Apologies and correction: My first post, should be read as, less than 2 cents per Kwh. Rather than cents per KwH.
Alan B

"While developing a nuclear program we need holding and bridging strategies to limit emissions. Efficiency is probably the lowest cost strategy, and an increased use of gas, which emits half as much CO2 as coal, another."

Efficiency and conversion to gas would do nothing towards reducing emissions to a level significantly mitigating AGW (i.e. even if the whole world did it). Also, gas is the bridging path towards the green fantasy of 100% renewables plus storage, so should be discouraged on this basis alone.

The current coal-generation of electricity should be maintained until nuclear reactors (eg, SMRs are imminent)directly supplant coal burning. Finkel meekly accepted the nuclear moratorium without leading the community towards questioning it, and/or, he's a green fantasist. He has severely failed us as Chief-Scientist.

It is amazing that some people are still promoting solar and wind as
being the cheapest energy.
As Graham mentioned the backup costs are denied by these strange people.
There is a study that blows away the prospect of batteries.

http://euanmearns.com/grid-scale-storage-of-renewable-energy-the-impossible-dream/

That article shows the scale of the problem. The UK of course has
nuclear power as part of its backup yet it still would need 14,000
batteries the size of Sth Australia's.

The other brainless possibility offered by the dreamers is to spread
the solar and wind around the whole nation and link it with a high
capacity grid that goes everywhere.
As has been demonstrated Sth Aus is too small to enable such a weather
differential system to be workable.
Some researchers have theorised about how big a country would have to
be to be viable. No one has modeled such a project yet.
The data, weather and power consumption is all available.
The article I read thought that large countries might need 12 times
the maximum demand in generating capacity plus the high capacity grid.
The article thought that might be an educated guess.
I wish I could remember where I read it.
One point my limited maths indicates that the capacity needed would
vary in inverse proportion to the country size, probably exponentially.

I reckon that would make a good PHD project

Extracting pure methane from coal with flameless waste nuclear heat, then running it through a water bath then activated carbon, enables energy to be pushed where it's needed and used at the premises, without being exposed to the elements, create a visual eyesore as transmission lines, or lose much in transmission or distribution.

Or create attendant electromagnetic fields that could create health risks. Plus reduce the CO2 produced by as much as 40%. Wherever this pure gas is used in transport or elsewhere as CNG.

Few if any internal combustion engines including diesel can't be re-tuned to run on it. And for diesel, minus particulates or smoke?

And or, turned into jet fuel or a diesel alternative, with the help of an old catalytic conversion process.

Given we did that, pocket the 26+ annual billions we currently spend on fully imported transport fuels.

The carbon retained in the process could be used as the basis of a super lucrative, manmade graphene industry?

Or used with recycled plastic/glass etc to bituminize roads, plus 101 other potential uses?

Currently foregone by just turning this valuable carbon into ash. When we could be creating thousands of new jobs, incomes and new tax flow, as we embrace the 21st century.

One of which would be medical tourism cancer sufferers came here in their new thousands to get their bismuth 213!

Locating the treatment centres where there's current high unemployment would create prospects for depressed regions and attendant service industries. And don't get me started on deionisation dialysis desalination and its promise!

Time to get off the fence, stop prevaricating and or put Australians and the NATIONAL interest first.

Cryovaced and irradiated fresh SAFE halal meat/food, that'll massively extend the shelf life! Whole new chapter!
Alan B.

Yet again Graham displays his ignorance. This time his main shortcoming seems to be his failure to recognise the cost of renewables is very location dependent. Some locations are much sunnier than others; some locations are much windier than others. And sites are limited, so it's much easier to serve a low demand with renewables than a high demand. Thus you wouldn't be able to reliably tell from what China does how viable renewables are in Australia even if the hadn't (for political reasons) built more coal fired power stations than they needed.

Despite this, and despite the parts of China with high demand being a lot less sunny than Australia, China is investing heavily in solar panels. Initially they concentrated on solar water heaters as PV was expensive, but now they're installing a lot of PV too.

Graham does make a good point on the technological development of batteries, but rather spoils it with a ridiculous claim about the second law of thermodynamics which seems to indicate a complete lack of understanding of their operation.

//Extracting pure methane from coal with flameless waste nuclear heat, then running it through a water bath then activated carbon, enables energy to be pushed where it's needed and used at the premises, without being exposed to the elements, create a visual eyesore as transmission lines, or lose much in transmission or distribution.//

Well, electrification was called "the most important engineering achievement of the 20th century" by the National Academy of Engineering. But yeah, sure, let's wind the clock back to the days of the gas lamp. Things were better back in the old days before that punk Westinghouse fouled it all up. [sarcasm]

I do admire the way you keep coming up with these crackpot ideas that, while perhaps technically possible, are invariably impractical, inefficient, uneconomic, prohibitively expensive and/or just plain ludicrous. That's a real skill you've got there, although I can't imagine in what situation it might ever prove useful. Here's a video I think you'll like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEdsQmjLMKs

That Sörgel fella wasn't a relative of yours by any chance?