Energy production and supply should never have left government hands in Australia; it should certainly never have got into the hands of foreign, greedy, gouging companies who appear to have more say as to what goes on in Australia than our idiot, warmist Prime Minister. The recent appearance of a senile Chinaman making peculiar fist-clenching motions over the obscene profits of AGL was disgusting and insulting to all Australians who have been sold out by the very politicians supposed to be looking after their interests.

We need to do to things: elect a decent government for a change, and take back our country from foreign gangsters.

Malcolm is strong and has power.
The leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten, has been labelled by the uninventive Prime Minister "Electricity Blackout Bill". "There's never been a more exciting time," rues comedian Mark Humphries, "for crap nicknames."

Exactly! And just what you get, when dogma and ideology replace reason and logic! As the planet passes a point of no return!

We could be a country guided by the irrefutable truth, not finger pointing folks unable to use the brains they were born with, to do else besides fighting over the spoils of defeat?

As we lurch from one bad situation to a worse one?

Because dogmatic recalcitrant intransigents are obsessed with winning!

Therefore are chained like salivating Pavlov's dogs to coal and coal dependency! Even as the world moves on to something else.

That something else is Thorium, which gram for gram, outperforms coal as a source of energy, ONE MILLION TO ONE!

And we have enough in our dirt, to power the world for 700 years.

Moreover, given we are not yet locked into solid fueled reactors, and therefore chained to solid fuel supply, as fabricated fuel!

We could by just using the brains we were born with turn this to our own huge economic advantage! By committing to LFTR technology.

Then using that as walk away safe, molten salt thorium charged reactors. To supply, CHEAPER THAN COAL, energy.

Not only that but take other nation's spent fuel and reprocess it, as free to us fuel, given we could earn annual billions supplying such a service. AND IN COMPLETE SAFETY!

And get our king hit manufacturing sector up off the floor and back in the game, at the front!

Armed with a virtually inexhaustible source of energy. So cheap as to be able to make desalinated water a very commercially viable option to to turn our deserts into veritable gardens of eden, as we drought proof Australia!

And doable, if we were not coupled to ( vision impaired Luddites leading the blind) combative cretins, mired in the last century and unable to see much beyond the next election/media cycle.

This will never ever change until we get media organisations committed to disseminating/evidence based science! i.e., the actual truth, as opposed to endless editorial opinion, masquerading as actual news?
Alan B.

What would private enterprise like as energy policy? Well, all of it privatised, so the rivers of gold could be diverted forever to the debt laden, price gouging, tax a voiding profit repatriation of, foreign investors, hedge funds and the like!

What they would rather than die in a ditch first, before they allowed it to rise, like phoenix from the ashes of our (nearly complete) economic destruction? Sovietized and prioritized public energy supply. As nuclear energy!

And doable if we can stop irrational fear mongering and mountainous misinformation from preventing its roll out. Now while we can still beat those who might patent us out of that possibility, with purloined technology? They then sell to us!

Our alleged leaders, seem to have no difficulty throwing our money at pumped storage and subsidised coal? The last new coal fired power station we built cost some 2.5 billions? And we have a government needing a lift in the polls, waffling on about clean coal.

If international experience is anything to go by, at somewhere north of 7.5 billion per plant, which they'll build?

Moreover, we'd need to build three or more in the next decade!

The problem with this mob! Is they're incapable of looking beyond holes in the ground, selling our rocks and economic sovereignty to the highest bidder? When they're not throwing our money away like drunken sailors?

What's their problem, folks who used to be coal miners, black lung victims, going somewhere to happen, can't do anything else? i.e. mine and process thorium/build stuff?

A wage is a wage and manufacturing guaranteed by the world's cheapest, cleanest, safest energy, will likely be churning out value added products, world's lowest carbon footprint steel etc, long after Newcastle etc, runs into, [economic certainty,] forced mine closures!
Alan B.

If Turnbull and others had not fallen for the mythical gw religion we would not be in this situation.

Alan B,

You say,
"This will never ever change until we get media organisations committed to disseminating/evidence based science! i.e., the actual truth, as opposed to endless editorial opinion, masquerading as actual news?"

