Yeah, We know. The same people will agree, and same set will disagree. Yawn. It's a waste of time discussing nuclear while we keep voting for the same backward drones.

Readers, please comment on this vacuous article before it is, not rooted, but worse, Alan B.'D

Nuclear has always proven unproblemic, expensive and only needs one bad day in 40 years to be unforeseenly disastrous.

Arguments agaist nuclear being expensive are based on unproven hope, eg. of Thorium enthusiasts.

Beyond about 20% wind and solar where we're at now the integration costs escalate. That's before millions of electric cars, desalination, heatwave aircon and so on. The extraordinary contortions that 100% renewables advocates go through reminds me of OCD sufferers who won't step on gaps in the footpath. There's also hypocrisy; when new transmission was built a couple of years ago it was demonised as 'gold plating' now it's necessary to develop the resource. SMRs on brownfield sites like Hazelwood and Liddell won't need new power lines.

Wind and solar increasingly needs to be curtailed due to line congestion and system strength rules. They lose money due to frequency correction FCAS charges and marginal loss factors all the while getting the LGC subsidy which was supposed to be gone by now. After nearly 20 years of the RET electricity emissions have declined a few percent, not almost eliminated. It should be obvious that nuclear is the logical replacement for coal. That politicians can't see that shows they are part of the problem.

CORRECTION:

Nuclear has always proven PROBLEMIC, no matter what marketing claims come out about safe, new, cheap, small, modular, technology reactors.

Nuclear enthusiasts talk of small power reactors in isolated communities.

Even for small reactors in isolated communities environmental-regulatory-courts-political-planning permissions could take a good 20 years.

"So why is it that as a nation we continue to deny our own nuclear expertise and experience? That we restrict ourselves to limited and inadequate solutions to generating clean and reliable electricity? That we continue to export uranium for others to use to generate zero-emission electricity?"

Because we are so bloody stupid.

David

Yes! We need to have an adult factual debate on this topic. And give we can get the emotions out the mountainous misinformation from the anti-nuclear, anti-development greens, We might be able to develop an industry and the cheapest electrical energy in the world and in complete safety! And allow other folks to pay our entire R+D/development outlays at no cost to us ever!

Nobody who understands even the basics of nuclear energy is going to suggest we develop solid-fuelled reactors, but rather SMR (small modular reactor) servicing microgrids with MSR (molten salt reactor) given theses can be built as complete units inside a standard-sized shipping container and burn other folk's nuclear waste which among other things will allow us to power the nation for thousands of years with almost free CARBON FREE electricity!

In a conventional reactor, the reaction is controlled by the raising and lowering of the fuel rods with ELECTROMAGNETS! And means they need back up systems and back up the backups! And those backs cannot be in a cellar or basement if there is even the slightest chance of flooding! Neither diesels nor alternators work well underwater! Nor staging transformers (Fukushima)

Chernobyl was a nuclear accident going somewhere to happen? First, the Cheif engineer was a political appointment? And the rods may not have been changed on an absolutely essential schedule? In which case the, generated by the nuclear reaction, xenon may have expanded inside rods? and added to the 150 atmospheres of pressure inside the reactor?

Thereby forcing something to let go and superheated to white-hot water immediately flashing to its component gases as a highly explosive and massive fuel bomb. It was a hydrogen explosion that wrecked Chernobyl and an uncontrolled reactor that then created the rest of their problem given a total power outage and no ability to cool the reaction. Given all the coolant, i.e., the water, had flashed away in a microsecond. And no backup ability to repace it or lift the rods!?TBC.
Alan B.

Pete your ability to try and silence debate before anybody who knows anything whatsoever about safe, clean cheap nuclear power ( NOT YOU) has a chance to illuminate the facts, is legendary!.

I get you do not want to see an industry developed on already tried and proven technology, given how much that might hurt your rooftop solar panel installation business?

And when you can't win a factual debate, sadly, my old mate, you are reduced to going the verbal and abusive bullying, play the man tactics, which I who actually does give a rat's for my fellow Aussies, just didn't earn!

The fastest a nuclear reactor has been built and commissioned is actually six short months and proven by the factual evidence as opposed to your activist's BS writ large! Yes I know, it was an SMR and based on a tried and tested proven design and all I am advocating here genius! Not you preferred and stated forty years BS!

If your solar panel installation business takes a hit a few years down the track? You can always switch to installing the magnetic induction pads under electric vehicles that allows them to be recharged on the go on future graphene highways? And given the continual rollout of new models? Never ever run out of business!

