Josephus,
>To give every person on the planet food, housing, transport and comfort is not going to happen by wind and solar,
The nuclear alternative is always available, and there's also geothermal. However considering the enormous amount of solar energy our planet receives, what basis do you have for concluding it can't do the job?

>because it will only supply the first world.
What brings you to that conclusion? Are you under the illusion that it's still too expensive?

Aidan your last post identifies you as either a fool, or so poorly educated that you have no understanding of the subject. This is not surprising as a recent examination of Gen Z in England found that of this the greenest generation ever, only 28% know that nuclear power generation is a low to zero CO2 activity, much lower than wind or solar in lifetime CO2 emissions.

These & most greens the most vocal protesters have virtually no idea of what they are protesting about.

Only someone with no understanding of the physics involved could believe that current wind & solar techniques could ever supply eve our electricity requirements.

Worse it has no capacity to supply our industrial power or transport mining & agriculture fuel. The only life style they could support would be subsistence farming, & hunter gathering.

Is this your desired future? If not, do try reading something other than green propaganda, & learn some of the facts of life.

Hasbeen & Aidan,

I suppose the question is: how much land would solar, wind or nuclear power generation take up in, say, India to provide at the level of service that we take for granted in Australia ?

Solar and wind power generation take up a lot of land - we may not worry much about it here because we frankly have a lot of land. But not so in many other countries, not to mention that solar and wind installations would take a lot of valuable land out of production.

But nuclear may be the game-changer. Since nuclear power can be scaled up and down to be used to power submarines without much worry, and at the other extreme, to power pace-makers, safety is no longer an issue. Nobody is surely going to build nuclear power plants using 70-year-old Chernobyl-type technology; or build such plants right on a beach in tsunami-prone areas like Fukushima. Technology has moved on from all that.

Whether thorium or uranium or whatever else, nuclear power plants can be built to scale, from village-level requirements to those of large cities, and emulating the safety features that may be in place in France and Finland. If we seriously want to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere, then surely a CO2-free method of energy production should be thoroughly considered ?

By the way, Lucas Heights near Sutherland has been involved with handling nuclear waste since 1950 or so. Any major life-threatening accidents in that region since then ?

Joe

Hey Ian Bryce,

"Give me good policies… OK here is a proposal. Combine energy sources to make one system as reliable as coal – Fair Dinkum energy as Scomo said. Solar, wind and storage together make a good combination. Remember, my qualifications are in physics and electrical engineering."

I'm all for whatever works best, and I already support these things.
Lets look at WA as an example.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-01/rise-of-rooftop-solar-power-jeopardising-wa-energy-grid/11731452

"This could allow AEMO to 'spill' surplus solar power, rather than have to accommodate it in a way that put the grid under stress."

Why spill the power, I don't know about infrastucture in WA, but my idea would be to create a smaller holding pond at the base of a dam that has half a days worth of pumpable water in it, so that instead of spilling the solar power, you redirect it to pumps, I don't know maybe tiers of Archimedes screws slowly lifting the water up the dam level by level, and refilling the dam.

That way 'spilled' power becomes a battery in the form of stored water.

I'm all for water wheels, turbines, solar etc. whatever works.
- Put power generators on the wheels of trains and feed it back into the grid if it works.

And on that subject it should be a national power grid.
Build high speed rail linking all capital cities and incorporate a national power grid into it.
Include water, fuel, internet and make it like one giant hub or conduit for the whole nation.

Create a socialist base level employment schemme (The job you have when you don't have a job) that pays double dole for full-time work doing things to help the government save money.

Focus on training and have a national scheme across the nation building this HSR

Instead of just giving welfare recipients a handout (to inject money at the bottom) they could've just come up with a different policy to get that money into the economy.
Isn't a handup better than a handout

[Cont.]
The loser of capitalism is the one who doesn't get the job.
End that stupid rot and all the social problems that follow by building a foolproof system.

How you going to have free education and free welfare if you cant offer a free job to offset these costs?

This puts to use 'the 5% unemployed that capitalism needs to prevent wage growth' and make them an asset instead of a liability.

Thanks for your earlier response.

[Cont.]
One more point.
Say you have one full dam, and the HSR and water pipes are all level.
Then all you have to do is let water out of one dam and send it down the pipes to another, and you can also make power from that flow.

Then once its all connected into a national grid put solar farms near the railines and a SMR nuclear plant in each state and we'll have more power than well know what to do with.

How else do our leaders plan for the country to be globally competitive?

If you can't lower wages in the private sector what else can you do to make the country more competitive?

You have to lower the cost of energy and transport, there's no other way.

- And then you see how all these things come together -