What a pity the anti-nuclear power protest movement (as distinct from the anti-nuclear weapons protest movement), don't understand the damage they and their predecessors have done to human well-being and the environment as a result of their uninformed beliefs and anti-nuke dogma.

Nuclear power learning rates and deployment rates were disrupted starting in the late 1960's as a result of the anti-nuclear power protest movement. (See the figures in the link below).

From the abstract:
"Learning rates and deployment rates changed in the late-1960s and 1970s from rapidly falling costs and accelerating deployment to rapidly rising costs and stalled deployment. If the early rates had continued, nuclear power could now be around 10% of its current cost. The additional nuclear power could have substituted for 69,000–186,000 TWh of coal and gas generation, thereby avoiding up to 9.5 million deaths and 174 Gt CO2 emissions. In 2015 alone, nuclear power could have replaced up to 100% of coal-generated and 76% of gas-generated electricity, thereby avoiding up to 540,000 deaths and 11 Gt CO2. Rapid progress was achieved in the past and could be again, with appropriate policies. "
https://cama.crawford.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/publication/cama_crawford_anu_edu_au/2017-01/4_2017_lang_0.pdf

Jim Green is a long-time professional anti-nuclear lobbyist. He has zero credibility in the field.

This is nothing more than the next episode in a long, skewed series of articles by Jim Green, whose continuing employment as an anti-nuclear agitator relies on his ability to construct misleading arguments to support his employers' position.

The primary thrust of this article is to damn all present and future nuclear power by assertions of association with military weapons programs, which is stretching the truth more than somewhat.

Put simply, nuclear power plant have been producing extremely reliable and safe electricity for decades without leakage of material into the military programs, which themselves are shrinking - with the minor exception of a certain idiotic nation-state that insists on using nuclear bomb tests as levers to enhance its already formidable notoriety.

Nuclear power, despite Jim Green's wishes and ranting to the contrary, has been of major benefit to the world and will continue in that role.

As for the observation that only three Australian mines are still producing... so what? Australia is still #3 globally. Besides which, as Generation IV power plants expand, so will the use of recycled uranium. Gen IV reactors enable more than 100 times as much energy to be obtained from a given quantity of fuel. Thus, mining is far less necessary.

Nothing to see here, folks... carry on.

People who refer to Trump, the leader of the free world, as “another madman” are not people to be take seriously.

you're right he's in a class of his own.

Australia's contribution to Nuclear proliferation risks is negligible! We're protected by the mutual destruction rationale.

South Australia's economy is going backwards at a rate of knots, with the uranium mined there, almost her only industry able to earn a few scarce export credits? The anti development brigade want that gone as well!

They/we could earn considerably more, if their and our parliaments weren't logic and science free zones? And just agree to store other nation's nuclear waste here?

And with that done and this material stockpiled? Build a dozen, walk away safe, molten salt thorium reactors here?

My preference would be the (factory built, mass produced here) 350 MW FUJI. And because a number of highly credentialled Nuclear scientists prefer it?
(Type, the case for thorium, into your search engine, then scroll down the page to a free PDF)

Then with those fueled for the next 100 years, with around thirty tons of thorium each? Start dribbling in imported waste, to burn and reburn it until every remaining erg of recoverable energy (85%) is completely extracted, and while that energy powers our cities and energy dependant industry for free, given we would have received billions as annual incomes for the service!

Always providing, we are intelligently led and resist calls to privatise the never ending income stream! The principle cause of the current crisis!

There is enough thorium in our dirt to power the planet with carbon free power for a thousand years, and around twice that if we use it to reprocess and reprocess nuclear waste and weapons grade plutonium! Until the remaining material has a half life of just 300 years! All of it!

And that my friends is how you honor a genuine non proliferation activity positively! And create a veritable mountain of nuclear medicine miracle cures as a side effect!

Moreover, without shutting a single reactor down! Miracle medicine that motivates the cashed up unwell to visit here to avail themselves of this life saving boon!

Energy crisis? What energy crisis? The only crisis is a leadership and rational thinking crisis?
Alan B.

As I've explained a dozen times, Fertile material (thorium) can't be compressed to produce a thermonuclear explosion! Whereas fissile material like enriched uranium and plutonium can.

We who invented pulsed laser light enrichment ought to deploy that technology to enrich our exports to power production grade only! And enter into long term contracts to take it back when they've finished extracting the energy it gives up in conventional reactors, for a suitable fee!

Molten fluoride salt is a very poor receptor of neutrons, meaning. The possibility it could transfer them elsewhere is very remote. Therefore, decommissioning a molten salt reactor is never ever going to be as problematic as radioactively hot oxide reactors etc.

