JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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Sunny Sunday Afternoon Ah!
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Thunderstorms just to the north of Sydney and now developing around the Oatley area.
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Oh yes the Kinks. Actually I was listening to them last night.
We owe a lot to the Brits for their great music and navigators.
Thanks to James Cook, Matthew Flinders and Trim for giving us Australia (‘Terra Australis’) rather than New Holland, or, Van Diemen’s Land.
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And for seeing off that French invasion
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South Dakota, snow at road edges 3-5 feet deep, sidewalk edges 2 feet. 5° F outside, these are winters that children live for, apple trees love, cherry trees love, AGWers hate in reality.
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I wondered about the 10 gray stars at the top.
I clicked on the left most and then all the others.
Note it said: 1 out of 10 based on 1 rating
I reentered and hit the righthand star. Now it says
5.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings
Everyone that comments should hit the righthand star
and we can see what happens. The average should approach 10 asymptotically.
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It is getting there. 8.9 now on 11 ratings.
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Somewhat meaningless exercise.
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“We’ll all be rooned“
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On very old posts we lost the star data around 2012 in the mini-crash — which left them all grey. I noticed someone had taken the time to go back and tap the 1/10 on every single post of hundreds of posts. EG randomly like in 2010, or this one in 2011. I was impressed at their dedication…
Like really, it would have taken a long time to load every post starting at the very first one.
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Hi Jo, until very recently I have hardly been aware of the star thing.
Could the tap on “every single post” have been a programming fault?
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Just smoozed by the AEMO dispatch overview page, as one does and noticed 1.8GW pouring into NSW. A bit over 1GW from QLD via two max out connectors and 800MW from VIC via an almost maxed out connector.
When does Lidell shut down again?
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March I think.
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CURRENT PRICES
NSW $450.00
Qld $63.73
SA $19.99
Vic $19.13
Tas $$54.12
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April 2023……………..Boom !!!!
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Planned to be fully shut down by April.
Just in time for winter.
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Winter….Yes….Always the perfect timing to hit the consumer with maximum power usage…..Despictable !!
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It will be fine. Management by happenstance will deliver the goods. Matt Kean and the NSW energy brains trust will deliver.
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It’s a pity the next NSW election will be March 25. The incoming Labor government will blame any blackouts on the previous Mob and promise more renewables. I wonder if they would want off-shore turbines near Wahrongah, Manly and Bondi.
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The deliberate shutting down of a once-rich and prosperous country, Australia, is quite tragic and definitely treasonous.
And none of the idiots behind this can claim “They didn’t know”. It’s impossible for them not to have heard our voices of reason.
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A recall a story around a demonstration of a latest CSIRO very high tech invention (that dates the story) to a group including US Admiral Rickover. The answer to one of his questions was
“Australia is a very advanced country – it is tomorrow there now”.
Has the international date line since been moved to somewhat west of Western Australia?
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1. Why was Gates here and what instructions did he give Albanese?
2. Why did Ghislaine Maxwell decide to say this week that Epstein was murdered?
3. Can media/Pfizer bury the Jordon Trishtan Walker revelations successfully?
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Australia, with a population of just 25 million, spent over $2 billion to buy 518 MILLION RATs test kits. Or 22 for every man, woman and child. Surprise, surprise, we have quite a few left over – a few hundred million in fact – and they are about to hit their expiry date.
Perhaps Gates is here to sell us some fresh ones so we don’t run out.
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And I never used one of them………….Do they work?
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They give a go/no-go result to secure entry to places, but no one seems to care if they work or not, as long as they give a result, no matter how meaningless.
Like mindless drones, people “just following orders”.
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Used them a coupe of times.
One positive test.. which was GREAT, because I had to work (sort of) from home for two weeks .. on full pay 🙂
Mild cough at worst.
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Tony Blair says that the next pandemic will start April 30, guess those RATS may still have a use
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Probably not. If there is a new pandemic it won’t have the same antigens as the old one did. By definition.
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1. To create a fence. Gates work better with fences.
2. Probably heard the jail house rumour of her pending suicide.
3. Yes but Dr John Campbell is on it.
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Haha. I feel fully informed now.
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One might say that Dr Campbell trips the light sarcastic there
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He nearly choked with his tongue in cheek commentary.
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Perhaps John Campbell will teach Pfizer how to wash their hands of the whole incident?
😀
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Gates was probably giving Albanese instructions for the next pandemic and ongoing covid vaccinations.
Covid-19 preparations and “management” came under the auspices of “Event 201” which was the subject of a real meeting sponsored by Gates and the WEF, but before it happened…
https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/exercises/event201/
There is also another event that plans for the next p(l)andemic but I don’t recall it’s title. I’m sure someone here will know.
