Posted on 04/30/2025 7:43:17 PM PDT by BenLurkin
In the Hunter Valley, long, brown trains chug through lush pastures, carrying stacks of black rock - the lifeblood of the region, though not for much longer.
This has long been Australia's coal country. But the area, a three-hour drive from Sydney, is now begrudgingly on the frontline of the country's transition to clean energy.
"This town was built around a coal mine," says Hugh Collins from Muswellbrook, "so it'll be a big shift. I don't know what will happen."
Nowhere captures this dilemma quite like the soon-to-be demolished smokestacks of Liddell power station, which tower over the rolling hillside nearby. Liddell, one of Australia's oldest coal plants, was closed two years ago. Across the highway is sister-power station Bayswater, scheduled for retirement by 2033.
Liddell's owners want to redevelop both stations into a renewable energy hub – in line with the Labor government's plans for a grid powered almost completely by solar and wind energy.
The opposition Liberal-National coalition, though, has proposed converting Liddell into one of seven nuclear power plants across the country.
Currently banned, nuclear is the controversial centrepiece of the Coalition's clean energy plan.
Nuclear has historically been deeply unpopular among Australians scared of having radioactive plants in their metaphorical backyards. But with the Coalition plugging it as a cheap and reliable option to complement renewables, interest is growing.
Ahead of the election on 3 May, each party has insisted that their visions are the best way to both fulfil Australia's commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 and tame rising power bills.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Oil please.
Nuclear is scary.
How scary is it really, when the worst US nuclear power accident, a core meltdown at Three Mile Island, resulted in zero fatalities? That’s less than a typical drink driving wreck, which there are thousands of every year - and the meltdown was over 40 years ago.
Australia has the largest uranium reserves in the world, followed by Kazakhstan, Canada, and Russia.
Plus there are no fault lines there to cause another Fukashima.
Chernobyl … All the radioactive scares. in Japan with Fukushima…not to mention what they endured in 1945
It looks cheap in theory, but in practice it almost never works out. That's why nuked investors will no longer touch it. Fuel costs are negligible, but almost everything else heats up into a financial meltdown.
It's just like communism: great on paper, failure in practice. The vain always believe it just hasn't been implemented by the right people yet. Now with superhuman AI secret sauce, it's time for another go!
Ask France if nuclear is scary?
Centralized planners love centralized nuclear power. Big government can cut political threats out of the economy at the push of a button. Nuclear power seems to be the natural choice for communism. Compare to solar, which can be owned by a private citizen with freedom to disconnect from the matrix.
The USA would never, ever build a reactor like Chernobyl, having no containment vessel and having a positive void coefficient, both elements of a terrible communist design, nor would we replicate Fukushima. Also what happened in WWII has no bearing on civilian power generation. Using USA safety standards, a terrible disaster, Three Mile Island, killed zero people, 40 years ago.
There is an unjustified phobia of nuclear power. If we had spent all the money we’ve spent meddling in the Middle East over the decades instead on nuclear power plants, we’d be 100% self sufficient in energy and wouldn’t need to pay people who want to kill us and destroy our civilization.
“Chernobyl … All the radioactive scares. in Japan with Fukushima…not to mention what they endured in 1945”
Good grief. The technology is light years more advanced. They don’t melt down any more.
“There is an unjustified phobia of nuclear power. “
A phobia carefully nurtured by the media.
Quebec runs on hydro power….some of which goes to the Northeast states.
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