Daily review 31/05/2022

Written By: - Date published: 5:30 pm, May 31st, 2022 - 16 comments
Categories: Daily review - Tags:

Daily review is also your post.

This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

16 comments on “Daily review 31/05/2022 ”

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  2. Robert Guyton 2
    31 May 2022 at 6:18 pm

    Block the pap. Look deeper.

  3. SPC 3
    31 May 2022 at 6:53 pm

    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 rarely wise to take on two adversaries at once. Mr. Biden should find new ways to work with China, rather than trying to coerce it to be different. He should take bold steps to tone down the rhetoric, such as lifting Trump-era tariffs on Chinese goods in return for Beijing’s reduced support for Putin. Otherwise, he will miss an opportunity to be a savvy, strategic president rather than one who fights with China at every turn.

    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

  4. RedLogix 4
    31 May 2022 at 9:01 pm

    And finally some good news – the Finnish seeming to have a knack of being many decades ahead of the rest of the human race:

    In a historic shift, Finland’s Green Party voted overwhelmingly to adopt a fully pro-nuclear stance at its national meeting.

    The party manifesto now states that nuclear is “sustainable energy” and demands the reform of current energy legislation to streamline the approval process for SMRs (small modular reactors). Finland’s is the first Green Party to adopt such a position.

    “I am very happy and proud,” said Tea Törmänen, who attended the conference as a voting member as chair of the Savonia/Karelia chapter of Viite, the pro-science internal group of the party. “This is a historical moment in the history of the green movement, as we are the first green party in the world to officially let go of anti-nuclearism.”

    The action was taken at the two-day Vihreät De Gröna (Green Party) party conference, which included 400 participants representing local party groups and other interest groups from across the Nordic country. It ended yesterday in the town of Joensuu.

    The approved platform also supports license extensions for existing nuclear reactors, and gives the green light for replacing the planned Fennovoima power plant — recently cancelled over the Ukraine crisis because the supplier was the Russian state-owned operator Rosatom — with “an equal amount of stable, low-carbon baseload energy production.”

    Finland’s Green Party holds 20 seats in the national parliament and is part of the government coalition, holding the foreign ministry, the internal ministry and the ministry of environment and climate.

    Compare this with the NZ Greens who are proud of achievements such as constitutionally discriminating against male leaders in the party.

    • Anne 4.1
      31 May 2022 at 9:36 pm

      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.

      • RedLogix 4.1.1
        31 May 2022 at 9:43 pm

        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.

        • Nic the NZer 4.1.1.1
          1 June 2022 at 8:36 am

          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.

          • RedLogix 4.1.1.1.1
            1 June 2022 at 12:22 pm

            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.

        • theotherpat 4.1.1.2
          1 June 2022 at 8:42 am

          so there is new tech to handle the waste products or just bury it in the earth/head in the sand sorta thing?

          • RedLogix 4.1.1.2.1
            1 June 2022 at 10:06 am

            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.

            • theotherpat 4.1.1.2.1.1
              1 June 2022 at 11:30 am

              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

              • RedLogix …
                1 June 2022 at 11:57 am

                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.

  5. Anne 5
    31 May 2022 at 10:35 pm

    Conflating this with opposition to nuclear power was much harder to explain.

    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.