Not Quite Right

meltdown

In Australia we are experiencing the worst continental drought on record. The response of the federal government is to advocate nuclear power stations to help reduce the Greenhouse effect.
Sorry guys, won't work to reduce carbon emissions. The whole mining cycle - and the manafacture of all the equipment, the construction of infrastructure in remote areas, the provision of water for the mining tailings dams and everything else just means the total carbon emissions are a disaster compared with say, improving combustion efficiency, improving cycle efficiency with co-generation and sequestration of hydrocarbons in existing power generation plants. Politically it will work a treat enabling the market force drones to say they had an idea that was trashed by the wusses, trendies and selfish people who support renewable energy. Selfish because the big money mates of the govt don't get quite the same profits out of renewables. Don't get to sell as much imported stuff when reuse and recycle are policy rather than patronised. So this is just another spin on doing nothing. There is of course no infrastructure in either manpower or industrial expertise in Australia to support this idea so importing all those things will be good for the balance of profit ...mmmm. Maybe not so good for the national accounts and balance of payments but who cares about that. Looks good in a big company balance sheet.

posted by dougi @ 1:45 pm