China is the world leader in MSR thorium research.

China - "148 gigawatts of coal-fired plants are either being built or are about to begin construction, according to a report from Global Energy Monitor, a non-profit group that monitors coal stations. The current capacity of the entire EU coal fleet is 149 GW."

Hands up all those who think China thinks MSR thorium is viable.

Another great article by Jim Green, building fact upon data that Uranium-nuclear energy is not the energy genie nuclear enthusiasts wished it was.

And Thorium? A shallow distraction of some techno-dreaming odd-bods at OLO. Thorium is pie-in-the-sky, never proven commercially. Thorium has not even reached the stage of being proven a power failure like Uranium 235 reactors.

And Australia's lack of experience with commercial use of nuclear power makes Australia the middle-power least equipped to develop improved power reactors of any type.

There IS a successful nuclear power technology that millions of Australians now rely on. OLO's odd-bods just don't recognise it.

- Its solar energy which relies on rays produced from permanent FUSION reactions on the Sun. This FUSION solar energy has none of the downsides of trying to make nuclear FISSION a viable energy source here on Earth.

Jim Green still hasn't proposed an alternative !

The alternative that millions of Australians now rely on are solar cells on a home or larger scale. These harness FUSION solar energy from the Sun.

Ever cheaper more efficient batteries are now storing the solar energy unused during daylight hours.

This solar-battery technology has none of the downsides of trying to make nuclear FISSION a viable energy source here on Earth.

The Molten Chloride Salt FAST reactor has the following properties.
+ It *cannot* melt down because the fuel is already a liquid.
+ It requires power to keep the fuel up in the core and reacting. In a power failure the hot liquid salt pours down to the drain tank and the moment it cools to 400 C the salt crystalises into a solid block that's not going anywhere.
+ The Molten Chloride Salt Fast Reactor eats uranium and thorium and nuclear waste and nuclear warheads!
+ It burns all the longer-lived 'waste' out of it, getting 90 times the energy out of the waste, turning a 100,000 year storage problem into today's energy solution.
+ The final wastes are fission products that you melt into ceramic blocks and bury under the reactor carpark for 300 years. Then they're safe! Your whole life would only result in 1 golf ball of waste. That volume for Australia would only come to 1.4 Sydney Olympic pools of nuclear waste after 70 years of abundant, reliable, carbon free electricity!
+ Uranium from seawater can run the world for billions of years. It's essentially 'renewable' because geological activity and erosion tops up the oceans.
+ Dr James Hansen, the world's most famous climatologist, says we need nuclear power and we should look to the history of the French. They built out a mostly nuclear grid in just 15 years. It can be done, fast and cheap. The French electricity bill is about half Germany's, and Germany is only a third done with their unreliable wind and solar plan. According to Hansen the choice is nuclear power or climate change.

If Jim Green thinks he's a better environmentalist than Dr James Hansen, he should check himself in for help.

PLANTAGENET

Even 'clean' power like solar PV uses 15 times more building material and 5000 times more land than nuclear. http://tinyurl.com/y2n45cz9 It also quite worryingly produces 300 times the waste per unit of energy than nuclear! http://tinyurl.com/ybpwgrsc By 2050 Australia could have 1.5 MILLION tons of solar e-waste to try and recycle, and we currently don't include that cost in the price of solar installations. http://tinyurl.com/y6clgxa8 Indeed, renewables expert Matthew Stocks (rightly) demanded I show the cost to decommission nuclear power plants and store the waste. But when asked, he admitted he hadn't done the same for solar! Why does solar 'cost modelling' not include the *huge* task of cleaning up and recycling 300 times the waste? http://tinyurl.com/y8vwdgp4

"Clean" solar is not so clean. But the real worry is EROEI - Energy Returned over Energy Invested - which measures the energy profit of a power plant after all the energy it cost to build it in the first place. Renewables have an OK EROEI on their own. But what about a 100% renewable grid? What about the energy to build all those pumped-hydro dams as 'batteries' for when the sun goes down and wind goes quiet? The figures on this paper might be a little old, but show that renewables + storage may not even be a high enough energy source to run our world. http://tinyurl.com/ya3c3esp Dr James Hansen — the climatologist that diagnosed our climate problem — says believing in 100% renewables is like believing in the Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy. http://tinyurl.com/yclaf2sn

Normal reactors have an EROEI around 60.
Breeder reactors get 60 to 90 times the energy out of each bit of uranium! Because they eat 'nuclear waste' they cut the energy intense mining and refining stage.
In other words, their EROEI is 40 * 60 (going conservative) = an EROEI of 2400 or much higher!