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It was called ” Catastrophic Contagion”, and was held October 23 last year in Belgium.
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WEF now renamed as World Economic Fallout.
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Even under the Trudeau Maladministration, Canada is still building proper power stations. Most countries are, no matter how lunatic Left and Green their regimes are.
Everyone except Australia.
SEE LINK FOR REST
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No dates though. Pity.
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The official inflation rate is something like 7.8%, which is bad enough. However, no one I know believes that. In terms of things people actually spend money on, most people I speak to estimate 25%-30%.
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Martin Armstrong (Armstrong Economics) crunched some inflation numbers recently for the USA and he came up with 32% pa.
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COPIED FROM ELSEWHERE
Do we remember Cliff Young, Today I want to surprise with the story of a simple Australian shepherd who won the Sydney-Melbourne supermarathon at a distance of 875 km. He ran without sleep in 5 days, 15 hours and 4 minutes. He was 61 years old!
The Australian Ultramarathon was held from 1983 to 1991. Each start was attended by experienced athletes who trained for months in order to successfully cover the distance of 864 km from Melbourne to Sydney. Most of the runners were under 30. They were sponsored by major international brands, providing quality sneakers and comfortable equipment. Imagine the surprise of the athletes when 61-year-old Cliff Young appeared on the track of a large-scale race. In overalls and with galoshes over boots.
Clifford – that’s how Young’s full name sounds – was born in 1922 into a poor family. The boy spent all his childhood on a family farm in Victoria, a state in southeastern Australia. The area of the property was just over eight square kilometers.
Neither in his youth, nor when he grew up, Cliff was not fond of sports. The man’s sudden love for running woke up, it would seem, too late to reach great heights in a new business for himself. The farmer plunged into the conquest of long distances at the age of 57.
In 1982, when Young was 60 years old, he tried to run a thousand miles (about 1.6 thousand kilometers) around Memorial Square in Colak. The man wanted to break the world record, but could not. Fortunately, failure did not stop him on his way to impressive results. A year later, Cliff entered the Australian Super Marathon to cover the distance from Melbourne to Sydney.
On the day of the race, world-famous athletes were perplexed when they saw a 61-year-old man in the area for athletes. At first, everyone thought Young had come as a spectator. Conjecture was dispelled when the man approached the registration desk to obtain the competitor’s number. Some eyewitnesses thought that the farmer was simply out of his mind, while others were seriously worried about his health and safety. Indeed, at this age, the body may not withstand such colossal loads.
Young safely got the 64th number and stood in line with the other runners. The film crew, who were at the start, rushed to interview an unusual participant. When the journalists found out that Cliff really intends to run the ultramarathon, and besides, without sponsors and special training, they told him bluntly: “You can’t.” But the farmer was not taken aback.
“No, I can. I grew up on a farm where we could not afford horses or a car until very recently. Only 4 years ago I bought a car. When the storm was approaching, I went out to herd the sheep. We had 2,000 sheep grazing on 2,000 acres. Sometimes I caught sheep for 2-3 days – it was not easy, but I always caught them. I think I can participate in the race, because it is only 2 days longer and is only 5 days, while I run after the sheep for 3 days. ”
When the marathon began, the pros left Cliff far behind. Spectators from all over Australia watched the man, worried and even prayed for him: if only he would finish alive. Moreover, every experienced athlete knew that a distance of 864 kilometers takes about five days of travel. To do this, you need to run for 18 hours every day and sleep for 6. The farmer was not aware of this running plan.
The morning after the start of the race, people learned that Young had not slept and had been running all night. But he still lagged behind other athletes. Every night, Cliff caught up with his rivals, until on the last day he pulled ahead and finally went into a significant lead.
The Australian farmer triumphs in the ultra marathon. It took him 5 days 15 hours and 4 minutes to finish. 10 hours less than the result of the nearest rival! To the surprise of the public, Cliff did not take any prizes for himself. The man refused the $ 10 thousand and distributed it to the rest of the runners, dividing it equally. At that moment, the whole country fell in love with the new national hero.
A year after winning the ultramarathon, 62-year-old Cliff married a 23-year-old girl named Mary Howell. Their wedding was paid for by a chain of stores that sponsored the iconic race. True, after five years the marriage broke up.
In subsequent years, Young did not abandon his favorite business. He continued to run and in February 1990 took part in the first international 24-hour championship in the English city of Milton Keynes. And in November he covered 648 kilometers in the Australian Campbelltown.
In 1997, Cliff gained public attention again. He intended to run 16,000 kilometers to raise money for homeless children. Unfortunately, the man had to interrupt the race after 6.5 thousand kilometers, because his teammate fell ill.
