Dear Alan B (for black kettle).

Your ideas are well underway with Aboriginal land rights. Aboriginals controll over 20 percent of the Australian land mass now. It's a known they'll ignore it all off into the future, (while it awaits an enterprising Chinese buyer), where it can regenerate to its original state, (less the benifits extracted by noxious weeds). Ho ho.

This is one the few articles I've seen that presents an alternative view to the toxic dialogue in the press. Kudos. I'm not sure where Ross Elliott and Alan B are coming from politically. However hopefully we can see more articles in this vein. I get what Alan B is saying about a low carbon large scale energy source being an important input into Australian production. Perhaps we also need to boost our defensive capabilities by developing our own nuclear weapons given the threat from our neighbours over our territory. Many of the powers looking to send their populations to Australia have nuclear weapons and the change in the relative dominance of the US requires a deterrent. Nuclear power would assist in development of nuclear weaponry.

A low population growth with capable young migrants would be way better for this Nation than great numbers of indisciplined & dark ages mentality indoctrinated Centrelink dependents.

CM: It is possible using some Lucas Heights isotopes to create small tactical nuclear weapons.

Then put them in smart bombs to deliver them by stealth to specific targets and by the dozen in just months.

MSR thorium, on the other hand, was abandoned in the seventies because of the extreme difficulty of weaponising it. And our best possible reason for accepting, building and deploying it. regardless of the sentiments of the coal lobby or the huge political donations, they allegedly give to political parties.

Just as affordable reliable carbon-free energy is critical to our prosperous future is even more important if drought proofing Australia and making life at least tolerable when the next life threating heat wave hits.

MSR thorium and 2 cents per KwH, coupled to deionisation dialysis desalination, would allow us to irrigate our desert heartland. Make the world's cheapest steel with the lowest carbon footprint, with our locally-invented single step method and the world's cheapest safest electricity for the arc furnaces we'd build just for that purpose.

Because at the end of the day self-defence and self-reliance absolutely demands just that and sustained self-sufficiency in our locally-supplied and available fuel supplies. And all possible with MSR thorium.

Moreover, given the actual fuel usage. Will never ever run out of thorium.

We need first and foremost to address climate change and only doable with carbon-free or carbon-neutral energy. And from a self-defence perspective on tap and on demand, whether or not it rains and fills dams or whether the sun shines or the wind blows.

Yes, we could have that with very large scale solar thermal backed with equally massive pumped hydro, but at what cost? And Just how defensible would such necessarily massive projects be, given we'd lose all capacity, once these huge projects were annihilated in the first wave?

Whereas MSR thorium can be quite rapidly mass produced, sited underground as many multiples all serving as multiple backups.
Alan B.

Sounds interesting Alan B.

Until I see detailed evidence of how Alan Tudge proposes to implement the high points of his recent announcement (The Australian Oct 10, 2018) we continue to be left with endless parliamentary, state and federal,references on population and infrastructure and the ever convenient Intergenerational Reports to under pin budget assumptions.
Why we have never linked population to infrastructure in any cohesive national and continuous sense confirms the political inertia that bedevils any potentially fractious policy issue in 'the lucky country'