http://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1488888833237398&set=a.225317139594580

Just spotted this article about small portable nuclear power plants.
Should investors support this technology instead of the Tax dollar guzzling ,massively polluting Solar & wind generator industry ?
For small applications solar & wind are fine but we need a lot of power for industry & whole cities & large towns.

Who knows the future?

There is a zinc battery that might last fifty years. There is a company that wants to refurbish reactors from retired US naval vessels. There are loads of things in development that could give viable alternatives to cheap coal generation.

What worries me are the greens and Albo cult zealots sucked in by the wind and solar grifter spiel. What I'd love to do is go off grid and give the nem the bird. I suspect a lot of Australians feel the same, but the technology as it stands does not yet provide me with that option.

Nuclear is the only way to replace coal currently. In ten years it might be a cheaper option. Until it is, Australia should stick with cheap coal generation if it wants to maintain the environment, food production and living standards.

I don't do social media, so I can't read what was said on Facebook.

I can say only that it's not much good pondering what investors should do - it's their money - and if we had politicians with an ounce of common sense, we wouldn't be talking about what should be happening. We already had the answer to cheap, reliable electricity in coal, until some maniacs decided to invent a load of nonsense about carbon dioxide, climate change and the notion that wind and solar was better.

The reality is: climate change is natural and unstoppable. It's too late and too expensive for nuclear power, and our only hope is a return to coal. Even that will be expensive, thanks to vandals running it down and blowing up plants.

We all need to regain our common sense and instinctive thinking abilities and stop listening to people we have never heard of.

Also a reality, Australia is rooted, thanks to all the twaddle Australians have fallen for; and the fact that mass immigration is putting more demands on our puny energy system.

It is said that people get the governments they deserve, and Australians are a glaring example of that.

on one hand indy is saying small portable nuke generators. Then says large scale power needed.
You need to clarify what is what and what size are you talking about.
Lukus heights reactor is classed as 100 KwH / day generator.
put that into large scale u would be looking at many hundred of thousands. of generators.

i seen what you are talking about and i would say that is B/S. An impossible task.
The size of that thing would power about 5 homes.

doog,
You don't see what I'm talking about.
Start the change by using smaller units such as they have in ships just to get started or are you so daft as to believe such a change could be achieved in one big hit overnight ?
As the use of small units proves useful, the technology gained & proven can be expanded to larger or more such units. If it proves not worthwhile then less harm is done than by clearing hectares of forest pollution from wind farms & even less money wasted. The important factor is to make a start !
At this stage of available technology small reactors are many times safer than the huge uncontrollable plants as we have already experienced. All I'm saying is, if we can have successful portable reactors for the past 50 years in ships then surely with the latest technology we can have reliable plants on land. Considering the massive energy requirements of an aircraft carrier one would think a similar plant could run a town of 200,000 without much difficulty. For those who keep bringing up the subject of cost just consider keeping unions away from such a project.
Also, keep in mind the Russians have been doing it since before you were born.

For AU solar is the way to go. Backed up with gas. Solar is going ahead in leaps and bounds. Batteries are being taken up in big numbers. So what is the point of talking of things that do not or are only toy systems.
Good for trades wanting to get off diesel.
Nukes will never happen in AU after the last election, by bringing down a deranged govt would be. They could not see the damage they were doing to themselves let alone not being able to find a costing that does not exist.
Lets look at former coalition govts: Abbott, scomo, not exactly the sort of leaders that excites any one that does not believe in hard line alternative govt:
Albo has done very well, in driving a steady ship. Infrastructure is coming along and will soon take over dirty coal.
A majority of Australians want coal gone and opponent's of good coal will only rock the political boat.

Doog- Wasn't the Lucas Heights Reactor designed to produce medical and industrial chemicals and as a research reactor not as a dedicated power generating facility. If so I'd expect even a relatively small reactor designed for power generation such as from an aircraft carrier or submarine would be a better comparison. Of course the management of Lucas Heights might be useful to form the management team of an Australian Nuclear Industry or nationalized institution.
I'd expect that naval nuclear reactors would be modularized given their long and broad history in the US military.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Flux_Australian_Reactor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_naval_reactors

Of course those that would make the west dependent on those not loyal to the west are traitors. All sources of energy are potentially problematic but destruction of the west is also problematic. There are those that care less about things than the west. Sometimes the west needs to make hard decisions

Canem.. Lukus heights has a capacity of 100 KwH generator. That is a classification of a reactor only. An electricity sized reactor is one gigawatt. 100,000,000 times bigger.
That is the difference of a nuke in suburbia as opposed to a nuke in an isolated and community free zone of 50 kms radius.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1225185639676254

As she says, they only hype the final output !

When you talk about Lucas Heights you reveal that you know nothing.
A close friend of mine, Keith Alder, set up Lucas heights and was in charge
till he retired many years later.
He had a plan which he put to the government but they were too short
sighted. At that time he was in charge of the proposed nuclear power
station that was started at Jervis Bay.
You can blame the PM Billy McMahon who cancelled the project for the
mess we are in now.
Keith's plan was that we establish a plant to produce fuel for nuclear
power stations and provide a reprocessing service for other countries.
His plan was build two plants, the first to take other countries
depleted fuel, generate power from it as it is depleted further and
then take depleted fuel from the first one and then deplete it further
in the second plant.
Then the further depleted fuel is so low he used to carry a sample
in his pocket for when he gave talks.
I remember being surprised at its weight.
Having a system like this the world would pay us a fortune to process
their fuel and return it, or finally store it.
Keith's plan would have carried all our energy costs forever.
It was a plan that would have made Australia financially rich forever.
We would have had the cheapest energy because we would make money
digging it up and finally burying it.
All the carryon from the last 20 years or so would not have worried us !

If present-stage alternative energy technology is purely for domestic application then that would be acceptable for the near future . Industrial requirements however should not even look at it.
Worn out solar panels & wind generators should be the responsibility of the user at time of disposal.