“ But oh dear– we had no idea that the search for hosting new (untested) nuclear reactors was on too! “

Oh dear, indeed. They should always consult nobodies like Ms. Wauchope. Non-South Australians would probably not know, but an 'Advertiser' survey in the last few days shows that a MAJORITY of South Australians think that citizens' panel that was foolishly consulted was WRONG in its rejection of a nuclear waste depository for the state. Wauchope and her fellow spoilers don't have a clue.

SA is going backwards fast enough without the help of idiots like this.

Interesting comment from an alleged GREEN implacably opposed obsessive antinuclear proponent. And alleges the reason they're banned in the U.S. Is due to some manifestly mythical safety regulations?

Not true the real reason is economic and the power of both the fossil fuel industry and big nuclear which would be both wiped out by power prices as low as $0.1.98 PKH as the median. (Professor Hargreaves, and Thorium cheaper than coal)

The alternative to coal and or gas as as load power is indubitably nuclear! No is buts or maybes!

Let's be clear, if Noel were spruiking for the FOSSIL FUEL industry or BIG NUCLEAR, this would, without question, be the central tenet of her, I believe, highly mendacious and disingenuous frivolous, vexatious argument?

If we are to have a nuclear industry and given we could now be in the cross hairs of a madman with an itchy trigger finger ICBM's armed with miniaturised warheads. What do we do appeal to his inner angel/whim and caprice?

Or, make sure we can retaliate as the only available deterrent that would or could stop a mad dictator in his tracks.

The Oak Ridge molten salt reactor operated for around five years without accident or incident! And as a walk away safe reactor that could be shut down for the weekend and restarted Monday.

Or alternatively left to percolate away for around 120 days, to prove it would, could and does self regulate!

My backyard is available now today. TBC.
Alan B.

The waste (around 1%) from a walk away safe molten salt thorium reactor is far less toxic than that produced (around 99%) by a conventional light water oxide reactor! Yet, as far as a molten salt walkaway safe, thorium reactor is concerned, just unspent fuel!

Moreover, able to be burnt and re-burnt until every erg of energy in the unspent fuel is fully spent! Leaving a far less toxic waste with a half life of just 300 years!

And this 1% still radioactive waste, can be used in long life space batteries that completely burn up with reentry!

Let's be clear, there's lots of deliberate misinformation being spread here and most of it serves the needs of the 3-4 trillion dollar a year, fossil fuel industry or big nuclear!

Let's build or assemble a few shipping container sized modules?

Make no mistake, you'd be fully protected from any residual gamma radiation by simple concrete walls!

All that prevents that is manifestly moribund government regulations that could be altered tomorrow with a few pen strokes!

To date more nuclear pollution is produced by coal and fracked gas than any nuclear plant! And if they were but constrained by the same rules and regulations as the nuclear industry? All coal and or fracked gas plants, would be shut down tomorrow! ALL, NO IF, BUTS OR MAYBES!

I promise we will not be hurt by PKH prices with a median of $0.1.98, nor the copious quantities of cancer miracle cure bismuth 2/13, we could generate with them and able to be extracted on the fly from a fully active, operational, walk away safe, molten salt, thorium reactor!

Think, 1 in 3 Australians will at some time in their life be afflicted with cancer! And you could be next in line!? YOUR KIDS OR THEIR KIDS?

Time to stop catering to the whim and caprice of the anti development de-population, (I'm all right jack) crowd and their, par for the course, massive misinformation campaign!

And if they do come from China? Completely down to the antinuclear advocates, antinuclear campaign!
Alan B.

THORIUM: energy cheaper than coal Paperback – July 25, 2012
by Robert Hargraves
Kindle
$7.92
Paperback
$25.00
11 Used from $13.00
Electricity $1.98US , 2009 prices . Maybe $ 4.29kWh , or say $6.18.
Buy Bitcoin for secure molten salt meltdown blockchain rocket electricity and AIDS cure.

Can I have one just to annoy Noel?

As for costs, lets look at comparisons and available as peer reviewed expert input. Which Noel is not, just another bogus link dependant, anti development activist?

Driven only by the idiotic ideological imperative and to hell with the economy; and her fellow Australians?

None more so than her fellow, near bankrupt, South Australians.

Look, a 350 MW light water nuclear reactor would use 2551 tons of (as rare as platinum) fuel in its entire operatoinal life time.

