The pond had wanted to start off on a lighter note today with a Colbert joke about aging, (useless YouTube ads apply), what with recent talk about the perils of old age in US politics and that WSJ whack job ...
... but then the genocide lovers got in the way, blathering on about anti-Semitism while the mass murder continues ...
Always the conflating and confusing of genocide and anti-Semitism, and yet,
it's an ugly time ...
The infallible Pope arrived a little late in the day to offer comment, but better late than never ...
Never mind, there's never time for news of the ongoing genocide in the lizard Oz, what with Petey boy daring to take out lizard Oz journalist Liam Mendes ...
Rather than reading the reptile account, the pond suggests the ABC or the Graudian ...
The ABC should be pleased, the wild-eyed hysteria means that the reptiles have entirely forgotten about their war with the ABC for the moment, and instead the war with Nine is on, with Petey boy the prime target, and the pond standing by with a seraphic smile ...
While dealing with the headlines, this one also caught the pond's eye ...
It was simply too rich to ignore - the anti-Voice campaigners complaining about anyone being deaf to the Voice was a most generous serve of irony, and the pond congratulates Tess for a singular ability to whip up a meal laden with irony without the first clue as to what she was concocting ...
While the news offering was relatively skimpy - the top of the page seemed to be slimmed down, with just the bouffant one in the top far right corner blathering about reality checks - as opposed to a good old State of Origin check on Petey boy - down below the fold there were many riches ...
The pond usually doesn't give politicians in the commentary section the time of day, but it will always make an exception for Ted and his desire to nuke the country to save the planet, and when the big huggable Teddy bear starts off with George Orwell, the pond was immediately beyond sold ...
It so happens that for its thought crimes, yesterday the pond was reading a piece in WaPo, Evan Halper's
As nuclear power flails in the U.S., White House bets big on a revival (paywall), with the tag,
Price shock, engineering mishaps, long delays and a spate of corruption have not deterred the White House from its nuclear energy ambitions.
It was a ripper read and the pond regrets it can offer Ted only a portion of it, but it did have a lovely snap of a cooling tower just to lure Ted on...
Ted was really hot for taxpayers to foot the bill, what with cost overruns, engineering setbacks and major doubts about viability, and lordy lordy, long absent lordy, he knew all about doublespeak ...
Meanwhile, back with WaPo ...
Indeed, indeed, Ted is keen to get cracking, with Ontario a perennial favourite ...
That WaPo story wrapped up this way ...
...The same challenge faces developers of small modular reactors.
Plans to build the nation’s first such plant in Idaho fell apart in November as the projected price of power kept spiraling upward. The price shock ultimately forced the small power companies in Utah that had earlier agreed to purchase electricity from the Idaho project to bail.
Administration officials counter that tech companies, with their surging energy needs and commitments to zero-emissions energy, are changing the equation. They point to nascent agreements with both big utilities and small nuclear power start-ups through which the tech firms are aiming to bankroll some of the infrastructure construction themselves, shielding other ratepayers and utility investors from financial risk. Duke Energy is collaborating with Amazon, Google, Microsoft and the steel company Nucor on one such agreement that the firm is hoping will propel nuclear development. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
But Parsons and other experts say jump-starting the nuclear industry will also require a big new infusion of federal cash, potentially in the tens of billions of dollars. That is a heavy political lift after lawmakers have already approved subsidies and incentives for nuclear developers that Granholm said can cover as much as half the cost of a plant.
Many proponents of wind and solar — as well as natural gas and even coal power — are fiercely opposed to further nuclear subsidies, arguing it is throwing good money after bad at a time other types of clean power can already be made more cheaply and without radioactive waste.
“The nuclear industry has this huge public relations campaign that says only it can meet the demand for clean energy,” said Patty Durand, a consumer advocate and a candidate for the Georgia board that regulates utilities. “But it is just not true.”
But the United States, the birthplace of the nuclear energy industry, is fast losing its dominance over it. China currently has 21 reactors under construction. India has eight large reactors under construction. South Korea has been steadily building new nuclear plants and is on a path to generate nearly a third of its energy from nuclear power by the end of the decade. (Nuclear currently accounts for 19 percent of the U.S. power supply.)
There are 19 AP1000 reactors, the design used at Vogtle, in development around the world. None of them are being built in the United States.
