Australian nuclear news 24 – 30 December
Headlines as they come in:
- Where is the ‘mature debate’ about the health impacts of nuclear power?
This talk of nuclear is a waste of time: Wind, solar and firming can clearly do the job. - Dutton must face coal, hard facts. Nuclear will not work.
- Labor argues ‘economic madness’ of Coalition’s nuclear plan would cost NSW $1.4tn
- Dangerous Tribunal decision paves way for Dutton to keep nuclear blow-outs secret.
- The Australian election as a game of cricket: cost of living is the issue, but does Nature bat last?
- ? Look at the networks, not nuclear, to reduce energy bills
- Australian navy advertises nuclear submarine job with $120,000 salary and ‘no experience’ needed.
The Australian election as a game of cricket: cost of living is the issue, but does Nature bat last?
December 26, 2024 , By Noel Wauchope, https://theaimn.net/the-australian-election-as-a-game-of-cricket-cost-of-living-is-the-issue-but-does-nature-bat-last/
It is not nice to talk about politics at this happy festive time. But you can talk about cricket. Indeed, in Melbourne, it is your patriotic duty. So, I will – sort of.
A prestigious political analyst, Paul Bongiorno, writes in The Saturday Paper about the focus of campaigning for the 2025 Australian federal election. He sees both political parties emphasising the economy, and the “cost of living”. But Bongiorno warns that climate change could suddenly become once more the big factor in the political game, if summer does bring bushfires and floods.
Bongiorno argues that Dutton and the Liberal Coalition are out to stop renewable energy development:
“If the Dutton-led Coalition manages to take the treasury benches, the brakes will be dramatically applied to climate action. The energy transition would be stalled and billions of dollars of new-energy investment put in jeopardy.A key Labor strategist says… it would take only another summer of catastrophic bushfires or floods to significantly jolt public opinion.”
Bongiorno goes on to argue that “The portents here are not favourable for Dutton.” And he cites powerful arguments about “deep flaws” in Dutton’s energy plan’s economic modelling. Bongiorno draws the conclusion that if climate change extremes hit Australia, voters will recognise the value of renewable energy, and vote for the present Labor government’s policies on climate action.
If only that would be the effect of weather disasters – Australian voters embracing action on climate change – the development of renewable energy and energy conservation!
Paul Bongiorno is a much-admired and well-informed analyst. And I am presumptuous to doubt his opinion. But I do doubt it. Look what happened in 2023, with the Australian public first supporting the concept of an Aboriginal Voice to Parliament, but finally voting a resounding “No” to that plan.
How did it happen?
We are in a different era of media and opinion. We are in extraordinary times. When it comes to national elections, people still do vote according to what they see as “their best interest”. It’s just that now, due largely to the power and influence of “social” media, information about “one’s best interest” has become very confusing.
We thought that the Internet would give everyone a voice. And it did. But very soon the new information platforms found money and power could be bought by corporate interests, and indeed, that they themselves could become ultra-lucrative corporations. The media has become a smorgasbord of conflicting information, with so much of it not fact- checked. The “old” media still checks its facts (though I’m not sure about Sky News), but the old media has always been beholden to corporate influence. Even the ABC is circumspect in what it covers, and what it omits – and still makes sure to provide “balance”, even when one side is plainly unreasonable.
Anyway, for the old media to compete – the news has to be preferably exciting, dramatic, even violent. Except for sport and feel-good stuff.
In the new zeitgeist of 24 hour information barrage from so many different outlets, political news can be, and indeed is, swamped by cleverly designed brief messages, from forces like the Atlas Network, from the dominant global fossil fuel corporations. That swamping propelled many Australians to vote against the Aboriginal Voice.
In political news, media emphasis has shifted dramatically away from facts to personalities. In the USA, Donald Trump was seen as a strong, confident, interesting man, as against weak, indecisive, (and female) Kamala Harris. In Australia, there’s an obvious contrast between careful, measured, Anthony Albanese, and strong, outspoken Peter Dutton. In the USA, it didn’t matter that Trump offered few positive policies, so in Australia, the Liberal Coalition does the same.
In the USA, with a population of 334.9 million, approximately 161.42 million people were registered to vote. But only about 64% of these actually did vote in the 2024 general election. So, the majority of Americans don’t vote anyway. Trump was elected by a minority. The rest either didn’t care, or weren’t able to vote.
The Australian election system is so different. With compulsory voting, preferential voting, and the nationwide and highly reliable Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), most Australians do vote. You’d think that with factual news being provided by mainstream media, climate change information would become so important to voters, in the event of summer weather disasters. Paul Bongiorno thinks so.
I think so, too, But the advantage for Peter Dutton in the current national mood might be twofold.
First, Dutton is still that “tough, decisive person” with a tough plan, too – nuclear power instead of renewables. Secondly, the Dutton plan can so easily be marketed as the only real solution to global heating – nuclear power portrayed as “emissions free”, and “cheaper” than solar and wind power.
Never mind that there are substantial greenhouse gas emissions from the total nuclear fuel cycle. Never mind the astronomic cost. Never mind problems of radioactive wastes, safety, and weapons proliferation. The very telling point is that nuclear reactors cannot be up and running in time to have the needed effect on cutting greenhouse emissions. The time for effective action is now, not decades later.
Action on climate change is critical for Australia – and now!
But for the global nuclear lobby, getting Australia as the new poster boy for nuclear power – is critical – now!
Nuclear power should be a dying industry. There is ample evidence of this: reactors shutting down much faster than new ones are built, and of the mind-boggling cost of decommissioning and waste disposal. However, “peaceful” nuclear power is essential to the nuclear weapons industry – with the arms industry burgeoning in tandem with the increasing risk of nuclear war. It seems that the world cannot afford to weaken this war economy.
And the cost and trouble of shutting down the nuclear industry with its tentacles in so many inter-connected industries, and in the media, and in politics, is unimaginable.
The old poster boy, France, has blotted its nuclear copybook recently with its state energy company EDF deep in debt, and things rather crook with its latest nuclear station. But hey! What about Australia, a whole continent, with a national government perhaps ready to institute nuclear power as its prime energy source, and all funded by the tax-payer!
The long-promised nuclear renaissance might really come about – led by Australia, the energetic new nation, with its AUKUS nuclear submarines, with brand-new nuclear waste facilities, and kicking off this exciting new enterprise – nuclear power. This is the opportunity for a global nuclear spin machine to gear up for an onslaught on Australia. They really need the Liberal-National Coalition to win this election.
Dutton will be fed with the right phrases to regurgitate. It’ll be all about a “balanced” economy – nuclear in partnership with renewables and so on, if people have any worries about that. All the same, there are those problems of pesky independent politicians like Monique Ryan and David Pocock, and there’s still the ABC, Channel 9 TV and its print publications.
First, I’m hoping that Australia does avoid bushfires and floods this summer. And second, I’m hoping that in the event of climate disasters, Australians will choose the Labor Party with its real plan for action against climate change, and reject the Coalition with its nuclear power dream. There is a good chance of this result.
I’m hoping that Paul Bongiorno is right, if climate change does bat last in the election game, and that I am wrong about the power of personality politics + slick lies.
Energy generators poke holes in Dutton’s nuclear plan as questions over costings pile up
‘No one really has the foggiest idea of what it will cost to develop nuclear in Australia,’ one expert says
Peter Hannam Economics correspondent, Guardian 14th Dec 2024
The Coalition’s nuclear energy plan creates “a significant risk” for the stability of the nation’s grid, according to the peak body representing power generators and retailers.
Responding to the Friday release of modelling by Frontier Economics of the Coalition’s scheme to build seven nuclear power plants from the mid-2030s, the Australian Energy Council warned the estimates assumed a slower build out of renewable energy.
The council’s chief executive, Louisa Kinnear, said they were “particularly concerned about the assumed lack of investment in new and replacement generation over the next 10 years”.
Slowing investment while we assess technologies only available in the future creates a significant risk for the stability of the energy system,” she said.
Frontier Economics, a consultancy, claimed the Coalition’s plan to decarbonise Australia’s main power grid would – at $331bn by 2050 – stand at 44% less than the estimates produced by the Australian Energy Market Operator, thereby saving consumers money. The Albanese government has accepted Aemo’s projections.
“A key issue is the modelling assumes coal remains in the system for longer than asset owners have advised, which could result in reliability issues,” Kinnear said.
“The Coalition’s energy mix and approach would mark a significant departure from the current energy transition trajectory.”
What does Aemo think?
Frontier’s report prompted collective head-scratching in Aemo’s corner.
For one, Aemo’s 2023 June estimates seem to have been converted to 2024 levels using an inflation rate of 8.9%, more than double the 3.8% pace assessed by the Reserve Bank and others.
According to Aemo, there are 45 gigawatts of renewable projects in the pipeline to connect to the national energy market (NEM). By contrast, Frontier only has wind and solar generation capacity rising from 24GW to 46GW by 2051, according to its “nuclear inclusive progressive scenario”.
(Renewables already provide about 40% of the NEM’s power, but according to Frontier’s estimates that share is only projected to increase to 50% by 2051.)
Using Frontier’s progressive scenario, rooftop solar would almost double from about 23GW now to 44.5GW by mid-century. Aemo’s step change scenario, by contrast, had estimated our homes will be accommodating a hefty 110GW of solar by then.
How reliable is economic modelling?
As mortgage-holders can attest, modelling of how soon the Reserve Bank may cut interest rates fluctuates almost on a daily basis. What store to put in numbers for complex energy systems 25 years hence?
Very little. Bruce Mountain, the head of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre, said Frontier’s claims should not “be paid much mind”. Nor, for that matter, should Aemo’s, which provide the present alternative plan supported by the Albanese government.
“No one really has the foggiest idea of what it will cost to develop nuclear in Australia,” Mountain said. “So many things in the production, distribution and consumption of electricity are changing quickly and many of the factors that affect costs and implementation are simply not known.”………………………………………………………
What if companies – or states – say ‘no’?
One challenge for estimating the cost of going nuclear is landing on a price to compensate the companies that own the seven sites chosen by the Coalition to host a reactor.
Six of the seven are private, and none has shown interest in going nuclear, because of the relatively steep cost.
“That implies compulsory acquisition and government coming in over the top of the owners of those sites,” the climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, told journalists on Friday, with some relish.
“Robert Menzies should be rolling in his grave at this stuff,” Bowen said. “If the Labor party tried this, the Liberal party would say it’s Venezuelan-style socialism.”
The Australian Energy Council, which represents energy retailers and generators, said the Coalition’s costings “raised questions on the role of the market in an energy system”.
And states that have legislated emissions targets are unlikely to take kindly to a federal government demanding they ignore their own laws………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/dec/14/energy-generators-poke-holes-in-duttons-nuclear-plan-as-questions-over-costings-pile-up
Look at the networks, not nuclear, to reduce energy bills
RENEW ECONOMY, Tristan Edis, Dec 19, 2024
The next election is shaping up to become a competition between politicians about which type of big power stations – nuclear or renewables – will help lower or drive-up power bills.
The fact that paying for big power stations makes up only a third of the power bill will probably be completely missed by both sides of politics. If politicians really want to help households lower their energy bills, there’s better places to go looking than the next big power station.
One of the places they seem to always glance past are the energy network monopolies. I suppose politicians can’t quite fathom how they might be able to turn this into a vote winner. But if you genuinely want to help lower energy bills you can’t afford to look past them.
As I explained in a prior article, the monopoly businesses operating our electricity networks have over 2014 to 2022 managed to manipulate the regulations and the regulator to generate profits 70% greater than the regulator had originally thought they’d capture.
This came on the back of a huge blow-out in expenditure and incredible shareholder returns for many of these networks over the 2008 to 2013 period.
Critically, electricity networks have not delivered these increased profits through better efficiency, with total factor productivity of networks today being worse now than it was back in 2006 when the Australian Energy Regulator began measuring productivity.
In terms of gas networks the story is worse, with the Regulator signing off on prices that gave these businesses profits 90% greater than the Regulated had anticipated.
What’s absolutely staggering is the energy network monopolies are mounting a lobbying campaign to extend their monopoly reach beyond poles and wires and into distributed batteries, electric vehicle charging and the management of household electrical devices.
Yet these technologies can be provided to consumers at lower cost via competitive markets and simply don’t need to be delivered or controlled by network monopolies.
The reality is that we can’t rely on the Australian Energy Regulator to keep these monopolies in check. Instead our best hope to address networks’ excessive charges is likely to be competition.
By shifting away from gas appliances to electric alternatives we can minimise our reliance on gas pipelines.
That, of course, still leaves us reliant on electricity networks. In this case though there is also the potential for competition through use of a combination of solar, batteries and energy efficient appliances and homes.
Also, if electric vehicles are charged during the daytime and outside evening demand peaks they can vastly improve utilisation efficiency of network capacity.
Even better, the technology is available for these vehicles to discharge power during peak demand periods to compete against networks augmenting capacity and large peaking power plants.
Energy networks’ lobbying campaign seeks to suggest they just want to help us make effective use of these technologies to address climate change. Yet effective use of these technologies entails less demand for network capacity.
Why would they want to undermine their own revenue base? And why should we turn to a monopoly to roll out technologies which could be procured competitively from businesses that are vastly more experienced in providing these technologies to consumers than the networks?
Where this is most insidious is the concept of so called “community batteries.” Networks are keen to market “community batteries” – which in reality are network monopoly-owned batteries – as a more efficient and fairer option than households adopting their own battery. This is based on the claim that by building bigger batteries, networks will be able to capture economies of scale to deliver batteries more cheaply.
But as I’ve explained previously, and now corroborated in data gathered by the ARENA, it’s just not true. Network-provided batteries are significantly more expensive than household batteries.
Yet this is not their only area of poor performance in supporting the use of distributed energy solutions…………………………………………………………………………… more https://reneweconomy.com.au/look-at-the-networks-not-nuclear-to-reduce-energy-bills/?fbclid=IwY2xjawHYFmJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHRWjory7UuJpQrd_U1wReQbbc2h5lgpmbHM
Australian navy advertises nuclear submarine job with $120,000 salary and ‘no experience’ needed
Defence outlines long-term strategy to staff US-built Virginia-class submarines expected in 2030s as part of Aukus deal.
Henry Belot, Guardian, 24 Dec 24
The Australian Navy is offering high school graduates “with no experience at all” up to $120,000 to become nuclear submarine officers who will eventually manage nuclear reactors and weapons systems.
The recruitment drive has been launched despite Defence not being expected to receive a Virginia-class submarine from the US as part of the Aukus deal until at least the early 2030s and amid warnings of cost blowouts and delays.
A navy job ad targets people who may have “recently finished school or are currently studying” with the promise of eventually “driving the vessel and charting its position”.
“Your training will first equip you with technical expertise in nuclear propulsion, the platform, and its equipment,” the ad said. “You will then move into your submarine qualification and oversee day-to-day operations, and you could one day lead the entire crew as commanding officer.”
A Defence spokesperson said the hiring drive was part of a long-term strategy to ensure it had enough specialist staff to deploy the submarine once acquired.
“This is to ensure we have the right mix of candidates and to ensure there is time to generate a sustainable career pathway,” the spokesperson said.
Once accepted, an officer would undergo 12 months of nuclear training in the US along with three months of basic submarine and warfare courses. The officers would then be posted to a seagoing submarine for further training.
Nuclear submarine technicians would receive 18 months of training in the US including six months of nuclear theory and 12 months of practical training on existing vessels. The technicians would also be posted to seagoing submarines…
The job ad also offers recruits “travel opportunities, job security, incremental salary increases as you progress through training and ranks, chef made meals at sea, social and fitness facilities, balance of shore and sea postings [and a] variety of allowances”…………
Defence has previously struggled to recruit enough personnel. In a briefing to Marles in 2022, obtained under freedom of information laws, Defence warned: “The last year has seen lower recruiting achievement and higher separation rates, which have resulted in the ADF and [Department of Defence] workforce size being below approved levels.”
The federal government also funded a new training centre at HMAS Stirling, a Royal Australian Navy base in Western Australia, to train a local workforce to deploy the Virginia-class submarines.
The US plans to sell Australia at least three and potentially five nuclear-powered Virginia-class submarines in the 2030s, before Australian-built submarines enter service in the 2040s.
In the lead-up of the acquisitions, from 2027 at the earliest, there are plans to establish a rotational presence of one Royal Navy Astute-class submarine and up to four US navy Virginia-class submarines at HMAS Stirling. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/24/australia-navy-nuclear-submarine-job-salary
The good Germans and the good Jews
Right now is supposed to be a great festive time – but it has become a spectacle of consumerism. Yet it’ is still good to spend time with dear friends and family.
But it’s a bit hard to forget what is going on in the world.
And grist to the media’s mill is -all the awful things, and the horrors still being done in Gaza.
A Martian, looking down on this sorry human race (and its media), might conclude that it’s a failed species, with extinction as its best option. But a more thorough examination would reveal so many thousands of people trying to be helpful to each other, and some quite heroically so.
It is a good time to pay tribute to the good people.
First of all, I’m in admiration for all those good people – the doctors, nurses, and humanitarian helpers in Gaza, risking their lives as they try to save the children, women, and men of this persecuted community.
And there are those who risk their jobs, their reputations, even their lives to stand up to the prevailing narrative that the Israeli genocide of Palestinians is OK.
The good Germans.
I bet that there are few people who realise that, back in the 1930s and 40s, there were many Germans who fought, did what they could, to stop the Nazis’ genocide in the holocaust. Catrine Clay has documented this in her book THE GOOD GERMANS:
Many ordinary Germans found the courage to resist, in the full knowledge that they could be sentenced to indefinite incarceration, torture or outright execution. Catrine Clay argues that it was a much greater number than was ever formally recorded: teachers, lawyers, factory and dock workers, housewives, shopkeepers, church members, trade unionists, army officers, aristocrats, Social Democrats, Socialists and Communists.
The Jews were the prime, though not the only, victims of the Nazi atrocities.
The good Jews
It is ironic that now there are Jews, people like the members of Jewish Voice for Peace, who bravely speak up for the best in their religion and culture, and denounce the genocide. They take the risks, and are often the leaders in student and other demonstrations
In Europe Having suffered throughout history, Jewish peace activists told Euronews Jews should identify with the oppressed and defend their rights – “whoever that oppressor may be.” In Germany there is Jüdische Stimme (Jewish Voice)
In Britain there is Na’amod, a movement of Jews who oppose what they call Israel’s policies of “occupation and apartheid” in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. There’s also the Jewish Council of Australia.