Even as it consumes less the 1% of its fuel, leaving the rest (2550 tons)as toxic waste or unspent fuel?

And given fifty years to absorb/offset the entire costs, (build and fuel) able to market reticulated energy for around 6 cents per kilowatt hour, wholesale? Decommissioning costs not included?

Now compare that with thorium and in a comparative 350 MW FUJI LFTR?

Over its entire lifetime and just tasked with consuming, as common as lead, thorium! Its entire fuel inventory for its entire lifetime, is one single ton, estimated.

Why the security guard out front is likely to cost more than the fuel! And therefore a median of $0.1.98, PKH, is more than credible!

Moreover, fuel that needs no enrichment, no extremely costly containment vessel and no also expensive, special hardened building.

Just stock standard industrial and simple, poured concrete walls!

And given fluoride doesn't easily transfer neutrons. Decommissioning not too expensive nor unsafe neither.

People who know as little real relevant and up to date information as the LADY? Ought to try and talk from a little higher up!? As opposed to shovelling it by the shipload?

And then only to serve, I believe, patently puerile political or filthy fifth column, purpose?
Alan B.

The SMRs to hit the market before 2030 are likely to be of the light water uranium fuelled type produced by NuScale, Holtec and Rolls Royce. Several molten salt thorium burners are on the drawing board but they are a long way from commercialisation. Enrichment of Australian uranium would be done overseas including a laser process invented here. Spent fuel could be stored in abandoned outback mines (with already elevated radiation) until a reprocessing facility becomes economic. If need be later generation small reactors could use that recycled fuel as well as thorium.

There seems little chance of replacing coal and expensive gas without nuclear. Name one average country that has done it. SMRs could use existing transmission and cooling facilities near the Latrobe and Hunter valleys. That would stabilise frequency from asynchronous generation like wind and solar whose subsidies and quotas will be phased out according to Finkel. SMRs could do desalination on coastline relatively near outback mines. Australia should be one of the first customers for SMRs.

"Why the security guard out front is likely to cost $21.84 hour, more than the fuel! And therefore a median of $0.1.98, PKH, is more than credible! Ought to try and talk from a little higher up!? As opposed to shovelling it by the shipload?"

Security guards PKH are convinced it's more than credible , likely. A little higher up is an increment of 60 years of big bucks, probably for sure.

Alan B wrote:

"The Oak Ridge molten salt reactor operated for around five years without accident or incident! And as a walk away safe reactor that could be shut down for the weekend and restarted Monday."

The decommissioning of the plant took over 40 years after having run for less than 5 and not having produced a watt of commercial power.

"Sampling in 1994 revealed concentrations of uranium that created a potential for a nuclear criticality accident, as well as a potentially dangerous build-up of fluorine gas — the environment above the solidified salt was approximately one atmosphere of fluorine."

The decommissioning project was one of the most technically challenging activities of its type.

"One unexpected finding [ of the project] was shallow, inter-granular cracking in all metal surfaces exposed to the fuel salt. The cause of the embrittlement was tellurium - a fission product generated in the fuel."

Its these unresolved, potentially disastrous problems that have caused the Chinese to constantly push out the estimated start date for a proof of concept thorium plant.

Walk away safe? Not quite.

More like run away safe.

A few folk with addled brains could be forgiven for thinking, nicknamenick, merely masquerading as no name numbskull and I are singing from the same song sheet?

Or that I am as loopy as the aforementioned or his current tag team mate/ Did someone mention thorium? Thorium stalker, Toni Lavis?

I have no connection whatsoever with either of these stalkers, who appear like anti thorium, fossil fuel industry activists, the second anyone mentions thorium.

Their/Putin's goal?

To stop as many airheads as possible from just looking at the case for thorium. Why? because thorium has the capacity to put both the fossil fuel industry and big nuclear out of business, with a median of $0.1.98!

Repeat and just for nick, who clearly should have gone to specksavers, that's $0.1.98 or just a tad under 2 or two cents!

Repeat, just a tad under 2 or two cents! 2 or two, take your pick nick.

And no matter which way you obfuscate or lay trails of red herrings it will just be a tad under two cents PKH as the median! That's less than two cents Moriarty/SFB's.

That said, the folks with big money and currently retailing our electricity, will have at least done their homework/due diligence! Before even suggesting such a scheme or using their funds to finance it?

