Capitalism 101

Find and develop a market for your product.

When your customer spurns you, destroy the market.

$150 a barrel for oil will be cheap if any of that sort of stuff goes down.

Thanks Wolfie.

Yellowcakes Howard Pitches to the Nuclear Family

In a sign that all controversial areas of public policy are to be neutralised in the run up to the Australian election later this year, John Yellowcakes Howard has promised plebiscites for communities unlucky enough not to be selected for a nuclear reactor in their town.

Homer Simpson will be invited to provide technical advice and support about the benefits of nuclear power plants for communities.

Communities will be able to vote their support and those with the strongest support will be awarded the reactors.

Although this will not happen for about 20 years, Yellowcakes can have his nuclear cake and eat it.

Eat your heart out Kevin A Hospital for Every Town Rudd.

Tim has a more reasoned summary.

It is all very plausible. Years of feasibility studies, planning, design, financial highjinks... and the community selected gets to vote. I doubt it.

More Varied Power Mix Essential for Australian Energy Future

From The Age

Australias energy future is likely to include a wider variety of energy sources, especially if a carbon trading scheme is to go ahead. Australia is one of the best positioned countries for a stable energy future, with a mixture of energy options, including 600 years of brown coal reserves. Although sustainable sources such as hot rocks geothermal, wind and solar energy are significantly more expensive per kilowatt hour and don't supply a base load, they are increasingly likely to be a larger part of the mix, with operating costs likely to dramatically reduce in the next two decades.

There seems to be an assumption from the generators that nuclear power will be part of the mix, with the assertion by the power generators that all their modelled options were cheaper with an element of nuclear power generation capacity, although most Australians are strongly opposed.

All the modelled scenarios suggest energy is going to cost a lot more in the coming decades.

Howards Election Strategy

Now that the Prime Miniature has arranged for Australias Nuclear Power strategy to be rubber stamped and that Nuclear Power Plants are to be built in Australia, the thorny issue of where to put them will be easily resolved.

Since the election winning issue of Labor increasing interest rates to over 50 percent was successfully implemented during the last election, it is unlikely to be such a killer issue. The Eco Friendly, Reduce Global Warming Nuclear Power Plant in every Labor electorate is being test marketed with focus groups. Early results indicate that Howards majority will double and the unlucky remaining Labor MPs will have the carrot of gazillions of nuclear construction jobs to placate them.