Yes Pete, and some commercial deposits of lithium and some of the purest graphene in the world not far from Sydney. Lithium/rare earth found by using side-looking radar and thorium as the indicator mineral

Recent advances in capacitor technology, produce a power storage system that can be fully recharged in thirty seconds. And with a top range of a claimed 800 klicks.

As for distance? What prevents us from placing modest 350 MW thorium reactors around 400 klicks apart on all the routes you've identified?

Or running very fast VLF trains between those destinations at supersonic speeds that reduce any and all to less than an hour?

And leave (slowpoke pedestrian) air travel to international offshore destinations.

I remember reading as a boy where English boffins had cracked antigrav.

The Chinese are still making progress on thorium miniaturisation.

With that cracked and powering autonomous cars or VLT trains or whatever? No longer constrained by the tyranny of distance or Hasbeen's fond memories or fossil fuel cars or dividend stream? Able to travel wherever we like, however we like!

VLT Could be powered by a continuous mid rail, rail gun? With a potential speed limit just south of light speed! And employed on carriers and airfields to assist take-offs? Just supersonic for now!

Imagine, an inboard thorium power source would mean we'd be able to travel/circumnavigate the Australian continent without a single fuel stop!? Include antigrav and electric propulsion and able to travel anywhere, with official permission of course?

What's missing is proactive Leaders replaced here by reactive, fifty years behind, followers,
Alan B.

The world is said to have over a billion internal combustion engines for both hedonistic tasks like holidays and essential tasks like ploughing the soil. I'd say the threat of EVs is overblown. In Australia you can buy a new petrol compact car for $18k but the cheapest EV was $44k last time I looked. You could buy a lot of petrol with the price difference. Moreover Australia struggles to keep the lights on at times let alone charge millions of EVs.

I think it will be a rocky transition to reduced oil transport. The key will be affordability not carbon emissions. Even as oil runs out the price may be modest (<$100/bbl) since the economy will have slowed. As we drive and fly less we'll wonder what happened to economic growth.

Ateday, overpopulation is not a problem.

At most the population may grow to around 11 billion, however we have left the realm of exponential population growth and are now in the linear stage. If you grasp linear growth in this sense you will realise populations cannot continue to grow beyond a certain point.

As for EV’s taking over, not in my lifetime in Australia if our current crop of hubristic politicians are anything to go by and if our even sillier green energy targets are pushed down our throats. There clearly won’t be enough power.

Australia needs an energy revolution and wind and solar just won’t do it.

Hear, hear and well said, Galen.

Last time I looked Highway capable affordable electric cars, with reasonable commute range came in at less than 7,000 AUD. (Chinese) Only government policy to protect local manufacture!? Make them necessarily dearer than that?

Yes, some cars with a bigger range and astronomical top speed were way dearer than that.

But for most of us, just getting to work, doing the shopping or visiting a nearby health professional is all we need a car for. I'd as soon drive to the nearest station if I need to travel interstate.

You've nailed it! The thing missed by the gormless pollies is affordable, reliable, dispatchable, 24/7, carbon-free power.

That is not wind or solar. Even with battery back up, given that combination removes the universal qualification of affordability and a healthy, robust, energy-reliant, manufacturing sector.

Only addressed by thinking outside the box and with that, nuclear energy! Not just any nuclear energy nor current models, but rather, walk away safe MSR and thorium.

Thorium is the most energy dense material in the world and so abundant, we can never run out of it!

Finally, MSR technology can be used to burn up all the world's stockpile of nuclear waste. And if we do it here now! Be paid annual billions for providing the service and very safely removing this highly toxic threat forever!

Leaving in its place a product with a half-life of 300 years and eminently suitable as long life space batteries.

Gormless greens waffle on about radiation, not understanding that there are three types. Gamma, Beta and Alpha. And all three used in medicine. Gamma in X rays, Beta and Alpha in conventional ontological radioisotope medicine!

Bismuth 213 is an Alpha partial isotope particle that's attached to an antibody that then exclusively targets some very nasty death sentence cancers and the most affordable source comes via MSR thorium!
Alan B.

Oh for God's sake...another claim that Peak Oil is just around the corner.

They've been predicting this for three decades and each time they're wrong, they just come out with more predictions. Its no better and just as believable as the "The End is Nigh" crowd.

Peak Oil fetishism only came about because the previous regular assertions that we'd run out of oil became untenable even for the most numerically challenged advocate. So those who just hope that oil will disappear invented a new path to their utopia.

It might be that peak oil demand will arrive in the next decade or three. But that will only be the case if the alternatives are better than oil. So why fret?

Meanwhile, EV owners all over North America have been caught out and are loudly complaining that their batteries are draining way too quickly and their range has been significantly reduced, sometimes by half, due to the extreme cold events currently occurring . Let's see how popular EVs are after someone dies because their car ran out of power in the middle of an extreme cold event.

Yes, Mhaze, Batteries are the weak link in EV's.

However, only a question of time before EV's become powered by thorium and won't run out of juice in the owner's lifetime, nor internal heating/cooling.

That said, there are some new batteries in development that double the range of the current crop of EV's? And would seem to be a combination of large storage capacitors that can be recharged in thirty seconds.

Finally, cold snaps that completely drain the battery not a regular occurrence in North America and even less likely here in oz, where most of our refined fuel is fully imported and costing a motza! 26 billion + per.

Imagine being able to put that 26 annual billions to work somewhere else? Cooperative endeavour perhaps and then allow the normal multiplier effect of cooperative capitalism to make one dollar do the work of seven or more!
Alan B.