By Jo Nova
Soon every tech billionaire will have their own nuclear power plant
Two weeks ago it was Microsoft reviving Three Mile Island’s nuclear plant. Now Google is buying seven small modular reactors, and Amazon is spending $500 million USD on part of a nuclear energy company.
Too bad for the deplorables who get stuck with the expensive wind-solar-battery clunker spaghetti-grid forced on them by the arts graduates in Parliament. An AI datacentre needs all the same thing a human city does — cheap gigawatts, 24 hours a day. The number-nerd men with money have all decided the cheapest reliable answer to running their AI data center cities, while pretending to fix the weather, is nuclear power. (Coal, of course, is cheaper which is why China uses so much, but it’s against the religion).
The unwashed masses won’t get that choice, of course, to sign up with whatever generator they want. Only the uber rich get that kind of luck.
Every one of these tech giants could have poured that money into wind farms and gardens of solar panels, backed up with acres of batteries and ten thousand miles of high voltage towers, pumped hydro, and synchronous condenser flywheels. But none of them want to pour in their own billions anymore, despite the social credit points bonanza and the bragging rights that would bring.
For twenty years these same people have been pushing the renewable hard sell on us, now overnight, without so much as a “sorry” they’ve all flipped, leaving us holding the can of decrepit national grids that can’t do what they were designed to do.
Google will build seven small nuclear reactors, the first by 2030…Our PM and the CSIRO must be feeling hung-out-to-dry. They declared nuclear was the most expensive option and said Australia couldn’t even build one before 2040.
Google signs deal with startup to build small nuclear reactors to power AI
Aljazeera
Google has signed a landmark deal to use electricity produced by small nuclear reactors to power its artificial intelligence (AI) efforts.
Under the agreement with startup Kairos Power announced on Monday, the California-based tech giant will back the construction of seven small nuclear reactors capable of generating 500 megawatts of power. The first reactor is scheduled to come online by 2030, with others to follow in the coming years.
“The grid needs new electricity sources to support AI technologies that are powering major scientific advances, improving services for businesses and customers, and driving national competitiveness and economic growth,” Michael Terrell, the senior director of energy and climate at Google, said in a blog post.
Two days later, Amazon too.
Amazon follows Google in taking the nuclear option to power data centres
EuroNews
Amazon is investing in US firm X-energy to utilise nuclear reactors to power its data centres.
Amazon and X-energy are aiming to have more than 5 gigawatts of SMR-generated power operational by 2039.
The reactors are currently under development, with none currently providing power to the electric grid in the US.
Big investors can help change that, and these announcements could be the “inflection point” that makes scaling up this technology truly possible, Huff said.
Feel the heat. Only weeks ago these same billionaires were raving about renewable energy, downranking and censoring the skeptics… now they are doing exactly what we said all along.
I wonder if the large AI users will have their own transmission lines from the generators out to their AI cities. If not, then maybe us plebs could get a little of the good stuff too.
On a side note, does this mean that OZ will not get any AI factories, at least until we remove the ban on nuclear? Maybe this is the employment plans of labour. You get to keep your job pushing pens over a desktop until the computer can get more power. Government employment, guaranteed to last forever.
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Exactly, Ian. Some, like Obama, have their own generators but we all need power for their plans to work.
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Obama not only has his own fuel to power his mansion, but he did it the smart way and went with a fossil fuel. He’s got 2500 gallons of propane and enough propane accessories to keep Hank Hill’s family fed for the foreseeable future.
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Victoria could be the AI centre for the world. Enough lignite to power data centres for thousands of years.
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The big tech guys won’t be thinking of the plebs. Remember it was these same techs who were leading the global boiling and ruinables charge. There’s a fair amount of hypocrisy in this latest move as reality has landed and those fanciful save the world chickens are coming home to roost.
The problem for Australia is that blackout Bowen won’t learn from this. He will reject this just as he rejected the news that all the major financial institutions were behind nuclear. Nothing will change blackout’s mind (sic), because he hasn’t got one to change.
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It’s the difference between Politics and Business.
One wants to stay in business, the other just wants to rule briefly (and expects a great retirement bonus).
