]Tldr we already have them ive been building them my whole life as has everyone else in my family. Ive lived on them in dongas since i was a kid your melting my mind its not even a secret you can literally check the tenders for these jobs

www.defence.gov.au/business-industry/finding-opportunities/local-business-opportunities/greenvale-training-area

Tell em frothy sent ya

Check out barking gecko

mining.com.au/commodities/other-minerals/uranium/
. Lucas Heights, New South Wales (Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation - ANSTO)
Olympic Dam, South Australia (uranium mine and processing facility)

Ranger Uranium Mine, Northern Territory

Beverley Uranium Mine, South Australia

Honeymoon Uranium Mine, South Australia

Rutherford Nuclear Facility, New South Wales (nuclear medicine and radiation services)

Yarramundi Nuclear Facility, New South Wales (nuclear medicine and radiation services)

1. The Australian Synchrotron Melbourne - a joint venture between Australian and international partners, including the US and UK.
2. The Open Pool Australian Lightwater OPAL research reactor at ANSTO Lucas Heights which has international collaborations and users.
3. The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation ANSTO also has international partnerships and collaborations with organizations like the US Department of Energy and the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA
4. The European Space Agency ESA has a tracking station near Alice Springs, Northern Territory, which supports its space exploration missions.
5. The US Navy's Harold E. Holt Naval Communication Station Exmouth, Western Australia, which is a satellite communication facility.

*Chinese-owned mines:*

1. CITIC Pacific Mining (Sino Iron mine, Western Australia)
2. China Shenhua Energy (Watermark coal mine, New South Wales)
3. China Coal Technology & Engineering Group (coal mines in Queensland)
4. Yancoal Australia (coal mines in New South Wales and Queensland)
5. Mengxi Copper (copper mine in Queensland)
6. MMG (copper and zinc mines in Queensland and New South Wales)

*Japanese-owned mines:*

1. Mitsui Coal (coal mines in Queensland)
2. Itochu Corporation (coal and iron ore mines in Western Australia)
3. Sumitomo Metal Mining (copper and zinc mines in Queensland)
4. Mitsubishi Corporation (coal and iron ore mines in Western Australia)

*Canadian-owned mines:*

1. Teck Resources (copper and zinc mines in Queensland)
2. Barrick Gold (gold mines in Western Australia)
3. Goldcorp (gold mines in Western Australia)

*Chilean-owned mines:*

1. Antofagasta (copper mines in Western Australia)

*Swiss-owned mines:*

1. Glencore (coal and copper mines in Queensland and New South Wales)

*UK/Australian-owned mines:*

1. Rio Tinto (iron ore mines in Western Australia)
2. BHP (coal, iron ore, and copper mines in various states)

*Other foreign-owned mines:*

1. South32 (coal and copper mines in New South Wales and Queensland, owned by South African shareholders)
2. Anglo American (coal and copper mines in Queensland, owned by UK-based Anglo American plc)
3. Newmont Goldcorp (gold mines in Western Australia, owned by US-based Newmont Goldcorp)

Please note that this list might not be exhaustive, as the ownership structure of mining companies can change over time

- United States:
- Pine Gap Joint Defence Facility in Northern Territory (housing an unknown number of personnel)
- Robertson Barracks in Northern Territory (housing an unknown number of personnel)
- RAAF Base Tindal in Northern Territory (housing an unknown number of personnel)
- Bradley Barracks in Northern Territory (housing an unknown number of personnel)
- Mount Bundey Training Area in Northern Territory (housing an unknown number of personnel)
- United Arab Emirates:
- Al Minhad Air Base in Western Australia (housing an unknown number of personnel)
- China:
- No military bases, but a 2018 deal to build a new naval base in Darwin
- Other nations:
- Butterworth Air Base in Malaysia, not Australia, but maintained by the Australian Army (housing an unknown number of personnel)
Note that exact numbers of personnel are not publicly disclosed for national security reasons.

Who do you think builds all the prisons and bases and mineing infrastructure?!?!?

I gotto throw blocks of ice on the slabs in airforce bases in kathrine at night when were pouring and she still cracks harder then a stockmans wife

You think we cant build reactors ?!??!?!?!

Its the most ridiculous thing i have ever read on this entire forum

This is dumber then people saying big air kiteing requires skill


I know im a little bit cryptic sometimes but why do you think i keep talking about tanks of geckos for?!?

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Froth Goth said..
1. The Australian Synchrotron Melbourne - a joint venture between Australian and international partners, including the US and UK.
2. The Open Pool Australian Lightwater OPAL research reactor at ANSTO Lucas Heights which has international collaborations and users.
3. The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation ANSTO also has international partnerships and collaborations with organizations like the US Department of Energy and the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA
4. The European Space Agency ESA has a tracking station near Alice Springs, Northern Territory, which supports its space exploration missions.
5. The US Navy's Harold E. Holt Naval Communication Station Exmouth, Western Australia, which is a satellite communication facility.