Exactly.

So too with runner, here:
"If Turnbull and others had not fallen for the mythical gw religion we would not be in this situation".

Gay Muslims caused global warming . Global Muslims warm gays. Warm Muslims are global gays.

Nuts.

Thank goodness, about time.
I was suffering Thorium withdrawal symptoms for a few days.
All ok now.

Binoy, if you had ever done any math, which judging by this essay you did not, you could in just a few minutes work, that you are preaching utter garbage.

Perhaps in 50, or 100 years, but only perhaps, renewables & battery storage may be able to supply our power needs. This is only perhaps, as there is no battery technology, even on the horizon that could supply even 1% of our daily power needs. The only place such technology exists is in the minds of dreamers like yourself, or con men who can see a big quid in fooling idiots like our politicians into subsidising their rip off industry.

Without either coal, gas or nuclear power generation, you will be living a romantic life by candle light, & cooking on wood or dung fires.

I do wish you dreamers had to learn at least a bit of arithmetic, before bursting into print.

Forget global warming, and just focus on our best possible economic future. And select the power options that deliver just that! And if that solution is a carbon free one that best addresses man made global warming! Get in behind and run with it!

Without question, that future is replete with a resuscitated manufacturing sector, and far more real, well rewarded jobs than anything mining has ever produced, as holes in the ground and mountains of ore, chopped up and exported as is! And just as unbelievably dumb as it sounds.

And while we may not be able to sell a gram of coal to the world, ten-fifteen years from now? We can still sell the steel from ore we mine here and aluminum made from bauxite also mined here.

All refined here into metal, using humongous, ultra cheap, localised energy!

Other mines will spring up to replace lost coal mining jobs. Such as rare earths, which to date has been seen as a problem, given the amount of thorium that all too often comes with them.

Rare earths essential for the wind turbines Binroy seems to prefer?

Aluminium is little more than congealed electricity, And to date, the cheapest and most reliable source of that energy has come from hydro, which still generates around a 10% loss forever, due to transmission line losses.

Cheap power deployable almost anywhere, makes a light metals smelting industry, along with titanium refining, a potential reality. All so called renewable power, connected to, multiple, costly transmission lines marching across the land and a blight on the landscape for everyone of these schemes. And just to transmit, unreliable, intermittent power!

And the exact opposite of what, energy dependant, 24/7 steel/metals smelting requires as an absolute essential!

All of which like solar voltaic, produce a level of toxic waste in their manufacture, which stays forever in the environment!

Geothermal is claimed as renewable, yet is only renewable due to radioactive materials like thorium, producing heat as decay heat, in the ground!
Alan B.

Between them, China and India are building, or planning to build, around four hundred coal-fired power stations. So coal has a huge future in the world.

Am I wrong in suggesting that renewable technology infrastructure, wind towers, solar panels, etc., are made, mostly in China, using fossil fuels, because it is simply not viable yet to do it using energy generated from renewable sources. True ?

If so, it follows that, the more renewable energy infrastructure is build and put in place, the more fossil fuels are required, and the more CO2 is released into the atmosphere. It's a bit like being strict about one's diet, no-fat, kale, chia, the latest unpronouncable, 'natural' but sure-fire health product, but ignoring that they're all grown with slave labour. Phony.

Is it true that renewables get an 80 % subsidy from the federal government ? That currently, they are therefore 20 % viable ? So who's the mugs ?

Roll on, Summer SA, where's my candles ?

Joe

My general feeling is that this crisis has been deliberately engineered.

And it going to cost a bucket load of tax payer money, that will go into the pockets of consultants and Power company owners.

Another commentator gets it totally wrong. The current debacle is due to the energy trading system that governments in Australia have created. 24/7 power is essential for a functional economy and should be the basis of a trading system. Renewables thus far cannot do this, yet they are advantaged by the system. Coal fired power can deliver 24/7, yet it is made nonviable by the trading system. Were preference given to 24 hour units of electricity supply, there would be no problem getting state of the art coal fired power stations built and electricity would still be cheap and plentiful.

