in symbiotic relationships.
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There will probably be an epidemic of them there
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Average temperature in Glasgow in November is 6C.
Great place to have a global warming emergency meeting.
Guess they are probably installing backup diesel generators just in case the power goes out.
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Someone needs to sneak in and disable all the heating ! 🙂
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How did you decide to recommend Option B?
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Reporters find it hard to tell the truth about the cost of renewable energy
Chris Mitchell
Many environment writers today are in the business of hiding the truth about the costs of renewable energy.
Few are smart enough to work out the risk to modern democratic capitalism posed by the financial markets’ short-selling of fossil fuels.
It’s all coming home to roost ahead of the Glasgow COP26 climate conference starting on October 31. Yet many local media outlets are not reporting much about the northern hemisphere energy crisis, and the spiking prices for coal, oil and gas. The media absurdity peaked last week when the bible of climate panic, the Guardian, was forced to concede: “China’s plans to build more coal-fired plants deal a blow to UK’s COP26 ambitions.” This column has been reporting China’s coal expansion since 2016.
Climate writers should know intermittent energy from wind and solar cannot support grid-scale power 100 per cent of the time. It needs to be backed up with energy storage. This is why former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull launched the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro scheme, the cost of which has blown out from less than $3bn to more than $6bn, according to Giles Parkinson at the RenewEconomy website.
Turnbull, in a piece for the Japanese English language website NikkeiAsia, wrote on August 22 about the need for more renewables. “But what is often forgotten is that we also need long-term, large capacity energy storage for when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine. Unless we address that challenge now, we will either fall back on fossil fuels or face blackouts. This need for energy storage is the ignored crisis within the crisis.”
That’s the patron saint of renewables Turnbull speaking, not a Murdoch conspiracist. But it gets better: “While lithium batteries can play an important role in storing electricity for a few hours, the only proven technology for storing electricity for longer periods is hydropower.” That is, pumped hydro.
Reporters here keep telling readers wind and solar are now cheaper than coal. Except the price of back-up will make total power costs much more expensive. Evidence around the world shows power prices faced by consumers rise as the percentage of renewables lifts.
Reporters often mistake the Tesla batteries – used here since South Australia installed one after the collapse of the state’s power system in September 2016 – for large-scale storage. But such batteries are designed to harmonise and firm the system rather than provide enough power to run the grid.
A study by the superannuation industry two years ago suggested a national grid-scale battery that could power the nation for 36 hours would cost $6.5 trillion, “or the cost of building 1000 nuclear reactors”, according to a report on ABC Online on June 26, 2019. This newspaper’s environment editor Graham Lloyd, reporting the same study, wrote that between 100 and 150 Snowy 2.0 projects would be needed to do the same job.
Admittedly, battery storage is becoming cheaper, but even last week a study from three UK academics suggested the cost of enough battery storage to run the UK’s power system for a fortnight, assuming 100 per cent renewables, would be £3 trillion – about 150 per cent of the UK’s annual GDP. Assuming 50 per cent renewables, the cost would be £1.5 trillion.
This column on September 13 discussed the flight of manufacturing from Europe to China in the 20 years since Europe began actively phasing out fossil fuels. It quoted the Guardian from 2019 saying: “Britain has contributed to the global climate emergency by outsourcing its carbon emissions to the developing world.”
The planet does not benefit from simply transferring emissions-intensive industries from one region to another. This is why some on the right of politics see UN climate action as a sly way to transfer power and money from the West to the developing world. In fact, the UN has always been upfront about demanding cash payments from the West, and the flow of industry to the developing world is driven more by labour costs than electricity prices.
Yet people who fear that democracy is losing out to totalitarian systems have a point. The positions of Russia and China ahead of COP26 makes clear why.
Russia is cashing in on Europe’s energy problems by ramping up the price of gas from its Gazprom state monopoly, probably with an eye to more than just short-term profits. It wants to pressure Germany, which has been silly enough to phase out nuclear power and most of its coal, to back a second gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2, under the Baltic Sea.
China was always permitted under its Paris Accord commitments to keep lifting CO2 output until 2030. That is why this column has argued COP26 is likely to fail. China’s CO2 rises between now and 2030 could exceed all the cuts made by the rest of the world.
Another Turnbull clean energy advocate, Malcolm’s son Alex, made the point in a piece on Substack on October 8: “China in a crisis tends to represent a command economy and … the commands are coming thick and fast.” Coal outputs domestically in China are ramping up fast, and “steel production is down 10 per cent year on year”, Turnbull wrote.