Look, I'm happy to learn.

But correct me if I'm wrong, only one of those is a nuclear reactor and it's used for research purposes.

That's a far cry from us being able to build half a dozen nuclear reactors for domestic power generation.

And you might want to check your details on Harold E. Holt communication station. Last time I was there I don't think I saw any significant antenna array for satellite communications.

Thats cause it went for a swim

Want to see me tileing an agr or something?

I could show you but then youll just say it was in another country which theres still 7 agrs in the uk

Im just confused as all hell why you think englishmen can build something in the 60s and we cant build it now?!? Theyre not egyptians

I'll pay that

Theres a documentary on tv all about it called the simpsons

Anyways im gonna go make this little bag or uranium disapear before the misses gets here and we gotto bust some chestplates for the best sakes

Nuclear power = a steam engine.

Sure we could build them.

But I reckon that if we don't get mature designs that have been demonstrated to be effective and efficient and source assistance with the building and commissioning.

They'll suffer the same issues we seen time and time again with other complex projects that have been the political flavour of the month.

We've been building ships in Australia for decades and just look at the bun fight the Hunter Frigates and Arafura class have been.

And they're just boat's, not fancy steam turbines using glowing rocks as heat source.

Its all good. Dutton is trying all he can to engage conservative idiots Trump-style. It wont work. There's Pcdefender, Japie, Sublime and a couple of other poorly educated morons. Not enough for an election win.

Its all good. Dutton is trying all he can to engage conservative idiots Trump-style. It wont work. There's Pcdefender, Japie, Sublime, Snoidberg and a couple of other poorly-educated morons. Not enough for an election win.

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remery said..
Its all good. Dutton is trying all he can to engage conservative idiots Trump-style. It wont work. There's Pcdefender, Japie, Sublime, Snoidberg and a couple of other poorly-educated morons. Not enough for an election win.

Are you generating a list of idiots on the Seabreeze Network? I have some others you might want to add.

Oh, hang on. If the list gets too long maybe Dutton can win.

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D3 said..
Buster, just putting the safety aspect in some perspective.

This is nowhere near an exhaustive list
Piper Alpha: 167 dead
Alexander Kielland: 123 dead
Seacrest: 91 dead
Atlantic Empress: 26 dead
ABT Summer: 5 dead
Nowruz Oil Field: 11 dead
The Haven: 6 Dead

Yeah, point taken, but how many people were evacuated never to return for centuries?

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Paradox said..

Buster fin said..
Cost of construction + fuel mining/refining/transportation/storage + operation + decommission + waste 'disposal' = one hell of a bill that will haunt us forever. Then there's that little issue of safety. Fikushimas meltdown was the effect of the earthquake. The achilles heal turned out to be a pump that had it's embankment breached. A tiny oversight in an otherwise huge project. Australia has no hope of not having a major mishap.

There are many incorrect assertions there. All power generation has a cost, including decommissioning. Unlike wind and solar, nuclear operations actually contribute to thier own decommissioning over thier 70+ year lifetime. The cost is built in and it turns out it is very comparable to coal and gas and it is much lower cost than wind and solar on a per GWh delivered basis.

As for ****ishima, yes a magnitude 9 earthquake and subsequently one of the worst tsunami's ever, found a fault in a nuclear power plant design.

That said, no one died, no one was injured and there was no significant spread of radiation. It is just a power plant in a very small area that is going to need some ongoing containment until things settle down in abut 40 years and it can be removed easily. It was a major mishap, with almost no impact.

So, a couple of days ago they lost cooling power to reactors 3 & 4 for 8 hours. No impact says Tepco. No doubt you weren't the slightest bit nervous. Good for you.

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fangman said..
Thought I would try and slip this one in while FN was busy with his scones and cream.



Full article here www.thebelltowertimes.com/wa-criticises-duttons-proposed-nuclear-plant-in-collie-havent-their-genetics-been-through-enough/

I think if I had a choice of mating with my cousin in Collie or Froth Goth, I would be choosing the cousin. At least there is a chance the inbreeding doesn't cause madness.

But I am just a blow-in there. I own a house there and visit a bit, but I wish I were a local and they would accept me. I think all I would have to do is to buy a diesel 4wd and remove the exhaust, so the barrier to entry is not that high.

But I am starting to see evidence that madness is caused by reactors, so I think I will pass on having one in Collie.

Isn't it great how all these proponents of nuclear power never want to locate them a long way away because it is expensive. They don't want to pay the cost of infrastructure and they certainly don't want to pay the costs if things go wrong.

