Why look Ethel! - UK to cut subsidies to wind farms!


Earlier end to subsidies for new UK onshore wind farms - BBC News

Be better if you confined yourself to facts Ethel. Had absolutely nothing to do with a dodgy pipe, but I won't spoil it for you as to the cause, do some research.

I understood that the majority of taxpayers in Australia pay no net tax at all once subsidies, allowances and discounts are taken into account.

ABS figures for fin yr ending June 30th 2014, rounded:

Total Australian govt tax revenue from all sources: $384,000 million of which $248,000 million was income tax.

Total expenditure on welfare was $138,000 million - $100,000 million on cash welfare payments and $38,000 million on provision of welfare.

So approximately 55%...

The other 25% must just be Joe Hockeys dodgy accounting skills..

I understood it to be 80% of those who pay tax support those who are on some form of welfare.
Hempy or Ethel, since you're so dismissive of the nuclear option, if you're Sydney based, maybe you could go to that lecture on 22nd July and rip the guy a new one for us here with your opinion of his crazy ideas. I understand he calls himself a greenie , but unlike most greenies, sees nuclear power as the only viable option to fossil fuels.

Interesting that my auto correct changes greenie to freebie.

Sorry, I don't ever recall voicing my opinion on nuclear power on PPRuNe...Please link it so I can refresh my memory... :rolleyes:

Put those numbers in RJMs post above in perspective;

Australia's Big 4 banks made 29 Billion dollars (28,000,000,000) profit last year wringng every cent out of us they can.

Australia is a basket case.

Quote:

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It's not new. Want an example from todays Australian:

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They backed down pretty quickly.
Queensland Budget 2015: Pitt backtracks, ruling out raiding super to pay debt
That POV has been around for a while. Nuclear power does have some advantages wrt greenhouse emissions, but like Ethel I also have concerns about safety. If even the Japanese can't run reactors without an unmitigated disaster, what chance do we have? :confused: Think about your average local utility provider (whether private or public) and imagine them running a nuclear reactor :eek:. While in many ways nuclear power is great in principle, I wouldn't trust either a state government or a private contractor to do it properly. There'd be efficiency measures, rationalisation and all the other political BS, and before too long...:sad:

ramble on - to put your quoted figure of 28 billion dollars profit into perspective can you tell us how much of that total was fed straight back into the economy in the form of loans etc. to keep the economy going? You cannot be suggesting it all went to the shareholders and staff, can you?

No Cookies | The Courier-Mail
Nah, course not; just a lot of it. :E
It certainly doesn't go to the staff...:}

Struth,turn it up a bit Worrals!:D:eek: Australia is a geologically stable country unlike Japan. No active volcanoes (there is one here in Hokkaido only about 100km away from where I sit) and few Earthquakes of any significance.

One which measured just over 3 on the Richter scale rattled Takikawa about a month ago, and I never felt a thing!!:} And no I wasn`t pished!:D

And we have plenty of open spaces where a reactor could be sited. And when was the last Tsunami to hit Aussie shores?

How are ya BTW?:D

Pinky,nuclear reactors have to be situated on the coast or a large body of water.They need LOTS of water for cooling :)

Well aware of that. How much of our coastline is inhabited?

Where do you think a good spot might be Pinky ?

How about by the de-sal plant in Victoria?

Dunno,you'll have to ask a nuclear engineer :p

But once you get down to a site that everyone agrees to,then comes the transmission problems in terms of wire lengths.You can transport high power over long distances using DC technology,as is done in Brazil in a few places, but it's very expensive.

And you'd need more than just one reactor for the whole country.

I'm not against nuclear technology,but there are some large bumps in the road that would have to be ironed out,and getting state and federal governments to agree and fund it would be 'interesting'.

Politics and funding would be the downfall,we don't have any visionaries anymore such as those that made the Snowy River Scheme a reality.

People say two things to shoot down nuclear

Fukushima
and
Chernobyl

But what about the plants humming away nicely in continental Europe and the USA?

I don't believe Japan is necessarily the gold standard in Nuclear Plant operation considering their face-saving culture, not to mention the tectonic... "activity".

Frankly, a nuclear industry here in Aus would go some way towards plugging the engineering brain drain we are suffering post-Mining Boom.

I wasn't worried about the geological stability, more the political side of things. Point taken, nonetheless; you know a lot more about Japan than I do. :8

Chuboy, I'd like to like nuclear; I really would. However, so far I'm not convinced that the advantages outweigh the potentially catastrophic outcomes. To scroll back a few hundred pages of this excellent discussion thread :cool::}, political expediency wrt dam management in SE Qld during the 2011 floods springs (sorry, pun) to mind. Substitute nuclear reactor for dam, and...:ouch: Face saving is not purely an Asian thing.

Answered your own question. But I`ll respond anyway, and I`m not any type or form of Engineer!

Some have suggested replacing the current coal fired electricity generators at Port Augusta with a Nuclear plant. Dunno what the Fishers Lobby would have to say, especially re the Prawn trawlers, not that there are many prawns left in Spencers Gulf.:eek: And I have been told that by a retired professional Spencer Gulf fisherman.:ooh:

Guess the Tuna farm operators at YPLC would have a gripe about it as well.

I would think that there would be a few suitable sites along the SA coastline.

Precisely. I guess it all comes down to suitability of the site and the safety level of the reactors concerned. And from what I have read in the local English language newspapers over the last few years was that the Fukushima plant was an old design reactor that was actually due for permanent shutdown.

Easy to talk about it here,without any nuclear expertise.Another thing to actually make it happen.