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Presumably if so many high profile hitech firms are seen to be abandoning renewables this will give pause for thought by the general public as well as those currently making energy decisions based on ideology, not reality.
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They may have asked AI to determine the lowest cost form of power supply. This from Perplexity comparing 100% “renewable”/battery with 100% coal:
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LCOE is a very faulty costing method for comparisons, as it doesn’t accurately compare costs across the full lifetime of the longest-duration energy source being nuclear. It only looks at lifetime costs of each energy source individually, thus ignoring the fact that while nuclear still continues to supply power, the short-duration renewables have to be torn down and replaced at least twice, if not three times or more. Also it doesn’t include the need for very expensive backup for the unreliable renewables.
Energy think tanks, including IEA in France, IEEJ Japan, OECD and the U.S. EIA have pointed out the fact that LCOE is incomplete.
For a good discussion on this subject, may I recommend “Full cost of electricity ‘FCOE’ and energy returns ‘eROI’”, by Lars Schernikau et al, May 2022.
Also Robert Idel’s “Levelized Full System Costs of Electricity”, November 2022.
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LCOE also does not consider other salient costs. Such as that ruinables require backup from the mythical batteries, in reality fossils/nuclear; that ruinables only survive through massive direct subsidies; or through preferential sale to the grid when the stupid things are working; or that a special grid is necessary for them since they only produce DC electricity.
By any reasonable comparison ruinables not only do not work but are ridiculously more expensive.
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It’s the backup cost that appears to be the major issue. Labor still appear to be claiming that gas will provide the backup, yet they want to reduce fossil fuel use to only 18%. Under those conditions, surely there would be insufficient gas available for use and to provide backup.
If gas won’t provide backup, and Snowy 2 only 10% of National grid backup at best, then batteries would have to be used at an exorbitant cost, which we cannot afford.
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The backup cost is huge but the subsidies are staggering. Alan Moran estimates those subsidies in Australia are $13 billion PA:
https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/dr-alan-moran-report/
And a subsidy is not a tax deduction which the alarmists accuse the fossils of getting as a subsidy. To receive a tax deduction your business must be capable of making a profit against which the deduction is offset. Fossils and nuclear do that. NO ruinable does; without subsidies they would not exist.
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Well, I’ll just have to stop buying stuff from Amazon, using Google or buying Windows…until they come to their senses and buy green electrons, just like Canberra!
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That made me laugh. So true. Arts graduates make all these tech decisions. It’s outrageous. Though was always the way. All the early prominent Australian politicians were lawyers.
It annoys me the prestige law students hold. I knew many law students when I went to university, and while some seemed pretty intelligent, a lot of them were far from that. Shocked me. It was a regional university though. My nephew is just finishing his LLB and I regard him as below average intelligence. You can’t have a conversation with him about any issue, he just freezes and has no idea what you’re talking about nor has any interest. He’s just a nerd who does his homework, gets distinctions. He’ll probably be Minister for Energy one day.
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one of my grandsons did a law degree and recently was employed by the AEMO. I fear for Australia!
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It does make sense. I’d say that’s the way it will go for a while, the big companies will have their own power supply and the rest will get the unreliable intermittent mess. People with enough funds (and sun) will have their solar running the household, the rest can go hang and survive off the propaganda fed to them. The trend seems to be starting.
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This is all well and good, but if you have electricity powering your home, (and here, keep in mind this would have to be a stand alone solar panel, battery backup home system, not connected to the grid) ….. what good is having that if everything else (which is all connected to a now failed grid) around you is blacked out.
You can’t go anywhere, do anything, shop, hospitals, emergency services etc etc etc.
Huh! You could charge the doorknockers wanting to charge up their phones!! (but then, there would be no reception, as no power to the comms towers)
Tony.
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Absolutely correct Anton. If wind and solar fail overnight, as they can do for the entire evening, if this occurs on a hot night, there is no way a standard house battery system will be able to keep supplying power for the entire evening.
And I’m not sure that hospital emergency backup systems are really designed to be run for long periods.
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And therein lies the problem, one which I have personally encountered.
On Friday 20Feb 2015, Cyclone Marcia drove directly over the top of Rockhampton, where I was living at the time. The power went off at 10.41AM on that Friday morning, and that power loss was widespread across the whole area.
