Thread: Nuclear

Originally Posted by AndyG

It is so very easy to put the blinkers on and cherry pick, or possibly some are just taking the **** O

The Comet jet was a disaster, pressurised jets will never work,
Chernobyl was a disaster nuclear will never work
The mining of Cobalt in the congo is wrong on so many levels, but lets not question the morality behind our renewable/ EV / battery purchase
And so on,
Take the blinkers of and go beyond

An addendum
I work in the Oil Palm industry in png, no orang-utans or Sumatran tigers are harmed, we preserve hcv (high carbon value) forests, we have an active engagement with the community providing jobs, power, water, roads, schools, clinics etc, but all oil palm is evil.

Hi Michael

Nice detailed reply. I didn't know about burning of wood pellets largely sourced from the USA. That seems to me to be astounding. It's pumping out CO2 and the idea to ship them from the US is ridiculous. If it is economic to do so the it indicated the market has something wrong with it! Unless the US is subsidising it to keep jobs for wood chippers in some states :-)

"Incidentally, the largest increase in coal production in 2018 was in China." China is sending mixed messages and information. In some reports they are reducing coal use and even shutting some power stations. But that may only be temporary when pollution levels are high. Their reporting is based on what they want us to believe (e.g. their perfect GDP predictions each year) and reporting here also might be skewed. China though is prob one of the few countries that can "mandate" max CO2 emissions if they really wanted to.

Hinkley C plant. I looked that up on Wikipedia Hinkley Point C. I can see why it's controversial. That lists many problems that we would face in Aust if the Govt were to decide to build one here. I like the 9% interest rate!

"Rightly or wrongly I suspect that unit costs would decrease in the event of further plants being built.." Yes, IF they were mass produced and if the new design lessened the safety and disposal problems. The later might occur but they will never be mass produced.

Thanks for the excellent reply.

Mike

I believe that Chinese coal is mainly soft and low energy and mined underground whereas our coal is mainly hard black and high energy, but no doubt someone will correct that.
It's still a fact that China is leading the way in investment in renewables, both to reduce complaints from Chinese people about pollution in its cities, and to generate jobs in manufacturing renewable equipment.
Its not a Coal vs Renewables situation - both have a future, but renewables will increase while coal will decrease.
Why isn't Australia investing to create jobs in manufacturing renewables, including lithium batteries? Once again, we are just digging it up and shipping it out and buying the resulting products, when we could create a lot of jobs by making them here.

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

Why isn't Australia investing to create jobs in manufacturing renewables, including lithium batteries? Once again, we are just digging it up and shipping it out and buying the resulting products, when we could create a lot of jobs by making them here.

I have been beating my gums about this for decades. We seem to have an economy based on selling houses and flats to each other. Our economy should be based on value adding to our natural resources and primary produce instead of just digging it up, chopping it down, exporting it on the hoof.

Only manufacturing and processing industries will provide the low skilled jobs necessary to gainfully employ the 800,000 or so unemployed plus a large number of disability pensioners who have some capacity to work.

Very true. Typical short-sighted thinking. We should be using our advantage in resources to leverage our way to the top of manufacturing, but instead we just take the lazy way every time.

Anyway, the nuclear power debate seems to be mostly a culture war pursued by people who refuse to accept that climate change is real and ignore the facts that nuclear is the most expensive and dangerous option while renewables are the cheapest, cleanest and safest choice.

As I have pointed out elsewhere, Australia has had an economy based on the export of primary products either rural or mining, and largely unprocessed, for two hundred years. The only times that manufacturing has been a significant part of the economy has been when it has had very substantial protection or subsidy.

While this was understandable in wartime and in those times that protection was seen as the norm pretty much worldwide, as this regime wound back from about the end of the fifties, and specifically with the growth of the EU, and as improved communications began to make it clearer to the average Australian buyer how much these policies cost the consumer, continuing with them became politically untenable, both domestically and internationally.

If Australia were to reintroduce significant tariffs and /or subsidies, this would in most circumstances result in retaliatory action by our trading partners, and at the same time result in a substantial drop in Australian living standards as prices rose and the economy shrank.

The major reasons for the dearth of manufacturing in Australia are not principally labour costs, as is often trumpeted, but a combination of several factors. These include labour costs as a minor factor, but the biggest single factor is lack of a large enough local market to allow manufacturing on a scale that can be produced by major manufacturing countries such as China, or any of dozens of other countries. Other factors include the high cost of doing business in Australia, from red tape, environmental regulations, high power costs, the cost of shipping to overseas markets etc.

There is, and can be, successful manufacturing here, but it will usually be where the market is actually small worldwide, where there is a market for goods that are specific to Australian markets but have low overseas demand (e.g. bullbars), or where there is some very special Australian expertise, again usually for a very small worldwide market - an example here is a friend of mine who is planning to manufacture a competitor for some specialised geophysical equipment currently available only from a Canadian company. He already manufactures and sells other unique equipment. All in small quantities, as the market is very small.

We just have to think regionally rather then domestically. The Asian and Pacific markets are huge and on our doorstep.

Yes, but the problem is that their domestic manufacturing is inside the doorstep! And in most cases they are in a very similar boat, unable to compete with China.