China signalled last week it might need to modify its emissions targets. The Guardian quoted a statement from Chinese Premier Li Keqiang: “It is important to build advanced coal fired power plants … in line with development needs. Domestic oil and gas exploration will be intensified.”
The big concern for the West is whether modern capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. As Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has admitted, Australia will face increased cost of global capital if it does not sign on to net zero by 2050. Reporters should not imagine bankers are doing this for ethical reasons.
Investors are short-selling the fossil fuel industry because they can make more money on taxpayer-guaranteed renewables. China, India, Russia and much of east Asia will not be following. While the West’s hedge funds will make a motza, hard power will continue to seep from Western Europe and the US. The West’s poorest consumers will pay more.
There’s also the issue of green hydrogen. The downside, at least with green hydrogen, is the need for more wind and solar to power the process that separates hydrogen and oxygen from water. Why downside? Wind and solar are low-intensity, inefficient ways to generate electricity. They require enormous amounts of land. The life spans of solar cells and wind turbines are limited: when rolled out across the planet they will present a mammoth recycling task when they need replacing.
Some environmentalists dislike the idea of covering tens of millions of hectares worldwide with this technology. Former Greens leader Bob Brown has criticised wind turbines for killing birds and affecting Tasmania’s natural beauty. He has likened a plan for Tasmania to be the new “battery of the nation” to the discredited Gordon-below-Franklin dam project.
Yet Australia, with about a third of the world’s uranium deposits, could be a real energy super power using nuclear technology that is not land-use intensive but is energy intensive and nonpolluting.
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Ooops Link
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Big.
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Thanks OldOzzie – who would have thought our ABC would allow this to be written and reported:
A study by the superannuation industry two years ago
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Here’s Bolt’s interview with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg a few days ago.
Fair dinkum asking about NET ZERO or whatever is like pulling teeth and certainly more painful.
And so far after 10 years of trying nobody has the guts to answer Bolt’s simple but very important question.
How much will it cost and what difference will it make?
The honest answer is it will cost trillions $ by 2100 and will have ZERO MEASURABLE IMPACT on TEMP at all.
See Lomborg’s expert team’s answer after COP 21 2015.
See John Kerry’s answer recently and Dr Finkel’s answer ( under oath) to Senator MacDonald LNP QLD at the Senate hearing a couple of years ago.
Watch video from 6 minutes 40 secs and then THINK.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQScxb0R6lE
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Add senator Kennedy asking some inconvenient questions about the money being wasted on reducing CO2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvpb8XQ1xN8
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Andrew Bolt: Scott Morrison’s climate backflip a failure of leadership
The Prime Minister is making fools of conservatives who trusted him at the last election when he promised to save them from Labor’s global warming plans.
Scott Morrison is betraying Liberal voters who believed him when he waved a lump of coal in parliament and shouted “this is coal, don’t be afraid, don’t be scared, it won’t hurt you”.
The Prime Minister is making fools of conservatives who trusted him at the last election when he promised to save them from Labor’s global warming plans, saying its “emissions reduction target of 45 per cent will cost everybody’s wage $9000 a year”.
Instead, he’s now pushing for even bigger cuts – “net zero” by 2050 – and this time it’s supposed not to hurt a bit.
What a failure of leadership. And what a disastrous repetition of history.
When Europeans first explored Tasmania, they were amazed that Tasmanian Aborigines had taboos on eating fish, even though fish would have saved them from going hungry. They’d also lost the ability to make fire, as mainland Aborigines could.
Here we go again. Australia has vast deposits of coal and uranium ore. Coal is perfect for the cheap, reliable electricity that’s helped make us rich. Uranium is perfect for reliable nuclear power that is the zero emissions energy that global warmists demand.
Yet we’ve banned nuclear power for no sane reason and are now also making coal taboo. Morrison is now pushing his National Party partners to let him go to the big Glasgow climate summit next month with a “net zero” promise that will doom coal-fired power.
What a joke. Nothing Morrison promises will make a difference to the climate. We’re too small, pumping out just 1.13 per cent of the world’s man-made emissions.
That’s why every political leader I’ve asked – Kevin Rudd, Bill Shorten, Tony Abbott and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg – refused to say what difference their plans would make to the temperature. They don’t want you to know the answer is “essentially nothing”, as former chief scientist Alan Finkel admitted.
