Taswegian - just as an aside to your note, that decrease in power prices is off historic highs in the wholesale price resulting from brown coal plants shutting up shop.

Like the other posters I am extremely suspicious of figures supposedly showing that renewables are somehow cheaper than conventional power. But about all I can add to the discussion is that no where have renewables added up to cheaper prices. All grids were conversion has been tried - including very small grids such as Barrow Island off Alaska and King Island in Bass Strait - have required massive (subsidised) investment, even to replace diesel-fuel generators. High power prices have proved politically explosive in countries which have embraced the renewables dream, such as Germany, Denmark and Spain.

Quote - "figures supposedly showing that renewables are somehow cheaper than conventional power."

How the figures are calculated could be one reason that they appear cheaper, but what calculations are they leaving out, for example the cost of repairing wind turbines is enormous especially if they are built in or near the ocean.

Far too many unfounded assumptions far too few known facts!

Fact one. One unit of thorium has the dispatchable energy quotient of one million hydrocarbon units.
Fact two, thorium with a half-life of 25 billion years is, therefore, less radioactive than a banana, and is fertile, not fissile, has been notoriously difficult to weaponize!

Fact three, MSR can be used to burn and burn, again and again, in perfect safety, other folk's nuclear waste! And as those folk pay us or our competition, annual billions for the service. Drive energy costs through the cellar.
This proposed burn and burn, again and again, can potentially reduce the half-life of that waste to just three hundred years.
That we should be opting for this far lower costing, to us, option, is an economic no-brainer!
We know Snowy 2 is going to blow out and cost several more billions than the current, back of the table napkin, estimate?
Setting up waste burners will cost far less given they can be mass produced, factory built and paid for by the annual billions we could earn?
But only if we stop the endless politically inspired prevarication and obstinate obfuscation and just crack on with it and Modernized MSR technology.
If we lack the expertise?
451 visas will allow us to import the necessary expertize until we have enough up to speed, technicians thoroughly trained and in place.
Suggest a Government facilitated and funded, cooperative model, would drive the build costs as low as they can conceivably go?
The time for excuse making and blame shifting is well and truly over, as are some of the political careers of fathomless fools. Who would die in a ditch before they allow us to both decarbonize the economy, as well as, quite massively growing it and JOB/JOBS/JOBS!
Alan B.

I personally welcome the statements that renewables are cheaper than coal, and eagerly await the cancellation of all subsidies.

Apologies and correction. a half-life of 25 billion years is incorrect and should be read as 15 (fifteen) billion years.
Alan B.

//thorium with a half-life of 25 billion years is, therefore, less radioactive than a banana//

What's the half-life of a banana, Captain Misinformation?