posts over the years that suggest Australia should lead the way in modular/Thorium Research and then lead the way in operating modular/Thorium reactors.
plantagenet,
That'd be great but that's not in the Australian Psyche anymore.
There's a very, very slight chance this could possibly be achieved if we can keep Labor out of Govt for the next few terms ! If only the present Govt could reintroduce education to enhance the natural aptitude of smart young people instead of the insidious dumbing-down of recent decades then yes, good things could be achieved again !
We really need to put a stop to the economic & social sabotage by the progressives to halt regression.

With a burgeoning nuclear energy industry and the best place in the world to store it in South Australia, how could a weak politician or two turn down applications from friends and allies to share our great facility with them?

In a fierce debate a couple of years ago on whether we should be the nuclear dump for the world the infantile premier of SA was salivating over streets paved with gold as the nuclear powers pressed billions of dollars in storage fees on him.

A citizen's committee, convened to act as a conduit to the public and to be the cheering squad was regaled with golden promises of riches untold, promises that upon examination were empty and or deceptive.

The nuclear industry invested substantially in this exercise. Its motives were to cajole an innocent into solving their problems for them. Their tactics were dishonest, the "balanced" debate of pros and cons was so obviously desperate to sell the idea that the narrative became embarrassingly biased. Questioning of "experts" was discouraged and allocated too brief a time while lectures were roughly 5 pro to 1 con. Lecturers against the proposal were replaced by presentations in favour.

The committee was not guiled by the bias and gave the proposal a big raspberry.

Beware the nuclear industry representatives bearing wonderfull promises of a Golden Age for everyone if Australia will only be a responsible nuclear citizen. The industry made much of an approaching crisis. That crisis must surely be on the boil today. How desperate are they now? Experience of that proposal should teach us that the nuclear industry will use any subversive tactic, any deception, any blandishment to sell its waste problem to someone else. The risk to our precious artesian assets is too great. The risk of a Red Centre that one day glows in the dark is also too great. The whole world must face this problem and the creators of the waste made to provide the solution that rids us of this curse.

Rockets carrying payloads of waste fired into the sun might be one approach to investigate.

Once again, with the crisis of nuclear waste at a desperate stage [if we are to believe the industry a couple of years back] pressure groups and agendum-pushers have emerged in aggressive new guise, hurling abuse at the unconvinced and waffling on with a jargon comprised of arcane abbreviations, chemical formulae and rarified International System of Units in a way that implies that if you don't understand the narrative then you're probably too stupid to understand what the issue is all about anyway.

Concentrated nuclear irradiation in very brief doses might be considered optimal in cancer treatments. Can anyone advise at what levels of radiation does constant exposure become inimical to good health? Is such level of radiation to be encountered in a collapsed or exploded thorium reactor?

Does this reactor contain molten salt when in operation? If so or not, is it table salt, NaCl? Sea salt? Or another kind of chemical salt? How is the salt made liquid if it's not dissolved in something?

It might appear a stupid question but it's not to a lot of interested people: We are advised that radiation can be harmless, even beneficial yet a layman can legitimately ask, based on his own perceptions and experience and without being belittled: Radiation from a bomb dropped on Hiroshima was far from harmless, so how is today's radiation different? Please be as detailed, clear and simple as the subject allows so a layman [and woman] might understand.

If you want to placate some of the hostility to nuclear power, you might indulge lay suspicions by telling the public, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. At my age, I've had numerous encounters with hucksters who hide inconvenient truths and the listener is not erudite enough to know he is being deceived. VESTED INTERESTS MUST ALWAYS BE DISTRUSTED.

The citizens' committee encountered it a few years ago but was not as gullible as the organisers had hoped. The industry has a lot to live down because of that absence of honesty and integrity.

Hi Luciferase

I'd be happy to respond if you:

A. Expanded your arguments

B. revealed your acronyms eg. "FFS"?

and

C. Removed such straw men as "Russian gas". Noting Russia regularly wedges Germany from broader NATO defence policy by threatening to turn-off Germany's gas supply during the bitter German winter.

Cheers

Pete

Hi individual

Re your "Friday, 21 June 2019 8:38:12 PM" comment.

1. Your idea of using an old nuclear aircraft carrier [eg. say tethered in Sydney Harbour] as a mobile power station is not a bad idea...in principle.

But even reactors on aircraft carriers wear out. A real life old nuclear carrier is USS Enterprise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(CVN-65) whose naval operational life was 1961 to 2012. As the world's first nuclear carrier she was a very large, extremely expensive experiment.

Enterprise's "eight" reactors quickly became obsolete, needed frequent Uranium refueling, and were always extremely expensive to maintain. After 50 years her reactors wore out and modern reactors (eg. in the Nimitz class) were vastly more efficient and cheaper to maintain.

Being the longest serving nuclear warship in history USS Enterprise was decommissioned (reactors and all) after 2012.

______________________________________

2. BUT "Let's build nuclear power stations" may be a good approach. Not from second hand nuclear ships or subs but built-for-purpose floating power stations.

Floating power stations may eventually prove an efficient solution in very isolated environments eg. Arctic and Antarctic

RUSSIA HAS ACTUALLY BUILT A FLOATING NUCLEAR POWER STATION
the "Akademik Lomonosov". See it being towed off on 28 April 2018 at http://youtu.be/pgGPDuTWjuo

Akademik Lomonosov is capable of generating 70 MW of electricity or 300 MW of heat. Heat is particularly important in Akademik Lomonosov's intended home in the Arctic port town of Pevek in Russia's Far East.

More see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power_station

BUT there are many security problems of having mobile nuclear reactors that float in the sea eg:

- Natural (Tsunamis, storms/cyclones, or being crushed by sea ice etc)

and

- man-made (more vulnerable than land reactors to terrorism, employee sabotage or naval missile sinking, or even piracy etc.)

Regards

Pete

Well, if we keep worrying what some terrorists may do than we might as well crawl back into caves.
Why not simply deal with the baddies as they should be dealt with full stop !
The only reason the baddies keep getting up is because of the morons in authority & their do-gooder supporters who foster the criminal elements..
Here in Australia we could have power stations being guarded by National Service.