There is a very large place for 18th century coal in our future just not in power generation connected to a costly and vulnerable national grid?

Expensive unsightly transmission lines need to be rolled out all over the joint to allow renewables to be connected to this, spanning the land, great white, and very vulnerable, energy wasting elephant!

And then needing battery back ups, pumped hydro and what have you, so the turbines can operate at peak efficiency and under optimum load!

Optimum load ensures the best possible burn and therefore lowest possible carbon emission!

Gas on the other hand can be stop started on demand, just horribly inefficient. Given these back up plants operate like jet turbines and waste a lot of energy via thermodynamics! But are up to full operating speed in minutes.

A better gas plant utilises that waste heat and doubles the energy coefficient. But then needs an hour to get up to electricity generating speed, without huge load shedding and brown outs, all over the joint!

The folks/bean counters that decide, just don't have a clue on any of this and are only as good as the advice they receive, some of it from folks conflicted by this or that ideological belief and or massive misinformation!
TBC Alan B.

If we were to build a coal fired power plant? It needs to be built alongside a very large coal deposit like, (still ours) in the Callide. Then needs to be backed up with pumped hydro and possible if the Burdekin were so utilised!

Moreover, it would need a very large scale algae farm operating alongside. Utilising large clear plastic pipes filled with nutrient loaded effluent. Vacuumed to remove any and all gas then have the smoke stack emission (CO2) channelled into that flow after the smoke stack electronic precipitators had removed most if not all the mineral pollutants.

Which could be, arsenic, carcinogenic cadmium, uranium and lead etc/etc!

These same oil rich algae farms would eventually produce enough diesel or jet fuel, to more than repay their inclusion, and have the desirable effect of producing zero emissions, coal fired power, profitably!

Walk away safe molten salt thorium presents none of these problems, can even be shut down for the weekend, restarted Monday if convenient?

They have as demonstrated in the few examples that actually went operational, been able to consume 99% of their fuel, which is three times more abundant than lead. As cheap as!

Safe enough to put almost anywhere and only needing far less expensive micro grids to reticulate power anywhere, which could have a median price expectancy of less than 2 whole cents P.K.H! (Professor Hargreaves)

As cheap as that is, could even be cheaper, if these things were set up as waste burners, burning other folks nuclear waste and in complete safety!

For which they'd pay us annual billions. More than enough over a decade to both build and completely pay for seven or eight 350 MW FUJI, molten salt reactors, or something better? And all our current power stations over the next two-three decades?

And just about right, as our ageing coal fired power stations are rendered obsolete by their age!

Yes thorium reactors do produce Gamma radiation and are able to be effectively shielded by simple concrete walls!
TBC Alan B.

Every Australian family produces enough biological waste to completely power their homes 24/7!

And without a single wrinkled (oh poo/poo) nose anywhere in sight!

And possible with the locally invented closed cycle/sealed, two tank poo digestor system, that converts this wasted waste into endlessly sustainable, bladder stored methane. That could be used to poo power a stationary engine, or scrubbed then feed into a methane consuming ceramic fuel cell, located with the aforementioned, on the poo powered premises!

The second option with its 80% energy coefficient, able to produce somewhere north of a 50% saleable surplus, with which the amenity could eventually pay for itself! Over say a decade? Thar's gold in them thar nuggets! Groan!

And then provide endlessly sustainable, reliable power/endless free hot water, for the lifetime of all current defecating family members, given few if any moving parts to eventually wear out! Groan!

That, burning ring of fire! Takes on a whole new meaning!

Coal has a guaranteed and greatly expanded future in our locally invented, single step, steel production and guaranteed by the demonstrably low cost of thorium power!

And some of it, most of our current export production could be converted to diesel, if we just had intelligence at the helm, directed soley by the undeniable economic imperatives of a thorium powered economy!

Thus we'd quite massively reduce our imports while simultaneously increasing our exports and turning our balance of trade, positive! What are we waiting for? Permission? Laxative chocolate?
Alan B.

What if Adani built a couple of new power stations?

I was sought of offered carbon credits for my land, however as usual the goal post kept changing and the carrot that was first dangled at me became very unattractive in the end.

The initial suggestion was around $23 per ton, and calculated as follows
Tons of standing timber per ha, calculated at 125% of the tree to allow for the root system, multiplied by the number of ha, divided by 20 years.
Not bad, 260ha @ 180 ton/ha x $23 = $53,820/yr, But, one had to lock their land away for 100 years (say 5 generations) and pay to maintain it to prevent the likes of bushfires.

Ok, so lets go back say 50 years. 100 hours per year at say 50 cents per hour =$50 per year plus consumables. Not bad.

Today however the sum is more like $40 per hour, or $4,000 plus consumables which is A 8000% increase in 50 years, let alone 100 years.

Its all a huge con job.

Geoff, get with the program! All these facts and figures?all this straight talking? Forget it! Work out the worse possible scenario and double it and then double it again!
Next blame massive, corrupt, Swiss based multi nationals like Greenpeace. Plus all the local rent seekers and the subsidies stolen from from ordinary Australians. Lie your proverbial off as is done in the green play book, that's the way to do it!

