From Gallipoli to Ukraine

The latest at my Blogstack, over the fold

Read More »

A quick response to the latest IPCC report on climate change, published as Time’s up: why Australia has to quit stalling and wean itself off fossil fuels

Because of tight deadlines, the editor added a fair bit of material to my draft. I stand by all the content, but not all the language is mine.

The latest from my new Blogstack

I can’t remember any previous time when I’ve been in unqualified agreement with Chris Uhlmann, but his description of the current election campaign as a policy-free contest between “a pathological liar, which is what the Labor Party seems to be calling the government, and a gutless fraud, which is what the Prime Minister essentially has dubbed you,” Of the two, I’ll give the higher preference to the gutless fraud, after ranking all acceptable candidates ahead of them, starting with the Greens.

To preserve my mental health, I’m going to refrain from any further commentary about the major parties. I may offer some comments on the Greens, the only party putting forward any serious policy proposals in this election, some of which I support and some I question.

Feel free to try and dissuade me. In particular, if anyone can make a better case for Albanese and Labor than “not Morrison and the LNP”, I’d be glad to read it.

And having sworn off election commentary, I’ll do my best to give you something interesting to keep your minds off the whole sorry process.

I’ve decided to migrate my regular newsletter from Mailchimp to Substack. Having done that, it seems worthwhile to try out Substack as a blogging platform. For the moment, I’ll post here at johnquiggin.com in parallel with the Substack blog.

My first substantive post is over the fold. I’m hoping for good discussion, so it would be great if commenters here could also take part at Substack.

Read More »

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has upended all kinds of certainties, created new possibilities, and closed off old ones. We can certainly see this in relation to nuclear power. Here are a few developments related to the war

• Russia’s capture of the Chernobyl plant, and the associated fire, have raised new concerns about nuclear safety
• Belgium has announced that its planned closure of a nuclear plant will be deferred, possibly until 2035, in order to reduce reliance on Russian oil and gas. There have been hints that Germany might do something similar
• Finland has cancelled its proposed Fennovoima nuclear plant which was to be built using Rosatom’s VVER technology. Coincidentally, a few days ago, the Olkiluoto EPR plant was connected to the grid, twelve years late and way over budget

My guess is that the need to wean Europe off Russian gas over the next few years will outweigh enhanced concerns about safety.

On the other hand, the implications for new nuclear power are unambiguously bad. Projects started now can’t come in time to help with the transition from Russian gas, and the safety concerns will add to cost

Looking ahead, no one will want to deal with Rosatom any time soon, and Chinese proposals are also coming under more scrutiny. The cost over-runs on EPR plants create huge difficulties there also. These come together in Hinkley C (EPR) where hte UK government is trying to push China’s CGN out of the project, but having trouble attracting private finance to replace it.

The great remaining hope is Small Modular Reactors, most notably those proposed by Nuscale. But this hope has been around for a long time, with the arrival date always about 8 years in the future.

Here’s my semi-regular newsletter, and a followup with links to a couple of recent articles about climate change and the disastrous floods in eastern Australia.

I’ve been using Mailchimp to send out the newsletter, but it’s mostly oriented to marketers. So, I’ve decided to move to Substack, which quite a few commentators have already done. One option is to move the blog there. That would be a big shift for me, as I’ve had the current site for most of the nearly 20 years I’ve been blogging. The main difference for readers would be the option of getting email alerts when new posts go up. If you like or dislike the idea, say so in comments

Over the page the followup email with links:

Read More »