After that, Young faced a terrible disease – cancer. The man fought her for five years. His most recent running achievement was a world record in a six-day marathon in 2000. And in 2003, Cliff died, he was 81 years old.
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Cliffy in his gumboots running down the highway is an enduring image many Australians will remember with affection.
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Any chance of putting a pic up? would be great to see
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(Not a joke.)
Apparently wind turbines around the world are collapsing at an alarming rate.
What, did they get a covid vaccination?
https://youtu.be/rQyoFe-K_BU
Video under 2 mins.
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Fatigue in welded structures is a bi….
I could not think of worse torture for an steel structure than a wind tower. High cyclic loads. There are good design codes for bridges that are probably not used for wind turbine towers. I have doubts that wind turbines will remain around long enough to get the design codes sorted for them. Meanwhile they will become increasingly difficult to insure.
It would be reasonable to expect environmental challenges based on their bird kill rate. In due course, it will be easier to stsrt a coal mine than a wind farm.
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It remains a mystery why , if wind power is in any way useful (e.g. with a battery) , small scale distributed VAWT was not the answer.
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Something along these lines , combined with Redflow batteries , looks very useful :-
http://www.leviathanenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/WIND_TULIP_BROCHURE_English.pdf
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farmerbraun:
Vertical turbines are less efficient than standard ones, although more robust and quieter, hence less output. Also flow batteries (and other old style ones) lose charge over time.
The lower efficiency isn’t just due to design but also that the wind speed increases as you go higher, which is why those newer wind farms have 10 & 15 MW units so high up (and, in-line with RickWill above, subject to even more fatigue forces).
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Graeme No.3 mentions this:
The nacelle for those 15MW units Vestas V236-15MW weighs a little upwards of 500 tonnes. It sits on top of the tower. The hub height of that tower is, umm, 280 Metres.
Okay, look at the Sydney skyline and all those humungous skyscrapers.
NOT ONE Of those buildings on the Sydney skyline is taller than this 15MW wind tower to the hub height of that 280 metres.
The blades on top of that stretch another 118 metres on top of that, so it’s height to blade tip is all but 500 metres.
A lot of stairs to climb come maintenance time, eh. Oh wait, they lower them from a helicopter. Now wonder how much the all up costs for maintenance are.
500 tonnes on top of a tower 280 metres up.
Oh and the Sound Power is rated at 115dB(A)
No wonder they’re offshore, eh.
Tony.
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https://reason.com/2023/01/27/twitter-files-matt-taibbi-hamilton-68-russian-bots-fake/
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Cold air outbreak to impact south east Australia.
https://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/wintery-weather-on-the-way-for-southeast-australia/1071762
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Shame , we were thinking of going to the Thursday music in the park session. Doesnt look like sitting in the park kinda weather now. In February, damn global warming.
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Music in the parka?
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When will my tomatoes ripen?
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Interesting, and how often have I repeated this, eh.
Levels of coal fired power technology
Sub Critical
Critical
SuperCritical
UltraSuperCritical
Advanced UltraSuperCritical
Tasmania – zero coal fired power
South Australia – zero coal fired power
Victoria – three SubCritical plants (10 Units)
NSW – five SubCritical plants (
1615 Units) (soon to be 12 Units)Qld – four SubCritical plants (17 Units) and four SuperCritical plants (6 Units)
Total Nameplate for all coal fired plants in Australia – 18,000MW.
China everything post 2007 UltraSuperCritical and now Advanced UltraSuperCritical, and converting all 400MW+ Units to UltraSuperCritical.
Am I missing something here?
Australia has missed the boat completely.
Now look at this, and these are end of year 2022 figures.
Coal Nameplate – 18000MW. Power delivered – 122,000GWH
Wind Nameplate – 10,277MW. Power delivered – 26,000GWH
So while wind makes up 57% of the Nameplate of coal fired power, it only delivers 21% of the power that coal fired power delivers.
To replace coal fired power with new tech coal fired power will be humungously cheaper than replacing coal fired power with wind power, because to deliver the same amount of power, you need three times the Nameplate of wind than for coal fired power, and in fact, if it was the USC coal fired power, that would be closer to four or five times the amount of wind power needed.
So for coal fired power, perhaps 18,000MW, five plants of four Units, or more realistically, ten plants of 2 Units, each 1000MW, so 20,000MW, and that will cover the ever increasing power consumption, expanding each and every year, no matter what things are put ion place to reduce consumption (PLUS 6,000GWH just in the last calendar year)
Wind, perhaps 60,000MW (and that’s just at that lower factor of three) and if Stockyard Hill the largest wind plant in the Country at 457MW, then that’s 131 of them, and considering they have half the lifespan of coal fired power, that’s 262 of them.