Perhaps, here to help, nick could write to them and suggest that we pay Putin megabucks per metre, for Russian gas or something as equally cogent and par for the course, with that, [cruel sensible debate at any cost,] horse!
Alan B.

Alan B
The .98 is lovely and you will be very happy together , SSM or not with sweetie Hargraves as celebrant. Alan, pie in sky is always greener with extra dollop organic methane cream . When you show me your power bill from Thorium Wowee at US $.98 then I'm not surprised.
It's the way to go and getting there is half the fun with holiday petrol prices at .98 a cupful.

From Noel Wauchope. In answer to Alan B. Alan B says:
"the reason they're [new small nuclear reactors] banned in the U.S. Is due to some manifestly mythical safety regulations?
Not true the real reason is economic"

Well, the 'new nuclear' lobby does not agree with Alan B. Pro nuclear writer Katie Tubb from the Heritage Foundation writes:

"Address over-regulation. Over-regulation from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the EPA has put U.S. companies and utilities at a disadvantage."
Nuclear developers must jump over countless regulatory hurdles" http://dailysignal.com/2017/06/29/trump-is-taking-steps-to-help-the-nuclear-power-industry-heres-what-can-be-done/

and pro nuclear Strata writes:

"Policymakers are enacting regulations to promote safety in response to public fears of nuclear energy. Although these regulations can be beneficial for protecting public health from the negative impacts of an industry, regulations also have trade-offs that can increase costs, reducing economic activity and innovation that could provide public benefits such as affordable access to reliable and clean energy.5 Overly stringent regulations, especially for managing nuclear waste and licensing new power plants, are likely reducing investment and innovation in the nuclear industry.
https://strata.org/pdf/2017/us-nuclear-power-summary.pdf

Of course, the reason is also economic. Private investors [with exception of Bill Gates' billionaire pack] won't touch Small Modular Nuclear Reactors. The lobby must persuade government to fund them

I'll take one thanks.

One out of a decommissioning US nuclear sub would be fine, after all, they have a perfect safety record.

//From Noel Wauchope//

//Posted by ChristinaMac1//

Why is your name Noel and your user name Christina?

I smell a rat.

". The nuclear industry is very fond of proclaiming that wastes from small thorium reactors would need safe disposal and guarding for "only 300 years". Just the bare 300!"_ Noel Christina Activist MacWauchope .
Rubbish . It will be fitted into Wombat ICBMs and exported in stages to Kim at ground zero.

In reply to Toni Lavis

My full name is Noel Christina Macpherson Wauchope.
10 years ago, when I starting blogging, tweeting etc, I adopted my middle names. It was in a period when it was sort of fashionable to have an "Internet name". I set everything up that way. More recently, I saw the value in using one's real name, But it is too late, too tricky, to unravel all the connections with "Christina Macpherson". This site is an excellent example. Try though I may - it seems to always want me to be Christina. No big deal. No rat.

//No big deal. No rat.//

Ah, my mistake. Must of just been the smell of hippy. If only you guys would bathe, people might take your anti-nuclear nonsense more seriously. But probably not.

Hi Noel

An excellent article, as usual.

Yes the smaller and more isolated a reactor the greater the greater the comparitive security hurdles. For example:

- in Small Town A, 20 odd guards with assault rifles would be required in shifts 24/7 to defend against terrorist attacks. This extra security, greater than for other extricity producing modes, would be expensive for communities/electricity customers.

- if Small Town A is isolated the greater the delay in State and Federal Police special weapons teams arriving by helicopters, in case of terrorist attack.

- mini-reactors need as many security and environmental approvals as large reactors with the same lengthy approval processes

- even mini-reactors need large perimeter fence exclusion zones to keep protesters and terrorists away and, by law, to protect communities against nuclear accidents.

- even mini-reactors are vulnerable to 9/11-like large aircraft strikes. Isolation is no protection. Hence, mini-reactors need the shielding of the type that was placed on Lucas Heights reactor(s) after 9/11. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/02/1088488155666.html?oneclick=true

- large aircraft may not even need to rupture a mini-reactor's protective shell. Vast amounts of large aircrat fuel burning could create enough heating to cause catastropic steam/gas buildup effects within a mini-reactor.

This thread is rather premature as no one will take nuclear, thorium
or uranium, seriously until perhaps later this summer if we start
getting regular load shedding.
We may continue on as we are with politician's promises of batteries
etc for a few years but the shutting of Liddel and others will finally
exhaust the public patience.