These courageous people face opposition from Western governments that align with Netanyahu’s Israeli government. But that’s not all. They risk alienation from family and friends, and condemnation as “traitors” to the community. In Israel itself, perhaps a very few are aware of the Gaza situation: they would be readers of Haaretz the independent newspaper (which will no doubt soon be shut down by Netanyahu).
We need to honour these brave and intelligent people, and to remember that there are many thousands who, in various ways, resist the prevailing culture of greed and war-mongering.
The LNP’s nuclear policy is working just fine
by Michael Pascoe | Dec 23, 2024, https://michaelwest.com.au/peter-duttons-nuclear-policy-is-working-just-fine/
Peter Dutton’s nuclear energy announcement has been totally nuked, so to speak,but Michael Pascoe argues it is nonetheless working just fine.
If a major Australian political party has had a core policy more quickly and comprehensively debunked, destroyed and generally defenestrated than the LNP’s nuclear power play, I can’t remember it. But that’s irrelevant to Peter Dutton and Atomic Ted O’Brien.
Despite the near universal rubbishing of the Coalition’s costings, allegedly supplied gratis by economic modeller Danny Price, the stunt is doing exactly what Dutton’s Trumpy playbook said it would do.
cheaper clean energy avoiding much more expensive and unsightly renewable energy spending by Labor.
That all credible media coverage effectively called that promise bullshit doesn’t matter. The promise was still being broadcast, still being talked about, still being reinforced.
For the votes the LNP is chasing, believing or disbelieving the promise is a matter of choice, political choice. Who do you believe, Labor or LNP?
Weak, faltering Albanese or strong, decisive Dutton?
Experts … who needs ’em?
Dutton and the LNP’s media wing have already done the groundwork to undermine those contrary opinions, no matter how numerous or expert.
The CSIRO has a political agenda, the criticism is coming from that “woke” ABC and “left-wing” newspapers, sources not to be trusted, Dutton copying Trump’s very successful “fake news” campaign.
“But, but, but,” you might argue, “these are fake nuclear costings! They have been totally exposed!”
I doesn’t matter. It’s not new that the LNP’s nuclear promise doesn’t add up. All the expert opinions rubbishing last week’s costings had already eviscerated the economics and credibility of the promise since Dutton made it back in May, before the Budget.
The Climate Council’s response back then is as solid an example as any. Dutton’s absolutely false claim that a nuclear reactor’s waste would only fill a Coke can continues to be a joke. Yet, it is unretracted.
Zero difference to Dutton’s polling
That’s seven months of steady, consistent, multifaceted dismissal of the LNP’s core energy and climate policy. Has it made any difference to Dutton’s polling? Well, as his rise in the polls shows, it certainly hasn’t harmed and has probably helped.
Once again, in this age of impressionism politics the detail of a policy being sensible or nonsense doesn’t matter. What counts is the impression it might leave of leadership.
The figures spat out by Danny Price’s modelling aren’t a surprise either. If you search on any issue, you can always find a consultant with a contrary view.
As a leading climate scientist once told me, there is a scientific basis to the three percent of climate scientists who don’t believe in anthropogenic climate change: there will generally be about three per cent of a group that will have a contrary view to overwhelming evidence.
change: there will generally be about three per cent of a group that will have a contrary view to overwhelming evidence.
Coalition media in cahoots
The staged-managed LNP/Murdoch costings reveal last week was a demonstration of Steve Bannon’s “flooding the zone”, starting with the Murdoch media simplifying, swallowing and promoting the nonsense in preview and rolling on with the flood of detailed critical analysis elsewhere, analysis that meant little-to-nothing to the voters Dutton is after.
The LNP’s nuclear policy was adopted without concern for costings. It was the vibe, opposition. The perpetrators knew some figures could be found to suit. Mere details.
There was a hint of that in the Saturday Paper’s story on Danny Price. Mike Seccombe quotes Price:
“What happened was I did an interview on the ABC about nuclear, because I was already doing some stuff in this area. And then the Opposition, Ted O’Brien’s office, contacted me and said they’d be interested in talking about my work. That would have been a few months ago.”
“The truth does not matter”
A “few” months ago? When it comes to months and years and measuring time and such, formulating a major policy in whatever period that would take before the Budget back in May sounds like more than a “few” months to me.
Total opposition. Grab the headlines, look strong and decisive, promise something the eventual failure of which would occur long after you’ve departed the scene, keep promising it, keep opposing whatever the government is doing. Some concurring figures can always be found along the way.
It works. It’s working. The truth does not matter. That’s what the polls are telling Dutton.
That’s what worked and works for Trump. Before the US Presidential election, Trump promised voters he would return prices to pre-COVID levels. It was obviously nonsense, obviously a lie. Doesn’t matter. It was part of Trump’s impression and now that he has been elected, it matters even less as he walks away from the promise.Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor is promising the LNP nuclear show will lower power bills by 44 per cent.
Yeah, right.
The worry for Australia is that the LNP shows every indication of continuing to follow the Trump path, the next step of which is ever greater lawfare.
Trump is suing a pollster and local newspaper over an incorrect poll in Iowa that had him losing that solidly Republican state, claiming the poll was election interference.
That is a fearsome warning to other media and pollsters.
The American ABC network settled a Trump defamation action over a little careless wording around rape/sexual assault, paying Trump $US15 million. The common view is the case would have been defensible, but ABC doesn’t want to be seen opposing Trump.
Given how small and impoverished independent media is in Australia, Dutton taking that next Trumpy step is frightening. A defamation action doesn’t have to be credible to be very effective. It just has to be started by a party with plenty of resources against a party with few.
Teals will baulk
Peter Dutton has backers with effectively endless resources. With such a frightening prospect, the only good news from the LNP’s nuclear fairytale is that it should make it impossible for the community independents, the Teals, to support a Dutton minority government.
The Teals are not stupid. They are committed to climate policy, a raison d’etre for them.
But if Dutton’s impressionist politics momentum continues, the Teals won’t matter either.
‘Tis the season to be fake about nuclear power, AI, plastic leaves, and a lot of other things
It was this charming picture of nuclear stooge Jennifer Granholm, on a background of plastic leaves, which prompted me to ponder on FAKENESS.
It really is an appropriate picture. She’s telling a lot of whopper lies about green nuclear energy as the cure for climate change.. And her cheating method is illustrated beautifully with those cheating plastic green leaves.
The picture popped up in Dawn Stover‘s superb article “AI goes nuclear“. Stover comprehensively explains the Big Tech Bros’ grandiose plans for spectacular growth of Artificial Intelligence, “hyperscale” data banks and big existing nuclear reactors, small not-yet-existing nuclear reactors, and not-yet existing nuclear fusion reactors.
Politicians, media and stooges like Jennifer Granholm go into orgasmic delight about all this excitement, and its undoubted progress for our lucky populace. But Stover reminds that:
“both the government and the tech industry are largely ignoring the known and significant downsides of nuclear power—including high costs, long construction times, accidents, nuclear weapons proliferation risks, and environmental contamination from uranium mining and radioactive waste disposal”.
It is so bizarre that the people are tamely allowing these tunnel-vision technopaths to run our energy systems, (and perhaps ultimately our lives) The most extreme sociopath of all, Elon Musk, is likely to be giving President Trump his orders, when that fateful new USA administration takes office. A government supposedly the servant of the American public, more likely to be the servant of very unreasonable “colonising Mars” ambitions, among the rest of the grandiose technology growth.
Fakeness has become so acceptable, as that green leaf wall above shows us. We know that plastic pollution is everywhere – in giant garbage gyres in the oceans, in tiny particles in our body organs. Yet we still accept more and more of fake plastic leaves, fake plastic Christmas trees, plastic everything.
There is a lot of fakery at this time – inordinate spending of money on completely unnecessary things, extravagant food and drink, and stuff in general – all of which is a pretty fake way to celebrate the birthday of Jesus – who taught ‘Do unto others as you would that they should do to you” . ‘Twould be less fake, if the prevailing Western culture were to make a special effort now, instead of consumer madness, -to help the disadvantaged, wherever they may be.
Most people are aware of the genuine Christmas message. Perhaps there will be a growing awareness of the culture of FAKE. Perhaps in 2025, there will be an awareness of the fakeness surrounding the “Tech Bros” and their nuclear+ AI obsession.
Week to 23 December – news counteracting the nuclear-military-industrial-media complex
Some bits of good news
– Incredible progress in reducing infant mortality in South Asia – UNICEF,
India extended health coverage to millions of elderly citizens, The green economy defied sceptics
TOP STORIES
Syria Today, Iran Tomorrow, and Inevitably China.
Finding the Unmentionable: Amnesty International, Israel and Genocide. Israel’s War on Gaza Is a War on Children.
SpaceX Wants to Increase Launches at Boca Chica Without a Full Environmental Review.
Olkiluoto 3 has been a financial catastrophe for Areva, Siemens.
Dutton said a reactor’s waste would fill a Coke can: Try 27,000 of them.
Climate. World’s largest iceberg on the move again after months spinning on the spot.
Noel’s notes. ‘Tis the season to be fake about nuclear power, AI, plastic leaves, and a lot of other things.
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AUSTRALIA. The LNP’s nuclear policy is working just fine. Don’t want nuclear power’: Wild scenes as protestors storm Perth’s CBD during inquiry into nuclear energy.
