It does seem as though some Asian countries are having considerable difficulties with nuclear waste. Japan for example sent used fuel to France and the UK for either reprocessing or vitrification, having concluded if I recall that a local mixed oxide plant (MOX) would produce fuel 4X as expensive as lightly enriched uranium. The MOX was used in both light water water plants and the discontinued Monju 4th generation reactor. Both approaches may not be revived and they are thinking of digging a 10 km tunnel under the sea to store radioactive material.

In comparison outback SA would be a cakewalk in physical terms though perhaps not politically. I think the correct approach is to start small in SA and let the public see what gives. This will take at least a decade.

Given the reported double meltdowns and other (six percent efficiency?) problems, some still to be disclosed?

I believe we need to entirely rule out liquid metal FBR's entirely!

And given molten salt reactors have yet to experience any such problem, I believe we need to both rule them in and begin now today to build a molten salt thorium reactor, given we know how to do that! And have plans available directly downloadable from the internet.

Why wait ten years! But use it reassembled as before, in 2018, to burn nuclear waste!

I'm just not that sure how well the old thorium based, stacked graphite block, molten fuel and molten salt heat transfer worked, but this even older FBR technology is preferred by others, ahead of molten metal FBR's as a back to the future step.

If a onetime world leading nuclear bomb building physicist, believed in and trialled thorium based SBR at Oak Ridge.

Then I believe we should start there and because you can't use it to make a bomb or bomb making material!

But instead, use it burn all the above, even if that takes the next thousand years and we have to power the joint with virtually costless risk free power in myriad small grid replacing factory built, mass produced modules, for said period!

It's a sacrifice I'd be willing to contemplate along with a world eventually completely free of nuclear bombs or bomb making fissile material!

And I'd not complain if the odd storm no longer took out my power, my air conditioning, my entertainment and the refrigeration!

Not everybody is as well placed as coal loving ttbn? Mate, you can keep your coal fired, foreign owned or controlled grid and the price gouging monopolies, it's created!?

How's the head? Hope it doesn't hurt too much?

Yes I know! But you'll get used to it?
It only hurts for a while and just at the beginning?
Alan B.

Now, we export a lot of coal! And more than anyone?

With the greatest lament of coal advocates, being the apparent lack of feasible clean coal?

Now, as somebody who once worked in the coal fired power industry in a science related occupation, I have an idea just how that might be done and with nature's own sequestration, zero emission!

First understand that algae absorb 2.5 times their bodyweight in Co2, and under optimized conditions double that same bodyweight every 24 hours! And that some types are up to 60% oil! And useful as is, without any actual refining as a superior diesel!

My optimized model would include effluent piped around large clear plastic pipes (kill two problematic birds with the same stone) and where suitably cooled and filtered smoke stack emission could be added to tower vacuumed and degassed water, which would then soak up the Co2 like a veritable sponge! No effluent? Seawater will suffice?

The entire emission load removal only dependant on the length of the pipe and the retained algae population!

With the excess filtered out, sun dried, then crushed to extract (child's play) ready to use green diesel, or jet fuel!

And yes it has been done elsewhere, albeit, more primitively, even where the lead time to maximized diesel production has been significant and the climate less than perfect/suitable.

Expert industry spokesperson has postulated, that even with a fuel excise component added, 44 cents per litre retail diesel is very doable?

Now, farmed algae only require 1-2% of the water of traditional irrigated crops, and therefore other outside the power industry options ought to beckon!

All that prevents import replacing locally grown diesel or jet fuel from getting a start up, is arguably vested political interest, ingrained willful ignorance? And consequent funding starvation!?

But no shortage of political hot air!? Don't just do something, stand there!
Alan B.

Alan B,

The Chinese are at the forefront of thorium research and they say that the earliest they'll have a demonstration plant will be 2024 with a commercial plant a decade after that. They also say there are still significant unresolved problems that may not be resolvable. So they only hope to meet the dates, but don't guarantee it.

Why do you ignore the views of the people who are at the forefront of thorium research?

Mhaze, I almost agreed with everything you said about the Chinese thorium program except this bit...

"They also say there are still significant unresolved problems that may not be resolvable. So they only hope to meet the dates, but don't guarantee it."

Please provide evidence?

In the meantime, China will mass produce another sort of breeder cheaper than coal in about 6 years.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/06/china-seriously-looking-at.html

The potential for thorium in Australia was best summarised by Curtin University's Nigel Marks here: https://theconversation.com/should-australia-consider-thorium-nuclear-power-37850

I hesitate to assume that any of the commenters here are more qualified than Professor Marks to rule any fuel cycles and reactor technologies in or out.