Nuclear Power – The Saltbush Club

Australia The Dumb Country – can we get lucky again?

By John Mikkelsen

A few short years ago, Australia was known as The Lucky Country; now in the eyes of the developed world, we are rapidly becoming The Dumb Country.

Much of that is down to the fact that our Labor Federal Government refuses to acknowledge the rest of the world’s industrialised nations are rapidly embracing clean, reliable nuclear energy under bi-partisan agreements, while our leaders seem incapable of even having a rational debate about lifting the current totally irrational ban.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton, flanked by Nationals leader David Littleproud, Energy spokesman Ted O’Brien and Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor, last week finally released the long-awaited costings of their plan to integrate nuclear plants into the energy grid with a claimed 44 percent cost saving over Labor’s rush to an unreliable renewables-only future.

Politicians: If Net Zero is Achievable, Why Not Give Us A Small-Scale Demonstration?

By Dr. John Happs

Imagine a company that claimed to have a battery-powered airliner that would carry 200 passengers over a distance of several thousand kilometres. Imagine also that the government funnelled a few million taxpayer dollars into the development of such an aircraft, politicians and the public would demand a demonstration of its capabilities and safety before anyone boarded for a flight.

By the same token, if anyone makes the claim that a constant, reliable, zero emissions electricity supply, based on wind and solar, is achievable, surely it’s essential that we verify this claim before rushing into such an expensive, untested nation-wide scheme.

The claim was made in the 1950’s that nuclear energy was a viable source of reliable energy and a demonstration was quickly and successfully provided in Arco, Idaho when the city was powered by nuclear energy on July 17^th, 1955. The Borax III reactor supplied the small town of Arco with nuclear power.

The Arco success was followed by another nuclear power demonstration at Shippingport, near Pittsburgh, in 1957 when the plant was completed in just over 2 years. It was reported:

“So, on December 18, 1957, after having operated the reactor and the plant’s steam systems on and off for about two weeks, it came to pass that the first full-scale atomic power station to be built in the United States was synchronized with and connected to the grid. At first, the plant was operated at just low power levels. It didn’t take long to complete some tests and reach full rated power on December 23, 1957, with the plant putting its full rated 60,000 kilowatts onto Duquesne’s commercial grid.”

https://www.ans.org/news/article-2093/atoms-on-the-grid-shippingport-1957/

Continue reading: https://papundits.wordpress.com/2024/09/02/politicians-if-net-zero-is-achievable-why-not-give-us-a-small-scale-demonstration/

Olympic Dam’s Gold Medal Performance

By Bob Day

It is exactly 50 years since Western Mining first discovered the massive gold, silver, copper and uranium ore body at the aptly-named Olympic Dam in South Australia. A golden anniversary indeed!

But discovering the ore was just the beginning.

The fight to allow uranium mining at Olympic Dam was brutal.

The ruling Labor Party, under then SA Premier Don Dunstan, was vehemently opposed to uranium mining and particularly opposed to uranium mining at Olympic Dam.

LABOR PRIME MINISTERS BEN CHIFLEY AND BOB HAWKE SUPPORTED NUCLEAR POWER… AND SO DOES UK’S NEW SOCIALIST PRIME MINISTER

By Cliff Reece

In 1947, the Australian Labor Party Prime Minister Ben Chifley (pictured above left next to Bob Hawke) – famous for his ‘The Light on the Hill’ speech, which has resonated down the years as epitomising the Labor philosophy – first guided the thinking of Australians towards nuclear power.

The establishment of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission was well on the way when the Chifley Government was defeated in 1948.

At no stage during the earlier years of the Labor Party were they against nuclear technology. The Uranium-Australian Policy which was formulated by the Australian Labor Party (ALP) during those years included the following:

A Pilot Plant for Net Zero

By Viv Forbes

Both solar and wind energy have fatal flaws – solar stops when the sun goes down or if a cloud blocks the sun; wind fails if the wind is too strong or too weak. But every day we hear of some fantastic and expensive plan to keep the lights on when these unreliable energy twins stop work.

