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June 2024

From Ross Eastgate OAM - great column on the common sense case for nuclear power.

Sensible precautions can contain reaction

LIKE venereal diseases, it’s difficult to argue nuclear power effect differs vastly between civilian and military applications.

Both have common, attendant myths.

Painful premature unnecessary deaths, genetic mutations, weeping sores which don’t get better, these foolish things remind us the only certainties are in the minds of ill-informed, though perhaps well intentioned activists.

Physicists Marie and Pierre Curie pioneered nuclear research, particularly medical applications, though without the safety precautions which have since been applied.

Marie died of radiation complications, Pierre was killed by a horse and cart.

The risks of fatal exposure to uncontained radioactive elements have been all but eliminated, save for tea drinking Russian dissidents.

The nuclear industry, for want of a better description has multiple applications from medicine to an adjunct to power generation.

Medicine and power generation are different concepts from nuclear weaponry.

Controlled nuclear reactors generate only heat, which creates steam which drives turbines to generate electricity which then powers multiple devices, from community power grids to warships.

Nuclear power plants operate in 32 countries generating an estimated 10 per cent of the world's electricity.

1956 was a French red-letter year with its first three nuclear power plants.

Today it has 56 nuclear power plants generating almost 70 per cent of its electricity needs.

Australia’s first experimental reactor at Lucas Heights opened the same year.

The US Navy has operated modular nuclear reactors to provide power for some warships since 1948 with millions of safe steaming miles.

Only the US has employed nuclear weapons, though nine known countries now have such weapons, US, Russia, China, France, UK, Pakistan, India, Israel, and occasionally North Korea.

There are potentially more, all with rational leadership.

Natural radioactivity exists in many substances, including coking coal without which there would be no steel or bitumen roads, which are essential to “environmental” activists, prone to supergluing themselves to both.

They don’t understand it’s impossible to superglue yourself to a dirt road.

Arguments about construction costs fail to amortise them over life of type and are inconsequential in one virulently anti-nuclear state which has destroyed established power plants while wasting billions on cancelled or unfinished projects.

Going nuclear with current technology and safety protocols makes perfect sense except to those whose opposition is ideologically rather than scientifically informed.

Australia has more to gain than lose.

Like venereal diseases, those taking sensible precautions inevitably enjoy much more satisfaction than those practicing total abstinence.

© Ross Eastgate MMXXIV

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Dame Jacinda. Of course she does.

Thanks to reader Jill for the tip!

Screenshot 2024-06-29 at 13.22.31
Screenshot 2024-06-29 at 13.22.31

Dame Jacinda Ardern has announced a new initiative for global political leaders on leading with kindness and empathy, with the 12-month program designed to “rehumanise leadership” in politics.

The former Prime Minister of New Zealand released a statement on Instagram, describing the program, named Field, as an initiative for leaders hoping to “challenge and change” the status quo of politics. 

The program will seek to “support and connect global political leaders who embody political leadership that draws on the strength of kindness and empathy,” her post read. 

“Field is hosted by Global Progress, and will create a network of like minded political leaders who use pragmatic idealism, speak to people with hope and optimism rather than fear or blame, and want to unite, rather than divide as we look to solve the challenges ahead.” 

“Field is an incredibly humbling, and exciting project to be leading. All part of my ongoing mission to help rehumanise leadership, and just be useful! More updates to come. Needless to say, I haven’t quite managed that cup of tea and a lie down just yet.”

The program’s first cohort, who meet next month, will consist of fifteen leaders based in Europe — though “this will broaden over time,” according to Ardern. 

 

Run by the Global Progress Action, an initiative of the Washington DC-based  Center for American Progress Action Fund, the program hopes to connect leaders who have embraced leadership that focuses on “pragmatic idealism” and who drew on the “strength of kindness and empathy to develop and build public support for progressive policy solutions to complex problems”.

In a statement released by the organisation, its CEO Patrick Gaspard called Ardern “the embodiment of the leadership style the programme will instil in those who participate.” 

“It’s only right that our inaugural fellowship […] is expected to include women in leadership roles from different European countries,” he said. “It will help shape the ideas that will steer Europe toward a more hopeful, unifying, and optimistic future.”

“The rise of authoritarianism and the growing influence of the far right in Europe shows the urgency of this program,” he continued. 

“This moment demands more bold and principled leaders who are not afraid to stand firm in their values and who will refocus politics where it belongs—on caring for people. The first-of-its-kind program will bring together leaders from different countries to challenge and change the status quo of global politics. Participants will have the opportunity to explore practical solutions in the context of some vast challenges facing global communities, like the climate crisis and rising inequality.” 

“It will help shape the ideas that will steer Europe toward a more hopeful, unifying, and optimistic future.”

Senior fellow and director of Global Progress Action, Johan Hassel added that “creating a fellowship for leaders to support, learn, and grow together can help restore faith in progressive solutions as a force for good and better combat the shadow of far-right extremism.” 

Last November, Ardern appeared as a visiting fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, where she said “only way to find long-term peaceful resolution to difficult and complex conflicts is if you find a way to end the violence and grief in order to give yourself the space to then have those conversations”. 

“Many people are cynical about politics, and I can see why,” she added. “I was in politics for 15 years and I came out with a strong belief that politics is a place for positive change.” 

In May this year, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and French President Emmanuel Macron announced Ardern would continue to contribute as a Patron of the Call to the Christchurch Call Foundation, which was created to reduce the kind of harmful content that led to the 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch which left 51 people dead.