Think, factory built mass produced 40 MW thorium reactors, will enable rapid rail electric trains to tow their safe clean cheap power source with them, housed inside a shipping container!

And save a fortune in wires that come with transmission distribution losses!

And once fitted not have to worry about refueling for around 100 years?

Although some essential routine maintenance would be envisaged every couple of decades or so!

Things like ocean going dredges could be powered up to run day and night on not much more than 100 grams of thorium, utilizing the power of water and pumps to cut a two lane seaway canal through the heartland.

As man-made one way shipping canals that also bring self flushing permanent water to our arid inland; and new similarly powered desal plants to also take economy building advantage of new ultra reliable water.

Cotton grown in the desert i.e., using only underground irrigation applications, would rank among the finest in the world, and would have a ready made highway to take it to them and anything else we could produce under optimal, out of northern hemisphere seasonal production paradigms, to maximize profitability

And in miniaturized laser actuated modules, power and and all ancillary equipment!

Mines currently powered off grid by diesel generators could be re-powered with 40 MW reactors that would massively reduce total running costs!

Ditto bulk freight forwarding via our own national fleet!

We confront an enviable future if our decision makers (stop preventing) allow us to grasp it? Given the seeming predilection for selling the farm and most business opportunities to debt laden, tax avoiding, profit repatriating foreigners?

If we were but lead by rationalists able to put all the petty partisan politicking aside in favor of the national interest!? What a wonderful world it could be!

Can't died in a cornfield over a century ago! Buddy Won't,, his older brother, is alive and well and grows ever more cantankerous with age and obvious (age/custom related) dementia!
Alan B.

Thought I'd just pop my head in. Thanks for the link to the pamphlet, Craig, possibly the most intellectually lightweight propaganda I've read on the matter.

This fairy-tale tickled me most, "In desperation, nuclear advocates are putting a new spin on their marketing. The slogan now is that nuclear and renewables make perfect marriage partners, as nuclear provides the grid with ‘baseload’ power. Unfortunately this pick up line cannot woo renewables into bed."

Who talks of a mix of nuclear and renewables on the same grid? What would be the point? Renewables have their place in reaching places the grid doesn't, that's all. Dreams of renewables (excepting hydro) replacing fossil or nuclear fuel on the main grid are fantasy, as is the idea uranium is a fossil fuel (From what life-form did it derive? Perhaps you're talking about the birth and death of stars, indicating fantastic thinking far beyond that of silly realists).

No, Craig Minns, nuclear is not fossil fuel. By definition the latter originates with living organisms.

And if the author of the linked pamphlet is the same Derek Abbott who contorts whatever irrelevance his latest anti-nuclear google trawl has dredged up into a post on the 'Nuclear Fuel Watch South Australia' facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1021186047913052/?ref=nf_target&fref=nf) on a daily or more frequent basis, I could not be less surprised to see it described as "possibly the most intellectually lightweight propaganda I've read on the matter".

what a wonderful target those solar panels and wind turbines make
to enemy aircraft

They cant be hidden in buildings out of site or underground.
The whole thing is typical, mickey-mouse-green -scheme.

The NBN phone connections are something else that will shut
down communication in any big emergency when they have ripped up all the old landlines.

Craig,

You really need to be more careful of where you get this stuff. For example the article claims that there is only 200yrs of uranium left. This is complete bollocks, as the existing mines have sufficient ore for 200 yrs at existing levels. There is 10x the amount available at the existing prices of known ore, and higher cost ores (but still financially viable) 100x that. Then if you add Thorium, the usable quantities can supply 100% nuclear energy requirements for upto 100 000 yrs.

Secondly, the cost of uranium fuel at about 0.02c/kWhr is so cheap that it is presently difficult to justify the $bns to develop the new technology reactors such as Thorium liquid salts, unless the inherently safe designs reduce the capital cost.

SM, I suggest you take it up with Prof Derek Abbott. He can be found at Adelaide University I understand.

http://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/

I'm not making any claims in relation to the article, I simply put it up, as previously stated, for Alan's interest, since he is especially engaged with the subject.

I went back to the original article in the IEEE journal Explore, which is where I first encountered it and it is clearly marked as a "Point of View" and doesn't purport to be rigorous. Having read through it again, however, it is much closer to that standard than anything I've seen here...