Perhaps fearing that Ted might appear a little lightweight, the reptiles sent for quango reinforcements, with CIS hacks on hand to offer think tank thoughts ... while operating as a caring charity ...
It was enough to put a rosy glow on cheeks, a radiant kind of joy, though the pond couldn't help thinking about the US experience ...
Luckily this pair could only manage another, albeit long gobbet ...
Having nuked the country to save the planet, the pond could turn to the usual Friday dissertation by our Henry, a great favourite at the pond, treasured for his classical learning, though alas, the pond must report that there's no mention of Thucydides today, but rather a lecture on the moral failings of Boss Hogg and Sheriff Buford T. Justice of Portague County, or similar ...
Yes, like his Republican brethren, our Henry has been brooding about the 'justice' handed out to a notorious crook and con artist, and brings his learned artillery to bear on the problem ...
The pond hesitates to interrupt the learned Henry's treatise just as he's drawn himself up and got going, but his Republican colleagues have already launched a splendid campaign ... as reported in the
NY Times, with that report outside the paywall in
The GOP Push for Post-Verdict Payback: 'Fight Fire Wirth Fire' ...
Splendid stuff, and the reptiles showed off their orange Jesus in several videos promising said righteous retribution, as only notorious crooks and con artists and snake oil salesmen can do ...
Meanwhile, our Henry was on fire ...
The snake oil salesman's chums were in furious agreement ...
...A central tenet of their argument is that the four criminal cases in four different jurisdictions against Trump are illegitimate and nothing more than political weaponization of the justice system. They continue to put forward the theory, without evidence, that all four cases are the result of a conspiracy by Biden — implicitly or explicitly rejecting the notion that Trump has been charged with crimes based on evidence.
But based on their premise that the charges — and now convictions in the fraudulent business records case — are baseless and were invented for political reasons, they are arguing that Republican prosecutors not only should but can do the same thing to Democrats. In short, having accused Democrats of “lawfare” — or using the law to wage war against political opponents — Republicans are saying they should respond in kind.
Some veteran Republican lawyers have sought to dress up the need for such retribution as a matter of constitutional principle. Among those calling for eye-for-an-eye prosecutions is John C. Yoo, a University of California, Berkeley, law professor best known as the author of once-secret Bush administration legal memos declaring that the president can lawfully violate legal limits on torturing detainees and wiretapping without warrants.
“In order to prevent the case against Trump from assuming a permanent place in the American political system, Republicans will have to bring charges against Democratic officers, even presidents,” Yoo wrote in an essay published by The National Review.
He added: “Only retaliation in kind can produce the deterrence necessary to enforce a political version of mutual assured destruction; without the threat of prosecution of their own leaders, Democrats will continue to charge future Republican presidents without restraint.”
Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill are less bothered about finding a high-minded constitutional rationale.
“President Biden should just be ready because on Jan. 20 of next year when he’s former President Joe Biden, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, a close Trump ally, said in an appearance on the pro-Trump network Newsmax.
Jackson said: “I am going to encourage all of my colleagues and everybody that I have any influence over as a member of Congress to aggressively go after the president and his entire family, his entire crime family, for all of the misdeeds that are out there right now related to this family.”
Some of the rhetoric has gone even further.
“Not just jail, they should get the death penalty,” Laura Loomer, a far-right and anti-Muslim activist with a history of expressing bigoted views, said in a podcast appearance after the verdict. Loomer, a onetime Republican nominee for a House seat in Florida, is not officially part of the Trump campaign. Trump, however, has praised her as “very special,” invited her to travel with him on his private plane and has met with her at his private clubs.
Indeed, indeed, hang 'em all.
Meanwhile, our Henry was at one, with his dismay at partisan ratbaggery deeply moving...
....There is no room on this issue for moderate or traditional Republicans, such as Larry Hogan, a former governor of Maryland and a star GOP recruit to run for the Senate in the blue state. Hogan erred unforgivably in the eyes of the Trump team when he implored Americans “to respect the verdict and the legal process” regardless of the outcome.
Chris LaCivita, a top Trump adviser, addressed Hogan in a post on X: “You just ended your campaign.” And even though a victory by Hogan could make the difference between whether Republicans or Democrats control the Senate next year, Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who is also the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, said on CNN that Hogan “doesn’t deserve the respect of anyone in the Republican Party.”
And so to the hole in the bucket man's final gobbet ...
