Australia : nuclear energy superpower

The world is clearly running out of oil, running out of time, and running into global warming. Every feasible alternative for generating energy has to be considered - bio-fuels (ethanol), geothermal energy, solar energy, coastal wave energy, wind farming, liquid natural gas and nuclear power.

When it comes to nuclear power, Australia is to uranium reserves what Saudi Arabia is to oil. Just three countries, Australia, Canada and Kazakhstan, control 60% of the world's viable uranium reserves. With so much demand for energy, led as usual by China, which plans an unprecedented expansion in nuclear power plant construction, what is being debated at the highest diplomatic levels is an international system for the production, sale and storage of uranium.

Australia would be the No. 1 player in such an arrangement. The enriched uranium would then be leased to users on long-term contracts, before being returned to Australia for safe disposal. That's why the Prime Minister wants a debate on uranium. I think that's what John Howard means when he says Australia could become "an energy superpower". Because the stakes are huge. Because the world's oil addiction is going to hit the wall sooner rather than later.

- Notes : the uranium price has gone up from $8.75 in Nov/Dec 1998 to $47.25 today (US$ per pound U3O8), a 440% jump. Analysts are forecasting $100 levels. I await a day when the price of uranium (per pound) does a "cross-over" with the price of crude oil (per barrel). And why not? After all, atom per atom, uranium has 10 million times as much energy as oil.

Meanwhile, the "nuclear-powered" portion of my own portfolio has also done exceedingly well. Just sold off some uranium shares which have doubled and tripled in the past couple of weeks, and made an equivalent of an extra month's bonus (for both Biow and myself). The overall portfolio gain now stands at 49%, a significant improvement from the May/Jun crash when it went down to a gain of only 8%.

US cut off from Cuba's oil rush

ottsun.canoe.ca :

A Canadian firm is among the companies whose move to drill for oil along Cuba's coastline has raised the eyebrows of oil executives - and given energy-thirsty America pause to reconsider its 45-year trade embargo against the Communist country.

Canada's Sherritt International Corp. has exploration rights in 4 of the 59 deep-sea blocks that the Cuban government created in 2005, after a report by the U.S. Geological Survey confirmed the North Cuba Basin held up to 9.3 billion barrels of crude oil and up to 21.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The fields have drawn the interest of companies from China, India, Norway, Spain, Venezuela and Brazil, but the U.S. is cut off due to the embargo.

(2006-08-03 12:30:28 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

Remove ads from Yahoo Messenger 8

googlesystem.blogspot.com :

If you install the newest Yahoo Messenger 8.0, you'll notice a very annoying animated ad at the bottom of the main window. How to get rid of the ads?

1. Close Yahoo Messenger.
2. Save this file (.bat text file) and execute it.

The .bat file you've just downloaded edits most registry values related to the ads in Yahoo Messenger from HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Yahoo\pager\YUrl, replacing the data with a dummy asterisk. If you install new versions of Yahoo Messenger, you'll have to repeat the steps above, as Yahoo setup rewrites the registry entries.

- There was an earlier set of registry editing instructions which were for Yahoo Messenger 7.5 up to 8.0 Beta (8.0.0.508) but no longer worked for 8.0 Final. These updated instructions have been tested and found to work for 8.0 Final (both the initial 8.0.0.682 release and the current 8.0.0.683 release).

(2006-08-03 12:24:13 SGT) [Tech] Permalink

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