Have to agree that things are likely to go from bad to worse. We're talking ourselves into looming energy shortages. With 50C heatwaves and millions of electric cars needing a charge there will be days when fickle sources of energy just won't be enough. Meanwhile emissions both in Australia and globally keep rising despite what was hoped to be a decline.

Germany spends billions on renewables subsidies yet seems hooked on coal. In theory their remaining nukes are supposed to shut by 2022 and coal by 2038. In practice that will mean relying on Russian gas. Here in Oz we've had a renewable energy target since 2001 or nearly two decades yet we just had rolling blackouts. The answer must be hamsters on treadmills for politically acceptable power generation.

A well-argued case against current nuclear power/solid fuel models. Jim is a well know anti-nuclear campaigner. Who cherry picks his facts and science to support a very obvious confirmation bias!?

And adroitly avoids discussing some of the reasons for the lack of success of MSR thorium! The most obvious being a prohibition by the US government on thorium R+D.

Even so, we have a number of examples where thorium has been trialled. The most successful being The MSR thorium in Oak Ridge Tenessee. Over fifty years ago.

You'd think alleged environmentalists like Jim would get that MSR thorium is potentially the very best most affordable, reliable dispatchable endlessly sustainable, carbon-free, green energy that even impoverished third world countries, around two-thirds of the world's population can also afford.

Without question, they cannot afford Jim's preferred "renewables". Therefore, will continue to burn coal and their trees regardless of the endless advocation of Jim and his particular cohort that they simply give up cooking, eating and heating their humble hovels.

They might if Jim and his extremely vociferous minority would demonstrate with action how that ought to be done!

Over two-thirds of the homes on the planet are places where there is no washing machine. Jim should take out six months trying that on for size along with his anti-nuclear buddies!

If only to actually finally get their moribund minds to focus on the real problems of climate change and how to best address it with practical pragmatism!
TBC Alan B.

Two-thirds of the homes on the planet are places where there is no washing machine! Consequently, WOMEN spend half their lives from dawn to dusk washing the families clothes by hand and usually includes teenagers, some of who also hand carry/haul up by hand, all the family's water.

Obviously although not apparent to Jim and his endlessly blind vociferous anti-nuclear cohort, this means that these female populations are deprived of any meaningful semblance of an education and subsequently improved prospects/financial outcomes.

Demonstrably the only viable means to put a real brake on disastrous population growth!

Even so, Jim and his cohort will demand from the manifestly worse off, control they're are themselves completely incapable of!?

He doesn't like Nuclear reactors and nuclear power, regardless of improvement and a safety record vastly superior to coal.

Moreover, as usual, adroitly avoids acknowledging that only MSR has a capacity to burn up this planet's stockpile of nuclear waste and in comparative safety given the normal atmospheric pressure these reactors operate in. And the very reason why MSR thorium is walk away safe!

As for the radiation? Safely contained by the obligatory, but also unpressurised, water jacket! And concrete box. A traditional 350 MW enriched uranium solid fuelled reactor will require over a thirty-year operational life 2551 tons of solid fuel. And produce from that over 2550 tons of highly toxic nuclear waste with a half-life of thousands of years!

Whereas an MSR thorium, say a FUJI 350 MSR adapted to use fluoride salt instead of sodium, will require just one ton of thorium over the same period and create less than 1% of far less toxic waste, with a projected half-life of just 300 years. And eminently suitable as long life space batteries.

Thorium is the most energy dense material on the planet and so abundant, we can never run out of it and promises everything fusion promised but could never deliver. And only prevent by PROHIBITION and the antinuclear evocation of Jim and his extremely vociferous cohort with their ignorance personified, political machinations!? And only explainable, if protecting commercial interests!?
Alan B.

Quote, "Renewables accounted for 26.5 percent of global electricity generation in 2017".

Well Well, I suppose you are telling us they account for 26.5% of installed capacity. That sure shoots your argument down, when they account for less than 2% of the actually delivered power.

Obviously a very blind alley these renewables. About as useful as tits on a bull, except for the rip off merchants who profit from the rip off.

New energy storage technology such at that using molten silicon being successfully developed by Adelaide company 1414D will help to drive the nuclear energy generators into oblivion, but in the meantime we are going to wear power blackouts every time we have a hot day.

David

Don't worry folks, in a few years the waning spotless sun & the increasing cold will prove that CO2 has very little effect on the weather, as you would expect from a very minor trace gas.

Of course some of the gravy train riders will then switch back & blame it for the global cooling, as they tried in the 70s.

We can then of course ignore these clowns, & go back to our natural advantage, generating our power from our abundant cheap coal.