The Coalition is playing voters for mugs once again with its nuclear costings. Coalition’s nuclear plan will hit Earth with 1.7bn extra tonnes of CO2 before 2050. The glaring gaps and unanswered questions in the Coalition’s nuclear plan and costings. More Australian nuclear news headlines at https://antinuclear.net/2024/12/17/australian-nuclear-news-headlines-17-23-december/
NUCLEAR ITEMS
| ART and CULTURE. Power, control and symbolic masculinity: How Freud might diagnose the pro nuclear lobby |
| ATROCITIES. Israel’s Crime of Extermination, Acts of Genocide in Gaza. |
| CLIMATE. Major report joins dots between world’s nature challenges. |
| ECONOMICS.Privatizing Syria: US Plans to Sell Off A Nation’s Wealth After Assad.U.S. Corporate Land Grab in Ukraine Underlies War With Russia.France’s most powerful nuclear reactor joins grid after €13bn holdup. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32XKveP01x4Foreign company withdraws from plans for Swedish nuclear power. |
| ENVIRONMENT. Risky Revival: How Michigan’s Palisades nuclear plant could impact agriculture . Will the legacy of nuclear power ever disappear from our coasts?. |
| LEGAL. Nuclear company Orano seeks arbitration over Niger mining licence. |
| POLITICS. Martial Law Fiasco Casts Doubt Over Korea’s Nuclear Power Push. Starmer backs minister accused of embezzling billions in Bangladesh. |
| POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. Israel, not the ‘liberators’ of Damascus, will decide Syria’s fate. Blinken Confirms the US Is in Direct Contact With al-Qaeda-Linked HTS. Blinded to Syria. How Washington and Ankara Changed the Regime in Damascus. |
SAFETY.
- Europe fears nuclear catastrophe: This plant sets off all alarms due to risk of explosion.
- Nuclear Power Plants Report Massive Uptick In Drone Sightings. Drone Incursions Closed Wright-Patterson Air Force Base’s Airspace Friday Night.
- Missing nuclear package sparks major search after ‘very dangerous’ radioactive container vanishes on its way to Spanish airport.
- Aldermaston nuclear bomb factory makes explosives error.
- Incidents. Radioactive spill reported in Northeast Ohio nuclear power plant. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Releases Report Confirming Radioactive Material Lost in Transit — Shipping Container Arrives Damaged and Empty in New Jersey.
| SECRETS and LIES. “I don’t care if its tainted money”: Council leader’s telling admission in Nuclear Waste Services cash grab debate. |
| SPACE. EXPLORATION, WEAPONS. US Space Force conducts ‘simulated on-orbit combat’ training. |
| TECHNOLOGY. Nuclear shipping will face significant challenges. |
Decommissioning. ‘Long journey ahead’ for nuclear plant clean-up. Final German nuclear power plant enters dismantling phase.
| WAR AND CONFLICT On Ukraine war, will Trump channel JFK or LBJ? Pentagon admits massive surge of US troops in Syria. Overnight Israeli Strike In Syria So Large It Caused Earthquake. Trump And Israel Can’t Wait To Start Bombing Iran. |
| WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES. With no real enemies, US poised to spend $1.8 trillion for national security in 2025. Despite 100% Pentagon Audit Failure Rate, House Passes $883.7 Billion NDAA. Israel’s not-so-secret nuclear weapons. |
Communities vent frustration at Coalition’s nuclear plan for their towns
By Joanna Woodburn, ABC Central West, 22 Dec 24,
In short:
Regional communities have shared their views on the federal Coalition’s plan for seven nuclear reactors around Australia.
A parliamentary inquiry has heard pleas for more detail about the proposal, but people have been told to wait for “all the facts”.
What’s next?
The federal committee is due to deliver its report by April 2025.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton has promised his vision to build seven nuclear reactors around Australia will “keep the lights on”.
But people in the communities earmarked to host the plants feel they are being left in the dark as to what the Coalition’s plan means for them.
“What are we actually signing up for?” New South Wales Hunter Valley resident Tony Lonergan said.
Mr Dutton has so far released the locations of the proposed reactors and the costings.
The Coalition wants to build nuclear plants on the sites of seven coal-fired power stations which have shut, or are earmarked to close, at Tarong and Callide in Queensland, Mount Piper near Lithgow and Liddell in NSW, Port Augusta in South Australia, Loy Yang in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley and Muja near Collie in Western Australia.
“I can’t help but feel that politicians see our region as apathetic, desperate and an easy target,” Lithgow resident Tom Evangelidis said.
In the absence of few other details, Labor established a federal inquiry into nuclear power which generated more than 800 submissions from individuals, business owners, industry groups and MPs.
The House Select Committee on Nuclear Energy, which will cease to exist after the inquiry, has toured Australia to hear from the residents whose towns have been selected to host the nuclear reactors.
Wait for ‘the facts’
A repeated request throughout the inquiry has been for the Coalition to explain what technology would be used, how much water would be needed, where the waste would be stored, how it would be transported and whether the infrastructure and technology were safe.
“Even after [the Lithgow hearing] there’s very poor details on will there be one here? When? And those concerns [about] land, safety concerns, environmental concerns; those are all very major concerns and I’ve seen no answers here today,” former NSW mining union executive Wayne McAndrew said.
“The Coalition is proposing the seven sites and I’ve seen nothing from them either.”
The inquiry’s deputy chair, Liberal MP Ted O’Brien, repeatedly told witnesses their communities would have access to a two-and-a-half year “on the ground” consultation process where people’s questions would be answered.
Outside the Port Augusta hearing, SA Liberal MP for Grey, Rowan Ramsey, urged people to wait.
But these assurances have not pacified witnesses.
“That’s not adequate in supporting the general public in forming opinions on things that affect everyone and nor is it adequate for people just to be expected to read or interpret a lengthy report,” Patsy Wolfenden from the Mingaan Wiradjuri Aboriginal Corporation in NSW said at the Lithgow hearing.
“We have agendas that are political and are imposed upon communities without their engagement and without their initial consent in the first place,” Associate Professor Naomi Godden from Edith Cowan University told the Collie hearing in WA.
Jobs promise
One of the Coalition’s key promises is secure employment for coal industry workers who will be out of a job when their power stations close.
In the Latrobe Valley, the Loy Yang power station in Traralgon is due to shut in 2035, which is the same year the Coalition wants its first reactors to be operating.
Local resident Adrian Cosgriff said power station workers were being given false hope, and instead should be encouraged to consider transitioning to the burgeoning renewable energy industry. “Get our coal workers involved, attract other industries as much as we can, so that when they start coming out of those power stations there’s actually work for them,” Mr Cosgriff said.
At Collie in WA, Daniel Graham from the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union shared some of the questions and concerns being posed by members.
“What am I going to do? Looking at the nuclear timeline, [I’m] just not sure how that matches up and how that’s going to help Collie,” Mr Graham told the inquiry…………………………………………………. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-22/coalitions-nuclear-plan-frustrates-communities-at-inquiry/104730522
The glaring gaps and unanswered questions in the Coalition’s nuclear plan and costings.
Peter Dutton’s vision doesn’t address the climate crisis anytime soon and cost savings are based on a comparison with Labor’s proposal that produces 45% more electricity
Graham Readfearn and Josh Butler, 13 Dec 24, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/dec/13/australia-nuclear-power-costings-frontier-economics-plan-peter-dutton-coalition-policy?fbclid=IwY2xjawHUXJZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHSLJcWqEbGOzAYkAVsppgXxhFjGsXpZLdVYB4J2Fn2n1iyTzXrnP5XMYRg_aem_g_g5MDvHcqIrdVL96ybbNA
The Coalition has revealed further details of its plan to build nuclear reactors in Australia, claiming it could deliver an electricity system costing $263bn less than the Albanese government’s plans to power Australia on renewables backed by storage and gas.
The Coalition is relying on Frontier Economics modelling to argue its nuclear vision for seven reactors across the country would be 44% cheaper than the government’s renewables-led plan.
So what do we need to know about the Coalition’s proposal?
Does the plan address the climate crisis?
Not for about 25 years. Frontier’s modelling shows the amount of CO2 released for every megawatt hour of electricity generated under the Coalition’s nuclear plan.
The report shows the “emissions intensity” of electricity stays much higher with nuclear than without until sometime between 2046 and 2049 – after which electricity would be slightly cleaner.
This is mostly because, under the Coalition, the modelling shows more coal stays in the grid for longer, releasing more CO2.
Any delays in rolling out nuclear reactors, which experts say is very likely, would lead to higher emissions for longer.
The Coalition’s chosen scenario to develop the electricity grid is in line with a 2.6C rise in global temperatures by the end of the century.
Is the Coalition’s plan comparable to the government’s?
No. The Coalition says its plan delivers an electricity system that costs 44% less than the government’s proposal – a saving of $263bn.
But the detail in the Frontier Economics report shows this 44% cost reduction comes as a result of comparing two different scenarios for the future of the electricity grid.
The Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo) looks at three scenarios for the electricity grid and Frontier based its modelling on two of them – called “progressive change” and “step change”. The Albanese government prefers step change.
Frontier says the “progressive” scenario is preferred by the Coalition and adding nuclear to this “is 44% cheaper than the step change future as envisaged by the federal Labor government”.
The problem here is obvious. We are not comparing apples with apples.
Tristan Edis, director of Green Energy markets, says the “progressive change” scenario “involves total electricity consumption in 2052 of 311TWh, whereas step change is 450TWh or almost 45% greater electricity demand”.
So the Coalition’s plan to deliver nuclear is based on a scenario where Labor’s preferred plan is producing 45% more electricity than the Coalition’s.
