Australia's electricity sector emissions have been roughly the same each year this century. That's despite the RET, carbon tax and direct action. Ahead we have the prospect of millions of electric cars, more desalination and air conditioning as a matter of public health. Even AEMO who are usually technology neutral seem to be alluding to nuclear in today's statement in The Guardian '“deliberate actions that address the challenges of our ageing coal fleet and which meet the need for secure and dispatchable supply, whilst also taking advantage of Australia’s natural resources”.

Australia should get the small modular reactors when they come on the market. Install them at brownfield sites like Hazelwood and Liddell to use existing facilities. As coal shuts we will be increasingly reliant on expensive gas. Store the used nuclear fuel in the outback and re-use it with later generation reactors.

And, nuclear submarines, please, bought from people who know how to build them, not built in Australia in the cause of job creation.

Logical rational factual argument! Yet as well-argued as it is, there is even a better argument for removing the GOVERNMENT prohibitions on nuclear power which as the irrevocable stats show has a far better safety record and significantly fewer fatalities than any other form of electricity generation! SIGNIFICANTLY FEWER! Have butchers at Alan Goulding's Facebook page to see two short instructive and interesting fact-based videos!

Yes the case for SMR is persuasive but not as persuasive as the one for MSR thorium. And given w go down the MSR thorium path, once the dumber than dumb government lift their dumber than dumb prohibitions, we could also task mass-produced (I've been saying this all along) MSR thorium modules with burning up the world's mountainous stockpiles of nuclear waste as a service they pay us annual billions to perform or provide!

And given we use MSR, with it's proven complete walk-away safe, complete and built-in passive safety!

Reap an annual windfall and free fuel, for that, is what Nuclear waste is in MSR!

And will ensure we have the lowest energy costs in the world and CARBON FREE power! For somewhere north of a thousand years!

Moreover, as the author identifies, a completely resuscitated steel industry More cal mining as metallurgical coal and a massive economic boost plus huge reinvestment in high tech manufacture! THERE'S ABSOLUTELY NO DOWNSIDE, NO COAL MINING JOB LOSSES HERE! TBC
Alan B.

Tristan Prasser,

Have you read "Nuclear Power Learning and Deployment Rates; Disruption and Global Benefits Forgone" https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/12/2169/htm

It explains what went wrong for nuclear and the consequences. There is some useful information in the Notes (see Appendix B)

The only thing preventing the roll-out of feasible nuclear energy, in this country are our self-serving, coal-fired moribund ministers, putting their own pecuniary interests and or after politics interests above that of the nation-state!? No other possible reason stacks up!? Unless it's absolute moronic stupidity? And if the cap fits?

The Author has correctly identified what becomes possible but only with nuclear power, i.e., Deionisation dialysis desalination on a massive enough scale to not only, very affordably, drought-proof the nation, but allow us to turn formerly arid desert regions into veritable gardens and magnificent new entrepreneur's opportunities/ cooperative enterprise!

Almost tailor-made for indigenous.enterprise! As the Author stated, nuclear power makes possible the manufacture, from endless seawater, a huge range of useful hydrocarbons indefinitely! And using proven science, Make affordable alternatives for petrol, avgas, diesel, many plastics and fertilisers. All impossible if we are lock welded to coal-fired power By inept and conflicted governments!

Moreover, nuclear power provides the safe flameless heat needed to catalytically crack the water molecule to allow it to decompose into its constituent parts. Hydrogen and oxygen and use the hydrogen collected by this massively cheaper method as our rocket fuel in our fledgling space industry.

Cheap power as envisaged would also allow us to incorporated rail guns as the endlessly reusable first stage takeoff catapults we could use to get large reusable second stage, carrier aircraft off the ground so as to launch our space vehicles from the stratosphere and at a far better angle and at speeds that reduce the size and fuel load of the third stage satellite carriers.
Alan B.

If we're hell-bent on using much more expensive and far less abundant uranium as fuel? Then at least use it in meltdown free pebble reactors, then use the waste created in those modules as unspent fuel in MSR thorium.

Pebble reactors use helium as the coolant instead of water and therefore don't need anything more tha a minimal water supply for the neutron absorbing, shielding water jacket. An artesian bore?

And even then could be buried and operated in a neutron-absorbing underground pool or pools.

Thorium is the most energy-dense material on the planet and is where we should be spending the bulk of our R+D.

Thorium placed in the blanket of a nuclear reactor becomes U233. U233 decays via reaction inside the reactor to among a few other things bismuth 213Bismuth 213 is an alpha particle isotope that in conventional, western medicine, is attached to an antibody to reportedly, successfully cure a number of death sentence cancers.

As reported, without significant harm to surrounding healthy tissue, including stage four ovarian, pancreatic, myeloid leukemia and some very nasty brain cancers. If this therapy does any harm then it has to be to the profit curve of big pharma?

And the reason for the incomprehensible, decades-long ban by Congress on thorium development!?

Time we started to take control of our own destiny And cut off those debt-laden, price gouging, tax-avoiding, profit repatriating foreigners that our government seems obsessed about and indeed the sovereign risk that might ensue for them!? If we just lifted the self-imposed prohibition on, for peaceful purpose, nuclear energy!
Alan B.

All you poor suckers above, milling around in congregation awaiting a decision of a politician which will actually serve the greater good of the community they are intended by design of Democracy, to serve.

Let the Chinese do it. That's what will happen in the end anyway. Let the back-hinders flow, without the slightest consequence to a politician.
That is the problem.

Dan

diver dan,
The footy & the Cricket are still broadcast, so what's the panic ?

Alan,

what is this "decades long ban on thorium" about?
Has the govt prohibited the idea of thorium?
If so why, I can't believe they would openly show their hand like that.
Politicians don't like to commit one way or another.
Do you have any info on this, I most certainly would like to know more, if you could please let us know.
Thank you.

An "Individual " I may be...and you are!

Well I may be confused too, when I log into OLO, but just as well I do see a spunky Ukrainian school girl , splashed across the screen of my iPad, dressed in high heels trying to sell something. I do believe the something is herself.

True, It's not cricket, and I have no money to waste on Ukrainian anything. Especially their fall-out from Chernobyl.
But maybe a Ukrainian school girl in high heels in a fall-out shelter under the shadows of Chernobyl...I wonder!

Dan

The author exercises some logic when he points to country/provincial places that just happen to use VERY LARGE CONVENTIONAL REACTORS, ie:

- "France" where:

; all reactor complexes are VERY LARGE conventional multi GW. A Gigawatt being 1,000 Megawatts. Note France is now constructing reactors of 1.6 GW.

; France cross subsidises its knowledge and civilian reactor base with its nuclear weapon/submarine propulsion base. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors#France

- "Sweden", which:

; first embarked on reactors for its 1940s-ended 1970s nuclear weapon program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_nuclear_weapons_program

; which provided a lower cost knowledge/infrastructure base for Sweden's civilian nuclear sector

; where all reactor complexes are VERY LARGE conventional multi GW http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors#Sweden and

- "Ontario [Province] Canada". Noting:

; Canada first embarked on nuclear reactors in support of the US MANHATTAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROJECT http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project#Canadian_sites which provided a lower cost knowledge/infrastructure base for Canada's civilian nuclear sector

; OPERATIONAL in Ontario are at the Pickering complex of reactors equaling 3GW and Darlington complex equaling 3.5GW

So for France and EVEN FOR SWEDEN AND CANADA they began with Nuclear weapons reactor knowledge-infrastructure bases which then transitioned to VERY LARGE civilian electricity reactors
_________________________________________________

So the author falls down when he suggests NON-COMMERCIALLY proven VERY SMALL MODULAR REACTORS (which are up to 300MW) http://www.iaea.org/topics/small-modular-reactors

Australia's low nuclear knowledge/reactor base and very small electricity market compared to the main reactor building nations (US, UK, France, China, Japan, Canada, Russia, India) means AUSTRALIA by itself CANNOT DEVELOP AND DEPLOY Small Modular Reactors without spending maybe $100 Billion.

Australia needs to wait for Small Modular Reactors to be:

- developed
- legally/publically accepted
- then deployed

in North America, Europe of Asia
___________________________________________

Visions of SMALL Modular Reactors being deployed in SMALL Australian country towns-small cities (Alice Springs? Longreach? Kalgoorlie? Broken Hill?) forget

the HUGE public/political/legal/police security opposition that would descent AGAINST EVEN VERY SMALL, HIGH COMMERCIAL RISK, reactor proposals

and delay them at Federal, State, Local GOVERNMENT and COURT (Supreme and High Court) levels for DECADES.