Please, do not EVER try to tell me that 262 new tech wind plants are cheaper than five new tech coal fired power plants, or even ten of the smaller ones.
Is it no wonder that when Eddie asks the simplest of Maths questions, the contestant replies ….. ‘Eddie, I think I’ll take my pass thanks!’
Maths! Oh, it’s such a worry!
Tony.
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Thanks Tony,
Even though it’s bad news it’s essential that we have it and fight to confront it.
The CO2 and renewables scams are undeniably evil at work.
In a true Democracy we wouldn’t be looking at this farce.
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Not sure why WA, with the modern coal power station, is omitted.
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apparently if you are not part of the NEM reporting – you are not part of Australia?
I remind my member of parliament occasionally to complain about this to AEMO
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They are actually reported on on the AEMO website, but separately, as they are separate and not part of the integrated NEM. Happily they probably wont be part of the future cascading failures on the East Coast.
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Thank goodness that in WA, we aren’t connected to the “National” grid. But it’s interesting that, after saying that coal would be phased out, WA’s premier has gone to a lot of trouble to keep coal energy working over summer.
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This is only correct if there is infinite storage. The only reason the current 10.2GW of wind can get to 21% now is because its uses the rest of the network as its big battery. If the capacity was increased to 50GW then that can only produce around 50% of the energy because using the rest of the network as a big battery can only sink the demand at the time. For example 50GW of wind may be able to produce say 45GW on a good day but the demand may only be 12GW with all the rooftop going hard. Most of the potential energy cannot be delivered due to lack of demand.
Without really low cost storage, wind is now near its limit in Australia. Germany is also close to the limit and only gets what it now gets by exporting its intermittency. Likewise the UK. UK can do a bit better because some of its wind gets high capacity factors up to 50%.
I do not know if the Labor party numpties have the brain matter to understand this but it was something that the LNP was beginning to understand. Reality is a tough task master.
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The other (minor) problem is that those Certificates (subsidies) have to be sold to the coal and gas burners. Above 50% of renewables the value of those will be ??
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Did you note that wind energy was not included in the Sun Cable project? I’m guessing that the main reason for this was that it was impossible to design a “reliable” power delivery system if wind was included.
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Future of nuclear power not based on ‘large-scale’ and ‘overbudget’ plants
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While the general thrust of what he is saying sounds correct, it has to be noted that many large-scale nuclear power plants have been built on time, on budget, and are now delivering cheap, reliable power. Unfortunately, the outliers Hinkley C and Vogtle are always dragged up as bad “ examples”.
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Kim said: Future of nuclear power not based on ‘large-scale’ and ‘overbudget’ plants
Graeme#4 said: ‘While the general thrust of what he is saying sounds correct, it has to be noted that many large-scale nuclear power plants have been built on time, on budget, and are now delivering cheap, reliable power. Unfortunately, the outliers Hinkley C and Vogtle are always dragged up as bad “ examples”.’
Here in the US, we will not be constructing any more of the large 1,100 MWe nuclear reactors. These large reactors require that too many financial, material, labor, and industrial resources must be concentrated over too short a period of time, with the effect that project risk and financial risk rise to unacceptable levels.
Some past history is in order. By the end of the 1980’s, the nuclear construction industry in the US had learned the hard lessons of the 1970’s and the early 1980’s and was well positioned to deliver its large reactor projects on time and on budget. But it wasn’t to be.
Beginning in the early 1990’s, serious competition from gas-fired generation put an end to nuclear construction in the US. It was possible to build and operate a gas-fired power plant more quickly and more cheaply than a nuclear plant — even a nuclear project which was being properly and optimally managed — and to do so at a lower fully-burdened operating cost.
Over the next thirty years, the nuclear construction industrial base in the US declined precipitously and was in a deeply withered state by the time construction of VC Summer and Vogtle 3 & 4 began in 2012.
What became immediately apparent to those of us who had been through the trials and tribulations of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s in learning how to do nuclear projects on cost and on schedule was that the hard lessons of that earlier period had been completely forgotten.
The managers of the VC Summer and Vogtle 3 & 4 projects made every mistake it is possible to make in running a high complexity, high risk project such as building a pair of large 1,100 MWe nuclear reactors. With the result that VC Summer was canceled and that the original project team for Vogtle 3 & 4 was completely replaced.
Vogtle 3 & 4is on track for completion, but its capital cost has more than doubled over the original estimates. The fact is that here in the US, we are not and will not be constructing enough of the large 1,100 MWe reactors which would be needed to realize the theoretical economies of scale which supposedly go with building the very large reactors.