On the next morning, I was up at around 6.30AM, and turned on my trusty (now 56 years old and still in daily use) National Panasonic R-247JB Transistor radio, (image at this link) tuned into the local AM station, ABC Capricornia 837, broadcast on both AM and FM, but this old radio only picked up AM.
There was a desperate call from the local Base Hospital, actually quite a large regional hospital really.
They did have emergency power, which had cut in when the power went off, but the emergency call was for diesel fuel, and lots and lots of it, as it was desperately low on fuel. Luckily, within half an hour two large road tankers turned up, otherwise the hospital would have lost power totally.
So, it seems having emergency power is subject to the availability of fuel to run them, as in this case. No good ducking down to the local servo, as their pumps are supplied from the grid, so the only access to fuel for the hospital was in fact large 18 wheeled rigs.
So, even if you do have stand alone rooftop solar and battery backup, you are subject to what happens outside of that household environment, where there might be , well, nothing!!
In the aftermath of the cyclone, our power was off for more than five days, and until you actually have to go through something like that, you just DO NOT realise how much for granted we take access to electrical power.
Tony.
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We lost power for only two days during the 2019 fires on the Mid North Coast. I had a Honda generator that could run our fridges to keep the food and a BBQ for cooking. Without that the local wildlife would have had a smorgasbord and we would have lived on cold canned soup and baked beans. Early nights meant decent sleep as nature intended.
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absolutely – we were driven out of the dividing range in the 2009 fires – the only power we had on that day was from a petrol generator – it didnt save my house though. We now have a fire proof house and a large hyundai diesel generator in a protective brick enclosure which runs our electric fire fighting pumps and the household when the power goes off – which it did several times this year (once for load shedding). I also have a gerry can stock of diesel that would keep us running for at least 5 days – which would be necessary if we get anything like the 2009 Black Saturday fires again.
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Businesses that want to stay in business in the CO2 demonised world will need their own power supply.
For example, Aldi is notionally 100% “renewable” (like Canberra) but still relies on the grid. It will be expensive to install batteries at every shop but ultimately lower cost than paying for what will be increasingly expensive grid. The wholesale price may stabilise but the grid costs will continue to cause the retail price to ratchet up.
https://corporate.aldi.com.au/corporate-responsibility/environment/renewable-electricity/
Coles is not as aggressive as ALDI but is on its way to notional (like Canberra) 100% “renewable”:
As the grid deteriorates, these large firms will be always looking at ways to reduce their cost of reliable energy supply. Most locations in Australia can do it at lower cost with solar/battery with small diesel rather than full diesel. Most of the existing supermarkets already have enough diesel to run freezers.
Many mines in Australia already have independence of the grid and some are using solar to reduce their fuel costs.
Aluminium smelters will not exist unless they have a tethered reliable power station.
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Surely it would be cheaper for Aldi to install a no-break diesel system, rather than very expensive short-life batteries? But then they couldn’t make those “green” claims.
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Why not? It may be less “polluting” using a diesel generator than the full environmental cost of so called green energy. EVs are 6 to 12 times more environmentally damaging than ICE vehicles and I would guess the same applies to back up generation. We know the green advocates never consider all the costs either monetary or environmental when spruiking their propaganda.
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The next time you visit Coles or Woolies, have a look at just how much cold storage and cool storage there is, and here keep in mind that is just ‘front of shop’, as there are humungous freezers out the back.
If a supermarket loses power, even for as little as just one hour, everything in cool and cold storage has to be thrown out, no questions, all of it.
And Aldi is the third of the major supermarkets, the 72nd highest electricity consumer in Oz, so imagine how much Coles and Woolies consume, around the same electricity as between 200 and 300 homes ….. each, depending on the size of the individual supermarket.
Woolworths consumes 1% of Australia’s total electricity, around 2.6TWH a year, so that’s 2,600,000,000KWH a year. Sorta puts your household power bill into perspective, eh!