If you want a civil factual debate I'm your man, old mate! TBC.
Alan B.

Poor old Pete probably means problematic.

Nuclear Power Learning and Deployment Rates; Disruption and Global Benefits Forgone

Abstract

This paper presents evidence of the disruption of a transition from fossil fuels to nuclear power, and finds the benefits forgone as a consequence are substantial. Learning rates are presented for nuclear power in seven countries, comprising 58% of all power reactors ever built globally. Learning rates and deployment rates changed in the late-1960s and 1970s from rapidly falling costs and accelerating deployment to rapidly rising costs and stalled deployment. Historical nuclear global capacity, electricity generation and overnight construction costs are compared with the counterfactual that pre-disruption learning and deployment rates had continued to 2015. Had the early rates continued, nuclear power could now be around 10% of its current cost. The additional nuclear power could have substituted for 69,000–186,000 TWh of coal and gas generation, thereby avoiding up to 9.5 million deaths and 174 Gt CO2 emissions. In 2015 alone, nuclear power could have replaced up to 100% of coal-generated and 76% of gas-generated electricity, thereby avoiding up to 540,000 deaths and 11 Gt CO2. Rapid progress was achieved in the past and could be again, with appropriate policies. Research is needed to identify impediments to progress, and policy is needed to remove them.

https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/12/2169

The fossil fuel industry, big nuclear, big pharma, green activists and rooftop solar installers are variously terrified we might choose to pick up where Alvin Weinberg, a chemical engineer, the inventor and patent holder of the first operational reactor went!

As he head honcho of the world's first operational molten salt thorium fuel reactor, which was operated between the 50s and the 70s, at Oak Ridge Tenessee, proved.

They, those variously opposed tried to destroy his (rescued at 11 minutes to midnight) notes and bury the only commercial quantity of U233, a principle source of, miracle cancer cure, bismuth 213, in the world!

This is how much financial terror is generated in the hearts of all those industries which could be enormously hurt or decimated by the rollout of already tried, tested without accident or incident and proven, walk away safe, MSR thorium.

Years and years later after the forced and premature shutdown, some "nuclear experts" did find some corrosion" Well it incorporated chemical engineering and as always there is the possibility of corrosion years after, when the reductants are suddenly removed/stopped.

That they tried, unsuccessfully to hide the facts and bury the U233 tells us they are terrified of the truth, don't want anyone to pick up and run with what was developed at Ok Ridge and forced to shut down on the eve of electrical generation, after which it couldn't have been!

We lost our car industry because the builders couldn't afford a power bill the exceded the wages bill, and thousands of Aussies have been routinely sacrificed After this coal-fired altar, as curable cancer has been allowed to take folk who would have had remission with tried and tested, conventional western medicine, bismuth 213, and in greater annual numbers than double the annual road toll. And in day clinics minus the usual nausea, loss of hair etc/etc! TBC.
Alan B.

Taswegian,
Looking at the example of SA, we can see that those escalating costs of yours are largely a myth.

Your perception of hypocrisy is also based on a misunderstanding: you think it's about the amount of infrastructure we have. In reality it's more about whether it is constructed (and financed) in an efficient way.

The AEMC has not done its job well, meaning there are far more restrictions and higher charges than should be necessary. But there are no technical problems that can not be easily overcome.

Nuclear energy has a great future globally, but in the Australian context it's unlikely to be competitive with renewables.

Dearest Alan B.

E.C. Uribe with a PhD in chemistry from conducting research with the Heavy Element Nuclear and Radiochemistry Group at the US Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory advised in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, August 6, 2018, http://thebulletin.org/2018/08/thorium-power-has-a-protactinium-problem/#

"THORIUM POWER HAS A [NUCLEAR WEAPON PROLIFERATION] PROTACTINIUM PROBLEM"

"In 1980, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) observed that protactinium, a chemical element generated in thorium reactors, could be separated and allowed to decay to isotopically pure uranium 233—suitable material for making nuclear weapons. The IAEA report, titled “Advanced Fuel Cycle and Reactor Concepts,” concluded that the proliferation resistance of thorium fuel cycles “would be equivalent to” the uranium/plutonium fuel cycles of conventional civilian nuclear reactors, assuming both included spent fuel reprocessing to isolate fissile material.

