NUKE TALK REPLY
Dear Editor,
No fears for anyone wanting to stake out a veggie patch, Margaret Wilkie (Coolum Advertiser 9 November), there’s plenty of time to enjoy picking your own beans. SMR’s are not going to happen anytime soon, if ever.
Those wanting “intelligent conversation” about nuclear power need to check the latest news from the USA about the Small Modular Reactors (SMR’s), that is small nuclear power plants, which they are peddling as an alternative energy source.
A recent report stated that the original target power price for a planned SMR was $55 per megawatt-hour (MWh). Latest indications are that prices are now likely to end up around $90-$100 per MWh. Those prices include over a billion in US government subsidies. Unsubsidised they would be substantially higher. Not one SMR is likely to be operating commercially until 2030 at the earliest.
In the time we have left to address global warming, nuclear power, as the CSRIO’s research consistently shows, is not economical or even achievable, especially compared with renewables and battery storage, the costs of which continue to decline.
Time to get on with what is needed now to address our energy needs as we face the existential challenge of climate change.
Robyn Deane
Bli Bli
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AGED CARE REFORM
Dear Editor
Today is a day of infamy for the Coalition. They will be shown to be wicked shifty liars. Does anyone recall Scott Morrison pledging, during a pandemic that was a tragedy for elder Australians, that Australians in aged care and their heroic workers, would become a priority reform for government? Now the current government is implementing that broken pledge by doing what all Australians want …Raising the pay of these so undervalued workers thereby boosting the sector. And what do the conservatives say? It cost too much!!! O the inhuman woe begotten Wicked UnAustralian horror. What immoral abject rubbish from that Coalition.
Dylan White,
Coolum Beach.
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REFUGEE COSTS
Dear Editor,
Who knew that our refugees, still imprisoned in our Nauru and PNG camps are costing our taxpayers an estimated $750 000 per day? Try to imagine how else that money could be spent; how these people could be employed and how they much they would contribute to the Holy Grail Economy? Just asking.
Margaret Wilkie,
Peregian Beach.
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AIRPORT TRANSPORT
Dear Editor,
I am venting my frustration at the lack of taxis and public transport at the Sunshine Coast Airport. The full flight I was on was running late and arrived on the coast just before 9pm.
I waited with quite a few other people for a taxi, and when one eventually arrived, I enquired if there were other taxis close by, but was told ‘there’re no drivers so you’ll be lucky’. People using Ubers would not have been in the taxi queue and there were quite a lot of people waiting for a taxi – some to Noosa, one lady to Doonan.
The local bus 622 stops going any further than the airport just after 5 pm, so with no local public transport and the lack of taxis, I decided to walk home. I live near Cuba street on the David Low Way at Marcoola and while the walk itself is not a bad walk in daylight with no suitcase to haul, it was past 9.30pm, dark, and not something any woman should be doing at night.
This is the Sunshine Coast a major tourist destination for thousand flocking to the coast more and more each year one would like to think they could get some sort of transport for the airport .
Diane Derby,
Marcoola.