The oncoming SMRs represent the only hope we in the US have for revitalizing the nuclear construction industry in this country.
It’s my personal opinion that NuScale and its partners Fluor, UAMPS, and Energy Northwest are well ahead of their competitors in getting the very first SMR-based utility scale power plant up and running in the United States.
This is largely because the NuScale team has been working at it longer than anyone else, and because their SMR design is the least technologically and programmatically ambitious among the several oncoming SMR designs.
The single largest issue facing nuclear is the need to keep upfront capital costs under control. The high inflation our economy is now experiencing is having serious impacts on the NuScale team and on its SMR competitors in keeping their upfront capital costs under control.
Cost control storm clouds are now on the horizon.
Prior to 2022, NuScale’s target for nominal upfront capital cost was $5,000 per kw, and for fully burdened operating cost was $55 per megawatt hour.
Fully-burdened operating cost has now risen to $89 per megawatt hour. I’ll guess that nominal capital cost is now above $6,500 per kw and possibly might be as high as $8,000 per kw. (For comparison, Vogtle 3 & 4 capital cost is now $13,000 per kw.)
A portion of the cost increase for NuScale’s eastern Idaho plant is being attributed to the quickly rising costs of acquiring and installing the power transmission support infrastructure needed to handle the plant’s output.
The same rising costs which are affecting new-build nuclear power are also affecting new-build wind and solar power, especially for the upgrades needed for the nation’s power transmission and distribution network.
However, there is a big difference between how rising costs for nuclear are being viewed versus how rising costs for wind and solar are being viewed.
Public policy decision makers and utility executives don’t particularly care what a wind project or a solar project costs. Government subsidies will flow regardless. But they do care what nuclear costs, because any subsidies nuclear power gets in the near term will be transitory at best.
SMRs will not and should not be given serious consideration in Australia unless and until the first SMR projects out the gate in other countries prove that an SMR-based nuclear power plant can be delivered on the budget and schedule which were originally promised.
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“SMRs will not and should not be given serious consideration in Australia unless and until the first SMR projects out the gate in other countries prove that an SMR-based nuclear power plant can be delivered on the budget and schedule which were originally promised.”
Totally agree. However, we dont have great history of learning anything practical from overseas. We mainly focus on picking up PC language and memes to fuel continual outrage about something or other. We continue to plow into solar and wind in spite of obvious disasters overseas , and our disaster will only be amplifies as we have no neighbours to lean on. Imagine the smoking ruin in the UK, Germany and California if they had to stand alone as we must.
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yarpos,
When I started working in the nuclear fuel cycle, it was the expectation of many Australians that we would soon be designing and building Australian nuclear power reactors. Lucas Heights demonstrated that we could build and operate plant and build and utilise a team of highly competent people. Some of the best qualified scientists to work in Australia to date worked in nuclear. The present crop selected as top scientists by processes similar to Miss Australia pageants are weak as woke wee wee water in comparison.
Then, ideology plus ignorance plus politics intervened. For reasons that I have never been able to trace, we suddenly had laws for a nuclear free Australia. My best explanation is huge bribes were paid to some key politicians.
In short, there is no technical or professional reason why Australia, today, cannot commence a plan like France succeeded with in the 1970s. Indeed, the task for us is much easier than France faced. If South Korea can do it (they have) so can we.
The ugly truth is that the main barrier for Australia is 50 years of dishonest, incorrect and ignorant propaganda. Past politicians who allowed this are invited to rot in Hell, as are present ones if they fail to get cracking with the easily-available best of modern technology for electricity generation.
Geoff S
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I don’t disagree with your comments about SMRs, and I also believe that for Australia, SMRs will be the way to go for our future power requirements. Also Australia has many large country centres that would be best served by local SMRs.
However, I thought, and happy to be corrected on this, that a lot of the problems with delays for Vogtle and Hinkley C were the new regulations they had to comply with, following Chernobyl and Fukushima.
As Barakah has shown, when everything goes well, large-scale nuclear can be delivered on time, on budget.
But again, I don’t believe Australia should be looking at large-scale nuclear.
10
And if I may add a further comment about costs, there is a tendency to use LCOE costs over a short lifetime, typically 30 years, that always results in wind and solar costs looking much better. But when costs use the FCOE method across the longer projected lifetimes of nuclear, then nuclear comes out at a far lower cost. And that’s even before adding the extra transmission line costs required for wind and solar.
20
The regulatory environment for nuclear power in the US is considerably more stable than it was in the 1970’s and early 1980’s. But it still remains a very demanding regulatory environment, to be sure.