Who wouldn't be worried about a notorious crook and con artist finally being caught out, albeit on a relatively minor matter, while the justice system valiantly works to protect him in other more serious cases, and his lickspittle sycophants promise mayhem and payback ...
And now, while the pond has run wildly over length - you don't get to nuke the country or defend con artists without spending a few words - speaking of lickspittles, the pond would like to end with the thoughts of lickspittle quisling and fellow traveller, the grave Sexton ...
It goes without say that there's SFA analogy with the Vietnam war, but we're dealing with a dealer in Vlad the Sociopath's talking points, so naturally Vlad featured in the visual distractions, together with a gratuitous snap of a de-miner at work ...
The important thing here is to give Vlad the Sociopath what he wants, and for that you want someone capable of the finest Neville Chamberlain impression, and for that you need the grave Sexton ...
It might be that this impression of Neville Chamberlain is first rate, but the pond certainly didn't interrupt when this Nev got to "R", that was the doing of the reptiles ...
Stay in the mood, stay in sell out lickspittle quisling mode, remember the point is to sell out Ukraine and give the sociopath what he wants ...
That's a mighty big billy goat butt from the lickspittle quisling, dressed up as "none of this is to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine", which is true enough, the point being that even a quisling would find it hard to justify.
The point is to work out how to make it a fait accompli, which is something of a challenge, even for quislings.
Doubtless Neville Chamberlain felt the same way, having given up on Austria, the Sudetenland, and Czechoslovakia, only to be suddenly confronted by Danzig, the corridor and the Polish matter ...
No doubt everybody would be better off giving Vlad the Sociopath back the entirety of the old Soviet empire, and who cares what the people might actually want. They should just thank the venerable Sexton for bringing back peace and the Stasi ... (and if you want he can hand over Taiwan as a supplementary bargain to Hong Kong's fate).
The pond notes with some regret that the day's business precluded any cartoons, so here are a couple to bring an end to today's proceedings at the lizard Oz ...
Here we go again ... and again and again and ...
ReplyDeleteAlex and Zoe: "The fact is that nuclear power plants last for 60 to 100 years ...". Ah, another one of those reptile "facts" - but then:
"The lifetime of an average nuclear power plant worldwide might reach up to 50 years".
"Up to 50 years ?"
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1229935/lifetime-power-plants-energy-sources-globally/#:~
But then:
"technical limits to these units churning out clean and reliable energy for an additional 40 years or longer."
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/whats-lifespan-nuclear-reactor-much-longer-you-might-think#:~
So who is really giving us "the facts"? And will SMRs - if they ever really get 'mass produced' in factories and assembled onsite - have the same lifetime as a large, expensive and highly managed and serviced reactor (which might manage as much as 92% operational time) ?
Maybe they will after we've been manufacturing, installing and servicing them for 20 or 30 years, but on day one ?
Shucks: "As the average age of American reactors approaches 40 years old, experts say there are no technical limits to these units churning out clean and reliable energy for an additional 40 years or longer."
DeleteWell, for 92% of the time maybe, if they are well manufactured, correctly installed and reliably serviced. Otherwise, the 8% of downtime is just when 'the atoms don't fission'.
David Penberthy: "/i>The fact SA's economy is not completely moribund, like the rest of the country [ including WA ?], says something ..." Yep, it says that SA has the most advanced renewable power supply in Australia and that the sun shines and the wind blows for a lot of the time.
DeleteNever thought I'd see a reptile boasting about how successful an advanced renewables energy state is.
GB - if you will excuse my taking up a chorus from the same hymn sheet - the Centre for Independent Studies certainly offers us independent interpretations. ‘the truth is that nuclear plants last 60 to 100 years, a much longer time frame than the CSIRO’s assumption of just 30years.’
ReplyDelete‘Assumption’? Um - Alex, Zoe - if you have troubled to read the GenCost document, and not just Dame Groan’s supposed synopsis, you might have seen the ’30 years’ explained in GenCost - ‘Debt and equity providers require a shorter payback period than the total asset life for some technologies to avoid the risk that part of the equipment might fail or might need new investment (sometimes called a refurbishment) to keep operating safely and reliably.’ And, yes, I have repeated that explanation of the ’LCOE’ from just a few days back, in the spirit of not letting all the recycling of ‘make’em up as we go’ rationalisations that fill the rigging of the Flagship, continue unchallenged.
