Some years ago Bill Gates suggested to Ziggy Switkowski that mobile telecommunication should be Telstra's main focus. Ziggy instead decided to invest Telstra's money OS. Some while later Kevin Rudd decided that his legacy to Australians would be a world class wired network, and so began the NBN rollout. How people today must reflect on his wisdom and foresight as they use their smart phones.

So what is Bill up to these days? Heavily investing in wind and solar? No, he's using 10 billion of his money building a first of a kind SMR in Wyoming. Delayed a couple of years because of the Ukraine war, but it should be up and running before Snowy 2.0. His Terrapower project is one of many SMR projects around the world and he estimates that one hundred would need to be built before turning a profit, so it's more an act of philanthropy.

The Green-Left Academy of Science supports nuclear power. It submitted a call to Parliament to drop the prohibition on nuclear power in 2023. Mainly because of the rising emissions - silly to be worried about that nonsense, but wanting nuclear to counter it.

They did a study 6 years ago that found that nuclear power was cheaper than fossil fuels; comparable with renewables, but unlike the latter, reliable. Nuclear was also found to have lower mortality and accident rates than equivalent power sources.

The opposition to nuclear power is irrational if you take into account the success of the 440 nuclear plants existing in the world.

Most of the anti-nonsense is generated by investors in renewables. If nuclear power was no threat to them, they would be making such a fuss.

If renewable energy was the cheapest electricity source and nuclear the most expensive, they would have nothing to fear. But, fear they do!

Lying about nuclear power, and people accepting these lies, is Albanese's panicked attempt to get another term to enable him to continue his swindling, and bribing the incoming Governor General with a 43% pay increase before she even starts work.

The obscenely rich Gannon-Brooke's and Turnbull, both big wind and solar investors, are in cahoots with him: as are all those foreigners ripping off Australian taxpayers, with the assistance of Albanese.

Something BOM doesn't like to talk about is wind droughts. It might upset the champions of windmills-for-electricity. You might have read about sailing ships being ‘in the doldrums’, unable to move, sometimes for long periods.

Rafe Champion writes that meteorologists should be asked to explain their silence on wind droughts, and authorities should be brought to book for “their failure to check the wind supply before connecting intermittent energy to the grid.”

Wind droughts can occur anywhere across Australia. And there is no evidence that battery storage will be much use for anything but short periods. And solar panels don't work at night.

It's not just mass immigration from the Third World that will relegate Australia to Third World status; lack of electricity for industry will help us go down to that level.

Gas is too expensive; we sell it cheap overseas, which makes it so. And nobody wants to explore and produce more. It's so cheap to Japan, for instance, that they can make a profit by selling it on to other countries.

And, the people who are doing this to Australia, don't want nuclear power either.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2024/06/things-that-go-slump-in-the-night/

Good comments ttbn, but Albo will first need to do more opinion polling and brainstorming before progressing the debate. The argument in favour of nuclear is helped by real world examples of it providing cheaper and more reliable energy than renewables. I think that the environmental harm from wind and solar will not help the renewables push either. And energy security should be significant as well.

It would be interesting were it not for the rolling blackouts ahead.

Fester

At least the nuclear question will be debated, and it certainly provides an important difference between Labor and Liberal that can be pondered by the electorate: provided that both sides act in a mature manner, and Labor, in particular, uses facts and not ideology to determine Australia's future which, in my opinion, is looking pretty grim, and getting grimmer, by the day. All these nonsensical accusations of 'negativity' against people who criticise the Albanese government and its incompetence are a sure sign of argument-free denial of the parlous situation we are now in.

I despair of the entire political class's ability to do the right thing for us and our country on just about any matter at all, these days.