Rationing power could be another mechanism used by the political class to keep us under control.

The problem is twofold! The first is, fossil fuel advocates reject out of hand! Cheaper, safe,r cleaner, more reliable, dispatchable, nuclear power!

Continue to assert, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, that coal-fired power at any price is cheaper than nuclear power!

An argument completely confounded by the proven facts, pertaining to MSR thorium! And all too often demand to know, if it's so good? Why doesn't everyone have it?

Hard to invest around 100 million per for something officially prohibited and by here and the US Congres to literal decades!

LITERAL DECADES! AND HOW DISHONEST IS THAT COMPLETELY SPURIOUS ASSERTION THEN!

Prohibited ostensibly, to protect the profit streams of their cronies in the fossil fuel industry, big nuclear and big pharma, all of who would see their profits dry up, or disappear, with the advent of operational MSR thorium anywhere in the world!

And that evidence is found in the operational reports from Oak Ridge Tennessee, and the operational log of the MSR thorium, there and operated without accident or incident between the '50s and the '70s The government which creates and enforce all our rules and regulations pertaining to the energy sector, claims to be technology agnostic! But continues to maintain their current prohibition on nuclear energy!

The second part of the problem is the mindless opposition by alleged green groups based entirely on completely unfounded fear of MSR thorium, which is nothing whatsoever like the reactors at Chernobyl or Fukushima!

No similarity in any context whatsoever, yet they continue to use their activism to block this climate change ameliorating technology unavailable via activism and tail that wags the dog, political pressure! And all the excuse a do nothing real government needs! To do nothing real or change the status quo! If anyone really and truly wants carbon-free and the safest of all dispatchable, reliable power, for less than 3 cents PKWH!?

Then the official prohibition on nuclear power generation must be lifted! Until this is allowed by the blockers to happen! Nothing much will change save power prices, which can still grow exponentially until then! TBC.
Alan B.

Here's the thing! Our power could be virtually free! No ifs, buts or maybes!

And here's how.

First, we need to lift the absurd and asinine ban by some, on us becoming the nuclear waste repository of the world! And plenty of sites where this could be done in perfect say to all!

Given this is so, the (couldn't find their feet in the dark, with a torch) decision-makers should just decide, sign the contracts and just get it done ASAP!

Then task several MSR thorium power plants to also serve as waste burners to extract a truly massive and unspent energy component, even as we earn annual billions for providing this waste repository service.

A conventional reactor, say a 350 MW? will during a thirty-year operational life. Require some 2551 tons of hugely expensive enriched fuel. And from those same tons will produce 2550 tons of waste.

Conversely, in an 350 MW MSR, one ton of this same waste will fuel it for up to and beyond, around 25 years, meaning that 2550 tons of waste will fuel several 350 MW, MSR's for virtual centuries with fuel we are paid annual billions to store!

Those same annual billions will provide all the start-up capital, which can be leveraged and all the build and rollout costs. And all associated necessary R+D! Which then means, we can avoid the usual control and command that comes with unwanted and unneeded foreign investment in this space!

And instead, use government-funded and facilitated cooperative capitalism as the template, which would allow some indigenous control and income generation into perpetuity, from this proposed template.

A template the rest of the world will want to emulate! Given they too, will want all the available carbon-free benefits of thorium-based energy!TBC.
Alan B.

My argument is backed and in part validated by a couple of videos posted on Alan Goulding's Facebook page. Where one can also find credible evidence, that in spite of disasters like Chernobyl or Fukushima, Nuclear power still has the lowest of all, death toll, per gigawatts of power generation! Go take butchers and weep!

Also put these on your reading list, Thorium cheaper than coal, by ivy league Professor and economist, Robert Hargraves. Or Thorium, Super fuel, subtitled, green energy, by Prize-winning investigative Journalist and science writer, Richard Martin.

Thorium delivers everything fusion promised but could never deliver!
And one would more than welcome The less than 3 cents PKWH that thorium could deliver as well along with the massive revitalization of the manufacturing sector this would alone underpin, and with, wait for it, CARBON-FREE ENERGY! Understand? CARBON-FREE ENERGY!
Thorium is less radioactive than a banana, and can only be used in a reactor after it's converted in the blanket of a reactor to U233, which is the mother of MIRACLE CANCER CURE, BISMUTH 213. AND A VIRTUALLY FREE BYPRODUCT OF MSR THORIUM AND WOULD SUPPORT A MASSIVE, MEDICAL REGIONAL TOURISM INDUSTRY AT LEAST AS GREAT AS THE COMBINED ANNUAL ROAD TOLL OF Britain Canada, and the USA.
But not allowed to develop, thanks to official government prohibition on nuclear power!