Clearly, a system producing more power will cost more. Dr Dylan McConnell, an energy systems expert at UNSW, says without adding nuclear, Aemo’s “progressive change” costs are about $133bn less than for “step change”.
The “progressive change” scenario being promoted by the Coalition assumes much slower roll-outs of electric vehicles, rooftop solar and the electrification of homes and businesses.
That suggests consumers would miss out on any cost savings from running electric vehicles or using less gas in their homes for cooking and heating (as well as the cuts in emissions that come with using less fossil fuels).
How realistic is the Coalition’s timeline for building reactors?
Frontier Economic’s report suggests the first nuclear power would enter the grid in 2036 – but many experts say this is wildly optimistic.
The CSIRO estimates it would take at least 15 years for Australia to establish the necessary legal and regulatory functions and then finance, commission and build a working reactor.
Energy expert Simon Holmes à Court laid out his own timeline this week saying there was “not a hope in hell” a nuclear reactor could be working before 2040. He said his own optimistic scenario put the date at 2044.
What other roadblocks does Peter Dutton face?
Dutton said because the Coalition was in opposition it hadn’t been able to begin the negotiations needed to make nuclear a reality in Australia.
Before a single nuclear energy plant could be built, the Coalition would have to win the next federal election.
Then, a Dutton-led government would have to overturn a Howard-era national ban on nuclear energy – with laws passing both Houses of Parliament. If Dutton winning a majority in the lower house seems a tough ask, getting such a plan through a likely hostile Senate would be even harder.
Then, the Coalition would have to see various state governments overturn their bans on nuclear energy. Finally, state leaders would need to be onboard to support reactors being built in their back yards.
As Guardian Australia has reported, Labor governments and Coalition oppositions in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia are either outright opposed to the plan or have failed to endorse it. The new Queensland Liberal premier, David Crisafulli, ruled out nuclear during that state’s recent election campaign.
Dutton has pointed to constitutional powers to override state objections if necessary. He has also noted the openness of SA’s Labor premier, Peter Malinauskas, to nuclear.
How much will electricity cost under the Coalition’s nuclear plan?
Dutton claimed the nuclear option would mean “a 44% saving for taxpayers and businesses” but does that translate into cheaper power prices?
Frontier’s report says it does not “present any results for the prices [of wholesale electricity] as this will depend on how the cost of new capacity will be treated in the future”.
In other words, they don’t know what the cost of power will be.
How have critics responded?
The climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, criticised the Coalition for not detailing how the nuclear plan would affect consumer power bills and pointed to other modelling showing it could push up bills by $1,200 a year.
He claimed the Frontier report contained “fundamental errors” and “heroic assumptions”, pointing out it assumed Australia would consume less power than Aemo’s modelling forecast. Bowen also criticised the report for using cheaper prices to produce nuclear power than the CSIRO and AEMO accounted for.
The federal Greens leader, Adam Bandt, called it a “con job for coal”, noting the nuclear strategy relied on extending the life of fossil fuels.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce And Industry said the plan needed to be scrutinised thoroughly. It wasn’t critical but called for “long-term certainty” for the business community regarding power prices and reliability.
The Clean Energy Council said it would be a “disaster” for power bills and dramatically slow the rollout of renewables like rooftop solar.
Rod Campbell, of the Australia Institute, said the nuclear plan was a “distraction to prolong fossil fuel use and exports”.
Syria Today, Iran Tomorrow, and Inevitably China
A US-backed terrorist organization fresh from overthrowing a US-targeted nation in the Middle East now vows to target China next.
The London Telegraph in a December 13, 2024 article titled, “Uyghur fighters in Syria vow to come for China next,” claims “a Uyghur militant group that helped to topple Bashar-al Assad has vowed to take the fight to China.”
Far from an exception, virtually all reports on the subject stem from either Adrian Zenz himself or reports published by US government-funded organizations including the Australian Strategic Policy Institute
New Eastern Outlook, Brian Berletic, December 19, 2024, https://journal-neo.su/2024/12/19/syria-today-iran-tomorrow-and-inevitably-china/
The collapse of the Syrian government in mid-December 2024 represents a pivotal moment for U.S. geopolitical strategies in the Middle East and beyond.
This event aligns with longstanding objectives, including the subsequently planned disarming, division, and destruction of Iran and the toppling of the Iranian government, the possible eviction of Russian military bases in Syria, and the use of US-sponsored terrorist organizations utilized in overrunning Syria to export terrorism to other targeted nations both in the region and far abroad including both Russia and China.
Syria’s Collapse Was Long Sought After
The US has repeatedly attempted to undermine and overthrow the government of Syria since at least as early as the 1980s. This most recent attempt began preparations as early as 2007 as revealed in a New Yorker article published that year titled, “The Redirection.”
Written by legendary journalist Seymour Hersh, the article admitted:
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al-Qaeda*.
Also that year, the US State Department had already been training, equipping, and funding opposition groups to return to their nations across the Arab World and overthrow their respective governments as part of what would later be referred to as the “Arab Spring,” the New York Times would reveal in a 2011 article titled, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings.”
Following the initial protests of the 2011 “Arab Spring,” US-sponsored regime change quickly and deliberately turned violent before transforming into a multitude of armed conflicts – some of which involved overt US military intervention, including in Libya, Syria, and Yemen.
By 2012, a US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report about US-sponsored regime change in Syria specifically, published by Judicial Watch, admitted that the so-called “Syrian” opposition consisted of Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Al-Qaeda*. The report admitted that, “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition,” and that “if the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality,” and that “this is exactly what the supporting power of the opposition [the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey] want in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”
It is very clear that the “Salafist principality” referred to the so-called “Islamic State.” While the West posed as intervening in Syria to eliminate the “Islamic State,” it was actually supporting and using it precisely to “isolate the Syrian regime,” just as the US DIA report noted.
Through a combination of sanctions, US-Israeli military strikes, US and Turkish military occupation including of Syria’s oil and wheat fields, Syria was slowly hollowed out and, as of December 2024, with Russia and Iran overextended elsewhere, finally toppled.
Next Target: Iran
Most obviously, just as with the US-engineered overthrow of Libya in 2011, Syria will persist as a failed and divided state the US and its regional proxies used to export terrorism across the region toward what remains of Iran’s asymmetrical military power including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iranian-backed militias across Iraq.
Syria can now also be used as a staging ground for attacks on Iran itself, including via the use of Syria’s now unprotected airspace.
One crucial obstacle eliminated with the collapse of Syria’s government was the destruction of its military hardware, including a formidable integrated air defense network. Even as US-Turkish-backed terrorists advanced on Damascus, US-armed Israeli warplanes carried out 100s of airstrikes across the country, both eliminating the abandoned air defense systems themselves and a long list of targets those air defenses had long prevented Israel from striking.
The Times of Israel itself, in an article titled, “IDF sees chance for strikes on Iran nuke sites after knocking out Syria air defenses,” connected Israel’s targeting and destruction of Syrian air defenses with plans to then carry out direct strikes on Iran.
………………………………….now the Israeli air force “can operate freely across the country’s skies,” and will likely do so both as part of shaping chaos inside Syria itself as well as amid future strikes on Iran.
Far from simply exploiting recent, unexpected developments, the elimination of Syria as an ally of Iran was a long-standing prerequisite required and planned for before moving on to toppling Iran itself.
Such plans were published by US government and arms industry-funded Brookings Institution in its 2009 paper, “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran,” noting specifically:
Israel may be more willing to bear the risks of Iranian retaliation and international opprobrium than the United States is, but it is not invulnerable and may request certain commitments from the United States before it is ready to strike. For instance, the Israelis may want to hold off until they have a peace deal with Syria in hand (assuming that Jerusalem believes that one is within reach), which would help them mitigate blowback from Hizballah and potentially Hamas. Consequently, they might want Washington to push hard in mediating between Jerusalem and Damascus.
Obviously, Israel’s recent war on Hezbollah and US-sponsored regime change in Syria has fulfilled this prerequisite – regime change achieved in Syria using many of the other methods listed in the 2009 Brookings paper focused on Iran including “supporting a popular uprising,” supporting [armed] minority and opposition groups,“airstrikes,” and “invasion.” In fact, such methods are used over and over again against all nations targeted by the US for coercion and eventually regime change.
US-Sponsored Terrorism Targets China and “Chinese Projects/Embassies”
In addition to targeting Iranian-backed militias, Iranian-friendly governments, and Iran itself, the US has utilized terrorist organizations now in Syria against other adversaries abroad, including China. Many signs now indicate the US could redirect these terrorist organizations back toward China once again.
This includes the so-called, “Turkestan Islamic Party” (TIP) also known as the “East Turkestan Islamic Movement” (ETIM).
What is particularly troubling about TIP/ETIM is the fact that the US disingenuously removed it from its Foreign Terrorist Organizations list in 2020 specifically to provide it with wider and more overt support. DW in its article titled, “US removes China-condemned group from terror list,” would claim TIP/ETIM was removed as a terrorist organization by the US government, “because, for more than a decade, there has been no credible evidence that ETIM continues to exist.”
This is demonstrably untrue considering the US Department of Defense admitted to having carried out airstrikes against the group in Afghanistan only 2 years prior to its delisting, NBC News would report.