Nor is it clear that the small warming we’re seen should be stopped. Over the past 40 years Australia has had bigger crops and fewer cyclones, and many dams are close to full. Our planet is greening. And why is Morrison going to Glasgow when the leaders of China and India, which pump out a third of the world’s emissions, won’t say they’re going, too, instead ordering their power stations to burn more coal to avoid electricity shortages now crippling green Europe?
Morrison should just be straight with us. He’s only going because we’re being blackmailed.
Frydenberg says international investment funds, now fashionably green, will hit Australia with higher borrowing costs if we don’t promise net zero. Some European countries could hurt our trade if we don’t cave.
Morrison himself explained on the weekend we had to “deal with significant economic challenges as the world [sic] moves towards a net zero economy.”
The Prime Minister should explain his backflip by giving us those blunt realities, and should be honest: this has almost nothing to do with the climate.
It’s the green lies I cannot stand, and which insult our intelligence. We may have to give in to the blackmail, but we don’t have to give in to the bull. No, global warming is not an existential threat. No, the Great Barrier Reef is not dying. No, we’re not in more danger of dying in climate disasters.
But where is Morrison’s leadership? Most importantly, if he really does think Australia must give up its cheap and vast fossil fuels, why not campaign to end our irrational ban on nuclear power?
Morrison simply does not dare. He’s instead helping to deny us two great and proven power sources, and offering instead new green ones like blue hydrogen and green hydrogen that haven’t even been shown to work.
This is insanity to match Tasmania’s Aborigines throwing away their boomerangs, barbed spears and fish hooks.
Alan Finkel, himself a warming activist, last week conceded “in practice the future costs for both green and blue hydrogen remain unknown”.
The International Energy Agency likewise admitted “reaching net-zero emissions will require the widespread use after 2030 of technologies that are still under development”.
The Business Council of Australia this month demanded a 50 per cent cut to our emissions which it admitted – incredibly – depended on “requisite technologies (that) had not all been developed”.
And so our new-age global warming primitives walk off to a mystic future, Morrison at their head, damning technologies that made us rich and promising magic solutions the other side of that rainbow. We are watching another civilisation in decline.
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Bet they are wishing they had held COP26 last month.
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The lead time for nuclear power generated electricity is too long for Australia. It will be like the submarines and we will be lucky to see anything before 20 years. Imagine trying to find a state that would agree to even consider offering a site? NSW is probably the frontrunner for a site – Jervis Bay has been mentioned numerous times. But if NSW LNP get voted out and replaced by a Labor/Green govt everything would probably come to a standstill. All Australia needs to do is upgrade the present coal fleet by modernising. The infrastructure is already there. Build some HELE type plants and then just have a pipe going into the ground showing the Climate zealots where all the CO2 is going.
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Ross,
Jervis Bay was chosen partly because it is a bit of Federal land, not NSW. I have not checked this for years, so it might have changed. Geoff S
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I nominate Canberra by the shores on Lake BG
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Small modular nuclear generators sunk below ground surrounding Parliament House in Canberra.
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3-1/2 Corners tonight, the wreckage Merkel has left lying around in Germany, once a technological powerhouse, now reduced to hoping for power from windmills and snow covered solar.
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Cutting corners there, Ronin?
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Here’s Lomborg’s teams latest thoughts about COP 26 in Glasgow. More same old BS and fra-d from stupid, delusional govts and endless waste of trillions more $ for a rolled gold guaranteed ZERO return.
https://theworldnews.net/za-news/bjorn-lomborg-can-leaders-finally-go-down-a-different-path-at-cop26
10/15/2021, 2:40:26 AM
BJØRN LOMBORG: Can leaders finally go down a different path at COP26?
DENIAL OF RESPONSIBILITY!
ALL RIGHTS OF THIS PICTURE RESERVED TO https://WWW.BUSINESSLIVE.CO.ZA/
TO REMOVE THIS PHOTO WRITE US [email protected]
In their bids to showcase climate leadership ahead of the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26), world leaders are once again talking of ambitious carbon reduction targets. For example, US President Joe Biden has set the goal of creating “a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and net-zero emissions economy by no later than 2050”.
Most rich nations’ governments have formulated similar ambitions. Unfortunately, that target will be prohibitively expensive. A new study in the renowned journal Nature shows the cost of 95% reduction by 2050 — almost Biden’s net-zero — would cost 11.9% of GDP or more than $11,000 present-day dollars for each American every year.
Twenty-four years have passed since the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, the first major global agreement promising to cut carbon emissions. Since then the world has hosted hundreds of climate summits and rich nations have reliably talked green; but emissions have kept increasing because no leaders want to stick their citizens with the huge price tag.