Looking at past history, the 1970’s and early 1980’s were a time of considerable regulatory and technological change in the US nuclear industry. The issues of that period are described here in one of my WUWT articles from the fall of 2021:
A History of Nuclear Construction’s Cost & Schedule Overruns in the 1970’s and 80’s
The original managers of the VC Summer and Vogtle 3 & 4 projects knew what the NRC expected of them, and they failed to account for the work needed to meet the NRC’s expectations in their project planning and project control activities. Other pieces of work scope were missing altogether from their project control systems.
Here is my detailed analysis of what went wrong at VC Summer and at Vogtle 3 & 4:
Root Causes of the Massive Cost Overruns at VC Summer and at Vogtle 3 & 4
Advocates of the large AP1000 size reactors make the claim that now that Vogtle 3 & 4 is nearing completion, serious consideration should be given to initiating another AP1000 size reactor construction project here in the US.
Given the realities of the current situation, with high inflation and with nuclear power’s capital costs under intense scrutiny, starting construction of another of these large unitary reactors like the AP1000 will be a very hard sell indeed.
Demonstrating that a nuclear construction project can be brought in on budget and on schedule is now in the hands of the oncoming SMR vendors to prove it can be done. If they fail to do that, new-build nuclear power in the US will fail.
00
Many thanks for your detailed summaries BB, I’ve filed them for future reference. I believe that some of the issues you raise are endemic in many large-scale projects, but no doubt they would be more significant in the nuclear industry.
As you rightly point out, a lot of these issues can be side-stepped for a modular SMR approach, involving far less site works.
00
Beta Blocker,
It takes only a tiny thickness of shielding to block beta, even less like a sheet of paper to block alpha. I am not even going to block your anti-reactor arguments because the pros and cons descend into unreliable subjectivities. Meat and poison stuff.
I will simply offer this. If the global aviation industry had been forced through the regressive, onerous nit-picking of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, we would still be waiting for the first aeroplane to take off.
Why do you like this extreme example of a bloated bureaucracy forever negatively interfering in the progressive processes of free enterprise?
Have you never felt the exhilaration of the wind in the sails when you, as master of the helm, sail free of the dumbass mob and do well what you know you can do?
I wonder if you regard the ancient Latin wisdom of “Fortune Favours the Brave” as dreadful extreme right wing propaganda due for cancel culture. Success Breeds Success. Geoff S
00
Geoff Sherrington, the most basic reason why the NuScale SMR will likely to be the first to go into production operation here in the United States is that their team is staffed by nuclear advocates who think like I do — as opposed to nuclear advocates who think like you do.
When it comes to delivering a successful nuclear project — the technology of a nuclear power plant; and the processes used to design, fabricate, and construct that nuclear power plant — these are all One Thing. They are not two separate independent things. The project management discipline needed to meet the NRC’s strict regulatory requirements is the same project management discipline needed to deliver all the other complex facets of a nuclear construction project.
I’ve been involved in mining facility construction projects as well as in nuclear facility construction projects. The level of project management expertise and craft skill expertise needed to deliver a nuclear project on time and on budget is in a different league altogether.
If you have taken time to read my two essays on WUWT, you should understand that the anti-nuclear activists in the 1970’s and early 1980’s got nowhere in the courts with arguments founded in issues of basic nuclear safety. Then they changed their strategy and began to focus on the severe quality assurance problems many of the nuclear projects in that era were experiencing.
For those nuclear projects which hadn’t followed through in meeting the QA requirements described in their construction licenses, the anti-nuclear activists exploited those QA issues to the hilt and were sometimes successful in killing a nuclear project using ammunition that the project’s own managers had handed to them on a silver platter.
More recently, the first nuclear renaissance of 21st Century was cut short because of growing competition from natural gas and because the first two new-build projects out the gate, VC Summer and Vogtle 3 & 4, blew their original budgets and schedules in such a spectacular fashion. Seriously deficient management practices were among the most important of the several issues which were responsible for those failures.
A second nuclear renaissance is now underway here in the US as a direct result of the zero carbon mandates now in force.
But the question remains. Will nuclear project managers take good advantage of this second opportunity to pursue another 21st Century nuclear renaissance? Or will they blow this second opportunity by repeating the serious management mistakes seen at VC Summer and at Vogtle 3 & 4?
00
If ever Australia returns to a rational , informed , society with a fully brain functioning adult Government, maybe we can return to the best , proven, cheapest, form of generation , using the latest coal fired plants with a rew Gas fired peaker plants..
…..but obviously ..that aint gonna happen !
I also hold out hope for the new “ultrasonic “. Deep drilling technology, which could open up Geothermal heat sources for existing generator plants.