Decades later, the story changed. “Th[orium]-based fuels and fuel cycles have intrinsic proliferation resistance,” according to the IAEA in 2005. Mainstream media have repeated this view ever since, often without caveat. Several scholars have recognized the inherent proliferation risk of protactinium separations in the thorium fuel cycle, but the perception that thorium reactors cannot be used to make weapons persists. While technology has advanced, the fundamental radiochemistry that governs nuclear fuel reprocessing remains unchanged. Thus, this shift in perspective is puzzling and reflects a failure to recognize the importance of protactinium radiochemistry in thorium fuel cycles.

...uranium 233 has a lower critical mass, which means that less material can be used to build a weapon. And compared with weapons-grade plutonium 239, uranium 233 has a much lower spontaneous fission rate, enabling simpler weapons that are more easily constructed...

...There is little to be gained by calling thorium fuel cycles intrinsically proliferation-resistant. The best way to realize nuclear power from thorium fuel cycles is to acknowledge their unique proliferation vulnerabilities, and to adequately safeguard them against theft and misuse."

_________________________

@ttbn

Yes Thorium and trying to flog funky new small reactors is foolishly problematic indeed.

Pete

Pete: your points are well made and undisputed, any fissile material can be used to create a thermonuclear reaction and we must certainly guard against that possibility!

Albeit, anyone who cannot remove it robotically is likely to receive a lethal dose of gamma in just a few minutes, once the material is outside the reactor's safety features.

Minute protactinium is extracted as it decays to miracle cancer cure, alpha particle isotope bismuth 213. And necessary given the half-life of the alpha particle, bismuth 213 is only 45 minutes. And immersion in a nuclear proof liquid is all that is necessary? As we wait for the final decay process to produce the bismuth 213. In the hospital nuclear medicine unit or day clinic.

Attached to an antibody it then attacks the cancer and not the adjacent healthy cells. Sometimes as shown in the scans, 66 short minutes from cancer to clear.

I would put these reactors deep underground with nuclear bomb-proof doors at the tunnel entrances (abanded underground mines in remote locations, e.g.)

And protected by, shoot to kill, Regularly, integrity tested, armed guards! Armed with high-velocity weapons and armour piercing ammo. Hoping that is one order that never needs to be obeyed!

I believe as soon as the seriously stupid embargo is lifted we will be able to import already tried and tested SMR's and as thorium powered reactors, that can be retasked to burn waste or weapons-grade plutonium!

And produce as a final waste product a material that is eminently suitable as long life space batteries, that stabilise in around thirty years.
Alan B.

Aidan back in October 2019 Canwestblue found SA retail power prices to be 62% higher than in Victoria. Their Feb 2020 update doesn't make an interstate comparison. AEMO point out that 47% of SA's internal electricity generation is gas fired.The Adelaide-Moomba gas pipe was built in 1969 and can't have a lot more to give. Some of my young relatives have left SA for the east coast. When the gas runs out SA will implode. So if SA is a success I'd hate to see what failure looks like.

What SA does have is uranium at Olympic Dam, Beverley, Four Mile and Honeymoon. It could power the whole of Australia in light water reactors. Instead it all goes overseas.

Pete,

I'll tell you what will be problematic if we don't stick with coal or replace it with nuclear power - the ridiculously expensive and unreliable power from the wind and sun gods that the Greens and Labor worship. Prayer meetings under a windmill won't help.

Nuclear power is an obvious and 'natural' choice for base load power. The emotions surrounding it may come from Hiroshima and Chernobyl, but ultimately, the resistance comes from those who believe in solar and wind and its "green" credentials.

Solar and wind are not as effective, efficient and resource neutral as they purport. They also will never provide baseload, despite the ludicrous claims of battery and hydro storage proponents. If you want baseload, then look to tidal and geothermal, but then that has cost and environmental impacts and extensive.

Nuclear reactions is what drives our plants core, the sun and as far as we are told the Universe. Do why not challenge this now, once and for all and get on with it.

I want to protect the environment and would rather contain the issue to limited nuclear waste management, than continue to watch general waste and pollution destroy valuable ecosystems. The greens want solar and wind...... Well lets tell them it won't work and put it to the population. Mind you we will have to purge the propaganda that has been fed to 3 generations of school kids!

Alan B wants MSR and it is appealing, except for some enrichment energy issues. Others may favour other designs. so be it.

The issue Australia has is that it is held hostage to a 1-5% of the population who are actively against nuclear power and the rest are sheep, informed by our media. Its time to take stock. A world run by Climate Changer Believers, or a world using nuclear power safely to determine its own destiny!

