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.