Hasbeen, why the rant against communism when nobody in this thread is advocating it?

____________________________________________________________________________________

Rhosty, the economics of small scale thorium power are hopeless. Even at a large scale it's likely to be marginal.

____________________________________________________________________________________

ttbn, the government owns the RBA, so can never run out of money. At the moment the problem isn't that they're borrowing too much, it's that they're borrowing too little. They're raising taxes to create the illusion of economic responsibility, and gullible fools like you have fallen for it.

I don't know what planet you live on Aidan, but this rubbish Ted is pushing yet again is straight communism, by a different name perhaps, but still the same animal.

Hasbeen, the rubbish that Ted is pushing does not feature the centralized control and the overwhelming public ownership that are usually considered the defining features of communism, so if it is communism it's sufficiently different from earlier forms of communism that the past failures of communism don't automatically apply to it.

Aidan, How many times do I have to say it?

You are wrong about the RBA not being able to run out of money. They can very easily run out of the only money that matters, which is FOREIGN EXCHANGE.

The bank, thank heavens, cannot print foreign exchange. Neither can it make foreigners lend foreign exchange to the bank.

We currently have a gross foreign debt of over 2 trillion, and it is growing every month. We are lucky to have a few good earners, such as selling houses to China, but no-one known hot long that racket will last.

With so many governments at the moment selling bonds at negative interest rates we are facing the biggest financial collapse in human history. The only salvation, for both the country and its citizens, is to follow the advice of Mr. Micawber.

plerdsus, I don't recall you saying it before, and had you done so I'd've informed you that the Australian government does not borrow any money in foreign currencies, and has not done so for the last twenty years.

If Australian people or companies borrow foreign currency, that's their business. If they can't pay it back, it's their creditors' problem. The government is not liable.

Having said that, IMO it would be much better for the economy if a higher proportion of the private sector debt were sourced domestically, and I think the RBA should do more to facilitate that. The result of doing so would be a lower Australian dollar in the short term, but the long term effect on its value would be the opposite.

Eighty years ago, Keynes explained that a temporary increase in government spending (without a corresponding increase in tax) can reverse the effects of a financial collapse. And yet people oppose doing so for fear of an IMPOSSIBLE outcome.

Aidan, read thorium cheaper than coal, before you go on digging an even deeper hole!

Firstly, very localized power is self evidently cheaper, because it doesn't lose power to transmission line friction! And for Australia that's about half the power we generate!?

The only reason for mega power stations is the national grid and our prewar decision to rely almost exclusively on cheap and abundant coal!

Even so, for the life of a thorium reactor, it's flat out consuming a truckload of thorium; given most of the fuel is consumed leaving only around 5% as actual waste. Which is far less toxic than that produced by oxide reactors; and anyway, thorium waste is eminently suitable for long life space batteries!

Whereas coal fired power consumes millions of tons annually of evermore expensive coal, produce tons of ash, compounded by increasingly expensive transport costs!

Thorium reactors are 50's technology and were only abandoned because there's no weapons spin off. And nothing prevents several/dozens of 40 MW modules being paralleled to create 500-1,000-5,000 MW's

And no I'm not talking about pushing CHEAPER THAN COAL thorium power through the great white elephant of a national grid, just a very adjacent manufacturing or processing plant; arguably the only way we can create a manufacturing model, more than able to compete with the emerging economies, or a geologically unstable Iceland.

And given just how much energy impacts and impacts again and again on the entire cost of production, massively reduce the cost of energy dependent manufacturing; or lowest possible carbon, metals smelting, or ship and sub building.

The fact that these modules can be mass produced and trucked wherever they're needed, brings the cost of producing energy massively down; ditto decommissioning!

And with the cost of energy dependent production literally halved, it can be halved yet again, (world's cheapest) for our domestic users; by changing to very locally produced and used, endlessly sustainable biogas, powering our homes 24/7, via super silent ceramic fuel cells; which by the way, also produce endlessly sustainable, free hot water!

Thereby adding billions to the current discretionary spend!
Rhrosty.