Now, the organization the US government claimed no longer exists, is in Syria and reported comprising an entire military unit alongside Hayat Tahrir al-Sham* (HTS), aiding in the recent overthrow of the Syrian government. HTS* is listed by the US as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, while TIP/ETIM is listed as a terrorist organization by the UN and even Washington’s close ally, the UK.
The London Telegraph in a December 13, 2024 article titled, “Uyghur fighters in Syria vow to come for China next,” claims “a Uyghur militant group that helped to topple Bashar-al Assad has vowed to take the fight to China.”
A US-backed terrorist organization fresh from overthrowing a US-targeted nation in the Middle East now vows to target China next. The ability to do so is only possible with continued US government backing including training, weapons, and logistics via regional proxies including Türkiye, who prepared and incorporated the militants in the invasion force that toppled Syria’s government.
Short of fighting in China itself, the Telegraph in an accompanying video would note, “can TIP take the fight to China, home to the world’s largest military with 2 million active troops? It’s easier said than done. Still, TIP could target Chinese projects or embassies abroad.”
The US already backs violent terrorism attacking Chinese projects and embassies abroad, including in Baluchistan, Pakistan and Myanmar. An army of well-trained, well-armed experienced terrorists fresh from the battlefield in Syria are poised to significantly escalate what is already a US war on China by proxy along the length of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and ultimately aimed at China itself.
It should be noted that TIP/ETIM and affiliated extremists carried out years of deadly terrorism within China’s western region of Xinjiang. The BBC in a 2014 article titled, “Why is there tension between China and the Uighurs?,” proudly listed the rampant violence Beijing at the time struggled to contain. When Chinese anti-terrorism efforts finally began to work, the BBC along with the rest of the Western media omitted any mention of separatist violence and depicted Chinese efforts to uproot extremism as “human rights abuses,” “coerced labor,” and even “genocide.”
No evidence exists of any systemic abuses, including either “coerced labor” or “genocide.” Even US government-funded organizations tasked with producing reports claiming to document such abuses bury admissions of a lack of evidence in the reports themselves.
One 2020 report titled, “Coercive Labor in Xinjiang: Labor Transfer and the Mobilization of Ethnic Minorities to Pick Cotton,” written by Adrian Zenz, a member of the US government-funded “Victims of Communism Memorial Fund,” admitted in its conclusion that, “in a system where the transition between securitization and poverty alleviation is seamless, and where the threat of extralegal internment looms large, it is impossible to define where coercion ends and where local consent may begin.”
Far from an exception, virtually all reports on the subject stem from either Adrian Zenz himself or reports published by US government-funded organizations including the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) or US NED-funded fronts like the World Uyghur Congress, Uyghur Human Rights Project, Campaign for Uyghurs, and the Uyghur Transitional Justice Database Project.
While these organizations pose as “human rights” advocates, their websites overtly refer to China’s Xinjiang region as “East Turkestan*” (sometimes spelled East Turkistan), claiming it is “occupied” by China, and openly seek separatism from China as one of their central objectives – objectives underwritten by generous funding by the US government.
In other words, the US is backing deadly violence, political movements promoting separatism, and fronts attempting to depict the Chinese government’s reaction to all of the above as “human rights abuses,” which in turn is used to justify otherwise indefensible sanctions applied to Chinese companies attempting to do business anywhere the collective West exerts influence.
Defending Against Washington’s Superweapon
While many are tempted to treat conflicts around the globe in isolation, the truth is the United States is pursuing a long-standing global policy of eliminating all rivals through persuasion, coercion, sanctions, US-sponsored sedition, terrorism, and military confrontation – by proxy and directly.
The fall of Syria and other nations like it contribute toward a more dangerous world where larger and more stable nations may be targeted, undermined, and toppled next.
The chaos that has followed US regime change in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, Libya, Ukraine, and now Syria this 21st century is just a small fraction of the instability, death, destruction, and destitution the entire globe faces should Washington continue prevailing in its geopolitical pursuits.
Among the most effective and so far unanswered weapons the United States government wields is its dominion over global information space and its global-spanning network of political interference and capture, centered around the National Endowment for Democracy and adjacent government and corporate-funded foundations.
Russian and Chinese military and economic power continues to rise, and both nations have successfully protected their respective information spaces. However, the US continues unopposed undermining nations along both Russia and China’s peripheries, successfully politically capturing nations and transforming them into political and even military battering rams against both targeted nations.
While China may have successfully uprooted US-sponsored extremism in Xinjiang, the US continues arming, backing, and promoting these same extremists out of China’s reach in recently decimated Syria. Through Washington’s control over information space outside of China, these terrorists are being presented as “freedom fighters” in much the same way the US has presented HTS despite being listed by the US State Department as actual terrorists.
Russia and China aid partner nations in the defense of their traditional national security domains – air, land, and sea – but have failed to export their own domestic success in securing a 21st century national security domain – information space. Should Russia and China succeed in doing this, Washington will be denied one of its last and most effective weapons used to sustain its global hegemony, making multipolarism inevitable rather than a mere possibility.
*-banned in Russia
Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.
Economics of Coalition’s nuclear modelling are worth nothing
There may well still be good reasons to favour nuclear. But on the basis of this modelling, the economics isn’t one of them
Australian Financial Review, .Steven Hamilton, Columnist, 16 Dec 24
On Friday, the Coalition finally released the economic modelling underpinning its plan to produce more than a third of our electricity via nuclear by 2050.
I approached the modelling – produced pro-bono by Frontier Economics – with an open mind. I have no issue with nuclear power so long as the economics stack up. To date, I am yet to read a convincing analysis in its favour in the Australian context.
Alas, after studying the modelling very carefully, I can confirm it is worth about what the Coalition paid for it.
Most critical reporting has focused on the Coalition’s decision, bundled along with nuclear, to abandon the “step change” scenario the government is counting on, which would see significantly greater electricity generation to support widespread electrification of households, transport and business.
But this is a red herring. While the Coalition’s claim that its plan will cost 44 per cent less than the government’s plan relies on the abandonment of step change, the modelling presents both step change and the Coalition’s preferred “progressive” scenario with and without nuclear power.
Within the progressive scenario, nuclear is claimed to reduce costs by a still-substantial 28 per cent. How does the modelling reach such a conclusion? Through sleights of hand, unrealistic assumptions and sheer physical impossibilities.
The first red flag is the odd choice to conduct all cost comparisons across the entire 2025-2051 period. To understand why this matters, consider that the Coalition’s plan involves two big changes.
First, a big slowdown in the renewables rollout paired with delays to coal closures; second, the transition to nuclear of the remaining coal-fired power beginning in 2035, but mostly in the 2040s.
So the claimed cost reductions over 2025-2051 are not driven primarily by nuclear being cheaper than firmed renewables, but by already-sunk coal-fired generation being cheaper than new firmed renewables.
From 2025-2051, nuclear accounts for just 15 per cent of electricity generated; but in 2051, it accounts for 38 per cent. So while the cost difference for 2025-2051 is 28 per cent, the cost difference in 2051, when both systems are fully up and running and producing near-zero-emissions power, is just 12 per cent. And that’s the comparison that matters.
Of course, we should not pretend the decision to swap renewables for coal in the interim is costless. The modelling shows that this will generate two and a half times the emissions from electricity generation from 2025-2051 than Labor’s plan.
That represents 1 billion tonnes of emissions, and that’s ignoring additional emissions outside the electricity sector. Using the Australian Energy Regulator’s “value of emissions reductions” carbon pricing framework, that’s worth $180 billion in today’s dollars. And we can say goodbye to our Paris commitment.
far more capital investment – nuclear or renewables – will be required under the Coalition’s plan than the modelling claims.
So what is driving the claimed 12 per cent cost advantage in 2051? Two key things.
The capital cost of nuclear is assumed to be $10,000 per kilowatt, which then falls by 1 per cent per year from today despite the fact that the first nuclear plant isn’t due until 2035, and most not until the 2040s. So around $8500 per kilowatt in 2040.
But the Centre for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems at MIT, in an independent assessment of the cost of the next AP1000 units at Vogtle, Georgia, puts the capital cost at a greenfield site at around double this, and that’s likely conservative.
Moreover, historical experience has shown that nuclear costs tend to rise, not fall, as additional units are built. This alone blows through that 12 per cent cost gap.
But there is a bigger problem. Because nuclear is so capital-intensive, the biggest economic challenge it faces is to operate at a high utilisation or “capacity factor”.
s noted by nuclear advocacy group the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA): “At high levels of renewable generation, for example, as implied by the EU’s 30 per cent renewable penetration target, the nuclear capacity factor is reduced and the volatility of wholesale prices greatly increases whilst the average wholesale price level falls.”
“The increased penetration of intermittent renewables thereby greatly reduces the financial viability of nuclear generation in wholesale markets where intermittent renewable energy capacity is significant,” they say.
But this is completely ignored in the modelling. It assumes an extraordinarily high capacity factor for nuclear of 90 per cent despite 38 per cent of electricity coming from nuclear and 54 per cent from renewables.
This implies nuclear is prioritised to generate near maximum at all times. But then renewables must be forced to serve only residual demand regardless of whether or not the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, pushing down their capacity factor.
Yet the modelling assumes high renewables capacity factors of 26 per cent for solar and 36 per cent for wind. But the real smoking gun is the fact that these capacity factors do not change with the introduction of nuclear producing 38 per cent of generation nearly 24-7. You might imagine storage could soak up surplus energy, but the modelling assumes far less storage with nuclear but with a similar capacity factor.
