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26 February 2010 00:03

Is nuclear power really a solution?

With only 2% growth, we will run out of electricity by 2017, what are our options?

JOHANNESBURG - Sensible people seem to agree that nuclear really is the only option for our energy needs.

That goes for South Africa, Africa and the planet.

At the Energy Indaba this week in Sandton Convention Centre there was much talk of wind, solar, biomass, wave and other energy makers, but frankly they all operate at the fringe of supply - less than 5%.

Nuclear is major stuff. And in expertise SA is one of the top nuclear countries, has been for about 50 years.

We made the bomb, scrapped it, but still make so many medical isotopes that every two minutes somewhere on the planet a patient gets South African nuclear help.

We need a fleet (that's what the collective noun is) of reactors, about ten to 15 of them.

A quick comparison: Koeber...

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17 February 2010 00:01

Sunday Times disappoints

Sunday Times' Vodacom article was inaccurate, unfair, overblown, and disproportionate.

JOHANNESBURG - It is a foolish journalist who jumps to the defence of his friends in print

Too often evidence turns up to show loyalty was misplaced, eggs collide with faces, and the defender of the friend retreats with ignominy.

A second injunction is the adage to which I have always adhered that one editor should not criticise another's choice of the "lead" or "splash".

But - a word I hate to use - the Sunday Times' decision to make the restraint of trade agreement Alan Knott-Craig signed with Vodacom (JSE:VOD) its main lead story on Sunday boggles the mind.

It was a week in which the president delivered his, admittedly rather boring, Read post

22 January 2010 12:31

The Haiti story everyone ignored

Not once was there praise for the poor bugger actually doing the co-ordination.

TORGON (SWITZERLAND) - As Haiti unfolded, who should have taken charge? Most TV commentators bemoaned the lack of co-ordination on the ground. In impassioned live broadcasts reporters from the BBC and CNN implored people to contribute aid, in the same breath as they wailed that aid was not getting to the people.

A bit less strident than CNN, the BBC still managed that air of stiff upper lip British concern about the rest of the world stuffing it up. Imagine if you were the person in charge. Imagine the task of co-ordinating aid to that massive disaster. Somebody had to do it.

That they were on to a hiding to nothing from the media is a given: it is not a task any human could perform flawlessly. More intriguingly, there are professional disaster managers, and whoever too...

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