You want fair electricity prices, Jenny? How about 2 cents or less per KwH retail? And from the profit orientated private sector?

No not hydro, we just don't have rivers with enough flow, nor the requisite reliable rainfall.

Why, our combined river flows hardly match that of the Fly river in our nearest northern neighbour PNG!

Thorium is the most energy material on the planet! And four times more abundant than uranium! Common as lead and not more expensive. And given a half life of around 15 billion years, (longer than the expected life of the universe) something we will never run out of!

Easily found with side-looking radar from aerial geophysical surveys.

Carbon free, MSR technology allows operation normal unpressurised operation. And therefore, given design specifics, walk away safe.

An also unpressurised, water jacket prevents nuetron leakage as does surrounding concrete walls, ceiling and floor.

Can be mass produced in purpose created factories, then shipped as shipping container sized, 40 MW reactors to virtually anywhere.

Thorium can be found almost anywhere, possibly in the beach sand of Tuvalu and just one ton of the refined metal, enough to power a 350 MW MSR thorium power plant for thirty years. Say the FUGI 350 MW rejigged for operation with fluoride salt!?

Why, the security guard out front, would cost more than the fuel.

Factory assembly from a single proven and road tested design, very doable. Not too dissimilar from the aerospace industry.

Yes I know, we did not always have planes nor a plane manufacturing industry nor ships plying the world transporting almost everything in shipping containers! Not having them at one time did not prevent us building them and sending them around the world.
Alan B.

I thought that atolls were always very slowly sinking anyway (didn't Darwin write something about that ?), and continually being built up by new deposits of sand.

If atolls WERE experiencing sea-level rise (or land subsidence), this could be partly explained by a growing population, taking more and more ground-water out. But it's a bit confounding for Greenhouse-Effect supporters to find that atolls may be actually growing out of the sea - that sea-levels there may be declining.

A climate-'woke' friend of a friend, from Bunbury, WA, told him that the sea-level at Fremantle had risen almost 3 cm in barely twenty years. My friend here in Adelaide asked him if it had risen around Bunbury. No, came the answer. Could the practice in Perth, of taking out massive amounts of ground-water, have caused the entire Perth region to sink 3 cm in 20 years ?

Of course, maybe - because of climate change - there is increased breakdown of shellfish in the Pacific, and those bits of shells are being ground down at increasing rates and deposited around atolls. Maybe, in fact, increasing area around atolls could actually be a measure of climate change ? Yeah, right.

During the Middle Ages, 'research' consisted of finding whatever fitted one's assertion - and, lo and behold, everything could, eventually. 'Climate science' seems to operate on similar principles.

Good on you, Jennifer.

Cheers,

Joe

I thought that atolls were always very slowly sinking anyway (didn't Darwin write something about that ?), and continually being built up by new deposits of sand.

If atolls WERE experiencing sea-level rise (or land subsidence), this could be partly explained by a growing population, taking more and more ground-water out. But it's a bit confounding for Greenhouse-Effect supporters to find that atolls may be actually growing out of the sea - that sea-levels there may be declining.

A climate-'woke' friend of a friend, from Bunbury, WA, told him that the sea-level at Fremantle had risen almost 3 cm in barely twenty years. My friend here in Adelaide asked him if it had risen around Bunbury. No, came the answer. Could the practice in Perth, of taking out massive amounts of ground-water, have caused the entire Perth region to sink 3 cm in 20 years ?

Of course, maybe - because of climate change - there is increased breakdown of shellfish in the Pacific, and those bits of shells are being ground down at increasing rates and deposited around atolls. Maybe, in fact, increasing area around atolls could actually be a measure of climate change ?

During the Middle Ages, 'research' consisted of finding whatever fitted one's assertion - and, lo and behold, everything could, eventually. 'Climate science' seems to operate on similar principles.

Good on you, Jennifer.

