In which the pond tries to revive its fortunes, or at least turn the tide, with SMRs and a Killer dose ...

 

The pond hit a nadir, rock bottom, low tide, whatever hollow metaphor you like, yesterday. 

The point of the reptiles is to be pointless, but yesterday was entirely pointless. As a correspondent rightly noted, where was the bromancer? Why did the bromancer avoid welcoming Truss as the new Boris? Why was the pond left with cartoons to celebrate the second (or is it the third or fourth) coming?

But the pond must do a Gatsby and beat on, a boat against the relentless current, borne back ceaselessly into the past ...until frabjous day, callooh callay, the pond might chortle in its joy, twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe of nuking the country, and the planet with a hearty celebration of SMRs ...

Oh indeed, indeed, what a relief to have a blowhard blow in and do the heavy lifting for the reptiles, as if the Caterist and the dog botherer weren't enough. And with SMRs already so cheap, the pond has immediately put in an order for one for the back yard...

As for the CSIRO, the pond was finally moved to visit to catch on their July opinions ... (there's a link to the pdf report here) ...

Enough of that nonsense, back to the siren song of the loon ...

Oh indeed, indeed, and its astonishing to see so many SMR's out there, blitzing the field ... blazing the way .... 

Meanwhile, on another planet at Stanford, May, 2022 ...

...The study also found that the spent nuclear fuel from small modular reactors will be discharged in greater volumes per unit energy extracted and can be far more complex than the spent fuel discharged from existing power plants.

“Some small modular reactor designs call for chemically exotic fuels and coolants that can produce difficult-to-manage wastes for disposal,” said co-author Allison Macfarlane, professor and director of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. “Those exotic fuels and coolants may require costly chemical treatment prior to disposal.”

“The takeaway message for the industry and investors is that the back end of the fuel cycle may include hidden costs that must be addressed,” Macfarlane said. “It’s in the best interest of the reactor designer and the regulator to understand the waste implications of these reactors.”

Radiotoxicity

The study concludes that, overall, small modular designs are inferior to conventional reactors with respect to radioactive waste generation, management requirements, and disposal options.

One problem is long-term radiation from spent nuclear fuel. The research team estimated that after 10,000 years, the radiotoxicity of plutonium in spent fuels discharged from the three study modules would be at least 50 percent higher than the plutonium in conventional spent fuel per unit energy extracted.

Because of this high level of radiotoxicity, geologic repositories for small modular reactor wastes should be carefully chosen through a thorough siting process, the authors said.

“We shouldn’t be the ones doing this kind of study,” said Ewing. “The vendors, those who are proposing and receiving federal support to develop advanced reactors, should be concerned about the waste and conducting research that can be reviewed in the open literature.”

Back to the dreaming, and the reveal that the dreamer has skin in the game, or at least a deep desire for government dosh and subsidy ...

Oh indeed, indeed, let nuclear run and free, though it might be handy if someone could point to a working example of how it's going to be the economical, pollution free salvation of the planet ...

Meanwhile, the pond is pleased to report that Killer Creighton has called in from the US, which means at least one certified genuine reptile was in the house this day, what with the likes of the bromancer and Major Mitchell MIA ...

It so happens that the Killer's piece coincides with a tip that the pond received from reliable government sources - people are expecting a big surge in Covid in late October ... but nobody wants to mention it, because why frighten the horses?

Now on with the killing fields and big pharma ...

Indeed, indeed, big pharma would have been routed if we'd all just taken Ivermectin ...

Sssh, don't mention masks or social distancing, they only get the Killer agitated ...

Oh you cruel plod, leave the poor innocent mask-less woman alone, so the pond can continue to rail with Killer ...

Shocking stuff ... a stand must be taken against tyrannical government...

Damn you, damn you all authoritarian governments ... keep church windows open? Why next you'll be suggesting Killer wear a mask, and what a Freudian outburst that'd produce ...

Indeed, indeed, fancy trusting vaccines, you'd be much safer in Nimbin ...and as for that idle talk of masks, it's time to take a stand ...

Ah, the good old days in the Dreamland Rink ... with Killer there in spirit, and ready to get agitated about vaccines too ... and so to a final Killer outburst ...