00
May be of interest if the subject of IQ and its assignment to nations and groups interests you
https://www.unz.com/jthompson/can-nations-have-iqs/
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Dangerous ground. This chap no longer exists because he talks about this stuff, and other stuff.
Wiki regards him highly.
Stefan Molyneux
freedomainradio.com
Stefan Basil Molyneux is an Irish-born Canadian far-right white nationalist and white supremacist podcaster, blogger, author, political commentator, and banned YouTuber who promotes conspiracy theories, scientific racism, eugenics, men’s rights, and racist views. He is the founder of the Freedomain Radio website.
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Leaving the Googlesphere doesnt mean you no longer exist H 🙂
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Why do you take everything literally?
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Oh I dont know, I guess I just look at what people say and think they mean what they say.
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No! You just like nit picking.
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“Africans cannot follow logical sequences that all other races can solve”. (from the link provided)
Everyone accepts the massive disruption that the invidious slave trade inflicted physically on Africa and Africans so it should not be too long a stretch to also consider the potential disruption to other human traits such as brain development. Another aspect of course is the emotional intelligence of nations/peoples.
The connections between the Irish and Arab peoples are a great place to start particularly given the stories of early migrations from Levant to Ireland. Both cultures can be quick to anger and quite brutal in their punishments.
There is an account from the early 1800s given by an Englishman who while out riding on his Irish estate noted a dark skinned man in flowing white robes ie an Arab approach one of his Irish workers and have a discussion with him before moving off. The Englishman was intrigued as to how they had conversed and immediately approached the worker to ascertain what language they had conversed in. The worker stated that the Arab had spoken in what seemed to be his own language and while the worker did not understand every word he picked up enough and responded to the man in Irish. The Arab seemed to understand enough of the response to move off in the correct direction of the place he was seeking.
Indeed a fascinating subject, thanks for the link yarpos.
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You can communicate a lot just using body language, hand signals etc ..
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About how a pandemic can be turned to advantage, perhaps.
Bill Gates was involved in the organisation of another simulated epidemic last year called Catastrophic Contagion.
These exercises should have been useful for elucidating response options, but all tend to define a medical emergency as a political-financial challenge requiring centralised authoritian management.
We are learning how that approach can turn a medical disaster into a civilisational catastrophe.
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No surprise the power of the state was turned on covid policy dissenters, and the whistleblower almost says between the lines that lockdown policy pushing was probably a Chinese campaign.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11687675/Army-spied-lockdown-critics-Sceptics-including-Peter-Hitchens-suspected-watched.html
What with the nudge unit, times have really got very sinister.
I wouldn’t doubt that the same is happening with climate policy dissenters too.
A while back I signed a gov. petition objecting to some energy/climate related policy. A short while after I got invited to offer my opinions via a survey, on going through it was obvious they were not interested in my opinion, only interested in understand my psychology to alter my opinion!
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Has anyone heard how the increasingly deadly bushfire seasons are going? I mean CO2 keeps increasing but seems no significant fires for 4 years. Geez, could this be because the weather doesn’t give a toss about CO2 and there is less fuel for fires?
But but ‘Cliiimaaate Chaaaaange’!
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I recall reading on this blog several years when one of your alarmists down under, I don’t recall xactly who, said essentially: “The problem with Climate Change is that it can’t be easily detected, so it’s hard to prove to lay people and to the general public that it is happening.”
Think about that. No logical cause and effect reasoning at all. But we absolutelty must stop using fossil fuels. It’s an imperative. That’s when I started to realize that no science argument matters. It’s a religion. It’s not religion like believing in the Christian God, or most other traditional religions, but a religion like if we do the right things and have the people we deplore make sacrifices; then nature will be brought into harmony (or something) and the weather will somehow be fixed.
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Re
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2023/01/28/developing-3/
Thinking about that and polishing my tinfoil hat
Punt would be that the Israelis would be after things nuke.
Seems like things like drone factories
Who downstream might that benefit?
Nordstream 3 in action?
I’m prepared to be wrong – hopefully
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Clearly this news is to be disseminated widely . . it’s on Yahoo.
Is it an attack , or a false flag, would be the first question.
https://sports.yahoo.com/bomb-carrying-drones-targeted-defense-130651227.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMC1bfkTlrAMNNDPG9rvg2fYESnJxl7bbFLehmpiMc1o2QKwM3xToHa5oZaGNo328rlhSY8JBDtU588g-F2XH__5_a4kJOeEfxzG0EP4vlAOCNOvC2YWp93Ka60PryJstGgj3oyLStfLXlJTEJl3lWqjyiBmj0XzF-arG1e2W7Ue
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I get the feeling we are sliding into WW3 or at least a major conflict quite soon. Seems like a major distraction is required on so many fronts there is an air of inevitability about it as the pieces move into position. I even saw a weird article the other day about how nuclear war wouldn’t be that bad really, because thriving sea life at Bikini Atoll, wildlife returning to Chernobyl and thriving cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I was all a bit Dr Strangelove.
