New heights for PC Better nuclear
THE Prime Minister and Energy Minister Angus Taylor have announced an inquiry into nuclear energy. Liquid fluoride thorium reactors are the future of clean baseload power generation. They are being developed in Europe, with India and China about to trial them. They have low construction costs because they operate at low pressures of 15 PSI, about the same as your car’s radiator, so don’t need pressure or containment dome for safety. And 1.75 tonnes of thorium would power a reactor for a year and generate electricity equivalent to 300 tonnes of uranium.
Thorium reactors burn almost all their fuel, so 83 per cent of any waste is safe after 10 years. The remaining is safe after 300 years (10,000 for atomic waste). Thorium reactors generate 5000 times less nuclear waste than traditional reactors and fuel cost is 6000 times less.
As Australia has 30 per cent of thorium surface reserves, we should join Europe, Canada, Brazil, Russia, UK, US and Japan in developing thorium. The US ran power plants from 1951 until the late 1960s which fell out of favour because thorium did not produce plutonium as a by-product, which was important for weapons. Liquid fluoride thorium reactors need a little seeding from plutonium of which I understand in decommissioned weapon stocks are sufficient to seed thorium power for the world for about 10,000 years. lawyers, this could mean they end up in jail, costing the state far more than if they were properly represented. Our treasurer may be getting the budget in the black but how exactly. It seems money is siphoned off from some agency, put somewhere else or just put straight into treasury coffers so the Government can tell us what a great job it is doing. It’s rather like believing the lemon tree at the bottom of the garden is covered in gold. Glennis Sleurink Launceston POLITICAL correctness surely has outdone itself in NSW. The Reproductive Health Care Reform Bill 2019, dealing with women’s rights to abortion services, runs to over nine pages with 2000 words, and does not mention the terms “women” or “females” once. Instead, the word “person” appears about 50 times. This is ridiculous! Am I the only citizen who is fed up with where our society is headed? We are increasingly pandering to minority groups, be it over building heights, wind farms, spotted handfish, access to wilderness, gender uncertainty or cable cars. Harry Quick Berriedale
Fire risk to our wilds
through our unique wilderness? Yes, it is remote but it holds plant species that are unique to this planet and are irrecoverable if incinerated. Surely, instead of throwing millions of dollars at a monstrous edifice slap in front of Dove Lake, for example, it would be advisable to divert that money to an effective wilderness fire protection scheme — so that there is actually some wilderness left to enhance the visitor experience?