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/dennis-shanahan/green-campaign-against-australian-coal-trail-leads-to-john-podesta/news-story/42784b8b30e0ab18d7386054189a0933

Killing Queensland Coal you say?
Funny how others never seem to zero in on the important facts.
This is wealth redistribution by the elite who want the public to pay more for renewable electricity so the ultra-rich can profit from carbon trading; as well as shut down economies in a push for globalism.
They shut down the country, increase the cost of everything, feminise all the men, and promote civil unrest with far-left civil society groups to push a globalist socialist agenda.
This is the global elite making war upon sovereign citizens in their own countries.

- You can't create a globalism socialist utopia without completely destroying the normal order of a currently functioning society in the first place.

AC

Anything you read in the Australian must be fact checked...check it against the Daily Telegraph for accuracy...:-))

It's not coal that's being crucified just the economy! And with the ultimate simplicity of energy too expensive for any industrial purpose or pumped irrigation food production!

And beyond the intellectual capacity of the current crop of local politician/economic illiterates to understand! Thus we have in the blue corner, privatiser personified and in the red corner, Adani admirer extraordinaire.

When and only if sanity reigned, we'd get started with a power paradigm to bring us and our economy into the 21st century! With the roll out of walk away safe, molten salt, thorium power, which could among other things, affordably turn coal into diesel, turn seawater into financially viable affordable irrigation water etc.

And underpin the economic restart of the Townsville nickle refinery as an employee owned and operated refinery, that could be rejigged to also refine cobalt?

And just the start of a quite massive industrial renaissance the complete resuscitation our punch drunk and staggering, foreign owned or controlled economy!

Tell Peabody to take a hike, they and their ilk do very little for us!

Time for a change we can all believe in and guided solely by reason and logic, not this or that ideological imperative and or winning power at any cost!

Including a horribly divided and fractured state, all pulling in several different directions simultaneously! Please ex-plane!?
Alan B.

Hi Diver Dan,
That info is checked against Wikileaks release of the Podesta emails.
- And Wikileaks has a perfect track record. No Fake News!
So I should be good on this one; but I accept your point regarding the MSM.

I support your Thorium, Alan B.

While we're waiting for thorium, Alan B, this is almost here, just needing permission:

https://neutronbytes.com/2017/01/14/nuscale-submits-smr-design-certification-package-to-nrc/

Premier Eyechart of Queensland said on TV tonight that there will
not be a new coal fired power station in Queensland.
She said QLD will have renewables.
I was disappointed that no one asked, what will we use when the sun
goes down and the wind does not blow hard enough ?

Do they really still believe in 100% renewables ?

Have a look at

http://tinyurl.com/y9n75xkf

See how Queensland is always exporting power to NSW and some is most
of the time sent on to Victoria.
NSW NEVER generates more than it consumes.
Watch the flow between the states, and you can see why some
politicians are chewing their fingernails.

If Queensland closes a coal fired power station the whole country
will be very deep in it and it won't hit the fan because there will be no power.

Sth Australia's wind goes from over 1000 megawatt to zero occasionally
but often around 300 megawatt. That is not needed reliability.

Just this morning SA's wind was 1, ie ONE megawatt !
Power was flowing from Victoria.

NSW, Vic and SA depend most of the time on Qld & Tas.
QLD is always exporting power.
If QLD closes a power station then we are all in big trouble.

Wind from SA is at present producing 7 megawatts. ie up 6 Megawatts.
Dear oh dear, the highest I have seen it is over 1000 Megawatt.
It will really need some massive batteries, 12 times the size of
the one they have just installed. err actually 12 + 30% the size to make up for internal losses.
Now a point I have never seen mentioned;
If batteries are the backup, that all presumes they are fully charged.
OK, then when will they recharge them and what power source will they
use ? If the batteries are big enough to carry the grid you will need
twice as many windfarms & solar to be able to carry the grid and recharge !
It looks to me to be a VERY expemsive option.

Bazz,

Once again SA dodges a bullet by importing huge amounts of power. Labor deserves an award for its power management. The Darwin award.

Well SM, they do not import "large" amounts of power generally but
they do seem to be skating on very thin ice.
A heat wave in NSW and or Victoria will be a problem for everyone.

The battery they have installed in SA is 110 Megawatt/hrs and is
rumored to cost up to $150 million. Have you heard a real figure ?

Bazz,

In the year 2015/16 SA imported 2000 GWHrs of power mostly during their periods of maximum demand which is a roughly 300% increase in 4 years.

As for the battery, the final cost is a state secret. I guess that JW and SA labor is ashamed of it.

Traditionally, Vic and QSL have been the big power exporters, and the other states incl NSW, Tas etc big importers of power, now that Vic has lost Hazelwood and power demand is increasing, if there is another hot day with no wind as there was last summer, the crap could hit the fan. Does Vic look after itself and dump SA or NSW?

The fun to come...

SM, you touch on what could be an interesting point.
The power that at any time may be flowing from Qld to NSW to Vic to SA
might have been paid for by SA and Vic could not "steal it".
Likewise the same heatwave might be in NSW and could NSW refuse to
send it onto Victoria if it had been purchased by SA or Victoria.

Do I sense some very expensive legal bills in th offing ?
Likewise constitutional legal challenges.

There could be some very interesting auctions this summer.
$10,000 a Mw/hr anyone ?