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Reiterated
“The Media Is Deceiving You”
https://catallaxy-files.com/the-media-is-deceiving-you/
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Here’s a topic worthy of serious debate . . .if there is any doubt.
“We now know that
1. Fauci lied,
2.that the vaccine rollout was handled from A to Z by the military,
3. that Pfizer and others hid all the evidence about disastrous trials,
4. that Ukrainian bioweapon labs were owned and funded by the CIA, and
5. that the huge rise in early deaths is more marked the more jabs have been taken in any region, and
6.almost non-existent in most African countries.”
So therefore . . .
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And here is the link , if you want to peruse his thesis. This is John Ward , at The Slog . . .
https://therealslog.com/2023/01/29/food-for-thought-3/
Is he utterly and completely wrong? Or right?
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So disagreeing with our overlords isn’t liked or allowed it seems.
https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/2023/01/inside-whitehalls-ministry-of-truth-how-secretive-anti-misinformation-teams-conducted-mass-political-monitoring/
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Calling Simon, point precipitation, atmospheric rivers and warmer air holding more vapour you say, but failing to deliver new ultimate records.
https://twitter.com/MatthewWielicki/status/1619323708954517504?cxt=HHwWgIDRia6V__gsAAAA
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Serious reading here (IMO)
“Shhh! Nobody Talk About World War III”
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/shhh-nobody-talk-about-world-war-iii/
And, after a look around the net this morning, no one seems to be mentioning yesterday’s dust up in Iran either
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Over the past few years , so many things have mysteriously blown up in Iran that I am not surprised in doesn’t make the MSM. Experts are probably puzzled like they are about increased deaths, sudden deaths, declining births and the Bidens wealth. So many mysteries.
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Here’s the thriving of Humans over 200 years and represented by the Our World in Data team using 5 charts.
The global population has increased from 1 billion to 8 billion (in 2022) over this period and yet this is the fastest and greatest improvement in Human history.
Don’t forget that in the year 1 AD there were under 200 million people on Earth and life expectancy was under 40 years. IOW nearly everyone was poor and sick, until we started to use fossil fuels and the Industrial Revolution powered us to the health and wealth we experience today.
Today there is no EXISTENTIAL THREAT or CLIMATE CRISIS or EMERGENCY at all. And today in 2023 we still use over 80% FOSSIL FUELS to generate our global energy.
But according to OWI Data very few people understand how or why Humans have thrived and many of our leaders tell us we face extinction unless we stop using fossil fuels ASAP. See the statements of Biden about the EXISTENTIAL THREAT.
Here’s the OWI Data link to their 5 data charts.
https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts
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Just to remind people of the level of lunacy about their existential threat.
AGAIN here’s the Guardian’s link to Pres Joe Biden telling us we face an Existential threat and we can “feel it in our bones”.
But who cares when this loony is just the leader of the free world? This takes just 2 minutes of your time to think about the level of understanding we’ve sunk to today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wXe-GanTh0
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It’s a religion.
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No doubt this will encourage Elbow and Co into “thinking bigger”
“Climate Extremists’ Hideous Wind Farms Are Coming To Your Backyard”
https://thefederalist.com/2023/01/27/climate-extremists-hideous-wind-farms-are-coming-to-your-backyard/
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Tennis elbow at this time, spending much more time at the tennis so far than the FIFO Alice Springs panic damage control.
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Because of the very bad flooding in Auckland, it’s important that we understand that New Zealand has suffered from terrible ( recorded) floods since 1840.
Like Australia they’ve built on flood plains and NZ also has very high rainfall events that ensures that flooding will always be a big problem.
Certainly ZERO evidence that co2 levels have made rainfall or storms worse than earlier times.
And we know that the BOM cyclone data shows a lower trend for both non severe and severe cyclones since 1970 for the Australian region.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/floods
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The pictures of Auckland reminded me of the flash flooding of City of Toowoomba, Queensland, a few years ago, CBD inundated.
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“Here it comes again , that feeling , here it comes again.”
Yes!!
What a great way to end summer; pastoralists rejoice.
https://www.metservice.com/maps-radar/rain/forecast/3-days
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“Scanning a Predynastic Granite Vase to 1000th of an Inch – Changing the Game for Ancient Precision!”
https://rumble.com/v27iwv7-scanning-a-predynastic-granite-vase-to-1000th-of-an-inch-changing-the-game-.html
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