If they located them hundreds of kilometres away from highly populated areas, I would probably be okay with that, but they need staff and they need powerlines, both which cost money. As it is it sounds like nuclear power is no cheaper, is not really compatible with renewables, so we are being sold a lemon. Just one that can never be completed in anyone's political term, so it's not even something worth considering.

I would of also chosen the border collie

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FormulaNova said..
..... As it is it sounds like nuclear power is no cheaper, is not really compatible with renewables, so we are being sold a lemon. Just one that can never be completed in anyone's political term, so it's not even something worth considering.

I wonder if that is point being missed. I don't think it is nuclear OR renewables.

I think it is probably:

a) net zero from a combination of solar, wind and hydro renewables backed up by nuclear

b) net zero from a combination of solar, wind and hydro renewables backed up by something else, which may include batteries not yet developed and some other stuff nobody really knows what

c) net zero from an almost inconceivable quantity of solar, wind and hydro renewables, combined with a transmission system expanded to almost absurd levels, but even then the practicality means it comes with either black-outs or has to be backed up by gas and/or diesel

d) forget about net zero and build new coal and/or gas plants and continue to have cheap electricity


I suppose you could argue;

a) is known but expensive
b) is theortically better, but currently unknown and may or may not eventually be actually better
c) in chasing idealogical perfection you end up with a worst scenario than anything else
d) has gone the way of the dodo and Tony Abbott, but whilst everyone else argues about a) and b) will probably Steven Bradbury

As I understand it the problem is that renewables can fairly easily build a grid that is reliable about 98% of the time with not much storage. The difficult thing is getting that final one or two percent of the time covered. The storage that is required gets very expensive because it gets used so little.
Building nuclear reactors doesn't really get around that problem because they are not actually storing any energy. All they are doing is displacing renewable generation

However, if you accept the likeliness that hydrogen is going to be exported as gas or as ammonia, then there is an obvious solution of just over building storage capacity for the gas.
It is going to be required anyway at the point of loading tankers for export, so why couldn't conditions be put on the construction that require a certain amount to always be in reserve? It would probably have to amount to a day or two supply of energy for the grid. And it would be available to turn into power as needed

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Mr Milk said..
As I understand it the problem is that renewables can fairly easily build a grid that is reliable about 98% of the time with not much storage. The difficult thing is getting that final one or two percent of the time covered. The storage that is required gets very expensive because it gets used so little.
Building nuclear reactors doesn't really get around that problem because they are not actually storing any energy. All they are doing is displacing renewable generation

However, if you accept the likeliness that hydrogen is going to be exported as gas or as ammonia, then there is an obvious solution of just over building storage capacity for the gas.
It is going to be required anyway at the point of loading tankers for export, so why couldn't conditions be put on the construction that require a certain amount to always be in reserve? It would probably have to amount to a day or two supply of energy for the grid. And it would be available to turn into power as needed

I would think we should just use our reserves of gas and coal to top up the 2%. What's the issue with using it ourselves, rather than exporting it?

Does net zero mean we stop exporting coal and gas?

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Mr Milk said..
However, if you accept the likeliness that hydrogen is going to be exported as gas or as ammonia

98% might seem a little high, depending on how much generation and distribution you feel is appropriate to build. To get to 98% grid reliability you'd have to be somewhere in many multiples of excess peak capacity for both generation and distribution.

But green hydrogen as the storage of excess renewable for stability generation does seems to be an attractive solution given the apparent limitations of conventional batteries.

But hydrogen has one massive issue that no-one can work out how to manage. Interestingly, I just spent last week with some people from one of the world's biggest energy producers who were looking at hydrogen concepts for future industry to replace oil. The general comments were that China appears to be going the battery route, while Japan and South Korean the hydrogen route. But neither had solved the issues, or had a foreseeable route to solving them. Not to say some break-through won't be made tomorrow though.

Main problem with hydrogen apparently is the storage and transportation of such a volatile material. For economy it needs to be transported in bulk, but for safety it can't be.

In my naive world I figured there must be something that could be added to imprpve it's stability. Some smart dude put lead in petrol for a broadly similar purpose, maybe there is something that could sit between hydrogen atoms to stop explosive propogation. Problem might be that there isn't much with an atomic size smaller than hydrogen to fit in between, which then leaves hydrogen compounds that contain freely available substances, are easy to produce and stable but also easy to breakdown and release energy. Hydrogen-Unobtainium maybe ?

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myscreenname said..
Does net zero mean we stop exporting coal and gas?

I think this is a big issue msn. I don't think anyone really understands what it actually means in practice.

And I don't think anyone knows exactly why either.


I do find it interesting that one big anti-nuke argument is cost, and a lack of actual costings from Dutton.

But nobody has ever costed net zero in electricity generation without nuclear. Mainly I assume because they don't have an answer as to what it is, let alone what it costs. Maybe if FN doesn't like the seven sites Dutton proposed could somebody list the sites required for wind, solar and hydro for net zero without nuclear (I am guessing it will be more than seven!)#.

