kgwilson

The only permanent Nuclear waste facility I know of is Finlands Onkalo, meaning "cave" in Finnish, the facility is carved 430 meters (1,411 feet) below the surface in 1.9-billion-year-old stable bedrock near the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant. It securely stores spent nuclear fuel using a unique multi-barrier system. It took over 20 years to build & can store 6500 tonnes of spent uranium. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository About 400,000 tones of high level waste exists globally with about 12,000 tonnes added each year. Meanwhile there are scores of decommissioned Nuclear submarines in storage awaiting the waste from their reactors to be removed and stored. The UK has 23, The US & Russia have not disclosed numbers or where the waste is stored. Is there a plan to dispose of the waste from the Aukus nuclear subs?

And certainly not and economic decision either.

Sams parents were NZers & his father was in the military & stayed on in the UK after WW2. They eventually decided to return to NZ.

Sam was a great actor and an all round fine human being. A genuine nice guy. I loved his book "Did I ever tell you this" a series of his memoirs he put together after finding out about his cancer diagnosis. Sir Sam Neill I will miss you

Trump never admits defeat in anything he is involved with. He will have some comment and blame everyone except himself and then state that if he'd been able to do x y or z they would have won so really even though it was a loss they won anyway (Just like the 2020 election).

FIFA management has been corrupt for years bowing to the almighty $. They inserted a drinks break supposedly because of the heat but mandated it for all games whether it is hot or cold, effectively splitting the game in to 4 quarters. This not only disrupts the flow of the game & gives players a bit of a breather but and most importantly provides and additional period to rake in $billions from advertisers.

Trump is a Malignant Narcissist. Here is an AI overview A malignant narcissist is a severe, highly toxic personality type that combines standard narcissistic traits with aggression, antisocial behavior, and sadism. Unlike typical narcissists, they actively derive pleasure from humiliating and hurting others to assert dominance and control. [1, 2] Core Traits & Behaviors While the term isn't an official clinical diagnosis, psychologists often use it to describe the most dangerous end of the narcissistic spectrum. Key features include: [1, 2] Sadism: They experience joy and empowerment when causing emotional or physical pain to others. Paranoia: They frequently view others as adversaries and may become deeply suspicious or defensive. Antisocial Behavior: A blatant disregard for rules, social norms, and the rights of others. Profound Lack of Empathy: They are entirely indifferent to the suffering of those around them and lack genuine remorse. [1, 2, 3, 4]

I particularly liked her role in 'To the Manor born". She and Peter Bowles were absolutely hilarious together.

If you are planning to install a battery to store your solar or a complete solar panels/battery system, consider becoming a VPP (virtual power plant). I did & got an additional subsidy on my 18.4 kWh battery of $676.00. I joined Amber as the VPP Manager at a cost of $25.00 a month. Instead of getting just a few cents/kWh when the sun is shining & the rates are low, the system charges the battery till its full & sells the energy when the price is high. My average is 18.2c/kWh. All my costs are at wholesale rates so I pay the same to buy power as the Energy retailers. In Summer when there is too much solar in the grid the sale price goes negative. When that happens & my battery is full, the system curtails the solar production so none is exported. When there is a grid failure somewhere like a power station partial shutdown the spot price can go to $10.00/kWh or even more. When that happens the system will export energy at its maximum rate. In an hour I can be credited more than a couple of months electricity cost while helping to stabilise the grid.

Trump continues to dig even deeper holes for himself. His pathological lying used to just raise eyebrows among world leaders. Now they are giving him back some of his own medicine. He is still insisting Meloni begged him for a photo but she has shot him to pieces with her latest comments. Mary Trump apparently said that his father told him to never accept defeat ever. He still insists he won the 2020 election & just last week walked out of an interview when a Journo stated the evidence was there & he insisted he had evidence to the contrary but has never ever produced anything (because he can't). The US has always exploited its position in every place it has set up a base or even just an embassy. The Yanks were widely despised during WW2 here, the UK & in NZ. Remember the catch phrase " over paid over sexed and over here". There were riots in Brisbane & in Wellington all due to the attitudes of US servicemen & their pompous boss MacArthur. They have rewritten history so many times. For example there were 75,000 British & Canadian troops that landed on D-Day & 57,000 Americans, all the navy ships & most of the landing craft were British & the Yanks stuffed up their landings, refused to use most of Hobarts inventions, took out half the bolts of the mulberry floating harbours so they got destroyed in a storm & had huge casualties & in the battle of the Bulge, Montgomery's 30 Corps stopped the Germans getting to Antwerp after they had over-run the yanks & Patton was too far away . The list goes on. The USA is an empire in decline and it has been for some time. The only thing Trump has been good at is hastening that decline. The sooner the leaders of rest of the World act in a positive way like Meloni & The US leaves or gets kicked out of countries it has bases in the better.

A malignant narcissist, 6 time bankrupt, insecure, compulsive liar & con man. Absolutely nothing to like there.

Trump beat Kamala Harris by only 1.5% of the popular vote. The electoral college system is the reason he got in easily with 312 votes compared to Harris's 226. Only a few thousand votes in a couple of swing states could have seen Harris the winner. Their system is corrupt and skewed by vested political interests. The US was considered a flawed democracy before the 2024 election & sits at No 34 on the World democracy index well below the threshold to be considered a full democracy. Now it is almost an autocracy under Trump. The average American seems to accept this as OK but the real test will be the Mid term elections later this year.

My MG 4 has a row of physical buttons to turn major things on & off. It also has a 10 inch infotainment screen to manage detailed stuff. I have never heard of any EVs having issues with touch screens. These have been around since the 1980s & with a large screen work really well. The screen demister has a single physical button. The air conditioning/heater/fan has another. When pressed the whole screen is all of the controls for this & the touch buttons are really large. It is easier to operate that any rotary or slider controls I've ever used in a multitude of cars before. There are also voice commands for everything though I don't use this by choice though the car will tell me things that are important like when the battery is getting low. Yes some car manufacturers have reverted back to some physical buttons mainly due to complaints from owners who have not embraced the technology or the poor design of the system. I have programmable physical buttons on the steering wheel that can be set for a bunch of different functions & they have 5 options (up/down/left side/right side and press). I have one set to radio/music, satnav, aircon for example & can run all the options from that one button. Some functions cannot be used when the car is moving as a safety feature, eg satnav unless using voice commands. Comments/complaints about use from owners has led to upgrades & these are just software changes all done free. There is a very large transition happening and some things will not find acceptance from some conservative people. All they have to do is try to accept the change and persevere and most will eventually grow to like it. I do like the drivers screen directly in front with speed/odomoeter battery, power ACC etc rather than the Tesla model of a large centre screen & nothing directly in front of the driver. The woman in my car has a cultured but not posh English accent which I find very easy to understand.

Well according to the defence chiefs, 3 second hand subs were the original preference as they would be delivered sooner. Why do we need 3 nuclear powered submarines anyway. The navy is spending $1.7 billion on a fleet of our own designed Ghost Sharks. They are designed to do almost everything that manned submarines can do at very low cost as well as low operating cost and we can have heaps of them. They won't say how many but there are apparently dozens being built. Aukus is costing at least $368 billion. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/sep/10/ghost-shark-submarine-drone-australian-navy-explainer

For the first time ever an EV is the top selling vehicle in Australia for May and it isn't Chinese but the Tesla Model Y. https://www.drive.com.au/news/australian-new-car-sales-in-may-2026-tesla-model-y-is-first-ev-to-top-vfacts-charts/