On that same Friday afternoon of the Cyclone, (at around 5PM) I drove to the local Stockland shopping centre, thinking they would have emergency power as well. Correct. I was after bread and some sausages maybe. I was one of maybe four people with a similar idea. I parked near a back entrance, and one of the Woolies staff was leaving to go home. I asked if they were open, and was told that they were open, sort of, and that they had asked any of the usual afternoon shift if they could come in, as they were desperate for staff, as it was ‘all hands on deck’ to clean out all the cool and cold storage, as soon as possible, before it went off ‘in situ’. I did access some bread, and some sausages, from the one small cold storage top open floor mounted ‘fridge’ used for just that purpose only, and only for the next hour or so they would remain open to the public, not that there were many people who even thought of that in the first place, because after that, they also were going to be ‘binned’ as well.
Tony.
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The local supermarkets (not Coles or Woolies) installed back up generators a few years ago following several (shortish) local blackouts. As one of the managers said each stoppage would cause $10,000 cost, pays for a lot of safety.
I notice that the large shopping centre with Coles (and several shops needing reliable electricity) have a large generator setup (not visitable) behind the back. Gets visits by a large tanker (diesel?).
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When I was growing up in the 70s, I wondered why my grandmother had a rusty old propane tank the size of a small car in her backyard (and most of the other houses in town also had one). She explained that that it provided power to their house before the electric grid reached their town. I predict we will see a return to that model if the grid becomes unreliable. People who can afford it will just go off-grid and find a more reliable way to get power. The more unstable the grid becomes, the more valuable companies that provide propane/LNG/diesel accessories/services for private homes and businesses will become.
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It seems Australia is unique in its hang up about nuclear energy. Americans have far less aversion to it. Strange how these fears take hold. Seems to be part of Australia’s character. I predicted the uptake of the vaccine would be high in Aus because of that fear (and it would have been high even without the mandate).
And the really weird thing is Australia is even fearful of coal, which forces the hand on nuclear.
I cannot believe we are even considering nuclear, but that’s what fear, and lack of critical thinking will do to you, strange things. I would think we would have one or two nuclear plants for the curiosity of the technology for the future, but with so much coal and a small population, most energy would come from it, even if co2 theory was correct.
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Israel has 100 to 200 nuclear weapons (no one but they know) and a reactor or two at Dimona, but no civilian nuclear power. Scientifically, on a per capita basis it is ahead of the US in innovation.
Then again its neighbors have been raining artillery shells and missiles at them for 76 years so they would have to do it underground today. If it gets rid of Iran as an enemy it may build nuclear plants like the UAE. A peaceful Middle East would be very nice.
Trump’s Abraham Accords was brilliant.
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Mark Mills was correct and he has been warning about the unreliable,toxic W & S + batteries lunacy for years.
Aussies should start to wake up soon but I’ll believe it when I see it.
Labor ,Greens and Teals want unreliable very expensive garbage for our future energy and then replace this Toxic mess every 15 to 20 years and at a cost of trillions of $ forever. See their ABC and Bloomberg estimates online.
Of course their added bonus is up to 28,000 klms of our precious environment destroyed forever.
Just a very obvious fra-d and con trick against their citizens and yet very few want or dare to understand or even make a noise about it.
Again, why is it so?
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Australia and the world generates very little total primary energy today from W & S and FFs still generate most of the world’s energy today.
It would cost endless trillions of $ to change to unreliable, toxic W & S and then replace the mess every 15 to 20 years at least.
The smart countries will only build reliable base-load generators and these plants will last well past 2100 with proper servicing over the years.
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We could not afford to keep paying around $120,000 to $150,000 per household every 10-15 years for renewed unreliable renewables and their required backup. Never going to happen, so the goal of 82% renewables is simply not achievable.
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There is a bit of a nasty after taste that goes with the pleasure of laughing at the doomsters, perhaps being awakened from their wokeness. We are getting woke AI.
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“Too bad for the deplorables who get stuck with the expensive wind-solar-battery clunker spaghetti-grid forced on them by the arts graduates in Parliament.“
Gold. Well said Jo.
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I hope the Coalition is reads this, Jo, so they can raise it in parliament. Google and Amazon going nuclear will be impossible even for the Left to ignore or forget.
A link to this page should be sent to every local conservative member, federal, state and local. I suggest another page devoted to this purpose.
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The “…arts graduates in parliament”. Love it!! Read Jo’s blog, get some science education and satirical comedy at the same time.