Cheers,

Joe

For a considerable time, I've followed Alan B's enthusiastic propositions for the use of thorium in power generation.
He seems well-informed on the subject yet I suggest that many of us are not.
I have tried to discover facts about thorium by hunting through sources such as Wikipedia but cannot find enough information for me to make a reasonable balanced approach in trying to understand why, if thorium has all the attributes outlined by Alan, it has not been widely accepted and adapted for Australia's power generation.
What I did find, however, were these suggestions which counter thorium's use:

Some experts note possible specific disadvantages of thorium nuclear power.
Breeding in a thermal neutron spectrum is slow and requires extensive reprocessing.
The feasibility of reprocessing is still open.
Significant and expensive testing, analysis and licensing work is first required, requiring business and government support.
In a 2012 report on the use of thorium fuel with existing water-cooled reactors, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists suggested that it would "require too great an investment and provide no clear payoff", and that "from the utilities’ point of view, the only legitimate driver capable of motivating pursuit of thorium is economics"
There is a higher cost of fuel fabrication and reprocessing than in plants using traditional solid fuel rods.
Thorium, when being irradiated for use in reactors, will make uranium-232, which is very dangerous due to the gamma rays it emits.
This irradiation process may be altered slightly by removing protactinium-233. The irradiation would then make uranium-233 in lieu of uranium-232, which can be used in nuclear weapons to make thorium into a dual purpose fuel.

Maybe Alan B can direct us to a range of reading material about this seemingly great gift to our power system.

Ponder, as you say you don't understand how MSR thorium works. And tried to find out by reading ngative articles suppoting current solid state fuel rods, replete with extremely expensive enrichment And tons and tons of waste.

Yes, MSR thorium comes with complementary reprocessing. And the very reason a 350 MW thorium reactor, burns just one ton of fuel during a thirty year operational cycle, which needs to run its full course, if only to prevent totally unecessary decomissioning problems.

MSR essentially burns then reburns its own reprocessed waste! And the very reason why the wate component of a completely depleted thorium is less than 1% and far less toxic than that produced by solid fueled oxide reactors. Which operate necessarily at masssive DANGEROUS pressures of around 150 atmospheres.

Need reactor vessels made out of a single steel molding, seven inches thick and made only in Japan.

The fuel rods must be changed every 18 months and the innermost ones placed on the outer and the whole lot changed every 4.5 years at quite massive cost.

During thirty years of operation, need 3551 tons of fuel and from that produce 2550 tons of highly toxic nuclear waste!

MSR thorium burns one ton, produces less toxic 1% waste product eminently suitable for long life space batteries.

MSR thorium also produces many medical isotopes, the most important of being, miracle cancer cure bismuth 213. And trialled successfully against some death sentence cancers, like stage four ovarian, pancreatic, myleod luekemia and some very nasty brain cancers.

All condemned by the recalcitrant intransigence of our alleged representitives and the now consequential, very expensive production of bismuth, via firing particles at radium with a particle accellerator.

This comment edited and corrected by Grammerly!
Alan B.

Ponder.

MSR thorium not widely used because of our (Goverment imposed) anti nuclear rules and regulations. And by USA prohibition on Quality R+D. Which currently limits the amount of thorium used in research to 6 grams or less.

And because if widely accepted would decimate both the fossil fuel industryand big nuclear! Not to mention the pecuniary interests of big pharma and some coal fired politicians?

However, billions now poured into R+D in China, Brazil,South Africa Indonesia and several others. Just not here!

Suggest you go to google tech talks on utube and listen to Informative Former NASA scientist and nuclear technologist, Kirk Sorensen.

Or prize winning investigative Journalist and science writer Richard Martin, who encapsulates his book, Thorium, Super Fuel, subtitled, green energy.

Or ivy league Professor, Economst Robert Hargreaves, who as he encapsulates his book, claims of power prices as low as one dollar and nine eight cents retail PKWH, for MSR thorium.

Thorium is fertile not fissile, And needs to spend a fortnight in the blanket of a nucler reactor, to become U233. The fissile product that fires up a MSR thorium. Could explain more but for word and ccomment limits. Read or listen to the above three, for more comprehensive informed understanding.

Seasons greetings and salutations.
Alan B.

Dear Loudmouth,

You rambled;

“But it's a bit confounding for Greenhouse-Effect supporters to find that atolls may be actually growing out of the sea - that sea-levels there may be declining.”

Lol. No the confusion seems to lie elsewhere my friend.

The article Jennifer M quotes doesn't say that sea levels are declining but rather;

“The data shows that islands in Tuvalu have been subject to rates of sea level change approximately twice the global average over the past four decades.”

It appears that sand accretion is responsible for increasing land areas on the larger islands while the smaller seem to be eroding and some disappearing altogether.

Hi Steele,

Yes, sea-levels either stay the same, rise or decline. My point was that, if land areas around Pacific atolls are expanding, it may well mean that - relatively speaking - sea-levels are not rising but declining. Shrinking. Getting less. Whatev.