How much patience do you think cities of hundreds of high rise
buildings will have every peak hot day when faced with a 15 story climb to the sky ?

They will demand nuclear energy tomorrow morning or else !

Here, for example, the question of security is addressed.
http://www.nuscalepower.com/smr-benefits/secure. The Wauchope argument against underground placement is particularly feeble.

France has run large nuclear reactors safely and successfully for 50 years and Wauchope et al have no sensible alternative to address AGW.

Reliable, affordable wind/solar/storage is a pipe-dream, SMRs are not. These need to go where distribution networks determine they should, i.e. where coal-fired power stations are now located.

We can avoid building any new coal generation at all and reduce our emissions markedly if we plan now. Urban EV's and synthetic fuels for long range transport etc. would flow sensibly from nuclear where we can add modules as these develop.

Instead of accepting the status quo over the current prohibition of nuclear, Finkel should have challenged it. He is either weak of mind or heart not to have done so but I think it's the former given his call for more storage recently. Here's something in relation to this http://euanmearns.com/grid-scale-storage-of-renewable-energy-the-impossible-dream/ where the comments are also informative.

Yes the successful French example has certainly been economical through dual-use nuclear knowledge that is shared with France's nuclear weapons program.

ALSO France's civil nuclear power reactors have become more economical because French reactors have become steadily LARGER.

From of 900 MWe to 1300 MWe to 1450 MWe. France is now looking at 1650 MWe reactors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Technical_overview

This is bad news for advocates of inefficient, uneconomical, Small Modular Reactors, ie. of less than 300 MW http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor

Small modular advocates are left up proverbial s--- creek with a teaspoon for a paddle.

Crystal balls at ten paces. The thing that is certain, IMO, renewables plus storage don't/won't cut it.

Here's something relating to your wiki reference, plantaganet. NuScale will have a product to sell in 2026, and I believe the volume will be there http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35863846

For 8 billion bucks eight small molten-salt uranium reactors could replace Hazelwood's megawatts.
http://www.terrestrialenergy.com/

24/7/365, clean, rampable electricity that can grow easily with future needs (just add modules).

But no, we can't have that, it would lead to bombs!

Changing the subject, any thoughts on how to defend ourselves as China eyes off all before it from the SCS.

Yes, Joe renewables will not cut it.
I have just read this article;

http://tinyurl.com/yb85rk8o

on how hopeless is that battery backup idea.
It is very interesting and it shows what I have been saying about
what happens when you get a string of still overcast days.
The month of January 2016 in the UK had a wind lull of six days.
The article shows that the UK would need 14,000 batteries the size
of Sth Australia's battery.
Also it shows that solar is hardly worth the cost and that wind is
the only practical renewable generator, but it is hopeless anyway.
Look at the area under the solar compared to wind on the graph.

Like any new complex product, small modular or small molten-salt uranium reactors are cheap easy simple, believe me. Reliance on public, taxpayer money to pay for it all is implicit.

Confusion between experimental stages, scientists'-engineers' job creation claims and market competitive electricity production is a slam-dunk no brainer. Again, reliance on public, taxpayer money to pay for it all is implicit.

And don't forget those downplayed security, decommissiong and only a few hundred years - wast storage costs.

Thanks again taxpayer.

No worries :)

There are now indications that wind & solar can only be built using
coal & oil derived energy and there is currently a dispute that has
even become a legal stouch.

http://tinyurl.com/yakte33o

Another paper has used UK figures for January 2016 to show that if
batteries were to be used then 14,000 batteries the size of the
recently Sth Australian installed 115Megawatt/hr battery would be needed.
There was a six day lull in the wind in the middle of that month.
You can imagine what that would do to the battery.
Then where do you get the electricity to recharge it ?

plantagenet says' "Reliance on public, taxpayer money to pay for it all is implicit."

Let all electricity generators compete equally and bring on a carbon tax that incentivises the shift to clean sources, with no direct taxpayer subsidies. The social/taxation system can take care of affordability problems for low income earners.

This means lifting the embargo on nuclear, AND, requiring generators to meet strong reliability criteria, i.e. sufficient storage to ensure 24/7/365 supply.