In a very frank analysis of the past decade of climate policy the UN calls the 2010s a “lost decade”. It cannot tell the difference between what has happened and a world that adopted no new climate policies since 2005. Just think about that: after all these climate summits and all these climate promises, when looking at the actual emissions we can’t tell the difference from the world we’re in and a world where we didn’t care to do anything about climate since 2005.
That puts the challenge with COP26 in perspective. World leaders can choose to do what they have done over decades and contribute to yet another climate meeting in a world overflowing with well-meaning climate summits. Nation after nation will show up and make nice-sounding promises like transforming their electricity sectors (responsible for only 19% of all the energy the world consumes) to renewables. There is a good chance those promises will eventually be revealed to be just as hollow as the last decades’ worth of promises, because voters will reject the bill.
Or leaders could finally go down a different path. The real challenge with the current approach to climate policy is that as long as cutting emissions is expensive, leaders will talk a lot but do little. In the rich world, this is to avoid following in the embarrassing footsteps of French President Emmanuel Macron, who had to backtrack to the yellow vest movement after proposing a modest hike in petrol prices. In the poorer world nations have far more important priorities, such as driving economic growth and getting their populations out of poverty.
What is needed is a much stronger focus on green energy research. If the world could innovate green energy that was cheaper than fossil fuels, we would have solved global warming. Everyone would switch, including Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Copenhagen Consensus has found that the most effective, long-term climate policy is in investing a lot more resources in green R&D.
During the 2015 Paris climate summit more than 20 countries promised to double R&D spending on green energy innovations by 2020. Unfortunately, they are failing this promise, too. Instead of making big and expensive promises that future governments will have to backtrack on once citizens protest against rising power bills, leaders should immediately commit to spending much more on green R&D.
Not only have most nations already made that promise, but compliance can be verified within 12 months. And the total cost for each nation will be much lower than current climate policies. For 2030, our Nobel economists suggested that the world increase its spending another $70bn per year. Compare that to the $195bn we are currently spending on subsidising ineffective green energy.
At COP26 world leaders would be well advised to not repeat what has failed in the past past decades, but to emphasise a cheaper, smarter, better way forward that will actually help fix climate change — invest dramatically more in green R&D to make sure we innovate technologies that can help the whole world to cheaply switch from fossil fuels.
• Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus and visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
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The problem is that in 29 years time, all the stuff that was built before then will need to be spent again and again and again and so on because it does not last more than 30 years.
The current approach is unsustainable and unachievable. It will consume all the available resources and can never deliver its promise. It would be far simplyer to just keep on consuming the fossil fuels for energy rather than consuming same resources to make useless weather monuments that give an illusion of producing energy.
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Nuclear – Former SpaceX Engineers Tout New Microreactor
A California company is gathering funding for development of a portable nuclear microreactor, designed for use in areas where other forms of power generation are not practical.
Radiant, founded by former SpaceX engineers, on Sept. 22 said it has raised $1.2 million from angel investors as it designs what the company calls a “clean energy alternative to fossil fuels for military and commercial applications.” Radiant executives said the funding is a combination of cash and cost-share commitments to support development of its more than 1-MW microreactor.
“Radiant is developing the first power generation system that can go anywhere,” company co-founder Doug Bernauer told POWER in an interview on Sept. 21. Bernauer is a former SpaceX engineer who while there worked on developing energy sources for an eventual Mars colony. Bernauer said he thinks microreactors hold the most promise to supply power for settlements on Mars, and during his research he saw an immediate opportunity to utilize the technology on Earth, which led him to found Radiant along with two other SpaceX colleagues.
“A lot of the microreactors being developed are fixed location,” Bernauer said. “Nobody has a [commercial] system yet, so there’s kind of a race to be the first.”
Patents for Upgrades
Radiant on Tuesday announced it has received two provisional patents for its advances in portable nuclear reactors. One of the technical upgrades decreases the time and cost for refueling the reactor; the other enables more-efficient heat transport from the reactor core.
Battelle Energy Alliance, the contractor that manages operations at the Idaho National Laboratory, and Radiant recently signed a memorandum of understanding seeking collaboration for development and testing of the technology.
https://interestingengineering.com/ex-spacex-engineers-are-building-a-cheap-portable-nuclear-reactor
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Going off topic here (the P. Ridd v JCU), but, in case you missed it, excellent summary …
https://amp.smh.com.au/national/academic-freedom-recognised-but-sacked-scientist-fails-in-bid-to-be-reinstated-20211013-p58zms.html?__twitter_impression=true
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Interesting info from Lomborg above about Biden’s USA cost of NET ZERO.
