Why?

Because they more than most Aussies are too stupid to read a book or too apathetic to get up off their arse to go take a crap? Were this not true and applicable to most Aussies, we would have risen up on our hind legs and got rid of both (ANTINUCLEAR) major parties, years ago.

And started our own nuclear industry! And one based on proven thorium and the promise by Ivy league Professor (ret) Economist Robert Hargreaves, of safe reliable base load power for less than 2 cents per KwH. Described by him in his book, (suggested reading) Thorium cheaper than coal, where the term PKH just means per kilowatt hour. Okay?

Suggest you also read, Thorium, Super fuel, subtitled, green energy, by prize winning investigative Journalist, Richard Martin.

Finally, take a butchers at U tube and former NASA scientist and nuclear technologist, who along with the aforementioned, will give you the literal facts pertaining to thorium and debunk some of the crap coming from the fossil fuel industry or big nuclear.

Both of who and their multi trillion dollar industries would be made completely redundant/obsolete by the roll out of practical operational thorium fired power and the medical miracles that it creates as the additional bonus. And without expensive shutdowns!

There's a lot of fearmongering crap being decimated by the aforementioned and the abysmally ignorant (Power junkie) green movement, implacably opposed to any nuclear, no matter how safe! And on purely idiotic ideological grounds and no other!

Time to take the blinkers off get acquainted with the actual facts as pertaining to thorium, then vote for pragmatic realists (and Australia) regardless of their politics!

That's the only way or course, we're ever going to end the energy crisis and get our (sold down the river) country back! Conversely you can all just sit on your apathetic bums and moan poor me!
Alan B.

Former NASA scientist referred to earlier is Kirk Soresen. Suggest you start with his, thorium in four minutes, to avoid straining your weak and feeble minds!

Were this not the case, we would not be were we are today, sold down the river by the very folk tasked with growing and prospering our economy? As opposed to promising what they'll never ever deliver? Or selling great chunks of it to the lowest bidder? Always providing?
Alan B.

Alan

With books often it is a case of having an opinion and finding arguments to uphold that opinion.

But, empirical/objective information keeps bobbing up showing how wrong deniers are.

The latest example is a Teekay tanker, the Eduard Toll transiting the Arctic in the winter of 2017/2018 without the aid of an ice breaker. That has been impossible in the recent past due to the thickness of ice.

https://interestingengineering.com/lng-tanker-crosses-arctic-in-winter-without-an-ice-breaker-for-the-first-time

Published and peer reviewed hardly one man's opinion Ant.

And thanks for the heads up on arctic cruising! And when our sun is in a waning phase and has been since the mid seventies (NASA) When natural cyclical climate variation should has seen us entering into a new ice age!

Hope old sol doesn't decide to cook all our gooses, by going back to a waxing phase and heating the joint right up!

Can only imagine what new extremes in weather conditions that would also usher in and almost certainly tipp us well over the 2 C limit that sounds our death knell extinction event!
Cheers, Alan.

The idiocy was giving renewables two bites at the cherry. For commercial wind and solar that means getting the pool NEM price then selling LGC green certificates for another $85 per Mwh on top. If their costs are say $70 they can sell for $-15 and come out even. Finkel wanted to change that by ensuring all generators intermittent or steady have some firm capacity via storage or backup.

I'm not quite sure how the National Energy deals with the reliability issue but the rent seekers don't seem to like it. When Hazelwood closed the SA govt decided to build new gas fired generators despite their gas supply being half a century old and lured away by export LNG. The intermittent generators should be paying for the new backup. They are overpaid yet they go missing at critical times like heatwaves and the early evening demand spike

National Energy Guarantee NEG

"I see no reason why the NEM should have either a price cap or a price floor (negative or not). If we're trying to balance demand and supply power quantities, why not let unfettered bidding prices reveal them? That's a question for another day."
No it's a question for now, because if you're going to write about SA's power, it's best to understand the context in which the cap was introduced:

'Twas the summer of 2000–01, before SA had all those wind turbines and solar panels. SA's electricity supply was at its most unreliable. It had just been privatised, and the electricity companies were using Enron style tactics to maximise their profits. Introducing a price cap was one of the things that was done in response to prevent those companies from holding back supply to increase the price.

I don't know about the floor price, but ISTM it would be better to ask why we don't have the infrastructure to make use of excess electricity when its price falls below zero?

Now common sense and many years of experience tells me that to every advantage there's a corresponding disadvantage....so when some one tells me they have the solution then I ask as to the cost....not so much the financial, but the consequential. If I am told there is non then I know I'm likely talking to a half wit who wants me to be a nitwit.
When one thing is changed a corresponding other is also changed, intentional or otherwise

IF we had a government that believed in the free market and open competition, we'd have policies that didn't try to pick winners, didn't offer subsidies to the most expensive forms of energy and did allow the cheapest to flourish.

It takes a special genius to take a country with one of the lowest energy costs and abundant resources and, within a decade, turn it into a country with one of the highest energy costs which ignores and vilifies its abundant resources. And then having done so, convince the people (and themselves) that the causes were other than their policies. Truly we deserve the leadership we get.

I'm completely on board with Alan B on this one. If only we had the right pollies we could start installing thorium reactors and all our problems would be solved within six months of next Tuesday week.

What's that you say?....commercial thorium reactors don't exist.

Please don't bother me with frivolous detail.