Despite lack of real world evidence renewables dreamers insist that steel towers, concrete foundations, glass panels, silicon cells, aluminium frames, copper wires and rare earth magnets will self reproduce. That's allowing for more frequent replacement than thermal plant.

A related question few have asked so far is whether aluminium smelting could survive in Australia without coal and with hydro under prolonged drought. Vendors of the mini-nukes (SMRs) say they can get an electricity price down to $US100 per Mwh. I think that would wipe out the local smelting industry so we'll just sell coal and bauxite/alumina to China. We'll then buy our own aluminium back no questions asked.

We don't need renewables to enter a carbon-neutral world! Just endlessly sustainable options. We certainly won't get there or avoid a catastrophic tipping point by following the (self-serving) advice of the Author.

Every Australian family produces enough biological waste>mthane, to power their domiciles 24/7!

And if consumed after scrubbing in a ceramic fuel cell, produces as much electricity as they will ever need, as well as a 50% saleable surplus. Moreover, we could recover as much as 50,000 barrels of crude P.A., just by cooking all our waste tyres in industrial microwaves.

Baled plastic bags are an excellent substitute for metallurgical coal in steel making.

A few days ago I was moved by a speaker advocating for funds for ovarian cancer in Australia. to the point of contacting them to advise them that Bismuth 213 might hold hope for folk literally sent home to die! And was told, astonishingly, that the speaker wasn't interested in alternative or complementary medicine.

Something no doubt the department of radiation oncology, University of Washington, Seattle and a dozen or so similar others would have been very bewildered to hear!

Some European clinics have successfully trialled Alpha particle bismuth in ovarian cancer. With results that were 400 times more efficacious than previous beta particle medicine.

The precursor for bismuth 213 is U233, and U233 is created by the conversion of fertile thorium, into fissile U233 in the blanket of an MSR!

And forbidden technology!

Why?

Because it threatens both the 3 trillion per fossil fuel industry and big nuclear alike! With power prices estimated to be below 2 cents per KwH!

Endlessly sustainable thorium power, means we need neither the current crop of renewables or prehistoric coal and gas!

What we do need, however, are the official barriers that condemn thousands of cancer suffers from untimely and premature deaths, removed ASAP. Along with the BS reasons for their(official) prohibition!

Because MSR's can be mass produced, we should at least have one in every major hospital, to one, provide all the power needed as well as supply several important medical isotopes.
Alan B.

Good lord!

Alan still believes in a "catastrophic tipping point".

I had no idea that there was anyone still believing that bit of garbage.

Talk about wishful thinking.

Fertile thorium. with a half-life longer than the estimated life of the universe means, we can never run out of this abundant, easily recovered stuff!

Simply put, I could step outside my door or Taswegian's door or ttbn's door and fill a cubic metre box, with dirt. And from that dirt, recover around 8 grams of thorium.

8 grams of thorium, costing around $100.00 to both recover and refine would power my house and car for the next 100 years and that's just an Oxford scholar a year.

Thorium is the most energy dense material n the planet! In fact, you'd be forgiven for believing, the only thing denser, were the minds of our coal-fired conservative pollies?

Look, one unit of thorium contains as much dispatchable power as on million hydrocarbon units.

And an MSR (Molten Salt Reactor) will produce endlessly reliable, extremely affordable, walk away safe, dispatchable power, whether the sun shines, the wind blows or the rains fall!

[ I'm convinced molten reactors, MRS) with or without salt would be none too successful? Tas.]

Moreover, prices below 2 cents per KwH. Will save our aluminium smelting industries, steel smelting and massively grow our manufacturing base!

Furthermore, these things could be used as waste burners for hire? That could well mean our dispatchable industrial power could be provided free!?

Our pollies just need to grow a brain and a spine to sit it on!?

Preferably well before we became a Chinese possession or so dependant on them, to effectively, make that our virtual reality!
Alan B.

Hasbeen:

The paleontological record informs us we have crossed this 2-degree tipping point before! And the consequence? Nearly all life on planet earth at that time was very nearly annihilated!

Moreover, 2C is enough additional ambient heat to start to melt the permafrost and tundra, releasing millions of tons of formerly frozen methane, which then provide a higher dense heat-trapping blanket that taps more radiant heat as occurred around ninety million years ago, following unprecedented volcanic activity.

And the previously frozen permafrost now melts every summer!

I'd understand your bile if there was any economic risk whatsoever, to decarbing our economy with MSR thorium.

But given its promise to resuscitate and revitalize our manufacturing base and indeed, virtually drought-proof this wide brown land. I just don't understand your repeated and mindless critique!

Don't forget to take your pills!

Perhaps, with your mind right?

Even someone as patently moribund as you? Might actually understand, there's a tipping point and we're approaching it! No question!

The paleological record does not lie!
Alan B.

The result Alan was, bloody great dinosaurs the largest land based life form the planet has ever produced or supported, & the flora that fed them.

I don't know where you get all this stuff, but it sure aint science.

Alan B

"The paleontological record informs us we have crossed this 2-degree tipping point before! And the consequence? Nearly all life on planet earth at that time was very nearly annihilated!"

What are you referring to? What part of the paleontological record? The two degree point activists keep on talking about is one degree from now and, sorry, that's not going to extinguish life. Temperatures have been much higher than this without anything much happening. So what are you talking about?

Alan, as you may or may not know my background is engineering, and my main job is creating/designing new products and producing pre-production proto-types.
Even though, unlike you, I know nothing about this thorium or salt technology you speak of, I am curious.
How much would it cost and how long would it take to make a 'bench top' working model of this thing you speak of.
I am interested in knowing more.
My interest is mainly in the creation of three dimensional mediums,
ie; in the physical form, rather than the technical, or non-dimensional. By building something we learn all there is to know.
Just writing about it only gives us a 'taste' of it.

ATRAV: Suggested reading.

#1/ Super fuel, subtitled green energy by prize-winning, science writer/investigative journalist Richard Martin.

#2/ Thorium, cheaper than coal by ivy league Professor (ret) economist Robert Hargreaves.

Or, listen to a short summation or encapsulation of both or either, on Utube and google tech talks.

Or just get on U tube and listen to several pro-thorium speakers one of which is engineer Jam Petersen, another former NASA scientist and nuclear technologist Kirk Sorensen.

Or You could ape old Hasbeen and simply not look? Constantly question established evidence?

Kirk Saved copious notes and a small stockpile of U233, from the successful thorium reactor trial at Oak Ridge, Tenessee.

Alvin Weinberg. The patent holder of the first operational nuclear reactor was not a nuclear scientist, but rather an industrial chemist. And was troubled by the extreme pressure inside conventional solid fuel reactors, was placed in charge. And oversaw most of two decades of accident and incident free research.

Albeit, removed by the establishment for his advocacy for peaceful purpose, non-weaponised nuclear power with marvellous medical spinoffs.

And forbidden by a relatively recent act of Congress to remove the possibility of the ruination of fossil fuel or big nuclear? DT would be proud?

Shutdown by that paragon of honesty personified virtue, President Nixon (not unlike DT) in the seventies. By withdrawing their extremely modest funding, then allocating it to a subsequently failed liquid metal nuclear project in his home state of California?

Oak Ridge constantly critiqued for not producing an erg of electrical energy. Albeit, shut down just as they were about to!

Our own conventional solid fueled reactor at Lucas Heights, has yet to light a single light bulb?
Alan B.