Just another day at the reptile factory, with Dame Groan groaning away, as she nukes the country and the planet ...
Sorry? There's never sorry in the groaning ... perhaps just a quiet rest in the maze in the peaceful snow ...
Just as the reptiles aren't sorry for that snap ... but it got the show off on the Dampierre derriere right note ...
Sorry, sorry, on with the groaning ... but watch out for the blood in the lift well ...
See the clever wording? In the groaning, it isn't a climate science crisis, it's an energy crisis, and so we need a rational debate about nuking the country ...
Strange, the pond thought we had an abundant supply of dear, sweet, innocent, clean, virginal Oz coal. Suddenly soaring coal prices are ruining everything?
On with the nuking ...
Of course, of course, good old Ridders ... but why should Ridders care about nuking the planet?
He doesn't really accept the climate science, and has been banging on about it for a long time, as with this analysis in the Graudian back in 2015 ... which ended on this jocular note ...
Ah never mind, birds of a nuking feather will flock together for a good groaning...
A good, solid groaning ... and all the more excellent because this sort of FUD is urgently needed in the lizard Oz, what with the wretched display of gormless, spineless, back flipping in the tabloids ...
Of course the usual suspects were impressed ...
Ah, The Betoota Advocate ... always authoritative ... and Junkee ... and who could argue with them?
All this net-zero talk is cheap when the likes of Peta Credlin and Andrew Bolt are still being given huge platforms to spread complete and utter misinformation regarding the same topics Murdoch media now claims to care about.
Well yes, but a lot more too. Who could forget the noble work of the dog botherer, or fail to mention the antics of Rowan Dean?
The miraculous transformation was noted in Media Watch too, as a closing aside, but back at the ranch, it wasn't even a blip ... as the reptiles pondered whether SloMo should come or go, or talk of Michelangelo, or head off to Glasgow, or perhaps share a beer with Barners in the Dungowan pub ...
Ah, it's troubled, difficult times ... no wonder a good old-fashioned nuking seems so attractive ...
50-50? Oh fuck it, not Prince Chuck, it'll send the Bolter into a frenzy ...
Settle Chuck, it's all sorted at News Corp.
Say what, it's like reading a few tabloid headlines and imagining they really mean anything ... except, perhaps, that the future belongs to blondes, or perhaps Prince Andrew?
Talk about headless chooks, but then this is one of the trickier backflips, with an inordinate degree of difficulty ...
In the end, after much agonising in a few fits, the reptiles solved the matter by slipping in another click bait video ...
Some confidence?
Meanwhile, there are possibly a few wondering where is Lloydie of the Amazon when he's most desperately needed?
Sadly our Lloydie seems to be lost in the jungle, so instead the reptiles sent in ancient Troy to pretend someone at the lizard Oz cared ...
Satanic mills? That's the best the lizard Oz could offer its highly trained flock of denialist sheep?
The pond simply couldn't stand it.
Of course the pond could just have gone to the comments littered beneath Troy's piece ...
Weird shit, but all very predictable, and only proving yet again that the carefully cultivated readership are a Titanic not up for an easy turning ...
No, it was too easy, that lesser path ... so instead the pond thought the only way forward was to do a cut and paste, and slip in a little recent Bolter ...
Note the date ... 10th October 2021, one day before the tabloid revelation, and the language, is still the same ... the blather about "warmists", the yearning for coal as salvation ...
Of course it was indirect, a cunning assault on Tim Flannery as a way of undermining the entirety of climate science ... but so long as News Corp employs the likes of the Bolter and Rowan Dean and the dog botherer and all the rest of the denialists, it will be but a sounding brass or tinkling cymbal, or a tinkling Troy ...
Yes, but billy goat, butt, get some Bolter up ya ...
Ah yes, that's more like it, talk of the global warming cult ...
Poor tinkling Troy, apparently in the grip of a cult ...
Um, actually Troy, look behind the arras. You'll find the odd absurd climate denialist in News Corp still ... unchanged in their ways ...