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When was the last manufacturing plant built in Australia?
Under the control of the CFMEU, only government funded projects get built, or we import all the components for solar panels and windmills.
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We built a Moderna vaccine plant in Victoria- does that count? ( rhetorical?, don’t answer)
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BTW here’s the percentage use of fossil fuels for the world and a number of countries.
Australian percentage is high but we only emit about 1% of global co2 emissions and China about 30%.
But Canada’s use of FFs is about 65% and still about the same percentage for the last 23 years.
Global tonnages of FFs are much higher today and NON OECD co2 emissions have increased by about 14 billion tons per year over the last 30 years.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuels-share-energy?tab=chart&country=USA~JPN~CAN~FRA~ITA~DEU~GBR~OWID_WRL~AUS~CHN
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According to the Energy Institute’s “Statistical Review of World Energy 2024”, Page 16, Australia REDUCED its CO2 emissions from energy by 0.2% in 2023. Was 1.1% in 2023.
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Jo, I wonder if Bowen is even aware of this. He seems to be totally blinkered and unable to take in any information opposed to his belief that wind and solar is the only option to power this country into the future. And I will not comment on the CSIRO!
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The King island hybrid system is mostly running on the Diesel generator again this morning.
https://www.hydro.com.au/clean-energy/hybrid-energy-solutions/success-stories/king-island
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The good news is that unlike yesterday the total output now matches the total demand.
But seriously how do you manage to get only 238kW out of a wind generator on an island in the roaring forties?
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Thanks for this update Jo. I would assume we won’t hear about this change In energy supply strategy from the three letter public broadcasters and the woke MSM corporations? Ouch, inconvenient truths.
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The MSM reported this days ago. The background is training generative AIs requires lots of CPUs and electricity. Fossil fuel generation is not an option. Mini nuclear power plants are still in the R&D phase, delivery is not until 2030 onwards. If successful, it will filter down to those who don’t have deep pockets.
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Yes. It was reported very briefly by your ABC on radio at least as part of their tech segment.
However, as for Fossil Fuel generation not being an option. It’s the world’s greatest source of electricity generation and will continue to be for a long time.
China & India certainly know it’s an option.
At least Google etc know that wind and solar is not reliable enough for their needs, or too expensive to make reliable. In Aus we unfortunately don’t have nuclear as an option under current legislation.
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Strop – the tech segment got their info from other msm. It is easy enough to find this out for yourself. They didn’t find out from the dark web or the alt media.
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I was agreeing with Simon about the msm you wally. 😄 But thought I’d note that your ABC didnt seem to be paying it much attention while their friends were. They may yet, if it doesnt present as nuclear being a good idea. 😉
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Mini nuclear plants have already gone past the R&D phase, as SMRs are being constructed right now. Need to keep up.
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Simon beat me to it. Yes, it has had horough msm coverage. Once again someone feels compelled to make a false statement for whatever motivation.
edit- just noticed that Jo has links to msm. doh
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The Blog hates being proven wrong. But no doubt they are already workshopping strategies to flip-flop to nuclear without looking stupid and claim credit for doing so. It’s too late for Bowen, of course; he’s in too dumb… I mean deep… I mean both.
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The Marxist, anti-human Greens won’t like this.
They have been outflanked and outmaneuvered by people 1,000 times smarter than they and with way more money than Alex Soros.
The Left won’t like it all as it solves energy problems and without fossil fuels.
When Trump is elected and if he’s paying attention he should let this rip and name someone at the DOE
who is a forward thinker – like Elon Musk. His administration should get in front of this all the way.
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Chris Bowen and the Socialist Albanese government with their Australia as a renewable energy superpower plans are destined to become the equivalent of an evolutionary dead end in Australia’s emerging energy profile. They’ll fade from history because it’s inevitable that Australia will have to embrace the nuclear option for reliable 24/7/365 baseload power to re-kindle our heavy industries like aluminium and steel. The bad old days of nuclear power generation accidents are gone. The latest developments in virtually risk free reactors will determine energy policies for aspirational governments who desire to progress the wealth and well being of their people. The following website shows what’s available to help Australians get the reliable energy and prosperity they deserve: https://www.usnc.com/mmr/
Let’s face reality: for renewables, namely solar, rooftop with battery backup for short-term outages is the practical limit to this kind of renewable input. As for wind turbines their dependence on the vagaries of the wind, their ugly blight on the natural beauty of our land and their huge land footprint make industrial wind power a curse for most of us rather than a blessing.
