Antinuclear

Michael West busts the spin of Murdoch media’s nuclear marketing.

It’s the nuclear debate. On the one hand, we have all the scientists, and experts on finance and energy.. And on the other hand we have Rupert Murdoch’s experts – Chris Kenny,  Caleb Bond and  the whole Sky News team. These people are experts in nuclear energy.

And so we have one side saying ”No Australia should not build nuclear power plants because they are too costly and there’s the issue of how to dispose of the nuclear wastes

But on the other hand – we have new evidence, unveiled by Sky News – by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, that nuclear energy is actually the cheapest new  form of energy

Australian nuclear engineer Tony Irwin [of Small Nuclear Technologies company] has crunched the numbers and it’s turned out – that in the long term nuclear energy is the cheapest form of energy. Daily Telegraph’s Piers Ackerman reported on all these numbers, – on the capacity factor, the estimated plant life, line transmission costs and all the other factors that are considered in the cost of building nuclear power stations is cheaper than wind and solar and vastly more efficient than pumped hydro 

  All prevailing wisdom – the science indeed would say that nuclear is the most expensive.

Why are we having thi debate?    If we were to build a NPP right now, it wouldn’t be up and running for 10 years they cost $20 billion to build.

Here we have Caleb Bond from Adelaide Advertiser – no need for a university education. Chris Bowen described nuclear energy as a complete joke. ” Doesn’t he have egg on his face right now” –  Caleb’s take.

Most experts think nuclear energy is a joke, too expensive  Who are the people quoted here?

The Australian and The Murdoch publications ……………..rabbiting on about how we have to go nuclear for baseload energy 

Where do they get their experts from?

We are getting to Murdoch’s experts,  Caleb Bond cited in evidence  a story in the Daily Telegraph  another Murdoch –  ”New research reveals that nuclear energy is actually the cheapest form of energy”        the expert here is pre-eminent global expert Piers Ackerman, one of Muroch’s greatest lackeys. – saying the nuclear energy is the cheapest.

The CSIRO value nuclear energy at 128-330 MW per hour .  9()% wind and solar they valued at 55-80 MW less than half. Coal is cheaper – they all are cheaper. Backing up the CSIRO is the world economic  forum  -is the IEA  the International Energy Agency. They base their decisions on the science

Nuclear is not only dangerous because of the wastes, but it is also perilously expensive to build, and it won’t be done before the climate is irretrievably damaged.in 2030

This is a complete distraction and it’s utter nonsense . And the Murdoch people actually understand this – they understand that it is never going to happen.

This is quintessential Murdoch stuff.  It’s a distraction.They know that nuclear energy is not viable,  It does not make commercial sense. The debate was over at least 2 years ago.  Solar is the cheapest, then wind, and hydro and so on.

Despite people like Matt Canavan. Barnaby Joyce, playing up to their coal donors, their vested interests – the problem is in the grid now, that coal is not viable.

2 years ago the IAE declared in its world energy outlookj solar as the  cheapest.energy in history

Murdoch’s nuclear push is a distraction. They know it will never happen. They need to have  a hat at the table.  They come up with a contrarian view –   to create division and debate. Murdoch creating enemies –  our experts like Piers  have told us that this is so-  the enemy is renewable energy everyone else are all woke latte-sipping lefties -anybody that doesn’t like coal.  They’ve lost that debate, They know that they have no basis to push coal and  gas will be next.

So what they’re doing now is promoting SMRs.  Lets’ build smrs.  This has been tried elsewhere hasn’t been seen to work efficiently –  If the Chinese the Russians, the Americans and Brits can’t get it going – why are we even talking about them?  When we have free solar and wind Because Murdoch wants to be a player in this debate. it’s all about media creating goodies and baddies, Liberal good, Labor bad, Green terrible. 

Thanks to Giles Parkinson at REneweconomy.  we quote his research into this.

The track record of smrs around the world has been pitiful. Just a handful of projects most or all suffering massive cost overruns and multi years delay. Russia’s floating nuclear plant  was 9 years behind schedule, more than 6 times over budget and the electricity it produces is estimated to cost  an exorbitant US $200 per Megawatt hour.- according to the OECD;s nuclear energy  agency –   a source that Murdoch minions would be fleeing from. Why would you when you have Chris Kenny Piers Ackerman and the lobbyists from ANSTO?   

The only other operational smr anywhere else in the world, China’s high temperature gas cooled smr, was 2 to 3 times more expensive than initial estimates. It was 8 years behind schedule and plans for additional reactors at the site have been dropped . Argentina’s smr is 7 years behind schedule , billion dollar cost overruns, current cost 23 times beyond preliminary estimates. . The cost exceeds A$1billion for a plant with the capacity of 2 large wind turbines.

By the time we did it in Australia and spent $5 billion on our smr that would have gone out to $20 to $30 billion for a small nuclear reactor when the climate has been destroyed by 2035. Not a very sensible policy outcome. 

China recently began construction of an smr based on conventional light-water reactor technology.  According to China National Nuclear Corporation, construction costs per kilowatt (kW) will be twice the cost of large reactors and the levelised cost of electricity will be 50% higher than for large reactors.

So not only do they take a long time to build, are hugely expensive, they’re not efficient either, So there you have it. It doesn’t work, like carbon capture and storage.

Yet it is being feverishly espoused in the Murdoch press. They’re coming out with nuclear energy stories daily. Their copy is pay-walled. it is losing influence. The ABC has just said it doesn’t want to showcase Murdoch newspapers in its breakfast television. 

These guys are in a bind and they have to be controversial, combattive even, to maintain their tiny Sky News audience, which they package up as recent research found, and send it all around the world as evidence that their climate-denying analysis has legs. It is a classic misinformation – propaganda machine.  which is subsidised by us, the tax-payer.  They are looking for a cause celebre. looking for relevance Their bullying tactics are on the way, They will come up with any proposition possible to create a difference, to create a media narrative and this nuclear narrative despite it being majestically ill-conceived has no legs  but that will not stop then from carping on about it.

July 14, 2022 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, media, spinbuster