It will cost about 11,000 $ per year for every citizen or 11,000 times 332 million $ EVERY YEAR.
And never forget that the return on this lousy investment is ZERO $ FOREVER.
Just ask the Kerry donkey and THINK.
https://nypost.com/2021/01/27/kerry-zero-emissions-wont-make-difference-in-climate-change/
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We could scale it down to an Australian population of about 25 million and it would cost about $255 billion every year.
A couple of days ago Yahoo News had an article about climate change. https://au.yahoo.com/news/disaster-aussie-cities-will-flood-without-urgent-climate-action-093757455.html
From the article “With the science so clear and the risk so great, it’s “unfathomable” that some leaders refuse to make the 2050 pledge, Climate Council spokesperson and economist Nicki Huntley told Yahoo News.
She points to a Deloitte Access Economics report released this month that found climate change related disasters will cost Australia $94 billion a year by 2060 if action is not taken to reduce emissions.”
It seems that it would be way cheaper to take the risk and keep living as we are, particularly when the $255 billion would be a cost every year from now on but the “climate related disasters”
a. are a risk which may or may not (most likely not) happen in any given year,
b. expenditure to mitigate the risk of some disasters, like sea walls, once done, will not happen every year
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Yes Maptram and US population is about 13.28 size of our pop and that cost for them would be about 3.38 Trillion $ a year.
Anyone not starting to see a problem?
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Maybe the Nationals could include nuclear power in their position on Canute Crisis (thinking we can change the climate). Now, that would be leadership…and scare the anti industry groups, of course.
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I suspect, but am not certain, that a majority of voting Australians are not so stupid as to prefer to “freeze in the dark” with expensive unreliables when they know they can be warm and cosy and employed at a low cost with fossil fuel, nuclear or proper hydro.
The greens/Left hate coal, gas and real hydro so have left the civilised rational thinkers among us with no other option but for clean, practically inexhaustible, cheap nuclear energy.
Hopefully the inhabitants of Once Great Britain will think similarly.
Also, the strategy is not dissimilar to when Margaret Thatcher said there was anthropogenic global warming (recanted in her autobiography) and that Britain must go nuclear. The real purpose there was to break the coal mining union lead by Arthur Scargill. Now the nuclear strategy is similarly to break the greens/Left.
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MODS PLEASE HELP,
THE COMMENT I AM TRYING TO POST WILL NOT POST.
HAVE TRIED DIFFERENT PLATFORMS AND DEVICES.
[Your comment is at #33 David.]AD
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Did you post it here. There is no point putting it in an envelope and addressing it to Craig Kelly
[Oh behave]AD
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😛 And maybe get a different catchphrase “AD”
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A comment from WhatsUpWithThat …
The UK has a population of 67 million and 39 million middle class, powered by :
3 coal fired power stations (soon to be 1 and then none)
32 gas fired power stations
8 nuclear power stations
..and some renewables.
+ 16% of power from France, Holland and Belgium
China has a population is 1,400 million (1.4 billion) and 880 million middle class, powered by:
1082 coal fired power stations (200+ planned),
50 nuclear power stations
and a lot of hydro and some renewables.
The talk of the UK exporting CO2 is meaningless because it is always stated without context or scale. The UK’s 39 million middle class is dwarfed by not only China’s massive soon to be 1,000 million middle class but also India’s 300 million middle class, as well as the enormous differences in power generation.
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On helping it along
“Useless Green Energy Hitting The Wall”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/10/17/useless-green-energy-hitting-the-wall/
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If we in Australia can buy 12 nuclear submarines, why can’t we have a single nuclear power plant? Wouldn’t that be better for Scott Morrison to propose? My only question would be how fast we can build it. And it would likely be cheaper than the white elephant left by Malcolm Turnbull with his genius pumped hydro.
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The Turnbull Government’s Snowy 02 “pumped hydro” scheme estimated to cost about $2 billion and now heading quickly towards $12 billion, a Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme rejected section of that Project because it would not have been cost effective.
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There is a group here in SA that have vowed to die in any ditch you nominate to stop nuclear fuel generation or waste “dumps” to be placed in SA. When i explained to them we already have 3 waste “dumps” in SA they struggled to reconcile with this truth so resorted to the now obligatory plan B and the discussion ended quite quickly.
