A bit late in the day.
This reference provides a sobering perspective on the situation.
http://www.ecosophia.net/july-2017-stormwatch-climate-change

And yes both of Robert Lepage's posting were correct - especially how the privatization SCAM was/is one of the principal causative factors of our energy problems.

Malcolm Turnbull has hit the airwaves recently, saying, and I paraphrase, if you think that we can have a future without coal and oil you're delusional! Now he is essentially correct, if you replace, two words. Coal fired, with one word, baseload!

Now baseload can be cheaper than coal thorium or rolled out for comparative infrastructure cost, with coal, as solar thermal.

Always providing economies of scale allow automation to be included in the manufacture of the reflectors.

Nobody in politics is going to allow that, given the inclcuable sovereign risk that would ensue?

We could have publically supplied power for less than 3 cents PKH, if it were rolled out as cheaper than coal, thorium. And as government facilitated and financed co-ops.

And as much chance as a snowflake in hell, given the implacable and insane ideological imperative against cooperatives in the (no, nay, never) conservative wing of the "Liberal" party!?

And in all politicians with coal or coal fired share holdings? Even as arm's length investments? And the self serving ideological rage maintained, even as the smart money deserts coal and oil!

We're short of gas we're told, even as millions of tons of wasted biological waste is routinely flushed into our already massively polluted oceans! And in part, adding to the destruction of the reef!

Other poorer nations already convert this endless waste into endlessly sustainable energy and use it as manufactured biogas, to run diesel generators. A bit of steel wool in the air intake manifold, all that's required to run a diesel on bladder stored biogas. TBC
Alan B.

So, how could we have a cooperative model that could power this nation with the world's (ideologically opposed) cheapest thorium industrial power?

Well some intelligently lead government entity would need to assume an overarching control position. Then create and finance employee owned cooperatives.

The workers wouldn't receive wages, but rather a fully franked dividend, and all the entitlements of shareholders?

Moreover as shareholders they wouldn't need to belong to any union whatsoever, to have their interests protected!

They could use some of the profit stream to create a housing cooperative, a member's health insurance and a member's credit union.

Some of the unemployed partners could voluntarily man a collective creche, so that gender could be eliminated as a reason for not being inclusive as an employer.

With those with their families already large enough! Taking turns at voluntarily manning the creche and the canteen? And a mandatory requirement to membership in the credit union/buying cartel etc?

The buying union an adjunct to purchase ordinary household items wholesale or factory direct, to quite massively decrease, household expenditure burdens, while quite massively improving household disposable incomes. And place huge downward pressure on the bane of western economies, the wages price spiral.

It would be almost utopia! Particularly if this extraordinarily cheap power could be deployed in part to desalinate, massive (cooperative) income earning water projects!

And the cooperative nature of these enterprises would likely guarantee cradle to grave, positions for life? And Australia enroute to becoming the world's premier economy, with the most efficient manufacturing sector!

What prevents it?

Self serving vested interest and implacably opposed blockhead pollies!? That's all! We have all the needed expertise and the finances!
Alan B.

As Albert Einstein or Dump Trump said:

One's ability

at comment brevity

saves precious minutes-hours-days-months over a lifetime.

Comment brevity dumbs down debate! Or serves those with nothing to say, or those who would gag informed debate!

During the Great Depression the only free market, private enterprise model that survived largely intact was the cooperative model! And an absolute anathema for extreme/exploitive capitalism!

Moreover, the only free enterprise model with a snowflake's chance in hell, of competing with the emerging economies, in the manufacture sector!

Always providing, individual industries are limited to a single site, with their own thorium reactor providing all the power.

Thus we could have the lowest costing steel, with the smallest carbon footprint anywhere that utilises the Aussie invented single step smelting. Or a carbon free aluminium smelter set up as an employee co-op; and for the very same reason as outlined above. Ditto all manufacture!

Our taxpayer funded grants paid for the upgrades and robotics in the car industry!

Surely we can then claim them as property, preferably before the current cohort, does a Mitsubishi and absconds out of the joint taking our bought and paid for robotics with them.

Robotics that could be tasked with manufacturing solar thermal arrays or a employee manufacturing co-op or both?

Time to finally reject the endless BS and chart another saner course!

Tired of being the captive cash cow of tax avoiding price gouging profit repatriating foreign corporation/hedge funds! You?
Alan B.

All have valid points of view.
The unfortunate reality is that we have come to a point in this society where things have become too easy.
The saying that ' life is in the struggle ' is true.
There was far more intensity and appreciation of our achievements, as little as they may have been, we enjoyed the opportunity of being able to try and if we succeeded we we encouraged to continue.
The social camaraderie where a simple 'good morning' made us feel it was worth while getting out of bed. There was greater clarity, and any direction could be taken with confidence.
Then the psychologists arrived...and we were all told there was a better way of achieving social harmony and in some ways they were right....and in a lot of ways they were wrong. We all became part of a social experiment that instead of binding the social fabric, it became frayed and disjointed with the end result being what we have today.
We lost that fine balance of social growth through learning and understanding to letting politicians tell us they know better while lining their pockets. A politician is the quintessential 'Im in it for me' make no mistake and if some benefit along the way, well! all the better because it gave legitimacy to the position.
And we all vote accordingly. Lost is the proverb, you look after the family, the neighbours, the street, the suburb, the town.
Cultural customs that evolve over time were changed overnight.
One upon a time governments protected the people...today the mealy mouth charlatans are all vying for their place at the trough and what we have now is the residual effect, the consequences of not being true to ourselves