Ah yes, global warming cultists, eyes all shiny. Are your eyes all shiny, ancient Troy?
Oh just fuck off, bring back the dissembling Lloydie of the Amazon, give full weight to the denialists still beavering away, in their columns, in Sky News after dark, in the faithful and loyal comments section, where warmists are routinely roasted ...
Is there an upside to all this nonsense, as the planet fries before a good groaning nuking?
Well luckily the infallible Pope has got nothing to say about the alleged miraculous transformation, and has his mind on other matters ...
... and so has the immortal Rowe ...
... and that'll do the pond, because what else could be said?
Oh that? Get nuked, or nick off ...
Dame Groan seems to be saying that governments are simultaneously taking too much (red tape/environmental) and too little (subsidies/underwriting) action on nuclear power. The correct balance, of course, can only be determined by whatever provides the Dame's preferred outcome.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the cost of nuclear this is from Simon Holmes à Court's submission to the Inquiry into Nuclear Prohibition
"Hinkley Point in the UK has been delayed. It was first talked of in 2006—a commitment to build it. It was supposed to be finished in 2017. It is currently on track to be finished in 2027, so a good 10 years late. It is not being built by government, but it is on the back of a government contract. It will be receiving for 35 years what works out to be approximately $200 a megawatt hour. So that is five times the price that we have had in the electricity market over the last three to six months in Australia"
He also looks at plants in France and the US with similar time and cost overruns.
Regarding tinkering in your garage
https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/that-time-a-boy-scout-built-a-nuclear-reactor-in-his-yard-5403a7c89ffe
https://parliament.vic.gov.au/images/stories/committees/SCEP/Inquiry_into_Nuclear_Prohibition_Inquiry_/Transcripts/11_September_2020/2._FINAL-Simon_Holmes_a_Court.pdf
DeleteTalking about the likes of Hinkley Point is so very yesterday, Bef. It's all SMR's now, mass produced in SMR factories then shipped and assembled in no time at all. Yair, I believe it too, who wouldn't ?
DeleteHowever, the main point is, if we go for SMRs rather than the massive future disposal palaces that have been built so far, just what kind of local nuclear industry will we need to develop ? We do have a nuclear reactor - Lucas Heights - which is simply a medical facility, so not much of an 'industry' is required.
I presume we would not want to be doing our own 'uranium enrichment', so we'll be buying our fuel overseas (America ? Britain ? France, maybe ?). But what kind of operating and support setup would we need to develop ? And how much would it all cost and how much would the electricity have to be sold for if we're not to run up a huge government subsidy bill ? $200 per megawatt as Simon Holmes à Court says for the larger scale, specially constructed units ? Wouldn't be much of a bargain if it was.
I still wonder, though, what it takes to make the nuclear power units for ships and submarines. Surely several nations (US, UK, Russia, France and China) have been producing such 'scaled down' units for up to 60 years by now. Why not just build a dozen or two of them, but on dry land ?.
I humbly apologise GB, I must keep up.
DeleteThat doco also takes a swipe at SMRs ", the SMR sector
will have done well to have a handful of pilot projects operational by 2030, with one or two maturing to bankability by 2040. It is fanciful to believe that we know what they will cost, especially when the nuclear sector has an appalling track record of time and cost blowouts. Dr Jon Koomey, a renowned US energy expert, wrote recently that he has adopted a ‘show me’ stance with the nuclear sector: ‘Don’t tell me what you’re going
to do at what price; show me, and I’ll believe it when I see it."
It might take a while to find the source but I have seen an assessment elsewhere that bundling SMRs would actually result in a higher cost than a single traditional plant of the same overall capacity, The rationale that some sort of 'production line' method would result in much cheaper fabrication also seems dubious.
All types of renewables show the sorts of technical improvements and economies of scale that the SMR narrative relies on but the nuclear industry demonstrates the opposite trend. SMRs are basically vapourware.