In practice, one of two things has to happen. Either nuclear’s capacity factor must be reduced below 90 per cent to something closer to coal’s 60 per cent, or renewables’ capacity factor must be reduced to make room for nuclear. Either way, far more capital investment – nuclear or renewables – will be required under the Coalition’s plan than the modelling claims. Which again blows that 12 per cent gap out of the water.
In summary: there may well still be good reasons to favour nuclear. But on the basis of this modelling, the economics isn’t one of them. https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/economics-of-coalition-s-nuclear-modelling-are-worth-nothing-20241214-p5kydg?fbclid=IwY2xjawHUWzJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHdLavxsUUY_GjBH3PWkhXPoaK5h50Pyy9Zu1WWEt2adqfbAkKQ9zrFsJbg_aem_kbpsngTqQ-zFGfa9cL6s4Q
Nationals senator says Coalition introduced nuclear as a political fix
ABC News, by political reporter Jake Evans, Fri 20 Dec 24
In short:
Video has emerged of a Nationals senator saying his party’s nuclear policy shows it is not serious about cheap energy, arguing if it was it would instead pursue more coal.
Separately, his Nationals colleague Keith Pitt has announced he will quit politics, citing frustrations over the Nationals’ approach to climate.
What’s next?
A new member for Hinkler in Queensland will be elected next year.
Video has emerged of Nationals senator Matt Canavan labelling his party’s nuclear policy a “political fix” and conceding it is not the cheapest form of power, as a colleague quits the party over its approach to climate change.
Senator Canavan told a podcast in August that his party was “not serious” about nuclear power being a solution to high energy costs.
“Nuclear is not going to cut it. I mean, we’re as guilty of this too — we’re not serious. We’re latching onto nuclear,” Senator Canavan told the National Conservative Institute podcast.
“I fully support getting the ban [lifted], we’ve got a bill in the Senate to get rid of it. We should build some nuclear power stations. They’ll help, they’ll help our system.
“But we’re latching on to it as a silver bullet, as a panacea because it fixes a political issue for us, that it’s low-emission and it’s reliable. But it ain’t the cheapest form of power.”
Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen leapt on the comments, saying it revealed a divide within the Coalition.
“I don’t agree with much Matt Canavan says. But I do acknowledge he’s honest on this occasion,” Mr Bowen said.
“Canavan admits the Coalition is willing to impose higher costs on Australians with the most expensive form of energy just to ‘fix a political problem’ for Peter Dutton’s divided party room.”
In a statement, Senator Canavan told the ABC he had consistently over years said that a net zero approach was “not a serious policy” for the country……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-20/canavan-coalition-not-serious-nuclear-keith-pitt-quits/104749828
AI goes nuclear
Big tech is turning to old reactors (and planning new ones) to power the energy-hungry data centers that artificial intelligence systems need. The downsides of nuclear power—including the potential for nuclear weapons proliferation—have been minimized or simply ignored.
Bulletin, By Dawn Stover, December 19, 2024
When Microsoft bought a 407-acre pumpkin farm in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, it wasn’t to grow Halloween jack-o’-lanterns. Microsoft is growing data centers—networked computer servers that store, retrieve, and process information. And those data centers have a growing appetite for electricity.
Microsoft paid a whopping $76 million for the pumpkin farm, which was assessed at a value of about $600,000. The company, which has since bought other nearby properties to expand its footprint to two square miles, says it will spend $3.3 billion to build its 2-million-square-foot Wisconsin data center and equip it with the specialized computer processors used for artificial intelligence (AI).
Microsoft and OpenAI, maker of the ChatGPT bot, have talked about building a linked network of five data centers—the Wisconsin facility plus four others in California, Texas, Virginia, and Brazil. Together they would constitute a massive supercomputer, dubbed Stargate, that could ultimately cost more than $100 billion and require five gigawatts of electricity, or the equivalent of the output of five average-size nuclear power plants.
Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and other major tech companies are investing heavily in data centers, particularly “hyperscale” data centers that are not only massive in size but also in their processing capabilities for data-intensive tasks such as generating AI responses. A single hyperscale data center can consume as much electricity as tens or hundreds of thousands of homes, and there are already hundreds of these centers in the United States, plus thousands of smaller data centers.
In just the past year, US electric utilities have nearly doubled their estimates of how much electricity they’ll need in another five years. Electric vehicles, cryptocurrency, and a resurgence of American manufacturing are sucking up a lot of electrons, but AI is growing faster and is driving the rapid expansion of data centers. A recent report by the global investment bank Goldman Sachs forecasts that data centers will consume about 8 percent of all US electricity in 2030, up from about 3 percent today
Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and other so-called “tech bros” who also happen to be among the world’s richest men have thought about how the energy industry can—or must, in their view—keep pace with AI’s rapid growth while also enabling Big Tech to meet its climate commitments. They have all come to the same conclusion: Nuclear energy, whatever it costs, is the only viable solution.
In a rash of recent announcements, Big Tech companies have declared that they will either be reviving existing nuclear power plants, developing next-generation nuclear reactors, or both. Dollars are also flowing to nuclear fusion projects—even though many physicists think commercial fusion power plants that generate electricity are at least decades in the future, if they ever can be built. The federal government is not only supporting this nuclear-powered vision but also subsidizing it in the name of “clean energy.” However, both the government and the tech industry are largely ignoring the known and significant downsides of nuclear power—including high costs, long construction times, accidents, nuclear weapons proliferation risks, and environmental contamination from uranium mining and radioactive waste disposal.
Betting on nuclear. Again.
In Pennsylvania, Microsoft has plans to revive Three Mile Island. For people old enough to remember that name, it’s synonymous with the demise of nuclear power in the United States. Forty-five years ago, a partial reactor meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant 10 miles south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, gripped the nation and exposed nearly two million people to radiation. It was the worst accident in the history of the US commercial nuclear power industry.
The failed reactor never operated again, but a similar reactor built on the same island in the Susquehanna River was restarted six years after the accident and later received a license extension until 2034. That reactor was shut down in 2019 after its owner, Constellation Energy, was unable to secure subsidies from the state of Pennsylvania and deemed the reactor a financial albatross. Now, however, Constellation plans to reopen the reactor and sell 100 percent of the electricity that will be generated by it—enough to power 800,000 homes—to Microsoft………………………………………………………………………………………………..
The sudden interest in nuclear energy is largely due to AI, which is rapidly transforming the tech industry. Electric utilities are forecasting the nation will need the equivalent of 34 new, full-size nuclear power plants over the next five years to meet power requirements that are rising sharply after several decades of falling or flat demand.
Microsoft, Amazon, and other tech giants are not interested only in reviving existing nuclear plants. They are also funding the development of next-generation nuclear reactors. ……………………………………………………………….
Counting “compute”
Globally, electricity demand is also soaring and is now expected to be 6 percent higher in 2035 than the International Energy Agency forecast just a year ago. Electricity consumption by data centers, of which there are already 11,000 worldwide, could reach more than 1 million gigawatt-hours in 2027—about as much total electricity as Japan now uses annually, according to a recent analysis by the agency……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
An analysis done by OpenAI in 2018 found that the amount of “compute” required to train the largest AI models was doubling every three to four months. An analysis of more recent models reports that the training requirements multiplied by four to five times annually during the past four years………………………………………………………………..
Based solely on current trends, power consumption at US data centers is projected to grow by about 10 percent annually between now and 2030. By one estimate, the exponential growth of AI could consume nearly all the world’s energy production by 2050……………………………………………
In the meantime, data centers are being built faster than energy capacity is expanding. The rapid growth of this sector has not been adequately figured into climate models and is rarely mentioned as a safety concern about AI. In the March 2023 “pause” letter that called on AI labs to stop training the most powerful AI systems for at least six months, tech experts expressed concern about losing jobs—or even control of civilization—but not about climate impacts.
The AI boom is heavily dependent on power-hungry graphics processing units,…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
A dirty secret
Whether it’s chip manufacturing or bot training and chatting, where will the energy for AI activity come from? Big tech companies have been prominent in efforts to move toward a carbon-free economy. But with the rise of AI, tech-related emissions are going up.
…………………………………………………… the AI boom has pushed climate goals aside. Microsoft’s emissions, for example, are up by 30 percent since 2020. Google’s emissions have risen by almost 50 percent over the past five years. “As we further integrate AI into our products, reducing emissions may be challenging due to increasing energy demands from the greater intensity of AI compute, and the emissions associated with the expected increases in our technical infrastructure investment,” Google acknowledged in its 2024 environmental report.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………… there is no solid evidence that AI can deliver a quick fix for the climate crisis. In fact, AI is also helping the oil and gas industry increase production of fossil fuels. In Guyana, for example, ExxonMobil is using AI “to determine the ideal parameters for drilling” in deep water. For now, at least, AI’s massive environmental footprint is more of a climate problem than a solution.
Is this the “nuclear renaissance”?
As AI’s energy demands grow more intense, and it becomes increasingly clear that the expansion of wind and solar power cannot keep pace, tech leaders have set their sights on nuclear energy.
So nuclear hype has flowed like champagne at a wedding reception.
Proponents of nuclear power have been predicting a “nuclear renaissance” for nearly a quarter-century. But nuclear has never been cost-competitive with other energy sources, and that is unlikely to change anytime soon. The US Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook 2023 projected that renewable power would continue to outcompete nuclear, even in scenarios that predict aggressive cost declines for nuclear.