Go figure!
Alan B.

A hyped doom and gloom article.

Then embuggered by Thorium-Nuclear (never proven commercially!) is the Answer comments.

its what happens when you allow 16 year old tantrum throwing girls to lecture very weak gutless leaders.

Lazy, decepive article!
Isn't Geoff aware that most blackouts are due to transformer failures rather than insufficient generation?
Or that last time there was insufficient generation it was the result of a coal fired power station breaking down?

He displays sheer idiocy when he claims "For near-100% reliability, any given renewables generation capacity can never exceed about 50% of total capacity inclusive of dispatchable back-up. And, on average, the duplicated fossil-fuel 'dispatchable' capacity backing it up supplies much more than half the power actually delivered to users" ...and then claims SA to be an exemplar of this when it's actually a counterexample!

He then slurs activists with the false accusation that they "will loudly condemn any use of fossil fuels as 'dispatchable' power" when the short term use of gas for dispatchable power is well accepted by activists; what they loudly condemn is the use of fossil fuels as baseload power, and particularly the use of coal (which has a very high carbon footprint).

He then goes on to grossly overestimate the cost of storage by trying to apply the dubious conclusions of Californian study to here, even though our renewable output doesn't included the huge seasonal slump that California does.

Then there's the issue of curtailed generation. This is quite a new problem so it hasn't been addressed yet, but a consensus seems to be forming on what will be done: excess electricity will be used to produce hydrogen. Hydrogen is quite useful - it can be used to produce sponge iron, enabling steel to be made more cheaply and value adding our iron ore exports. Hydrogen can also be used to make ammonia, or even to synthesise hydrocarbons.

How much longer will Geoff keep treating easily solved problems like insurmountable obstacles?

Hey Alan B.

You might be all over the place when it comes to Trump, but you're quite knowledgeable when it comes to nuclear issues.
What do you think of these small modular reactors?

http://www.nuscalepower.com/

(Obviously it must be good because they support gender equality by 2030.)

'How much longer will Geoff keep treating easily solved problems like insurmountable obstacles?'

maybe like you Aiden he has witnessed lie after lie from the gw religion and has seen electricity prices increase and increase as renewables have been heavily subsidised by tax payers. It ain't rocket science. Your ideology has blinded you.

Never proven commercially!?

Hard to do, Pete, when on the eve of generating electricity to prove just that! The funding was pulled by that paragon of honest virtue, Richard Nixon of Watergate fame!

runner, for once I can find something to agree with you on!

That bloke couldn't find his feet in the dark with a torch!

There was a time when coal-fired power hadn't been proven commercially! And attested by the operators of water wheels and windmill grinders, Pete! All of who were replaced by the new technology and also put manmade climate change into play!

It's only a question of time before the whole world needs to decouple from coal-fired power and long before renewables will be fit to take over with ABUNDANT clean cheap, carbon-free, energy every boy and his dog can afford!

There are a number of solar power installers posting here and want MSR thorium up and running, like a proverbial hole in the head! And because the available unsubsidised prices would completely ruin their business model!

Of course, we should go modular! Given these small localised power plants could replace the grid and step down transformer stations and save the total combined transmission and distribution losses. Losses the mug consumer still pays for now!

Add in graphene as the current carrier of choice and those losses become negligible or too small to measure.

There're lots of folks critiquing a technology they know SFA about!

And the prime reason we now have to tolerate endless political prevarication confected delays and the highest energy prices in the world!

Well done, take a bow and all the kudos for the current state of affairs in the energy sector!

Something you created with your votes at the ballot box! UNDERSTAND YET, GENIUS?

So take a bow and lap it up, You deserve it! Think, with every new source of energy, mankind has progressed. You think we've gone as far as we can go, GENIUS!?

I rest my case.
Alan B.

runner,
It's bad enough that you've let your own ideology blind you in one eye, but it's worse that you've let somebody else's ideology blind you in the other! How much longer will you keep spreading the neocons' "gw religion" lie?

Open your eyes up! The evidence for anthropogenic global warming is clear, the evidence agains it is non existent, and as Christians we should care about the consequences of our actions.

Don't be fooled by simplistic explanations; always look for the truth.
For example, it's true that the price o electricity has risen substantially in the last decade. But that has very little to do with renewables. There are three much greater factors at play here:
• Spending on poles and wires has risen substantially, and a lot of it has been inefficiently planned and inefficiently funded.
• Power company profit margins have gone up.
• The price of gas went up enormously (partly due to domestic consumers paying international prices after gas companies in eastern Australia started exporting, and partly because of a rise in demand) so users are paying more for electricity when some of it's being generated from gas, which is most of the time.