The latest thought bubble from Mr Bowen (the Australian Minister for Generating Blackouts) is for him to be able to drain the energy from electric car batteries to back up a failing grid. He suggests that batteries could also power the house or sell energy into the grid. (They are already scheming on how to use smart technology to prevent homeowners from charging their own batteries when flicker power is fading.)

Beyond Mad Max with Dystopian AI

By John Mikkelsen

The dystopian future predicted in the Mad Max movie franchise may be closer than ever and it won’t take World War 3 to make it a reality.

To me the only ones worth watching were the original and its sequel starring homegrown hero Mel Gibson. Those drab desert landscapes from Mad Max 2 on, were traversed by fast supercharged fossil fuel powered vehicles without a single EV on the horizon.

So while the Teslas pile up unwanted at Port Melbourne and sales of EVs are declining globally, they represent just the tip of the iceberg on which the Western world seems destined to founder in its mad rush to offset climate change “driven by CO2 emissions.”

The fact that climate always changes and it’s mainly driven by natural cyclical forces beyond our control, is overlooked by political leaders pushing the green dream of “renewable energy” focussed on the unreliable intermittent sources of solar and wind power.

The Looming Electrical Power Shortage

By Steve Goreham

Originally published in Washington Examiner.

People in developed nations take abundant electricity for granted. When asked where electricity comes from, most will point to their wall outlet. But many states in the US are headed for a serious and prolonged shortage of electrical power not seen in decades, driven by rising demand from the artificial intelligence revolution and mandates to adopt green energy.

For 20 years, US electrical power policy has been dominated by efforts to try to “mitigate” global warming, believed to be caused by human greenhouse gas emissions. In 2021, President Joe Biden called for achieving a 100% carbon-free electric sector by 2035. Twenty-three states have enacted statues or issued executive orders to achieve Net Zero electricity generation by 2050.

OKAY TONY, SO WHAT’S YOUR NEXT BRIGHT IDEA?

By Cliff Reece

He’s managed to divide the country in a manner never seen before in Australia’s history but you can guarantee that our illustrious leader, PM Tony Albanese, has many more bright ideas in store for us.

The mess he is making of industrial relations and the economy in general will be ongoing, as you’d expect from a socialist government. But then there’s climate change that he and his little mate Chris ‘Blackouts’ Bowen still have much to work on.

The Great Wind and Solar Land Grab

By Steve Goreham

US Fish and Wildlife Service. Public Domain

Which is more environmentally friendly — an energy source that uses one unit of land to produce one unit of electricity, or a source that uses 100 units of land to produce one unit of electricity?

The answer should be obvious.

Nevertheless, “green” energy advocates call for a huge expansion of wind, solar and other renewables that use vast amounts of land to replace traditional power plants that use comparatively small amounts of land.

Vaclav Smil, professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba in Canada, extensively analyzed the power density of alternative sources used to generate electricity. He defined power density as the average flow of electricity generated per square meter of horizontal surface (land or sea area).

Continue reading: https://www.westernjournal.com/op-ed-one-simple-energy-question-devastates-net-zero-pipe-dreams/

Coal Fairy Tale

By Graham Pinn

The 2021 census for the first time reported on health, it revealed that 1 in 10 had a mental health problem. Surveys during the COVID period have shown that the young are particularly at risk, a risk compounded by the apocalyptic predictions of climate change. The combination of the two has undermined resilience and led to an increase in depression and suicidal attempts.

The news and social media, aided and abetted by “our ABC”, have contributed, there is also no doubt that climate negativity at school has been a factor, strongly influenced by both teachers and the curriculum. The newly announced intention of NSW and Victoria State Governments, to provide early learning from the ages of 3 or 4, increases that risk. My solution, parents should not be farming their children out at this age, instead tell them stories of hope and future promise.

The tale below, of the Princess Tricity and her salvation, is one for my grand-children. Continue reading “Coal Fairy Tale”