Balance smellance!

Cheaper than coal thorium is also carbon free! So where's the problem?

Thorium is nuclear power!? I hear the detractors say.

Thorium is fertile not fissile and therefore can't be massively and suddenly compressed to produce a nuclear explosion! And less radioactive than a banana!

Nor can the products created inside a thorium reactor!

Moreover, it can be tasked in walk away safe, molten salt reactors, with very safely burning/consuming nuclear waste or weapons grade plutonium!

40 MW Reactors can be mass produced to fit inside a stock standard shipping container and given molten salt is also the heat transferring medium, sited virtually anywhere! And there is enough alluvial thorium in our dirt, to power the world for a thousand years, and thousands more if we mine igneous rock!

And given enormously cheap power, able to act to almost oblige other nations to adopt this carbon free energy!

Get on U tube for the substantiated facts. One of which is, virtually all the costs are up front! Why the security guard out front costs more than the fuel! Get on U tube. It won't hurt your brain I promise!

Start with thorium in four minutes.

Then Super Fuel, subtitled, green energy, where the Author a prize winning investigative journalist gives a short summary and also rebuts some of the confected arguments trotted out by the ignorant or competing energy providers, many of who could be made completely redundant by this energy, the reason for their concern and mountainous misinformation!

And finally for the technically minded, type in the case for thorium, into your search engine, scroll down the page to a free downloadable PDF, which includes a color coded schematic of a walk away safe, 230 MW, molten salt reactor.

I think, we may have to follow France's example to get the balance right, given our current crop of do nothing of actual moment politicians, can see no further than the (great big) political bun fight they can have for some spurious political advantage, even as the economy goes to hell in a handbasket!
Alan B.

The trifecta of affordability, reliability and low carbon can be done as we see with France. They have 5% of Australia's electricity emissions intensity and their policy is to help battlers not disconnect them. As it is Australia is in the lose-lose position of increasing emissions and higher power bills. Deep greens must ask themselves if follies like the RET help on any level.

Finkel says we might get small savings years from now. Maybe that's as good as it gets. If the major parties say that Finkel is not perfect enough for them the public won't like things continuing as they are. There's a strong chance both SA and Vic will get blackouts in a hot summer. Perhaps we'll need that to force change.

I agree that border taxes on the embodied emissions of imported goods will have to occur, to ensure that 'the consumer is taxed'.
But Geoff you seem to imply that renewable electricity generation is more expensive and less reliable that fossil. This is not the case.

I have modelled scenario for the WA grid and a high penetration (85%) RE grid will be cheaper than renewing old coal and gas.
https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/sen/pages/185/attachments/original/1488077878/Briefing_Note_Economics_2017_V1d.pdf?1488077878

http://www.sen.asn.au/briefing_notes

You need to understand that the low market prices ($50- 60) that prevailed up to 2016 are a thing of the past and will never be seen again. They only occurred because the old coal plants were built mainly by taxpayers money, many were sold cheaply to private industry and most no longer have capital costs. Also the estimated $60/ MWh cost of carbon, particulate and S pollution was not included in the market price (except for a brief period of carbon tax up to $25).

Well, that was just like the Finkel report itself. Just a lot of hot air, without any practical answers. It is all very well suggesting that base load backup is needed for solar, wind, etc., but who is going to pay for it. Ultimately the consumer, I would have thought. What is going to replace all the old coal fired stations as they are gradually retired in the next fifty years or sooner. Don't hold your breath waiting for so called "clean coal" or cheaper gas. We just need to bite the bullet and build some new very efficient coal fired power stations until the penny finally drops that, unless some very cheap, efficient and massive bulk storage comes along, nuclear is the only alternative.

David

Well, If any other energy source other than walk away safe molten salt thorium reactors or homemade biogas can produce power for less than 3 cents PKH, please share!

Every Australian family produces enough biological waste to power their domiciles, 24/7, with endless free hot water one of the useful byproducts!

Aussie innovators invented the smell free, two tank system that processes biological waste to produce endless biogas. Adding in normally waste food scraps creates a salable surplus!

Running the gas through a simple scrubber, removes much of the Co2 content. Thus allowing scrubbed methane to be safely consumed in ceramic fuel cells, where an 80% energy coefficient, doubles the amount of energy/50%+ saleable surplus, created by the same amount of fuel, with endless free hot water. Moreover, like thorium, all the costs are mostly upfront!

Other bonuses being, completely sanitised high carbon soil improver,
also completely sanitised reuseable recyclable water, plus totally silent operation; where the exhaust product is mostly pristine water vapour!

World wide sales and economies of scale should see this high tech, bladder stored solution becoming increasingly affordable!
Alan B.

400 peer reviewed scientific papers published in 3 years say the earths temperature tracks the suns activity.

No such papers in 3 years proving the earths temperature tracks the level of CO2. None in 30 years for that matter, just computer projections.

What more do you need to see that CO2 emissions are not a bogeyman, & are probably an asset. Forget any damn fool carbon tax. Any educated person, up to date with the latest research, claiming today that CO2 causes global warming, or global any damn thing has something to gain from the claim. They certainly can't believe it is true

Once upon a time, there was a country with citizens who's power bills were actually a secondary consideration to other more important issues, such as paying the rent/mortgage for example: buying food was a normal and affordable process too.
That country of yor has for too long, been stuffed into a hand basket, and sent on its journey in a vacuum tube to hell.
A great advantage of the vacuum tube, was the screams against the dismissal of the poor could be ignored, (since sound does not travel in a vacuum). Taking advantage of the new discovery, the leaders of this once great Country, learned quickly to take advantage of the laws of physics, to protect themselves from involvement in their processes of power and control, to continue the process of rendering the middle class of that once great country, to the poorhouse quietly and without fuss!...cont.,

Noel,

Your paper is based on wildly optimist costs for renewables. The experience in the rest of the world is that the average cost of power in a country rises dramatically with the % renewables deployed.

Noel,

The rip off we the consumer are experiencing, is actually a conspiracy aligned by both renewable and conventional power producers, which has a mutually beneficial outcome towards increasing profits for conventional power production, effectively achieved by privatising generation, and eventually making renewables look an economic proposition by comparison; where we are now.

The very fine line between the two groups, will need close attention by politicians for this conspiracy to be effective for these vested interests, thus Abbott and his current stand for coal.
None of these players on all sides give a rats arse, if the bottom end of the economic spectrum in our communities, spend sleepless cold nights without heating, and without hot water for hygiene purposes.

The only consumer on the radar with politicians, is businesses such as manufacturing.
There is not a glimmer of hope in this F* country, for any relief for domestic consumers. They have been rendered out of the equation.

Put this lost cause beside other lost causes such as unaffordable housing and rents; escalating food prices, where consumers in Australia are sacrificed on the S* heap that is China, to pay what is world parity prices for food produced in this country, increasingly on farms owned and operated by Chinese agra businesses; add increasingly more short term insecure employment, and this country is in the hand basket to Hell, for too many Australians...whatever one of those is at the moment!