Labor’s bestie, Communist China wants Australia, and indeed all Western countries, to embrace a 100 per cent renewables, to make them dependent on China for windmills a solar panels; while China itself continues to build coal-powered generators , plus 27 more nuclear reactors on top of its 56 existing ones.

David,

As you've studied chemistry, the question I'd ask you relating to Copenhagen Atomics is could any of the actinides make the salt corrosive? The high purity salt they tested worked well, but a fission reaction might change it.

That is a good question. I think they might have run some quite long term tests to see what happens there. I will have to do some more reading.

I did find this summary of a workshop last year hosted by Argonne National Laboratory:

https://publications.anl.gov/anlpubs/2024/02/187645.pdf

Looking through the summary, oxygen and water are known to cause corrosion, but the effect of the actinides is largely unknown. Good to see active research and a plan to define and solve problems. The Chinese are testing an MSR, so they might be further ahead.

Again, all the w/s proponents just mention storage in passing.
Either they do not think it through, or want to just skim over because
it is too hard.
Take a night from say 5pm in summer, it is a hot day and aircons are flat out.
No wind all night, it is common, and the batteries are flat
next morning and hopefully the wind starts up and the sun shines.
Where will you get the energy to recharge the batteries in six hours ?
Oh dear, cannot get it from the grid, the amount you need is about
3 or 4 times what is available if you could use the grid.
No, you need wind and solar 3 to 4 times bigger than you already have.
Dear me, what if the next day is not sunny but also windless.
By 5pm that day the batteries will be flat and no wind.
So batteries with a storage for a long cold windless night need to
be one day capacity times the number of still windless nights so may
or may not be expected and the charging solar and wind need to be
that many times bigger.
I think you may now realise that bacup batteries might be a waste of money.
This is the real world and why solar and wind alone are impossible.

To summarise, trying to power Australia with wind and solar will entail:

-destroying a land area the size of Tasmania which will impact greatly on vulnerable native flora and fauna.

-building and maintaining wind and solar generation to produce six to eight times the average power demand.

-building and maintaining a storage system capable of handling a power input of at least six times the average power demand.

-building and maintaining a grid capable of handling six to eight times the average power of a grid powered by dispatchable sources.

-building and maintaining control systems to handle a highly variable power input.

-compromising Australia's energy security by being completely reliant on a foreign power for our generating infrastructure.

So however you look at it, pursuing wind and solar, as well as compromising our national security, is far more expensive and environmentally destructive than the nuclear option. It is no coincidence that the real world shows the adoption of nuclear to be an economic benefit whereas the adoption of wind and solar brings on an economic decline.

Remove the ban!