Free markets are a wonderful idea, but they must be set up with the right parameters. Done properly everyone is happy and government can watch on and smile. Badly designed, we all get screwed over.

Now let's all give credit where it is due.

Yes please Alan I will send my credit card details for .5kg Th232. Do you have a special offer for new customers such as an extra kg free ?

I already have some bottles of thermalized neutrons, tributyl phosphate, nitric acid, fluoride ion, acidified water and ion-exchange resin bed. These will be sehfidalked with alnivoeacband and re-datremonicapined producing 940degrees of shockwave steam and multimega GWH. We can't wait for the fusspots to draw up their plans for Thorium reactors , they've had 50 years and it's time to act.

Whatever we do now we will get blackouts next summer and for at least
the next ten years.
That was decided when Hazlewood closed.
So, Liddell is next in line.
What emergency steps can we take to stop it getting worse ?
Obviously the quickest improvement is to do some urgent maintenance at
Liddell on a no matter what it costs basis.
If AGL is not prepared to do it then the government must resume the
plant and give them $1 for it.
If necessary I would rush enabling legislation through parliament.

Any other discussion at this time is irrelevant.
It appears from newspaper reports that there is an engineering report
on what is needed at Liddell.
Why isn't the minister sitting in the site engineers office with the
maintenance foreman to find out what must be done and how long it will take.
I will bet quids he has not even been to the site.

We fired up the 10 KVA diesel gen set yesterday. The battery is getting a bit tired, so I'll get it a new one, before the wet season arrives.

It is a so called silent running unit, but I think the builders must have bee deaf. We tested running the exhaust into a 15Ft 8" diameter heavy cast iron pipe. Boy does that do the job. You can still feel a vibration in the air, but the thing is almost silent.

We are building in a bit of the carport between the house & the granny flat, as my son is living there. We will be able to power both almost silently, & to hell with the ratbag global warming politicians.

By the time we get the whole system up and running reliably we will
have to start seriously thinking about what comes next.
We have a lot of coal but we are repeating the natural gas problem.
We need to set aside enough coal for our use and start restricting export.
Worldwide the Energy Return on Energy Invested is falling. In China
it seems to have fallen so low that they are closing mines. In the US
they are also experiencing low ERoEI.
Worldwide coal is coming to its end and there is nothing else in sight
except nuclear. Fusion is probably still 50 years away.

The Greenies should have their power disconnected and let them
contemplate their navels in the dark until they realise that batteries
solar and wind are too expensive and literally not possible for all.

The type of housing we are now building is not conducive for solar or
wind for that matter.
I have 1kw of solar at midday and 400 watts at 3PM so it is not a real
alternative energy system.

We just seem to be stuck with politicians that cannot do addition
and subtraction. Since Hazlewood was closed I have had the AEMO as
my home page and I have NEVER seen NSW generate more power than we consume.
The shortfall is almost always made up by Queensland. If things get
desperate the state governments will bring in rules that their state
must be supplied first. Then it will really hit the fan !

I think it's obvious Bazz knows what he is talking about.

What's more, from my point of view over abundance of algae plant matter is warming areas of ocean and lakes, CO2 is not doing the warming as claimed.

So there is no need to abandon coal.

Just keep improving coal power stack filtering technology.

Electricity is a luxury item. Running water is a luxury item. Hot water is a luxury item. All this and more is on the way out for all but the wealthy.
Already, housing is a luxury item. Transport is a luxury item.
Ain't globalism great. Giant steps backwards !

It also look like diver dan knows what he is talking about.

"If things get desperate the state governments will bring in rules that their state must be supplied first."
It works for Darling river water in Qld. There's water-quota fiddling and electricity may look like Thailand hook-ups with coal-mines throwing bodgy cables over the mains to sneak some investment inwards.

Maybe they will start a nuclear war to confuse everybody and cover up their milking of public assets and money.

Australia's nuclear launching will confuse everyone but not if it's from New Zealand Rocket Lab . The "no-nuke" thing was clever ,eh.