360 million times two is 740 mill! And for 740 mill Kirk Sorensen could build some 7 molten salt, walk away safe, thorium reactors, the claim being he could build a working reactor for 100 mill! If one is doable?

Check him out on on U tube.

Moreover, we have enough easily recovered alluvial thorium to power our entire carbon free energy needs for the next one thousand years. Just get on and build the things off budget, then supply the world's cleanest, safest, cheapest, industrial energy to any and all who want it!

And pay it off from the proceeds over say the next thirty years. Or from the revenue we could earn very safely reprocessing other folks nuclear waste!? A far better option than to be the proverbial rabbit caught and frozen in the headlight glare. By the light at the end of the tunnel?

Which in this case is a thundering express roaring toward you at breakneck speed? Aptly named enduring economic misery?

Leaders lead! Others stand staring at the economic doom thundering in their direction, trapped by the glare of public opinion and asking all and sundry for permission to move! Just two options beckon! Do it or do it.

We mine and ship uranium and climate altering coal for heaven's sake!

After all, anyone, with half a brain and a comprehensive blueprint can build and operate a thorium reactor!

But getting an operating licence from the stonewalling (regulating) illdisposed banana fearing authorities? Terrified of the rads generated by bananas? [Bananas being more radioactive than thorium, which is fertile not fissile! And therefore, entirely bereft of any weapons spin off! And the very reason the 50's technology was abandoned in the 70's!]

Or is the disruptive/irrational tail wagging the dog, green vote/Hanson phenomena, the only real problem!?

Please explain? You think someone who'd run a fish and chip shop would at least understand, when the power bill was greater than the wages bill, something entirely rational and pragmatic needs to happen!? And or, those responsible need to be held to account! Well?
Alan B.

We don't need foreigners or foreign price gouging control to do what our oldies did! Build their own power stations.

If foreigners need to first borrow to build, then pay for the debt load, and the parasitic shareholders, hands out for unearned unrisked money? From the price gouged proceeds?

There was a time, around the time of (true liberal) Mr Menzies when we built and operated our own power systems!

Look, governments can borrow for around half that of private players, and we can involve the private sector as before, by requiring transparent competitive tenders to get the plants/allied infrastructure built!

The only thing that demands foreign investment by controlling owning and operating ,price gouging, profit repatriation, tax avoiding foreigners, is a highly flawed ideological imperative!

Ever hear the expression, if it ain't broke don't fix it! It wasn't broken but now it is!

Evidence? A 106% increase in just ten years.

It was better before we had a national grid, which in effect acts as a gold plated, privatized, price gouging non competitive monopoly, with a captive cash cow market!

And vastly more reliable, when states generated their own power; and local councils reticulated it and maintained the local distribution side!

People out west forced to run air conditioners 24/7, months on end to survive ambient temps that rarely if ever, went below 40C, now being hit with power bills as high as a reported $7000.00 a quarter, and farmers deep in the drought can't afford to pump water to save the crops!

Needless to say the streets are empty. Ditto the shops on many a main street, all the economically essential discretionary spending disappearing like the smoke from coal fired power plants.

It's time to stop with the BS and brown nosing foreigners, and just get the economic growth train back on track. And pardon the homespun homily.

We have a 2 trillion super fund that' still ours! So why do we need foreign money? And or the price gouging and control etc/etc, that goes with it!
Alan B.

SA had a lovely run of cheap gas fired generation with pipelines from both Moomba and Victoria. The inefficient Torrens Island steam cycle only baseload station was at one time Australia's largest gas user. Spot gas was about $4 per GJ in 2015 now it hovers around $10... see the AEMO homepage. What will it be by the time new gas plant is at mid-life? Drilling in the Great Australian Bight looks unlikely as does farm fracking in the southeast of the state. If energy storage was scalable and cheap we wouldn't need so much gas for intermittent backup and peaking.

At one time SA baseload dominated with Playford 250 MW, Northern 540 MW and Torrens Island 1280 MW capacity. Over 2000 MW baseload out of 3000 MW heatwave peak demand and very few blackouts. I think SA should go back to being baseload heavy but next time without so much carbon emissions.

Why not stick with proven coal technology, just get some experts in to tweak the efficiency and there you have it! No more green battery rubbish needed, proof:

"China’s national energy ad­min­istration has enlisted Feng as its champion in renovating outdated power plants and developing new ones that meet its needs to make more energy from lower fuel inputs, while emitting far less ­pollution and carbon dioxide.
Feng recently took The Australian on a tour of his virtually spotless Waigaoqiao Number 3 power station, which produces 138 per cent as much electricity as the ­Yallourn coal-fired plant in ­Vic­toria’s Latrobe Valley.

It operates with a workforce 53 per cent the size of the Australian generator, emits just 13 per cent as much carbon dioxide equivalent, and its efficiency — measuring how much of the energy in the coal ends up as electricity — is 166 per cent that of Yallourn. It took three years to build, and opened in July 2008."

There you have it, problem solvered!!
Geoff

Not much difference between gas and ultra-supercritical coal in Oz's overall emissions impact.

Imminent is the supercritical CO2-Brayton cycle (see Sandia), rather than steam turbines, which would put gas ahead of USC-coal on emissions, but nuclear ahead of both. Current steam generators could serve during a transition.

Large or modular nuclear reactors, or nuclear batteries, together with the Supercritical CO2-Brayton cycle would deliver baseload flexibly, rain wind or shine, cheaply, extremely efficiently and without emissions. All this without massive grid changes and rectification.

But I digress. Back to rescuing SA. It must immediately cease building more renewable generation and look only at stability and continuity, but will it?

Thorium reactors of around 40 MW, can be factory built and trucked virtually anywhere in a stock standard shipping container to be producing 24/7 power within day, 10 of them producing 400 MW! 100 4,000 MW!

And given factory build, mass production, for far less than equivalent coal fired options! And able to run for as many as 100 years without needing to refuel and for far less every which way than coal!

Solar thermal still needs specific sites and the still vulnerable Transmission towers!

Yes there will need to be tri annual inspections as routine maintenance of walk away safe thorium reactors, which operate at normal atmospheric pressure and therefore don't not need massive containment vessels to protect us from them.

And can be sited wherever power is needed! special materials and sacrificial anodes take care of most corrosion problems. Routine shut downs two or three times the life of the projects and normal replacement schedules taking care of any perceived problems

And given the power is very local no expensive and highly vulnerable transmission lines need to be run out just a few underground cables connecting local, also buried, transformers!

Yes I understand transformers need to be cooled,and easily done using natural convection, outlet expansion chambers and and the separate intake pipe directing cool air on/at the oil cooled mechanism. And likely better than stood coping in the blazing subtropical blazing (cook an egg on the pavement) Australian sun?

Meaning, storm tempest and flooding rain can come and go, without the lights or the fridge or cooker or air conditioner or computer or tv program or fire fighting/trash or effluent pumps ever going off, except for maintainence!
Problem solvered.
Alan B.