It is quite clear in that explanation from CSIRO that they expect nuclear plants to be able to keep operating safely and reliably beyond 30 years - the question, central to GenCost (note that ‘Cost’ part of the title - Alex, Zoe?) is - about when are there likely to be further costs, and how does the promoter set that out in an investment prospectus?
While you are doing that - you might ask whoever ‘advises’ your superannuation fund how many investments they have recommended on the basis of accounting projections over 60 to 100 years? And all that is before you chat to anyone who has expressed real interest in investing in nuclear plants, small, modular, medium or large - about what tax treatment they are looking for - particularly over how many years? Of course, you would have to be discreet about that, because odd wrinkles in the conventions that apply to taxation in our land have yielded some very welcome transfers of funds to the Murdoch family, and they might not like to see too much investigation of any part of the Australian taxation system.
Oh, they will put up the odd ‘business’ column to tell us that we peasants need a lower tax rate on business and its star executives - but that is just to play to the dwindling subscribers - practically nothing of that is of any practical significance to the Murdoch family.
The question with SMRs is whether they can be, and if so is it even economic, to essentially 'do them over' every 30 years or so, or will they just be completely replaced by a new SMR every 30 years (or less) ? Couldn't afford to do that with a big 'built on site' reactor, of course.
DeleteOh here we go again: a wingnut reptile-fellow-traveller will expose his simplistic ignorance yet again. No Ted, "Holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them" isn't doublespeak, it is, as Orwell explicated it, doublethink. Got that now mate ?
ReplyDeleteBut we also have "...Bowen is backing Australian submariners sleeping with nuclear reactors under water, but at the same time he is claiming the same technology on land is 'risky'." And that, Teddles old mate, is because it simply isn't "the same technology". Look up Rolls Royce sometime, mate: yes, they used to make very expensive automobiles but nowadays make aeroplane engines and, most relevantly, small scale on board nuclear power units for submarines. Which aren't "under water" by the way: the sub is, but they are high and dry within the bowels of the sub.
So if they were "the same technology", we'd already have SMRs instead of expecting it to take about another decade at least to complete and test the SMR design, build and test the manufacturing factories and gather and train installation teams. As well as setting up building and commissioning standards, regulations and enforcement for the operational SMRs
As to applying "the same logic to hydro", please do keep in mind that all the applying of logic (if any) was done before Albo and his mob got elected, so any 'explaining' is totally down to you. And PS mate: The failed so-called 'small reactor' plant isn't even remotely SMR: it's big, messy, expensive and custom built on site with all the problems and failures that "true" SMR technology is optimistically hoped to minimise. Just for your information, the reactor was a Westinghouse AP1000 reactor from a company that, like Rolls Royce, manufactures compact nuclear reactors for US ships and subs: in short, a company that should already know how to make successful nuclear power plants, but failed miserably in South Carolina.
Any'ow "Ontario residents pay about 14¢/kWh compared to up to 56¢/kWh in Australia...". Oh yeah, the joys of completely uncontrolled 'free enterprise' - the kind of rewards that Jeff Kennett got for us. And which Ted's mates are still getting for us. But hey, some numbers: Ontario has a population of about 176,000 people with a density of about 3300 people per square mile (1265 sq km total) - yep, an incredible challenge compared to Australia, isn't it. But you knew that, didn't you
Finally: "...nuclear plants being always on 24/7 and with an asset life up to 80 years." And if ever you can actually show certified statistics for a reactor (SMR or not) that actually even approximates those numbers, you might even become moderately believable.
"A study in 2019 by the economic think tank DIW Berlin, found that nuclear power has not been profitable anywhere in the world.[22][unreliable source?] The study of the economics of nuclear power has found it has never been financially viable, that most plants have been built while heavily subsidised by governments, often motivated by military purposes, and that nuclear power is not a good approach to tackling climate change. It found, after reviewing trends in nuclear power plant construction since 1951, that the average 1,000MW nuclear power plant would incur an average economic loss of 4.8 billion euros ($7.7 billion AUD). This has been refuted by another study.[23]"
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants
The nuclear power debate is actually a "how can I get a better pool of money and beat the bond rate with a fixed trailing commission, and lend out that pool of heavy money, all the while getting tax breaks from the sucked governments".
The power is irrelevant.
Nothing new under the sun.
ReplyDelete*Except teenagers (c.1950) and the internet.)
May be of interest here.