Actually, I think Finkle pointed out that nuclear was the only tech that was actually getting dearer.
DeleteOh, I thought that with the sudden, major rise in the price of coal, that all the coal burning technologies would be getting dearer - to operate, anyway, if not necessarily to make.
DeleteHi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteThe Groan again attempts to perpetuate the myth that small modular reactors (SMRs) are tried and trusted technology and can be bought off the shelf right now.
The Rolls-Royce SMR she cites hasn’t produced a single commercial reactor or even test model. It looks more like a consortium of vested interests casting about in search of government funding and yet again the costs seem extortionate compared to renewables.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/11/rolls-royce-vows-to-create-6000-uk-jobs-with-nuclear-power-station-plans
One would have expected an economist like Groanie to be laser focussed on the overall cost of building, running and decommissioning nuclear reactors and how those costs stack up against other methods of energy production. Instead it’s all magical thinking, much like how the French have imagined how much it will cost to decommission their aged nuclear reactors.
https://energypost.eu/how-much-will-it-really-cost-to-decommission-the-aging-french-nuclear-fleet/
DiddyWrote
Yeah, DW, the simple-minded reptiles (not only the Groany) do seem to believe that the SMR reactors are already on board. Maybe because of RR press releases that state: "The consortium, led by Rolls-Royce, which is creating a compact nuclear power station known as a small modular reactor (SMR), has revealed its latest design and an increase in power as it completes its first phase on time and under budget."
DeleteWau. But then one reads the second paragraph: "It has also announced it is aiming to be the first design to be assessed by regulators in the second half of 2021 in the newly-opened assessment window, which will keep it on track to complete its first unit in the early 2030s and build up to 10 by 2035."
Ok, so some uncertain time more than a decade in the future before the RR "consortium" could deliver, if everything goes absolutely spiffingly right, its first unit.
Yep, that's real 'dreamtime' stuff all right.
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
Hi GB,
DeleteThe SMR is yet another spurious technological solution that the NewsCorp/COALition keep spruiking as the only possible way they could ever countenance giving up extracting and burning fossil fuels.
Just like Carbon Capture and Storage, Clean (not Green) Hydrogen and Biochar (Soil Magic) the SMR is a technology that will solve all our Climate Change problems. As usual though it isn’t quite fit for purpose just right now so we will have to keep on burning that coal, oil and gas for the foreseeable future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSZgoFyuHC8
DW
"yet another spurious technological solution". Yep, that says everything that needs to be said, DW.
DeleteIf nuclear were so good it would be the LNP's policy. But that would risk MP's arguing that climate change is serious in order to get the voters to support it. As it is... would you trust climate science deniers like Barnaby Joyce or the opinionators at Newcorp to fix global warming with nuclear? What nuclear has going for it is that it can't make any dent in fossil fuel use any time soon, even with trying. Plus they can blame others for everything about it, including their own lack of climate policy.
ReplyDeleteAh Dame Groan, a mere $368k a year to provide some of Australia's leading annual weekly economic advice.
ReplyDeleteShall we have a little look at where she stands vis a vis a potential Nobel Prize?
https://twitter.com/MattCowgill/status/1447653055516708864
Now DP has given us a privilege today: a whole lot of the Buttoned-down Brain of the Bolter to read. Back in a prior lifetime, when I used to go to a fine cafe every day for my morning coffee and muffin, or occasionally toast or even shoestring chips, I used to get to read the Melbourne Herald-Sun without having to directly contribute a cent to Roopie's pile. And the Hairoiled-Scum (thanks to Farrago) is, of course, the Cave of the Bolter.
ReplyDeleteI'd only ever read the first few paragraphs, just to see who, or what, was copping his 5-minute hate today. It was never very enlightening or inspiring, it was more like who is the throat-sore lion roaring at now. And it's so good to see that's how it still is. Same old cast of people and things to hate and roar at, every Thursday (Bolter's Day).
I really would like 10c for every time Bolt has had a go at Tim Flannery; I'd be very rich now.