Splendid stuff, and with that column, the Killer has done his little bit for a growing form of American stupidity, aped around the world ...

...anti-vaccine pockets have sprouted up across the US – some organic, others seeded by national groups – including in wealthy, liberal enclaves in Marin county, California; Portland, Oregon; and Clark county, Washington, as well as in an Amish community in Ohio and among Somali refugees in Minnesota.
Questions about vaccines started to emerge in the early 2000s with a new generation of parents who had no first-hand knowledge of vaccine-controlled diseases such as measles and polio, says Saad Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health. “In the minds of successive cohorts of parents, the salience of real or perceived side effects go up compared to the salience of actual disease,” Omer says. “That happened over several decades because vaccines were so successful in controlling polio in the US.”
Seizing this opportunity, national anti-vaccine groups became aggressive evangelizers, and their messaging has taken hold in communities that Omer says share several common traits, such as having strong values of purity (either secular or religious) and liberty – a combination of “my body is a temple” and “you can’t tell me what to do”.
An outbreak becomes likely when these groups – which are often tight knit and insular – have frequent outside exposures, particularly through travel. For example, a measles outbreak occurred among the Ohio Amish community when two unvaccinated members contracted the virus while visiting the Philippines (reports conflict as to whether the trip was for charitable or missionary purposes).
Experts interviewed for this article weren’t sure when vaccine hesitancy initially emerged in the Rockland Orthodox community. The first organized action appears to have been a phone hotline through which anti-vaccine activists “would promote a lot of misinformation” to parents with questions about vaccination, says Dorit Reiss, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of Law. (Graudian away here with lots more)

Or they could just read the lizard Oz, railing at big pharma and vaccines and masks and all the rest of it ...

And so to a special prize for the lizard Oz editorialist, for persistent, relentless, idle abuse of the word "woke" ...

Enough is more than enough, you useless fucking moron, with your simplistic evocation of everything that's stupid about the reptile lexicon ...

Arranging an ambulance to come in a timely way has got sweet fuck all to do with 'woke', whatever woke is supposed to mean, you unwoke fuckwit.

And with that the pond would usually end with a celebratory cartoon and call it quits for the day ...

But the reptiles didn't just bless the pond with talk of SMRs today ... there was another energizer bunny in town, and in the interests of pond correspondents, the pond thought it would give it a go ...

It's long, mind, but the pond will always find a home for those visiting the lizard Oz with a yearning for fossil-fuel generation, and scarcely a word about what it might cost if climate science predictions come to pass in the not too distant future ...

Fossil fuel subsidies from major economies including Australia reached close to US$700 billion in 2021, almost doubling from 2020, according to new analysis by the International Energy Agency and OECD.

These subsidies are expected to keep rising in 2022 as governments worldwide attempt to use fossil fuel subsidies to shield customers from the high energy prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Australia spends billions each year giving subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, despite our climate change commitments. The Australia Institute estimates that in the 2021-22 budget period, Australian federal and state governments’ total fossil fuel subsidies cost A$11.6 billion. That’s up $1.3 billion on the previous year.

Subsidies play an important role in economies like Australia. By pushing the prices of things down below the cost of producing them, subsidies make everything from schools and hospitals to the ABC and childcare much cheaper and more widely available than they would otherwise be.

But it makes absolutely no economic sense to provide subsidies to things that a government is, or should be, trying to discourage.

The pond thought it should just drop a reference to The Conversation in for no particular reason ... please, do carry on ...

Oh you silly alarmist goose, we'll have SMRs in every capital city by Xmas ... the pond is aware of a vacant plot of land down the road where one will fit nicely ... but please, do go on ...

Phew, the pond was vastly relieved that its mention of subsidies did come in handy.  And there was more about them back in The Conversation, though with no indication of who might be paying through purse or wallet...

And there was more in relation to another topic that was raised, the proposal that we've been charging ahead at breakneck speed ...

But please, do carry on ...

And with all that, the pond is done for the day, the planet is fucked, and it seems we're driving off a cliff, according to the immortal Rowe ...

Well at least it's a way to go out in style ...