It’s time to reclaim common sense. Oust the destructive Socialist Albanese Labour government and demand the nuclear option.
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The companies mention that are moving into self-controlled nuclear power appear to all have special ways of doing so, such as reopening Three Mile Island. This will remove future demand from the various grids in the USA, but will not soon move the needle for all the rest of electrical power needs. It will take acts of Congress and State Legislatures to start the process. Then, planning, financing, training, and work might begin. 15 years out, is a guess.
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I doubt that it will take that long, as Three Mile Island wasn’t shut down because of any safety concerns. And SMRs should take a lot shorter time to gain certification.
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Typical of these advocates for renewables.
They are all NIMBYS. Every single one of them!
This is what happen when they are forced to face reality.
As Jo wrote they had the option to build wind and solar plants backed up by massive batteries. But no, they chose the reliable, cost effective option of nuclear. Hypocrites, one and all!
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This entire nonsense, Arts graduates and lawyers deciding science could end tomorrow with the answer to one question. Can we humans change CO2? And the answer is no.
The increase in CO2 is perfectly natural and beneficial and nothing to do with any human activity.
China, Russia, India, most of the world believes it. That’s 85% of world populations.
Only America and Europe are talking reparations for slavery, reparations for carbon dioxide, oppression of everyone except the evil ‘white’ males and faith in the power of windmills and solar panels. It’s part of the march through the Institutions of a revamped Post Modernist Marxism. Facts don’t matter. Captain Cook was a villain. Benjamin Franklin was a villain. Winston Churchill was a villain. All were racists. Even Elon Musk is now a villain not a hero simply because he dares disagree with this black Marxist fable, this new religion.
It’s a Bizarro world. Facts have no place in it. And science no place at all. Why not ban science? It has done no good for anyone. Free speech too according to John Kerry. We are heading back to the Dark Ages anyway. But you have to ask why the whole world wants to emigrate to America, Britain and Australia.
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Safe reactors are all for the good,
If they feed national grids, as they should,
But the plan may be feeds,
Just for big tech’s own needs,
And shut us all out if they could.
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I recently drove for several hours along the Hume Highway to Wodonga on Victoria’s north-eastern border. I was staggered to see the number and size of solar farms in the process of being constructed on good quality farmland both sides of the freeway. It is clear that those who are allowing this to happen and actively promoting it both have no idea of what they are doing to our future food and energy security and clearly dont understand the limitations of this form of energy generation. the destruction of the environment by the coverage of the landscape with solar and wind farms is being allowed to remove our capacity to grow our own food as well as destroy our wildlife and farms – so if you think food and energy is expensive now – you aint seen nothing yet. These “farms” are also vulnerable to the weather – has anyone looked into the damage to rooftop solar panels in Casterton in the hailstorm this week? It could show just how vulnerable these things are to our full range of weather impacts.
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The UK is being covered in carbon capture forests. Look at ‘where our projects are’.
And we have the Carbon Credits 2011 Act to pay people to destroy farm land in Australia as well. All our big companies now have to pay 35% CO2 tax, which is a tax on everything we do. This in a country where both parties said there will be no carbon tax. It’s just carbon theft. As illegal as it is hidden.
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BTW Nuclear is by far the safest BASE-LOAD power source in the world and perhaps nobody would die for many decades across the globe.
Death rates of just 0.03 per TWH are SFA and mean zip over 50 or 100 years.
BTW virtually all the Nuclear safety data used by OWI Data are also heavily biased from just Chernobyl and Fukishima to calculate the numbers, or 0.03 deaths per TW Hours.
Of course we know that toxic W & S are environmental disasters and have to be buried in landfill every 15 to 20 years and forever.
And never forget this means ongoing trillions of $ wasted forever and a very fragile electricity grid that will fail big time on a regular basis.
Here’s the OWI Data safety link.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
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