Right on the money Taswegian.

The graphite crucibles in locally invented, single step steel smelting, in modern electrically powered arc furnaces, would or could be ruined by intermittent power supply!

Accomplished as the metal solidifies inside the crucibles, the intermittently powered contracting/expanding mineral cracks the graphite crucibles, rendering them worthless!

Add a couple of hundred million for a big enough battery array to prevent that! And essentially all we'd achieve is the death of metals smelting in this country!

The multi-million dollar nightmare that the renewable enthusiasts never ever contemplate, given such contemplation requires a brain! And normal human empathy!

Otherwise, and given an operation brain is employed? The unstated, manufacture base destroying objective?

How else are the animals to be brought back and the planet re-afforested, as we humans are allowed to wither on the vine? The real objective of the antinuclear brigade?
Alan B.

ttbn, aside from your own idiotic claim that proven facts are "idiotic claims", labelling batteries as the problem indicates a lack of thinking. Electricity costs have long fluctuated because of fluctuating demand. Battery technology has at last reached the stage where t's starting to become a cost effective solution.

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Alan B.,
"Thorium contains 200 times the energy of uranium"
From where did you get that figure? It looks highly suspicious to me, as thorium has to be converted into U233 to make it fissile.

And there's no such thing as thorium 303. Known isotopes range from 209 to 238, with well over 99% of naturally occurring thorium being the 232 isotope.

Thorium does have great potential as an energy source, but please stop spruiking it until you've made a genuine effort to understand it.

Well guys I'll let you know ow steel smelting goes on renewable/battery power/pumped-hydro my company is planning to just that.

Aidan:
Take one ton of fuel, burn 99% of it to over fifty years to produce an arbitrary figure of a trillion PKH?

Take 2550 Tons and burn all that you can of it, which for those who are able to understand very simple basic maths? That is at best, just 1% of it, for the same energy output over the same approximate number of years. Still with me?

Save those years, when the oxide reactor was shut down for partial or complete refuelling. So the energy component comparison is 1% of 2550 tons versus 99% of 1 ton!

With just 1% of the thorium cycle as vastly less toxic waste! While the oxide reactor, produces at least 99% of its fuel type as highly toxic waste with a half life of thousands of years!

So, I've probably underestimated in the 200 times more energy comparison?

And probably explains why a mental giant such as Aidan, had all the initial difficulty?

Aidan is immediately going for his calculator and preparing to crunch the numbers. Then show his workings and my initial mistake so the rest of you numbskulls can understand just how smart he really is!

Alvin Weinberg, inventor of and patent holder of the first nuclear reactor, spent twenty years of his life research then operating the world's first molten salt reactor, at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Where he first tied uranium then thorium.

That reactor ran for close to five incident and accident free years!

And was after being starved of funding, shut down to serve the political imperatives of that paragon of virtue, President Nixon!

If you want to know more? Just type, Who will pay for the benefits of climate change? Into your search engine, then scroll, down to the bottom of the page for a comprehensive overview.

Or not. I just don't give a dam, what anyone thinks anymore! I'll just keep on trying to keep the bar stewards honest! And informed! Aidan is a really really nice bloke, just here to help!
Alan B.

The scalable energy source that dare not speak its name waits in the wings. see Michael Shellenberger with James Hansen at

https://unfccc.cloud.streamworld.de/webcast/james-hansen-nuclear-power-are-renewables-enough