 | Australia, The Place to Be: Part 3b | TOD: Australia/New Zealand | Queensland Shale Oil Billions in The Balance ? |  |
17 comments on The Bullroarer - Saturday 1 December 2007
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
User login
Contact
- anz at theoildrum dot com
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Archives
GAIA Host Collective
On the one hand Boof tells us that Roxby Down's groundwater is 300km away from any commercial irrigation, so that (he implies) it's impractical to have the groundwater go to irrigation.
On the other hand Boof also tells us - as does BHP-Billton, by the way - that they could build a desalination plant on the Eyre Peninsula... which would involve building a pipeline more than 300km long.
So it's practical to pump water to Roxby Downs, but impractical to pump it away from Roxby Downs. Apparently, water pipes can go only one way. I thought water flowed from high ground to low, but apparently it can only flow from public ground to corporate.
Who'd've thought?
price of U3O8: $200/kg
price of lettuce: $2/kg
Water required to produce 1kg of uranium: 3,000lt
Water required to produce 1kg of lettuce: 30lt in the open, 10lt covered, 3lt hydroponics
Then of course there's the cleanup cost when your uranium mine's in situ leaching settling ponds spill. I know of no case where a lettuce poisoned anyone.
Uranium is bought by some countries, but not all, and is subject to safeguards, etc. Whereas the world trade in fresh fruit and vegetables is very free indeed, and everyone wants them.
Should Australia base its economic prosperity on a market with narrow appeal, or on one with wide appeal? Would you rather we sold to three or four countries, or a hundred?
The uranium is also going to run out one day. Whereas we can, if we set our minds to it, keep growing food forever.
Should Australia base its economic prosperity on things which will run out, or on things which will, if done properly, last forever? Are we to be like those stupid middle eastern despots who pump out all the oil, but when it runs out, they'll just have an empty desert?
That was pretty good (sorry Boof) :-)
Its not fair to say the middle eastern despots will have empty desert - the gulf states will have a stupendous collection of enormous buildings and strangely shaped islands.
And the Saudis have quite a lot of heavy industry springing up.
And they are showing signs of looking at building some big solar plants - they have the luxury of building some huge solar thermal plants when the oil starts to run out...