Ps Alan B, can you just explain to me one thing, namely, has someone come up with an efficient, energy efficient means of energizing Thorium to the higher state needed to make it a viable fuel source.

basically I think until someone can prove that coal does more harm than good we are wasting time and money. Sure nuclear would do the job which highly subsided renewable can't but why do away with what we have an abundance of. Any sane person knows that coal has brought far more benefits than the corrupt lying anti coal brigade can prove. If it isn't coal that the regressives shut down cities for it will be cow farts. If its not cow farts it will be some other made up fantasy. The discussion of using nuclear power should go on but not in the context of the made up gw fantasy.

Runner,

Coal, as like all fossil fuel,s are valuable, but ultimately will end in 100-400 years time. So lets start getting serious about nuclear now, sort out the waste management, design, regulation now... and get over the trojan horse called renewables!

It would be wonderful to believe that the world could live on solar and wind, but this myth has been created by subsidy and vest-interest who have soaked up this hard-erased tax revenue from every day normal working folk!

Also fossil fuels are naturally manufactured resources that should, when we have base energy. be treated as precious resources that shouldn't be burnt for energy. These resources have much more value.

Why don't the Anti Nuclear mutts admit that aircraft carriers, submarines & other ships have successfully cruised the seven Seas for many decades now without incidents.
Why are these vessels safe ? Because they have operators who are disciplined with a healthy mentality & who aren't insipid Lefties mulling around UNI aimlessly !

Good point, individual. The reason the "mutts" don't realise it is because they are ideologues who can't think for themselves; all except Pete, who is a dear, really.

Individual,

There's a wonderful Iranian refugee surgeon who mentioned casually on TV a few weeks ago that he had fitted a nuclear-powered pace-maker in one bloke, plutonium-based, and had had no trouble so far.

So if nuclear power can be installed in someone's chest, and like you say, in submarines etc., without giving any trouble over many decades, surely the latest nuclear technology would be quite safe ? France and Finland rely on nuclear power generation and don't seem to have any major accidents.

Of course, nobody in their right minds would be adopting sixty- and seventy-year-old technology like at Chernobyl, nor build a nuclear power plant 50 metres from the beach along a tsunami-prone coast. So let's dispose of those sorts of pseudo-issues.

Joe

Dearest individual

There is a long list of catastrophic, fatal, nuclear reactor leaks on Soviet/Russian nuclear submarines.

eg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_K-19#Nuclear_accident

If you want further examples, pray sing out.

Pete

Taswegian,
I see you're behind the times again!

Firstly, SA's gas supply is not solely reliant on the Moomba to Adelaide pipeline. For the last 16 years there's also been a pipeline connecting to a second source of gas: the Otway Basin. The energy security issues were recognised and dealt with.

Secondly, although SA has been far more reliant on gas for its electricity generation than the other states have, that is diminishing. Despite the closure of all the coal fired power stations, gas's share has fallen substantially, losing out to wind and solar.

There is a long list of catastrophic, fatal, nuclear reactor leaks on Soviet/Russian nuclear submarines.
Plantagenet,
Loudmouth2 already answered this in his last sentence.

Perhaps the Russian incidents are related to their fondness of Vodka as are drugs & alcohol to too many Australians.

I think it's pathetic to use the worst most unreliable country in the world to compare with.
Russia has ALWAYS been of lower standards and performance than most other countries in the world.
They bungled their way to the moon, had to be rescued from the space station and a list of other failures, most of which you don't hear about.
It comes as no surprise, and is common knowledge to me that Russian construction and especially maintenance is at about the same standard as some Asian countries.
So let's compare apples with apples, and the record for nuclear has been very good, when compared to lives lost by other technologies.
We must accept that renewables are NOT THE ANSWER!
They have been a political money making medium for the greedy and evil, selfish scum of the political society.
They have used the GW con to justify appeasing the jelly brained weak and foolish of the public.
Coal is not, nor has it ever been the evil monster these greenies claim.
Govt's are only sucking up to the stupid public so they can keep their seat in govt.
They have discovered the truth, that's what they pay their advisers for, and they know that we are NOT guilty of what those pushing GW say.
So in one hand he, (the PM) wants to show that he is wanting to do something about GW, yet in the other he knows it's all BS, and is reluctant to waste time or money, in proving nothing other than appeasing a few green idiots and a lot of stupid sheep

Yeah nuclear is entirely safe.......not!

http://whowhatwhy.org/2020/02/24/an-olympic-sized-disaster-is-brewing-in-japan/

Galen

Galen,
So, now you expect Mother Nature to comply & not send any Tsunamis ? Would it not be more sensible to remove insipid decision makers who place massive nuclear plants into tsunami-prone area ?
Had Fukushima been a FUKUSHIMA MARU I doubt the accident would have occurred in the first place. As I have said on other occasions, smaller power stations moored would prove way more safe than one built on an earthquake-tsunami prone coast !
What is the safety record of the Australian plants btw ?

individual,
Nuclear plants can be designed to withstand tsunamis. Though the Fukushima #1 reactor was not tsunami proof, the #2 reactor next to it was.