Of course, there are multitudes of factors to take into account. Along the southern coast of Australia, The Australian tectonic plate is slightly rising as the plate tilts under Indonesia and PNG - ergo, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc.) - so along The Australian north coast, sea-levels would seem to be rising as the plate dips below the Pacific plate, while along our beautiful SA coast-line, e.g. the Nullarbor, the land is rising out of the sea, maybe an inch every century - i.e. the sea-level seems to be declining. Whether it is or not may have nothing to do with global warming or greenhouse effect. But it may - how to separate out all the factors at work ?

Similarly, around Sydney Harbour, maybe there is still some eustatic rebound from the last Ice Age in the Blue Mountains and across the SE corner of Australia ? So sea-levels may not SEEM to change along those old harbour stone walls ?

But yes, maybe even at my great age, I know much less about all this than I would like to think ? Thanks for attempting, vainly (given my congenital defects), to put me right :)

Cheers,

Joe

Dear Loudmouth,

No, the fact some of the islands are expanding horizontally doesn't mean sea levels are declining relatively or otherwise.

There are sea level gauges on one of the largest islands. Data from the 70s confirms the satellite data of quite dramatic increases in sea levels in that part of the Pacific.

“Sea level has been measured nearly continuously at Funafuti atoll since November 1977. Monthly water level data is provided by the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) http://www.psmsl.org/. The monthly record is comprised of observations made at two at locations within Funafuti lagoon.”

So unless you are going to contend that the gauges are sinking while the rest of the island is rising and the satellite measurements are totally incorrect you are going to have to accept that the sea level around these islands are indeed rising.

Further by using the assumption that they were falling to attempt to debunk global warming are you now able to bring yourself to acknowledge those rises support the science of global warming, or is that something you are incapable of given your politics?

Steele, you do me wrong. I wasn't saying that sea-levels generally were falling, but merely how complex the whole schemozzle is, that yes, there may be sea-level rise, but other natural processes may be at work to counter that in the case of Tuvalu atolls. And that all manner of tectonic etc. forces may be at work to either reinforce or counter what seems to be changes in sea-level. That sea-level rise or fall may not be a very reliable measure in itself, unless, somewhere (and therefore eventually everywhere) there is massive and undeniable sea-level rise.

For instance, the Bangla Desh tectonic plate is tilting down in the east, i.. Bangla Desh itself, while it is rising in the West (upstream on the Ganges). So the perception is that sea-levels are rising along the Bangla coast.

Another example for unwary observers: the Nile delta is becoming more inundated by the Mediterranean - as the silt which used to be carried down to help maintain the delta is now trapped by the Aswan Dam up-stream. So, again, the perception of sea-level rise.

My bet is that along Scandinavian coast-lines, there is the perception of sea-level fall/decline/drop/getting less of, as the land surfaces slowly rebound after the Ice Age.

God, it's all so complicated :(

Cheers,

Joe

I recall the late great John Daly saying back in the early 1990s that it was absurd to think the coral islands would fall below sea level since they always accumulate enough debris to maintain their height relative to the sea level.

Does anyone recall the story of the iconic tree in the Maldives that was torn down because, due to its fame, pictures from a century ago showed that it had remained the same distance from the shore. European scientists thought it best that such heretical evidence be remove.

Whatever the reasons, the vast majority of these islands aren't and won't sink. Their claims for compensation and assistance are mere rent-seeking. I think even they know that.

As to Ms Marohasy's discussion about the fall of Turnbull, it just shows that yet another PM was struck down by climate fetishism. In the end it comes down to the inability of politicians to deliver unpalatable news. Across the populace, we want three things - cheap power, reliable power and green power. But we can only have, at most, two of those things. No politician is prepared to break the bad news and so they keep searching for the way to resolve the irresolvable. And crash and burn as a result. Its as much the fault of an electorate which is unwilling to hear bad news as it is politicians who are unwilling to come clean.

Ponder this:

"After shutdown [of the Oak Ridge MSR reactor, in the late 1960s] , 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.

There is no such thing as a thorium reactor currently anywhere in the world. The Indians have been work on the science for a decade with no advances. The Chinese also. They say they MIGHT have a demonstration model up by 2025 and a commercial one by 2035, if, IF IF they can overcome the myriad problems they so far encountered.

Newton spent most of his life trying to work out how to turn base metals int gold. This is in the same vein.