"The Scissors, the Paste-Pot, and the Large Language Model"
May 23, 2024• Ryan Cordell
"Like LLMs, nineteenth-century newspapers blended original and unoriginal writing in ways that were difficut for their readers to immediately apprehend, and that reality led to similar—and warranted—anxieties about veracity, attribution, and reliability to what we face today.
...
"... the News & Observer highlights the material reality of newspaper production across much of the US during the period, which comprised primarily reprinted material from other newspapers, rather than original writing, and were lauded as much for canny selection as for literary skill.
...
"Reprinting was certainly widespread. Using our reprinting data from the Viral Texts project, we estimate that papers in the periodaveraged more than 50% reprinted content, with some considerably more or less, and this is a conservative estimate based only on detected reprints."
...
https://ryancordell.org/research/scissors-paste-LLMs
The Viral Texts Project
Mapping Networks of Reprinting in 19th-Century Newspapers and Magazines
“Nothing but a newspaper can drop the same thought into a thousand minds at the same moment…”
—Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
"This site presents data, visualizations, interactive exhibits, and both computational and literary publications drawn from the Viral Texts project, which seeks to develop theoretical models that will help scholars better understand what qualities—both textual and thematic—helped particular news stories, short fiction, and poetry “go viral” in nineteenth-century newspapers and magazines. "
https://viraltexts.org
Our Holely Henry: "...there's no mention of Thucydides today." It's just as though Thucydides has become a total "unperson" (since we're all onboard with Eric Blair today) - how could this have happened ? It's like all the law people have transformed into dedicated literalists.
ReplyDeleteBut then, if we don't have an infallibly correct understanding of the laws - and we don't - then it's always a case of "rule of men [and especially not of woe-men] rather than rule of laws", isn't it. Because without a single, clear, inescapable understanding of "the laws", then there simply isn't a "the law", is there. Is there ?
And so it's "...highly implausible that the charges would have been laid had the defendant not been named Donald J. Trump." Well I sincerely hope not, because it's only one particular 'someone' named Donald J. Trump who has committed all of the offences of that man.
In Sextonland: "[China's] indifference to international rules and conventions was demonstrated in 1951 when it simply annexed Tibet...". Now it should not be forgotten that the history of China, Tibet and the Mongols is all interleaved with Tibetans having considerable power within this three-part 'empire' at various times.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, as far as many Chinese are concerned, Tibet was, and now is again, a part of "China". Therefore it's not so much an 'annexation' as a restoration of traditional borders and organisation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tibet
It should also be noted that no such considerations apply to Taiwan which was wholly ruled by its own indigenous natives until the Dutch invaded back in the 1600s and then brought large numbers of Chinese 'coolies' in to work for them who then took over when the Dutch abandoned the island. China - apart from a short period of Chiang Kai-Shek - has never ruled Taipei.
Who knew that the whole of the evidence in the Donald's fraud case required a knowledge of the American judicial system as far back as 1711? If only Henry had been able to advise the jurors during the trial!
ReplyDeleteDespite no mention of Thucydides, it's comforting to see that Ergas reverts to some Greco-Roman mythology at the end with the mention of the goddesses of vengeance. A little harsh of Henry Ergas to cast Ronny Jackson, Marco Rubio and John C. Yoo as goddesses.
I'm sure that you've clocked it in the venerable Meade column in The G, but let's savour it - Roy Morgan research has listed the 10 most distrusted brands in Australia and the Lizards are No 5 - a creditable effort, and I'm sure that they can go higher; higher, dodgier, shonkier. Surprisingly no sight of the ABC. AG.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/media/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/07/even-magic-and-miracles-not-beyond-rupert-murdoch-as-the-australian-marks-its-60th-birthday
This how you get to be number 5 on the most distrusted brand:
Delete"News Corp outlets apologise for using young Indigenous dancers image in child sexual abuse story"
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-07/nsw-queensland-apology-miriki-indigenous-dance-news-corp/103953318
So Coles is more distrusted than Woolworths ? I wonder why; I'd have ranked them as pretty much equal.
DeleteRoss Gittins: "...our belated realisation that building so many houses on the flood plain of rivers wasn’t such a smart idea." Wau, is that some kind of deeply reticent revelation, or what ?
ReplyDeleteOoops: http://www.rossgittins.com/2024/06/no-ones-sure-whats-happening-in-economy.html
Delete