Alison Jane, apologies for not replying sooner but had already reached my daily post limit.

Thorium is placed in the blanket of n operational reactor, much as you do when creating some isotopes. And left there to absorb neutrons for around a fortnight. this changes it from fertile thorium to fissile U233.

And this is the fuel for a molten salt unpressurised reactor. Understand that a thermonuclear explosion needs kilograms of fissile material, not grams.

Something designed to operate exclusively in a molten state cannot meltdown! And given the coolant medium, fluoride salt, does not need to be pressurised, given the melt point of fluoride salt is around 400C. will operate without any drama at a sweet spot of around 700C, given the boiling point of the salt is 1400C!

The reaction is limited to the graphite core and ceases everywhere else in the system.

Beryllium is added as the reductant and also lithium. In the adjacent reprocessing plant, the xenon is allowed to escape and is passed through a water bath and activated carbon. Aditional grams of thorium could be included here so they can absorb neutrons and become new U233 fuel.

Further "enrichment" is addressed here by electrolysis and hydrogen purging. and all that is ever necessary. And very different from uranium, which can be enriched with pulsed laser light.

An equivalent 350MW uranium solid fuelled reactor will require 2551 tons of enriched, pelletised, ceramic uranium over a thirty-year operational lifetime. And produce as much as 2550 tons of nuclear waste. The reaction is controlled by fuel rod raised and lowered electromagnetically so no power outages can be allowed

An MSR thorium 350 MW, on the other hand, will need just one single ton, from which it will produce an optimal 1% waste. Waste which is eminently suitable as long life space batteries that burn up with reentry. Any power outage means an automatic shut down and the liquid self drains to a purpose created holding tank. I'd have one on my back yard and never worry!

I hope this addresses all your questions?
Cheers, Alan B.

Galen, so what your suggesting is that we build a nuclear power plant based on OLD technology, and bad planning.
I, on the other hand believe that a lot has been learned and is being learned every day about safer use of nuclear based products.
Alan's thorium salt concept was well on it's way to being introduced in the US, if not for the particular moronic POTUS of the day, (and they say Mr T's bad) who decided to stop funding and research into thorium and divert the money or funding to nuclear weapons instead.
The full story is on Google from memory.

Imagine I'm a terrorist, wanting some U233 to make a bomb? I'm going to need kilograms of it!

And we have come to our senses, have built a dozen or so in our arid outback?

Monsour terroriste, has decided he can get past security and collect some from a molten salt reactor where the U233 is also liquid and operating in the safe zone between 700-1200C. Ouch, ouch that's F-ing hot he screams as he tries to extract a couple of spoonfuls, drop the lot on his foot (well, it's a liquid) then dances the highland fling at just below light speed as he reacts to his left foot evaporating, going up in smoke!

Defeated, he hops to it and makes a roo like escape hopping around on his remaining good foot, gets half a mile from the facility and drops dead from the ultra massive gamma radiation dose he received from exposure to unshielded U233!

Ok decides Monsour Teroriste mark two. I'll use a robot, heh, heh.
Robbie trundles in announcing danger, danger, Will Robinson, alien attack etc. And is beheaded by a laser beam as he tries to get past the metal detector and the massive ceiling-mounted electromagnet, placed there for just such an eventuality!

Moral, don't lose your head over a few grams of red hot liquid! Some things are too hot to handle, and nuclear material can be thermally and radioactively hot and just not safe outside the reactor and environs, safety features!

Yes, if we build a few thorium burning MSR's not too many geniuses are going to try and steal something they need to precipitate from solution and then challenge the Gamma radiation they could be exposed to! I don't see why they'd bother!

I mean it would be vastly easier and less challenging to build a fusion bomb! First, they'd have to get here, then beat the arid outback and our security, then get away unharmed! I mean given the turbines could be powered with hot, or super chilled, or both, air! That's where I'd build them.

Pardon the levity.
Alan B.

Alan, you are still dreaming.
David