Raycom,
The reverse is the case - see http://reneweconomy.com.au/csiro-aemo-study-says-wind-solar-and-storage-clearly-cheaper-than-coal-45724/

If you want to read the study itself, that's at http://www.csiro.au/~/media/News-releases/2018/Annual-update-finds-renewables-are-cheapest-new-build-power/GenCost2018.pdf

Dear Pete,

Wishing You and Yours a magical Christmas.
Enjoy every moment. And a Peaceful, Healthy,
and Happy New Year 2019!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2019!

Raycom, sorry mate, but Adian is right. Renewables are cheaper than coal, however, MSR thorium is vastly cheaper and no, not new technology but trialled between the fifties and the seventies, culminating in a four or five-year trial, without accident or incident. Other than a sampling mechanical failure, thanks to inadequate cables on sampling buckets. Which were replaced with more robust stainless steel?

In his book, thorium cheaper than coal, ivy league professor, economist Robert Hargraves estimates thorium fired power could retail from the private sector for less than 2 cents per KwH.

Compare a 350 MW light water reactor with an operational life of 30 years and a similar capacity MSR thorium. The FUGI 350?

The conventional reactor will require 2551 tons of enriched uranium over its operational lifetime. And burn fuel as rare as platinum. And from that 2551 tons of enriched and expensive fuel, create at least 2550 tons of highly toxic nuclear waste.

Conversely, The MSR thorium (extrapolated from Oak Ridge) will burn just one ton of fuel during the same period in a walk away safe reactor, and create during the same time frame, less than 1% waste of far less toxic material eminently suitable for long life space batteries.

Thorium is at least four times more abundant than thorium and is the most energy dense material on the planet!

Moreover, with a half-life of 15 billion years, longer than the expected life of the universe. Something we can never ever run out of!
Alan B.

A lot of cloud-dwelling dreamers, will tell us our future energy will be hydrogen? Maybe, but at what cost?

I mean the cheapest way to create hydrogen is by the catalytic cracking of the water molecule and yes the heat generated in a truly massive solar thermal plant could supply that raw heat. And the water molecule cracking plant, just as massive, if we are to produce enough for all household use and most transport options.

The build cost equally massive and enough one could suggest sufficient for half a dozen new, new coal, coal-fired power plants.

A simpler solution would cook coal to release the methane content and use that instead. And delivered to the households industry and gas stations of Australia via a national gas grid, built by the public purse and retained by it to limit price gouging profiteering!

Most household and industrial use would be via methane consuming ceramic fuel cells and available without any significant transmission loss from the coal facility and the users. Given the reaction in the cell is chemical rather than combustion, the exhaust product, mostly pristine water vapour.

Electrification and batteries would limit the transport options that relied exclusively on compressed methane gas

Even there the CO2 emissions would be reduced by as much as 40% The refuelling stops more frequent and no bad thing for long haul, heavy road traffic.
Alan B.

Alan B wrote: "Thorium is at least four times more abundant than thorium"

That may be true but then again thorium is 4 times more abundant again.

Alan B wrote: "a walk away safe reactor"

"After shutdown [of the Oak Ridge MSR reactor] , the salt was believed to be in long-term safe storage. At low temperatures, radiolysis can free fluorine from the salt. As a countermeasure, the salt was annually reheated to about 150 °C until 1989. But beginning in the mid-1980s, there was concern that radioactivity was migrating through the system. Sampling in 1994 revealed concentrations of uranium that created a potential for a nuclear criticality accident, as well as a potentially dangerous build-up of fluorine gas — the environment above the solidified salt was approximately one atmosphere of fluorine. The ensuing decontamination and decommissioning project was called "the most technically challenging" activity assigned to Bechtel Jacobs under its environmental management contract with the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge Operations organization. In 2003, the MSRE cleanup project was estimated at about $130 million, with decommissioning expected to be completed in 2009. Removal of uranium from the salt was finally complete in March 2008, however still leaving the salt with the fission products in the tanks."

Walk away safe?....more like run away safe.

Thanks for that Mhaze, and the second thorium should be read as uranium! Not as corrected by the auto correct, to thorium. I take it you're not critiquing me for being partially sighted!?

You might have seen I'm not averse to coal-fired power, just our means of distributing it!

If it is cooked to extract pure methane and that methane distributed via a publicly owned and operated Gas pipeline grid, then the normal transmission and distribution losses would be almost entirely eliminated. The resulting coke still useful for several industrial applications, Blacklamp for the tyre industry and a possible source of manmade graphene?

Installing methane consuming ceramic fuel cells to convert this lighter than air, gas would eliminate the noisy diesels and double the energy coefficient which at 80% for the latter combination 4 times better than conventional coal-fired power.

And possibly also stretch our cal fired reserves from an estimated 700 years to 2800, and power prices a quarter of current examples. and indeed far-far lower than the best most efficient renewable.

Methane is also a reductant and therefore act to prevent internal oxidation in the pipeline. Maintenance could be contracted to specialist competing employee-owned co-ops to contain costs.

And all doable, but, inferior in my view to MSR thorium, given this would likely be the heat source used to cook coal and extract the methane, given the cost and impracticality of solar thermal to provide 24/7 heat/around the clock production?

Merry Christmass to one and all.
Alan B.