A walk away safe molten salt thorium reactor, operates well below the boiling point of molten salt! Meaning two things, an ability to extract the medical isotopes from an operational reactor on the fly and add the waste to be burned or unburned. Furthermore, produce enough heat to lend itself to the catalytic cracking of the water molecule, to produce humongous and extremely cheap hydrogen, which can then be piped almost without loss to where the consumer is, then converted to electrical energy via locally invented, ceramic fuel cells.

Currently, transmission line losses can be high as 30%? With the average being a reported 11%! However, distribution losses can be as much as 64%?

And due to the resistance in millions of miles of wires and voltage altering transformers some in step down transformer stations, others on poles, that supply a few individual houses.

Just this difference could quarter prices and before we calculate how much cheaper wholesale distribution will be! A 1 cent PKH is feasible as publicly supplied, ceramic cell distributed wholesale/industrial power!

And with a safely buried system with few if any moving parts to wear out or needing to be maintained!
Alan B.

A footnote: Given molten fluoride salt doesn't boil until around 1200C and given the preferred FUJI maximum operating temp, is listed as around 950C!

It therefore follows, no expensive containment vessel need be built to contain a steam explosion. Particularly, when the preferred cooling/heat transferring medium is also fluoride salt, not water, per se.

This means, with mass production, the build is going to be significantly lower than any comparative coal fired power station.

A drainage pipe at the bottom of the reactor is kept cool by the flow of air blown over it. causing the salt there to crystallize and form a plug.

If the power is for any reason whatsoever, terminated. This flow of air automatically stops and the inherent heat, melts the salt plug, and allows the entire contents of the reactor to drain into a purpose built containment vessel, where there is never ever enough concentrated mass to support a reaction!

Meaning the salt cools then crystallizes. And would still do so, if the operators were home in bed or deceased as a result of some disaster.

That said, if they are located underground, they are less easy to spot or become targets of choice. Coal fired power stations with the mountains of coal just don't lend themselves very easily, to that option!
Alan B.

As all people who never left their 18-year-old-leftist-uni-kids brains know.

If we're nice and export no uranium. North Korea's

- Kim Jong-un will go away

- and China will do what we say

One of the mysteries of Australian political life is why so many loopy left extremists come from Victoria.

My theory is that the entire state was contaminated by Socialist Left dogma when Baghdad Bill Hartley, George Crawford and Bill Brown, but I'm conscious that the Maoist, Trotskyite and other left extremism in Victoria go back long before that.

It's amusing that Mitchell and Green seem to think anybody would take them seriously.

Alan
Do you have costing on catalytic cracking of water ? .75c kg?
Cheap and clean: Australian company creates hydrogen with near ...
https://www.theguardian.com › Environment › Electric, hybrid and low-emission cars
Jul 21, 2016 - .. Methane cracking made viable with iron ore. Our goal is to be halving or more than halving the cost [of hydrogen production], so taking it to $0.75 per kilogram.”

After all but eliminating costly transmission and line losses, Is there another reason to create massive hydrogen gas as outlied?

Well yes, one being an ability to store excess production and use it when the intermittent power provided by much more expensive renewables, takes a holiday!

And the fact that hydrogen is a lighter than air gas, that'll climb uphill without the need of energy consuming pumps, just strategically located expansion chambers.

Finally, we might have to spend over 24 billion to do reactors pipeline now?

Or for the diabolical dithers, or those with a hidden agenda? e.g.,Investments in coal/coal fired assets? One decade of business as usual blame shifting, obfuscation or prevarication, will see those costs literally doubled.

Spending this money now, on essential infrastructure could resuscitate near dead manufacturing sector/quite massively grow the economy!?

It's time to grasp the nettle! As always, grabbing it quickly and firmly. eliminates even the possibility of pain.

And in our case, literally halves the necessary and unavoidable outlays another decade of dithering will create!

Just get it done minus all the (yes, but well, well, but, but, you see, we're technology agnostic) BS, that private enterprise can do it cheaper/better?

Maybe, but not monolithic oligarchs, ripping us off for all they're worth/destroying our economy/goose that laid the golden egg as they do! And the sole stinking to high heaven, reason. where we are today!

Alternatively, create/enable employee owned co-ops and give them a crack at proving they're the cheapest most efficient option/one that pays all its relevant tax, while ensuring all after tax profits remain in our own economy!

Where every one retained dollar, does the work of several, all while adding massive impetus to our own economy! Economists refer to it as the usual flow on factors.

Only Ideological idiots, welded exclusively to ideological imperatives, would argue otherwise! Incidentally, unburn in previous post should read reburn.

I seem to be getting uninvited spelling assistance? Not all of it helpful!
Alan B.

Alan
Are you there . Alan.
.75c kg?