And here we have yet another case of GIGO!

In this case the Garbage In is that, in Geoff's words: "Importantly, it assumes extra costs from stop-start activity roughly offset fuel input cost savings from such intermittency."

That might be a credible scenario if the baseload plants were treated as peakload plants, but that's not what would happen in reality. Instead they'd be on with high (though not always full) output for days at a time, and off for weeks at a time.

This completely invalidates the basic picture, despite Geoff's unsupported assertion to the contrary.

We have to get past the risible rubbish of sovereign risk. In any free market economy, investors live or die by their own choices and the government imposed rules and regulations that either allow the best safest cleanest most affordable option to at least have a place at the table And stand or fall on merit!

If that were truly the case and the Australian consumer, not a captive market held hostage by compliant pollies?

Who does their master's bidding? Instead of those who elected them to represent their best interests?

We would surely have a fledgeling nuclear industry right here right now!

NOT JUST ANY NUCLEAR INDUSTRY BUT MSR THORIUM! For the unbeatable power price, it could deliver, especially if rolled as funded and facilitated employee co-ops.

Only prevented by the ideological imperatives on both sides of the aisle!?

And or their foreign masters?U233 is made exclusively from thorium? And U233 is the single source of officially withheld, miracle cancer cure, bismuth 213! And has a proven record of clearing tumours in minutes!

Even in death sentence stage 4 cancers!

Even in clinical trials of ovarian cancer in Europe in 2006 (google scholar) And because it's officially denied, at one thinks the behest of the abysmally ignorant, antinuclear brigade.

Thousands have had virtual death sentences to endure along with a host of associated conditions, one wouldn't wish on their worst enemy!

How many more need to die to early or in vain, and or be offered an armful of Nembutal as their only available, cost-effective remedy, while pollies concentrate on mindless point scoring and saving their own bacon!?

Every objection by the famously ignorant, antinuclear brigade is more than rebuked by the established facts and the proven science.

WE'VE BEEN ABLE TO MAKE BISMUTH 213 FOR OVER HALF A CENTURY!

Look, this is the simple undeniable truth, THORIUM>U233> BISMUTH 213.

HOW MANY MORE NEED TO DIE, BEFORE TOO MANY HAVE DIED, SOMETIMES IN A DEATH YOU WOULDN'T TOLERATE FOR A STRAY MONGREL!
Alan B.

I've seen credible estimates for coal-fired (private enterprise) power for as little as 3 cents per KwH. But in the U.S. of A. and using ROM coal?

Or an averaged price that's part coal, gas and nuclear, of 6 cents. Nuclear on its own, 12 cents?

And from a 350MW reactor needing during its lifetime to burn 2551 Tons of expensive, enriched fuel.

Which is only partly consumed by the waste creating technology (1%-) to leave 2550 tons of highly toxic partly spent fuel to dispose of, or reprocess in a breeder reactor.

Now extrapolating from Oak Ridge's fuel consumption it's reasonable to assume for the thirty-year life of a thorium burning UNPRESSURIZED MSR.

Only one ton of fuel will be required in a 350 MW thorium MSR, leaving around 1% as unburnt and far less toxic waste, that's eminently suitable as long life space batteries!

Reactor build costs, significantly lower and able to be mass produced and factory-built. For a fraction of the cost of either coal or twice as expensive, traditional nuclear.

Given the massively lower build costs and astronomically lower fuel and running costs!

It's easy to see why Economist Professor Robert Hargreaves estimates, that a private enterprise company, could provide, carbon-free thorium fired power for less than 2 cents per KwH.

Or for free if used as paid to burn, waste burners!

Yet we here argue the pros and con,s as if the only two games in town were either coal or renewables!

Almost as if this were planet ignorance personified, where naught else exists or is ALLOWED!

WHY IS THAT!? AND WTF'S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!? CAT GOT YOUR BRAIN!?
Alan B.

Peak load? What? The sort we get during an enduring heat wave that sees almost every air conditioner in the land turned on and operating for days at maximum capacity? When coal-fired power plants, still cannot get past a 20% energy coefficient?

Or when aging boilers succumb to internal corrosion and need to be replaced? And when the shutdown of one single unit causes an automatic overload that trips out whole suburbs and cities as transformers react, by burning out?

This debate can go around and around, with promises of future cheaper renewables able to match or beat coal.

Even as the cost of raw materials, shipping and wage inflation as high as an annual 30% impacts on the price and profit curve!

All we need, say the renewable enthusiasts, is enough battery storage; and the ensuing prohibitive cost that forces our remaining manufacturing offshore! Couldn't have implemented planned de-industrialisation any better!

And so it goes, up goes power prices and pollution! With no end in sight! As curable cancer victims keep adding to the death toll by the entrenched application of idiotic ideological imperatives.

And as the caring "doctor" advocates for death sentence cancers to be treated with a lethal dose of Nembutal! As an alternative to miracle cure radio alpha particle isotope, bismuth 213.

Why? Because vested interest (the renewables) assisted by current power prices would all be ruined by the accompanying much lower, thorium MSR, unsubsidized power prices! That's why!

We could bring down the crippling cost of power as an alternative to, economy-wrecking tax reductions and the accompanying wealth concentration?

But that would require honesty, inherent integrity, plus pragmatic bipartisan policies!
Alan B.

"This completely invalidates the basic picture, despite Geoff's unsupported assertion to the contrary."

So, for unpredictable periods of "weeks at a time" FF generators can leave plant and personel idle while remaining on call for unpredictable periods of "days at a time", and such inefficiency costs nothing? How is a private business case built around such an uncertain scenario that won't lead to high spot prices? Of course, socialists will make this a public enterprise and hide the true cost within the unworkable boondoggle the pursuit of renewables is, together its already hidden extreme of publicly subsidized support.

It's working so beautifully in Germany, on both cost and emissions, isn't it just? Renewables enthusiasts won't let reality get in the way of a good dream. GIGO indeed!

Those claiming intermittency as a reason to oppose solar ought update their knowledge about concentrated solar ...

https://www.cleanenergycouncil.org.au/technologies/concentrated-solar-thermal.html

intermittency is clearly NOT a factor for all solar