So, yes if we can realistically only need 2% generating capacity outside of wind/solar renewables then gas would seem to be the cheapest, most sensible solution for Australia. Not resulting in zero CO2, but is it close enough to zero to be immaterial ?



# if my Sunday evening maths doesn't fail me :
1 single reactor nuclear plant = say 1.5GW = (1.5GW * 365*24) = 13,140 GWh
1 wind turbine = say 3 MW = (3MW * 365 * 24 * 25%) = 7GWh
13,140 / 7 = say 2,000 turbines for one reactor, plus storage capacity
At scale assume requirements are a 800m spacing x 4km row spacing footprint for turbines = 6,400 sqkm per reactor equivalent

So to replace seven single reactor nuke stations would need an area about 44,800 sqkm, Assuming wind only, no solar underneath but storage of somesort as well.

So, as a concept of scale, that is about 50% of the area of Tasmania on a 800m spacing x 4km between rows of efficient large turbines. Add in solar and hydro and I'd assume it gets less, but is still a fairly big number.

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Mr Milk said..
As I understand it the problem is that renewables can fairly easily build a grid that is reliable about 98%

Got me thinkin'.

Australia's current generating capacity is about 270TWh. So 98% would be about 35,000 turbines (at 3MW each). On the same grid as above that is about 120,000 sqkm. Or 50% the area of Victoria.

Plus storage. Not sure how long you'd need to store for, but lets say you need that 2% at any one time. I'd think this is well below that required at peak storage discharge, but for concept of size ideas:

2% of generating capacity = 5,400GWh

The Collie Tesla battery is said to be about 1.3GWh, will be the biggest in Australia. So that would be 4,000 of them required.

So if you wanted to acheive this by 1st January 2050 you'd have to build one Collie sized battery every 2 days and 4 wind turbines per day for the next 25 years (minus what we already have but those are calendar days not business days).

Froth Goth better roll his sleeves up.


#the maths above has not been peer reveiwed and may stand corrected. It is provided for concept only and not to be relied uopn for a buisness case. Independant energy advice should be sought for your circumstances.

But that's OK. Cattle can still roam around the tower bases.

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Carantoc said..

Mr Milk said..
As I understand it the problem is that renewables can fairly easily build a grid that is reliable about 98%

Got me thinkin'.

Australia's current generating capacity is about 270TWh. So 98% would be about 35,000 turbines (at 3MW each). On the same grid as above that is about 120,000 sqkm. Or 50% the area of Victoria.

Plus storage. Not sure how long you'd need to store for, but lets say you need that 2% at any one time. I'd think this is well below that required at peak storage discharge, but for concept of size ideas:

2% of generating capacity = 5,400GWh

The Collie Tesla battery is said to be about 1.3GWh, will be the biggest in Australia. So that would be 4,000 of them required.

So if you wanted to acheive this by 1st January 2050 you'd have to build one Collie sized battery every 2 days and 4 wind turbines per day for the next 25 years (minus what we already have but those are calendar days not business days).

Froth Goth better roll his sleeves up.


#the maths above has not been peer reveiwed and may stand corrected. It is provided for concept only and not to be relied uopn for a buisness case. Independant energy advice should be sought for your circumstances.

The mistake in your assumption is that we have to hold 2% of a year's worth of generation in reserve. That would be 7 days without wind or any sun at all anywhere on the grid. A very low probability event.

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Mr Milk said..
But that's OK. Cattle can still roam around the tower bases.

Australia is certainly well placed with large swathes of undeveloped, flatish land that gets plenty of sun and wind compared to other nations.

Japan has a population density about 100 times Australia. That's the main reason I feel nuclear might suit Japan more than Australia.

But then Australia also has large volumes gas. Most of which we export to Japan (and elsewhere) for less than we sell it to ourselves.

I heard, maybe incorrectly, that if it's too windy they have to turn the wind turbines off, out of fear of them catching fire.

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myscreenname said..

I would think we should just use our reserves of gas and coal to top up the 2%. What's the issue with using it ourselves, rather than exporting it?

Does net zero mean we stop exporting coal and gas?

There are a number of things that Australia doesn't produce, stuff that we need to get of other countries. You know... via trade. That's where the World Trade Organisation comes in.

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Mr Milk said..
The mistake in your assumption is that we have to hold 2% of a year's worth of generation in reserve. That would be 7 days without wind or any sun at all anywhere on the grid. A very low probability event.

But the mistake in your assumption is that consumption is average. I was was working in average annual figures. Peak demand will be higher.

And also, the other mistake in your assumptions is that storage is used to only supply consumption. It is also need to act as a massive damper to stabilise the grid, both from excessive demand and excessive production.