The point is you cannot make people view the world its reality when they see it from the one they have constructed for themselves therefore, you wont convince people to build a nuke whilst they still believe millions died in Fukashima, or there are no waste “dumps” in SA.
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Probably True hypersonic.
Can you detail the three existing “nuclear waste dumps” in SA?
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By the end of October, the Niño 3.4 index will drop to -1 C.
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/ocean/nino34.png
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Yes unfortunately it doesnt matter much what reality is. Fact is politicians make decisions and they dont know much about these things. My local member is a typical mid-wit type and he isnt going to be deep thinking on this issue, he cant, he is not capable of it. Simple as that really.
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One politician with the knowledge and education to actually understand the science and engineering behind the AGW farce is Malcolm Roberts.
Other politicians should take more notice of what he says, rather than following the low-intellect-level MSM and AGW shills.
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A Federal MP replying to a lengthy email from me regarding wind and solar installations and the land area required to match coal fired power station generators, and of course explaining nameplate and capacity factor, was quickly answered.
The MP thanked me and commented the information provided was exactly what was needed.
That important information has not been provided to MPs?
I am however not surprised, the Canberra Mushroom Club.
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Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese show net-zero unity inanity
Greg Sheridan
Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese are now on a unity ticket holding that the net-zero emissions by 2050 commitment is a national security issue. The problem is they mean opposite things. And they’re both wildly exaggerating, if not flat-out wrong.
Labor has for many years accepted the idea, fashionable in some strategic circles, that climate change can cause political unrest in the South Pacific, or low-lying parts of Southeast Asia, through flooding and the like, as well as having direct impacts on the Australian continent. Therefore Australia should tackle climate change urgently for national security reasons.
The first part of Labor’s policy syllogism is defensible enough, but the second is nonsense. Whether Australia reaches net zero by 2050 or 2060, whether it reduces emissions by, say, a further 8 per cent or a further 5 per cent in a given period, will have absolutely zero effect on global climate change. This is especially the case given many of our emissions reductions involve ceasing activities that will then be taken up by other nations with slacker environmental safeguards.
But Morrison’s equation – that effective membership of the Western alliance now requires a commitment to net zero by 2050 – is equally unconvincing. If there was a quid pro quo for AUKUS, it had nothing to do with joining future US military campaigns and everything to do with giving Joe Biden and Boris Johnson a triumphant media moment at Glasgow. This is just the sort of nonsense Barack Obama tried to sell to Tony Abbott.
Canada is an intimate member of the Western alliance and its carbon emissions have barely moved. Japan is a key member of the alliance and it’s still building new coal-fired power stations. India, a critical member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, is even more committed to coal.
The difference between Australia making a formal commitment to net zero by 2050 and just continuing with current plans is extremely slight.
We will certainly be well advised to buy any carbon offsets our friends in the South Pacific may be selling. International trading in carbon offsets is extremely ropy, often corrupt and based on hypotheticals piled on fictions. Last time this was tried, Western nations were paying huge amounts of money to Chinese factories not to do things they only ever said they were going to do in order to attract carbon offsets sales.
There’s no reason to think it will be any different this time. Nonetheless we should spend what is effectively aid money on the South Pacific and whatever schemes it participates in.
Finally, Morrison makes a powerful argument when he says progress to net zero cannot be linear because it depends on technology that doesn’t yet exist, doesn’t yet work or is not yet affordable.
We should invest heavily in green technology and hope it works out. But by definition, technology that does not yet exist cannot be part of a precise plan or timeline.
Morrison’s old formulation – net zero, through technology, as soon as possible and preferably by 2050 – was actually 100 per cent right. So long as he’s just changing the form of words, net zero by 2050 can possibly be a beneficial fiction.
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Just released report by published by the Minerals Council of Australia:
Ben Heard (2021) ‘Small modular reactors in the Australian context’ https://www.minerals.org.au/sites/default/files/Small Modular Reactors in the Australian Context 2021.pdf
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Correct URL: https://www.minerals.org.au/sites/default/files/Small%20Modular%20Reactors%20in%20the%20Australian%20Context%202021.pdf
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Most types of energy generation have negative side-effects. This is a natural occurrence since the Industrial Revolution. I bet the latte inner city “Greenies” of today wouldn’t want to go back to living in caves or thatched houses without power. You reap what you sow.
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Recently, The Bill Gates Foundation announced they had invested Billions in these small scale reactors. Hence, this story come as no surprise.
The Bill Gates Foundation is a force for evil; check out it’s involvement in the scurrilous use of vaccines in India, Africa etc
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