Compared to the US Australia drew the short straw with oil and gas but got lucky with uranium. (So why don't we exploit it?) Other countries may be unable to replicate US fracking success apparently because their shale basins were twisted and overheated and not allowed to simmer. That's by geological events not humans.

I think Victoria is in for a rude shock. Having flogged Bass gas for decades and by not replacing the remaining Latrobe Valley coal stations it won't have a controllable power supply. Maybe SA disease will slowly infect all the states. There's always the chance that a backlash will see some sanity returning.

"Untouched by economic reality, here are the fantasy figures that the Victorian government is claiming as the outcome."

Only Andrews the magician could produce such fantasy.

Poor South Australia! The reliability of Victoria as a standby power source, will be much reduced.

Every boy and his dog knows that uranium based power is significantly dearer than coal! Needs very expensive and problematic decommissioning after 25-50 years!

Whereas, thorium reactors can be left almost unattended to percolate away for as long as 100 years! Thorium promises everything fusion promised but couldn't deliver!

Uranium at best, only uses 10% of its fuel type. Leaving 90%+ as highly toxic nuclear waste, with a half life somewhere north of 10.000 years!

Yes we mine and sell uranium. But ignore three times more abundant thorium, which was the fifties nuclear power, whose name can no longer be mentioned and only abandoned after hugely successful trials, (N.B. Aidan) during the seventies. Because it couldn't be weaponized!

If GM were to run a prototype new engine round a testing track 24/7 for five years plus, without accident or incident without noticeable wear! Any reasonable person would concede it had been very successfully, thoroughly road tested!

Moreover. it threatened all fossil fuel markets and big nuclear alike. Given the security guard out front costs more than the fuel and the far less toxic waste is eminently suitable as longlife space batteries. Which burn up with reentry!

I agree with Tas, we ought opt for baseload industrial nuclear power as the only way forward. But only numbskulls would opt for uranium and another fukushima or chernobyl, at any time, without warning or notice! When walk away safe, much much less costly thorium, which can be deployed anywhere, beckons!

And doesn't necessarily need water or the great white elephant of a costly energy wasting national grid! Which can and does waste upto 75% of the energy we push into it! And the mugs out there in mugsville are the ones paying for all of it!

Time to tip this trough and force the snouts thrust into it, for doing very little, to take their free loading elsewhere!
Alan B.

During the post war era, we went from a war torn basket case economy, generating around 3500 MW's of power to one generating ten times that and grew an economy the envy of most of the world! Via publicly owned and operated power! That's all!

Politics, the art of the possible was suspended for a time and became the art of the impossible.

Arguably because there was no other choice and Leaders who knew just how close we'd been to becoming a foreign possession! Knew we had to have a vibrant robust manufacturing sector to call our own and just for security guarantees!

Since then it's all been largely downhill and we've had all manner of hands on the wheel.

Some visionless to the point, where the only remedy was to sell the family farm and heirloom silver! And just to buy votes!

Why even one "PM" tried to sell the snowy mountains scheme to bulk up inland revenue. And failed to understand that a power station, a bank, a telco, an airline, all built and paid for by preceding, blood sweat and tears, sacrificing generations! Can only be sold once and the assured income (billions) they provided had to be made good elsewhere! For us as expanding debt and a growing structural deficit.

Today we stand at a crossroad, do we use more of the same and drown in debt for largely unrepayable debt serviced, recurrent spending?

Or do we just bite the bullet and use that debt to build stuff that will, #1 sevice all the debt obligations incurred and #2 create more jobs than we have people to fill them! And #3 roll out affordable power that multiplies power generation by the power of ten!

Then use that and the cash flow it generates to roll out space age desal to not just drought proof the joint but turn arid wasteland/the dead heart, into veritable gardens of eden. Now that's change we can all believe in! EXCEPT THOSE CHARGED/TASKED WITH CREATING IT!?
Alan B.

Alan B.,

Decommissioning of nuclear reactors is going to be very cheap when World Nuke Dump Oz gets going.

All because of John W Howard's visit to the US, where the very persuasive US State Department squired him about and JWH suddenly evolved (sic) as Uncle Sam's No1 spruiker, bar none, for Oz to be the glow-in-the-dark dumping ground for Uncle Sam's nuke waste and anyone else's too if they stood in line next.

'Nek minit', there was JWH lecturing amazed Canadians, the world, on the joys of others' nuke waste, and back home his fellow Libs were in shock.

So there you go, Uncle Sam always had a safe (for the US) disposal strategy. They just needed a 'Little Deputy' to show up on the horizon one day.

But isn't that what a good mate such as Uncle Sam should do to another mate in these 'Progressive' times? Y'know, bend the other fellow over and give him a good nuking up the back passage er, make that 'a cradle to grave' rogering. Um, that will not do either, but doubtless the good old boys and more importantly the very convincing girls of the US State Department will come up with the right words (and maybe that former Oz PM's lost trousers too).

Walk away safe, molten salt thorium reactors can be tasked with burning and reburning Uncle Sam's nuclear waste again and again; anyone else's for that matter; and be paid annual (5 10 15) billions a part of the deal for thousands of years. While we extract every remaining erg of energy out of it, as costless energy!

Then bury it very safely in the ground that first gave it up, with a remaining half life of just 300 years!

The misinformed just need to stop obsessing and move on. One or two more chernobyls would be disastrous for certain, but it's carbon threatening planet wide, total annihilation!

Without question we're tiptoeing just ahead of an irreversible tipping point that quite literally means, stop burning fossil fuels now today and without destroying the very economies that feed, house, clothe and educate us/ours!

Time for business as usual prevarication/obfuscation to end and action to start! If you can't or won't help! Get out of the way.

For years big tobacco mislead the world on the dangers of tobacco!

It seems fossil fuel company scientists are/have been reporting privately internally, that climate change is real and they're causing some of it. Yet like big tobacco, [Jenny,NB,] have a different, manifestly mendacious message for Joe public!


Moreover, buried in a compound invented here, rockcrete. Much like completely inert volcanic glass, impervious to both acid and alkaline solutions alike, with remaining waste sealed and providing less rads than equally buried igneous rock.

My backyard would be fine!

Why, the average Joe would be exposed to more whole of life radiation in just one international flight between here and Britain, or an annual chest xray!

Any reactor, would still need more than adequate shielding and robotics to add the nuclear waste to the flow sheet or remove the miracle cure isotopes.

Molten salt boils at 1200C or thereabouts. Whereas the useful target range achieved by molten salt reactors ranges between 750C and 950C, meaning no special containment vessel need be built!
Alan B.