The Biden administration embraced subsidies to keep existing nuclear power plants online and reopen closed ones—for example, a $1.52 billion loan guarantee from the Energy Department is what made it possible for the owner of the shuttered Palisades nuclear plant to announce plans for a reopening. “In 2022, utilities were shutting down nuclear reactors; in 2024, they are extending reactor operations to 80 years, planning to uprate capacity, and restarting formerly closed reactors,” the Energy Department approvingly noted in a report released at the end of Climate Week NYC in late September.
The White House also recently offered $900 million in new funding for small reactors. In its initiative for AI, the Energy Department waves vaguely at plans to “unlock new clean energy sources, optimize energy production, and improve grid resilience.”
“We’re looking at a chance to build new nuclear at a scale not seen since the ‘70s and ‘80s,” Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said at the opening plenary of the American Nuclear Society annual conference in June.
The Energy Department sees potential for a “commercial liftoff” that could triple US nuclear capacity by 2050 and puts a positive spin on AI’s role in boosting nuclear: “AI and data center load growth is aligning the fundamentals for new nuclear with requirements for 24/7 power, valuing decarbonization, and investment in new generation assets.”
Despite this federal support, the nuclear renaissance so far lacks an order book for new nuclear plants that are actually being constructed. What it does have, as noted in the White House’s “liftoff” report, is “a set of customers who are willing and able to support investment in new nuclear generation assets.” Namely, big tech companies that can afford to pay big electricity bills…………………..
Although tech titans currently have ample funds to invest in energy, the cost curve for AI is going up. The expense of powering chatbots is already climbing so fast that companies are holding back their newest versions from the public.
Existing nuclear power can’t satisfy the demand for energy that is not only more abundant but also cheaper. “We still don’t appreciate the energy needs of this [AI] technology,” lamented OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January. “There’s no way to get there without a breakthrough.” Altman, who has warned that AI’s “compute costs are eye-watering,” called for increased investment in nuclear fusion as well as fission.
The fission (and fusion) frenzy
In addition to OpenAI, Altman also chairs Oklo, a nuclear power startup that went public last year when it merged with a special purpose acquisitions company that Altman also chairs. Oklo plans to build its first liquid metal-cooled sodium fast reactor at Idaho National Laboratory in 2027. However, the company’s initial application for a license was denied—for lack of information—by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in January 2022 and has not yet been re-submitted.
In August 2023, the Pentagon announced an “intent to award” a contract to Oklo for a small modular reactor at an Air Force base in Alaska. However, the deal was quietly revoked a month later.
Despite setbacks like these, Altman sees the future of nuclear energy and AI as inextricably linked. “I don’t see a way for us to get there without nuclear,” he told CNBC last year.
Retired Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is not as worried about AI’s energy demands as Altman is, but he too is bullish on nuclear energy. Among his multiple investments in nuclear startups is a company called TerraPower, which has received funding from the Energy Department and Los Alamos National Laboratory to develop a sodium-cooled fast reactor similar to Oklo’s.
Gates has invested more than $1 billion in a TerraPower plant that broke ground in Kemmerer, Wyoming, in June. TerraPower says the reactor will be operational by 2030. But construction of the plant’s Natrium reactor has not yet begun, nor has it been approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which is still conducting safety and environmental reviews.
Gates issued a celebratory announcement calling the science behind the reactor “super cool.” Not mentioned in the announcement is the estimated price for the 345-megawatt reactor: $4 billion, of which the federal government is contributing half. Even if the project comes in on budget (which would make it exceptional among US nuclear reactors of the past several decades), it will be more expensive than comparable gas or renewable projects.
Microsoft and Google are also placing bets on nuclear. Earlier this year, Microsoft hired a director of nuclear technologies and a director of nuclear development acceleration to lead the company’s strategy for powering AI advances with small, onsite nuclear reactors—as well as buying energy from larger conventional reactors such as Three Mile Island. Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in OpenAI and owns almost half of its equity, plans to use AI to expedite the process of getting nuclear plants approved and has been training an AI model on regulatory and licensing documents.
Google last month signed an agreement to buy a total of 500 megawatts of generating capacity—about half the output of a conventional nuclear reactor—from six to seven Hermes small modular reactors designed by Kairos Power. Google aims to deploy the reactors next to Google data centers by 2030. This past summer, Kairos broke ground on an NRC-permitted demonstration reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. It was the first non-water-cooled US reactor approved for construction in more than 50 years.
Michael Terrell, senior director for energy and climate at Google, said the agreement with Kairos could help the company support AI technologies and “reliably meet electricity demands with carbon-free energy every hour of every day.”
Wealthy tech companies and individuals are investing in nuclear fusion as well as fission. Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and was the first outside investor in Facebook, joined Altman in backing a fusion startup called Helion, which claims it will begin producing electricity from its first commercial reactor by 2028 and will sell it to Microsoft.
Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a venture capital firm founded by Bill Gates, has invested in Helion and three other fusion startups. One of those ventures, an MIT spinoff company called Commonwealth Fusion Systems, is also backed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and has received $1.8 billion in second-round venture capital. Commonwealth announced earlier this week that it has leased land to build a commercial-scale fusion power plant in Virginia, but the company has not yet secured any permits or customers.
Critics such as Daniel Jassby, the former principal research physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, have called the excitement surrounding these fusion projects “over-the-top and unjustified.”………………………………………………………………………………………
The downsides of nuclear
Despite massive infusions of money from corporations, billionaires, and governments, nuclear is not a sure bet. Around the world, large reactors have repeatedly come in over budget and behind schedule, and although they require lower initial capital investment, smaller reactors are likely to be even less economic than the larger ones that now exist, in terms of the cost of the electricity they produce.
“Very few of the proposed SMRs have been demonstrated, and none are commercially available, let alone licensed by a nuclear regulator,” wrote Allison Macfarlane, who chaired the NRC a decade ago and now directs the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia, in an essay published last year by IAI News.The only SMR reactor design certified by the NRC is the NuScale Power reactor, which received more than $200 million in federal support and was slated to be built at the Idaho National Laboratory. But the projected cost of building the reactor ballooned between 2020 and 2023; its only committed utility customer dropped out, and the project was canceled a year ago.
The only new nuclear reactors that have been built in the United States in the past 30 years are Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia. These Westinghouse AP1000 pressurized water reactors were the nation’s first “advanced” reactors, but they ended up costing $35 billion (more than twice as much as originally projected) and were completed seven years behind schedule.
There are more than 50 designs for new reactors, and the tech giants investing in nuclear do not seem to be working toward a standardized design—something that many nuclear experts recommend as the best way to get plants approved and built quickly and affordably.
Cost and time are not the only obstacles that must be overcome if nuclear is to meet the AI-energy problem. The work force needed to build a host of nuclear projects has dwindled as plants have closed and not been replaced. Also, none of the proposed new projects has included any new ideas for what to do about the radioactive waste generated not only by reactors by also by uranium mining. There is still no permanent repository for long-lived radioactive waste in the United States.
Radioactive waste isn’t just a disposal problem, either. “Bill Gates should be worried about reprocessing and proliferation,” said Alex Glaser, a nuclear security expert at Princeton University and a member of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board.
Concepts like the Oklo fast reactor would produce fissile material that bad actors could use to make nuclear weapons. Oklo and other nuclear startups propose to reprocess their waste to keep costs down. But that reprocessing produces plutonium that could be diverted for use in nuclear weapons. The United States rejected reprocessing in the 1970s after determining that the potential for proliferation made it too risky for commercial use.
n all the hype about AI and nuclear, there is scant mention of nuclear weapons proliferation to more countries or the risk that fissile material could be acquired by (or provided to) terrorists. Nor is there much attention to the vast amounts of raw materials and water required for the growth of both AI and nuclear energy, or the electronic waste generated by chip manufacturing and data centers.
A conversation of a few dozen questions with an AI chatbot may require a half-liter of water. A large data center consumes more than a million gallons of water daily, and some data centers are being built in places where water is already scarce.
Developers are loathe to reveal how much water they use, but after a legal battle with an Oregon newspaper, Google finally agreed to reveal that its data centers in The Dalles consume 29 percent of the town’s water supplies. Google plans to build two more data centers there.
No roadmap for “responsible” AI
AI has been compared to electricity—a utility that people soon won’t be able to live without. But there is currently no framework for regulating this new utility, and AI’s energy demands have been given short shrift in the many discussions of AI’s safety risks……………………………………………………………………………………….
Both incoming vice president JD Vance and Elon Musk, who have the president-elect’s ear at the moment, are strongly pro-nuclear. “Broligarchs” Musk and Peter Thiel played significant roles in the recent presidential campaign. Thiel reportedly had a hand in pushing for JD Vance, who had previously worked for him, as Trump’s vice presidential pick…………………….
The tech bros now have a clear path to the unfettered growth of AI and are already pressing Trump to review federal AI policy and weed out laws and regulations that “may be unnecessarily impeding AI adoption.”
Silicon Valley’s AI gold rush aligns almost perfectly with aspirations at Mar-a-Lago, where AI is seen as a must-win race with China. But a second race is also afoot, one in which skyrocketing US electricity demand may outpace supplies, perhaps leading to power outages and utility rate increases of up to 70 percent by 2029.
History suggests nuclear will be a slow starter in that race. https://thebulletin.org/2024/12/ai-goes-nuclear/#:~:text=Big%20tech%20is%20turning%20to,that%20artificial%20intelligence%20systems%20need.
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 