in terms of where it could be built without losing an election or two, a plant located in the centre of the Nullarbor would be about as safe as you could get, but hopelessly uneconomic gets to the nub of the matter

can’t even build a second airport in sydney these days.

The reality is that they will find a host of other factors to site them somewhere else.

Or speaking of the Nullarbor – sure it’s remote but as you say that appears to be an advantage for a nuke scheme in an era of nuclear hysteria. More interestingly though for us may be that the Nullarbor is also somewhere with plenty of bright sunshine for solar power installations, and it also sits beside the southern ocean with some of the most concentrated wave and wind power available on the planet. So toss them all in to the wash and for the extra price of the long distance to the electricity markets you gain a substantial co-location opportunities to ameliorate your transmission losses and costs. Bearing in mind the present economic viability of things like the Tasman DC link and if we also consider seriously mooted concepts like that enormous Nth African solar project (to feed power to Europe), what would seem at first blush to be an unworkable Nullarbor scheme may not be so inconceivable after all. I picture metropolises of happy power workers blooming like electric Kalgoorlies across our deserts …

In the course of exchanging opinions, like-minded people frequently develop more extreme versions of their original views on such issues as climate change, labor policy, same-sex relationships, and affirmative action.

Groups ranging from citizens’ forums to judicial panels tend to squelch diversity and polarize opinion.

With the Internet facilitating the formation of like-minded groups, this phenomenon may help account for the intensity and division of contemporary social and political debate.

p.s Bhagwati is a Democrat and an AEI adjunct scholar (1993-present);

p.p.s. According to his wife, Samuel Huntington was a life-long Democrat; he was in the carter white house. he was a member of the AEI Council of Academic Advisers (-2008)

p.p.p.s was James Q. Wilson a republican hack or the best political scientist of the past half-century,? chairman of the AEI Council of Academic Advisers (1991-2012?)

p.p.p.p.s. Seymour Martin Lipset, adjunct scholar (1973-2007) was the only person to have been president of both the American Sociological Association (1992–93) and the American Political Science Association (1979–80).