Skip to main content

Australia's Big Coal Ad Against Nuclear Power

Rod Adams received this ad from a fellow blogger the other day and posted about it.
It is a very straightforward effort by the coal industry to scare people about nuclear power - not really so much about the typical aspects of nuclear power that some try to use to instill fear, but the threat that nuclear power poses to coal mining jobs.

This kind of ad can only work in a place like Queensland that has a high concentration of miners, but it supports my theory that a lot of what you read about energy needs to be viewed in the context of knowing that it is the world's largest and often most lucrative business. Competition over market share is often the hidden motive behind the emotionally laden messages from all kinds of different people.
Depleted Cranium picked up on Rod's post and shared these thoughts:
The thing I especially like about this is that it singles out nuclear as a threat to coal. Wind? Solar? Oh those are no threat. Build as many wind turbines as you want. Build solar plants. That has no affect on the job security of coal miners.

Also, it apparently is becoming harder and harder to lie about the facts regarding nuclear power’s economics or safety. So what’s left? Just try to cry for sympathy and be a little more honest, stating that the real reason is that the opposition has a vested interest in a competing and inferior power generation method, I guess.
I wonder what would happen if the coal industry in the US ran an ad like that. I bet they would get ridiculed online.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Antinukes often indavertently make arguments that actually support nuclear power. This fantastic example should make all of us pro-nukes grin from ear to ear.

The coal industry admits it: in the long run we can't compete with the superior technology, so we're appealing to your goodwill to save our jobs. They also inadvertently say that piddle power (wind and solar) is inadequate. If piddle power actually had a chance of supplanting coal, you can bet these coal miners would let you know.

Yes, absolutely. Nuclear power will kill the coal mining industry. It's way overdue.
Arvid said…
Will the nuclear industry kill coal?

Yes We Can!


/Starvid
richardw said…
And the coal industry is powerful in Australia. Nuclear is just not on the Agenda since change of Govt. and was always unpopular.

Meanwhile the coal industry's stranglehold is being cut back slowly.

The cost of Wind power in Auistralia is now below coal power. Coal power plants are just not going to be built - so if you think it's a battle between Nuclear and Coal in Aus. you are sadly mistaken.

Popular posts from this blog

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Why Ex-Im Bank Board Nominations Will Turn the Page on a Dysfunctional Chapter in Washington

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum

Fluor Invests in NuScale

You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap