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notices and features - Date published:
5:30 pm, May 31st, 2022 - 16 comments
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The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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https://twitter.com/wekatweets/status/1531479381880647680
Block the pap. Look deeper.
A guest writer opposes the Blinken view that China is a greater threat than Russia and instead sees China as a partner in the global system. And wants the end of Trump era sanctions on China (in return for support vs Russia).
It's a reprise of both the Nixon play of the 70's and the Clinton one of the late 1990's – the idea that China with trade would become part of the global regime.
It's presumptive to think Xi Jinping would agree, and there is the danger that it would be seen as a sign of weakness. He might simply mention the offer to Putin so the two could game theory a response. I would imagine it would be Americans want hegemony in Europe and would hand Asia Pacific to China to get it.
PS The writer comes from the financial sector (investment fund) – John Key wants us/Enzed to hold China's hand as a partner in the Pacific.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/30/opinion/china-us-russia-strategy.html
There is this link for those who pay money to the local bluemedia.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/russia-or-china-the-us-must-make-a-choice/CO7RAVEASW2LO7R3O2PKF7ZWOU/
Wayback, too.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220530092156/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/30/opinion/china-us-russia-strategy.html
And finally some good news – the Finnish seeming to have a knack of being many decades ahead of the rest of the human race:
Compare this with the NZ Greens who are proud of achievements such as constitutionally discriminating against male leaders in the party.
The world-wide anti nuclear movement of the 1960s,70s and 80s played a very important role Redlogix. It was largely due to them that the nuclear powers were kept in check at a time when the Cold War was at its peak and anything could have happened. Fortunately Putin was not in the top spot at the time.
But technological advancement means it is possible to build small nuclear power stations which are safe and environmentally friendly. It doesn't surprise me Finland is first off the block – an under-rated nation that has produced a few of the world's finest classical composers and was also able to maintain relative independence from the former USSR despite their close proximity.
The anti-nuclear movement of that era could legitimately object to nuclear bombs. Conflating this with opposition to nuclear power was much harder to explain. Continuing to do so decades later is beyond reason.
I'm pretty confident civilian nuclear and nuclear bombs are closely related technologies. Supposedly the gap in technology can be bridged in months rather than years. This is the reason the US govt gives for being against Iran having a civilian nuclear power program.
Related but not the same at all. All weapons grade material made so far has been processed in specific reactors designed for the purpose. Civilian power reactors have never been used because while it is theoretically possible, it's very inefficient.
Moreover if we migrated to a thorium cycle the production of plutonium is eliminated. That mitigates a whole layer of proliferation risk again.
Regulating nuclear weapons is political problem. The world is already in a nuclear overkill state, more reactors will not move the needle on that.
so there is new tech to handle the waste products or just bury it in the earth/head in the sand sorta thing?
First of all nuclear waste comes about because solid fuel rods accumulate xenon – a gas – as a fission product. This gas forms inside the metal crystals of the fuel rods and the build up of internal pressure over time causes micro-cracking, swelling and a slow degradation of the structure. For this reason solid fuel reactor type can only consume about 3% of the uranium in the rod before before it is replaced.
Even so the volume of spent fuel rods is tiny compared to all other energy sources. It is not a difficult problem to manage physically – and indeed most of the world's current inventory of spent fuel is quietly sitting is small yards or pools right on site causing no issues whatsoever.
If you decide to do nothing else with it – then burying it in a geologically stable location is the obvious solution. The Finnish – again being smarter than the rest of the human race – have got on with building just such a facility.
However it has long been recognised that throwing away 97% of the energy in your fuel is not optimal. In response the Gen 4 reactor community has always had a 'waste burner' development community pursuing methods of accessing this energy. The Moltex Stable Salt reactor is one example. The general outcome of this approach is to reduce and already modest volume of waste by a factor of 30 or so – and burn up most of the long-lived nucleonics so that it need only be stored for a few hundred years instead of thousands.
In short there is no magic wand to make fission waste products vanish entirely – but there are reasonable pathways to manage them.
oh ok its fixed then….only utter deadly poisonous for hundreds of years…..most excellent…won't be this generations problem then it is after all much better to have only hundreds of tons of poison shit instead of thousands of tons
Has anyone died or been harmed by spent fuel storage so far?
By contrast WHO estimates that around 10,000 people are killed by coal power particulates every single day.
OK. I took your comment to mean the anti-nuclear movement as a whole.
There were real concerns about nuclear power stations back in the 70s and 80s. They were not regarded as safe and of course there were some serious incidents in both the USSR and the USA. I agree there is no point in continuing to protest against them for the reason I gave.