Re: Airstrip Two is much bigger than Airstrip One
That may be a very VERY long time
Bear in mind that marine nuclear reactors require 50% enriched fuel, which is subject to NPT rules and the USA got pretty toxic about Iran enriching its own. It would be ..... "hypocritical" ..... to now be transferring some to a non-nuclear state (explicitly forbidden)
This kind of thing is on par with Germany/Japan conveniently ignoring the Washington/London naval treaties on the leadin to WW2 when it suited them to do so
Then there's the issue that Australia's spending $800 billion to defend its trading routes from military aggression - from its single largest customer (as in larger than all the others combined)
Meantime China's working on second-sourcing iron ore and coal from Africa by building up the economies of african countries. They may be getting indebted, but they're also getting pretty good infrastructure and economies out of the deal, unlike past "trading" with western countries
Australia's economy is critically dependent on primary industry exports, mostly iron ore/anthracite coal and China is virtually the only customer for these materials
How well will Australia's single-customer-dependent economy handle if if that country takes its business elsewhere? (Hint: ask the barley farmers, it didn't end well for them)
Meantime China's due to bring the the first Molten Salt fuelled nuclear reactor online this month since the Oak Ridge MSRE was shut down in 1969 (and the first thorium fuelled one ever - Oak Ridge never got to test Thorium), with a 100MWe power reaction version right behind it for testing. If that works, you can expect them to start selling the to developing countries and break the world's dependency on oil (which also breaks the US dollar hegemony, meaning all the quadrillions of US debt comes due)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