Of course, Greens will hate such holding of renewables to account. Their interim position would be gas backup and bugger-all storage, meaning the payment of carbon taxes while awaiting the arrival of their impossible storage dream. They can leave the bloody tax-payer alone. I'm tired of hearing how cheap renewables are when they're directly and indirectly subsidised to the gills.

Hysterical opposition to nuclear, especially when renewables don't cut emissions (even in Germany where the emperor has no clothes but Greens push on uncritically), should no longer be allowed to bring the world towards CAGW. Finkel should be the one saying this here in Oz.

Luciferase,
Isn't the co2 tax got us to where we are now ?

>sufficient storage to ensure 24/7/365 supply.
The opinion seems to be shifting, it is becoming more certain that
batteries simply cannot do the job for a 24/7/365 system.
The sheer cost is one reason. I am trying to find the article again
but it was several hundred of billions of pounds for 14,000 batteries of 120MW/HRs.
Fancy charging that lot after a lull period.
I doubt Australia has enough water available to run hydro at that scale.
I think it has now been established that renewables are in fact very expensive.
The ERoEI of coal, oil, gas are continuing to fall and inevitably
there will in the future be no point in digging them out.

It seems that a change of policy to nuclear is inevitable.
I think it may take a very serious collapse of the economy before
the people and politicians are forced into a change of mind.
I would start by establishing a TAFE college in Parliament house
and forcing all politicians and public servants to do a range of
courses in electricity, mechanics, chemistry and whatever other
weaknesses they had in their past education for it is obvious none
of them learnt anything useful during their education.

Just listen to them talking on Q&A etc to understand the problem.

Forget about AGW, that is the least of our problems.

For a 24/7/365 system it is gradually dawning that nuclear is the only possibility.

Ah yes Luciferase, I remember seeing that One Nation senator that was
disqualified, he is an engineer, trying to get a point across about
some electricity argument with a politician and finally just giving up.

Bazz,

I was initially in favor of a carbon tax but arrived at the understanding that renewables coupled with fossil-fuels cannot sufficiently mitigate against CAGW. Also, affordable storage to bring about 24/7/365 despatchability is for dreamers, along with any combo of renewables, gas and storage. That's why Greens hate the NEG, it hits them hard with this truth.

A carbon tax would hit them even harder because renewables plus gas would be further nobbled. This is a reason I want it other than elevating nuclear above coal, although it's already capable of rivalling coal without a tax.

There is the argument that a CT would nobble exporters, but only if they fail to shift to emission free electricity generation.

The CT can be phased in, with investors safe in the certainty that coal/gas is on the way out on the main grid while nuclear is the only sensible option on the way in. Renewables will continue to have their place off-grid, and some investment there will continue.

Luciferase, looking at the graphs of the UK for Jan 2016 it is
interesting to compare the area covered by the solar output.
It is so insignificant that the solar just looks like a vertical
spike once a day around 1200.
The greatest area covered by wind is so much greater that I cannot see
any point in having solar.
I discovered that myself when I read the meter here each hour.
At 8am 200 watts, 9 am 400 watts, 11am 850watts and
12-30 (building midday) 1080 watts, 2pm 800 watts, 4pm 6 watts, in shadow.
Then no output till next morning. So without tracking hopeless,
with tracking they would be a lot better but not much in 24 hours
and that was summer readings.

BTW, I read a report yesterday that the US fracking companies have
been fiddling upwards their Ultimately Recoverable Rescources.
They have done it to keep the capital investors interested.
It forecast an early jump in oil prices when the penny drops.

Gov't subsidy of domestic solar is stupid for the tracking reason and because of good old dust and dirt.

If we're going to sink money into solar we have the space for mass installations, like Spain, where tracking and cleaning are continuous. But why bother as it's not despatchable unless coupled to CO2 emitting gas turbines and/or unviable storage? The only clean energy sources are nuclear and hydro.

I wish Finkel would exercise some courage and scientific nous and say something towards changing the direction we're taking. What chance has the man in the street got of getting across the issue when the Chief-Scientist appears clueless? Snowy 2.0 should be canned before it begins and modular nuclear investigated. forthwith.

"The only clean energy sources are nuclear and hydro.".... proven and despatchable, that is.

Indeed !
It really is time to out of its agony the idea that solar & wind are
the cheapest electricity generators.
The greenies agree that the foundations are part of a wind farm.
So why do they not cost the backup batteries etc ?
Good night !