Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "" video.

I'm an engineer, aerospace by degree but I work in industrial control systems, automation and robotics. After the imminent collapse of manufacturing I went into the mining sector. It was also because 20 years ago it looked like we were going back to the moon to mine it for Helium-3. What I actually got out of the mining sector was a chunk of experience with infrastructure. That's because remote mine sites are fundamentally an exercise in infrastructure. Before you dig the hole there's the accommodation village, the food services, entertainment services, airfield, roads, drains, power station, backup generators, clean water and waster water services. It actually woke me up to the real answer to why we DON'T have a moon base. Its not the going to the moon issues its the getting all the stuff there. This is why Elon's on a fantasy trip with his Mars plans. Of any mining project the infrastructure is a massive task costing huge amounts of money. What it also woke me up to is where Australia is with its infrastructure. I first became aware of our energy issues around 2015 when I did this funny little consult job for a Taiwanese investment broker who specialises in solar projects. They wanted to know when the old power stations were being switched off. The lists for Australian power stations are on Wikipedia and it includes WHEN the were BUILT (or commissioned) and for many when they are scheduled to be turned off. A couple of things horrified me in what I found. 1: How old our power stations are and how few ENGINEERS realise it. 2: The complete lack of planning to replace them and this is not a Liberal or Labor thing its EVERY Government 3: The complete lack of understanding the Australian people have of the situation.
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Continuing here's a list of Australia's major power stations and by major I mean that they produce (or produced) over 1,000MW (megawatts). These are what I call Gigawatt class power stations because they produce close to or over 1GW (1,000 MW). From Largest to smallest. These are all coal fired except for Torrens Island which is gas fired and is down to 800MW as they have already decommissioned the oldest part of the plant. Eraring (NSW) 2.88GW commissioned 1982 age 40 scheduled closure 2025 Bayswater (NSW) 2.64GW commissioned 1982 age 40 scheduled closure 2035 Loy Yang A (Vic) 2.20GW commissioned 1984 age 38 scheduled closure 2048 Liddell (NSW) 2.00GW commissioned 1971 age 51 scheduled closure 2023 Gladstone (QLD) 1.68GW commissioned 1976 age 46 scheduled closure 2035 Hazelwood (Vic) 1.60GW commissioned 1964 age 53 at closure in 2017 Yallourn W (Vic) 1.48GW commissioned 1975 age 47 scheduled closure 2028 Stanwell (QLD) 1.45GW commissioned 1993 age 29 scheduled closure 2046 Tarong(QLD) 1.40GW commissioned 1984 age 38 scheduled closure 2037 Mt. Piper(NSW) 1.40GW commissioned 1993 age 29 scheduled closure 2040 Vales Point B(NSW) 1.32GW commissioned 1978 age 44 scheduled closure 2029 Loy Yang B (Vic) 1.05GW commissioned 1993 age 29 scheduled closure 2046 Torrens Is. B (SA) 1.04GW commissioned 1976 age 46 scheduled closure 2023 NOTE We have not commissioned a Giga Watt class power station since 1993. In that time our population has gone from 17.7 million to almost 26 million. I did all of 1 economics class in my life and just the first 15 minutes of that course explained the basic idea of supply and demand. Our energy crisis isn't a Liberal, National, Labor or Green thing. They've all dropped the ball playing games of political hot potato and left us with this giant economic WMD that's going off right now. Worse is the cost to fix this and that gets mind numbing and it is a number that can be calculated. If you want to discuss this let me know.
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@lunsmann The problem with the nuclear question isn't if we'll have it, its a question of what type. Forget the 3rd, 4th generation question that's nothing more than a generation of pressure water reactor (PWR). The problem with PWRs is that no matter how much anyone says they are inherently dangerous. FYI - I am an engineer with 30+ years of industrial control systems including the second highest qualification any engineer can get for what we call Functional Safety. That's the engineering of safety functions in industrial applications. Emergency stops are the most basic thing there. I have also worked in Australia's nuclear industry on the mining side, but that meant doing the standard formal nuclear industry induction. Its only a 2 day course but it covers everything from Uranium in the ground to being back in the ground. I did it at a very interesting time as well as there was a lot of noise about what Iran was doing and our instructor made it perfectly clear that we all knew what they were doing. All that said. No matter what anyone claims PWRs can go bang. Its just the very nature of what they are. Molten salt is the opposite, they are inherently fail safe and they can't go bang. Its just fundamental to the way they work. The problem right now is the development of these technologies. Research into nuclear energy literally died after Chernobyl. Mainly due to the fact nobody wanted to study nuclear engineering even as a basic engineering degree. The only reason Thorium nuclear reactors resurfaced (they weren't new) was because a NASA engineer (Kirk Sorenson) had a project to power a moon base. He quickly realised solar is out because all but a few odd places are darkness for 14 days out of every 28. So he went looking for an alternative and stumbled across the MSR Experiments done at Oak Ridge Labs in Tennessee. For civilian use I think based on what I know Thorium fuelled molten salt reactors are top of the list. Plus for Australia we have very good potential sources for thorium. For the military its Uranium PWRs and that's because for that environment its the developed technology and the training for crews and the discipline required is all done AND I know that because I used to work with a guy who was an ex-USN nuclear power plant operator. So I have a fairly decent background and I believe we need to first separate out what our military need and what we need in the civilian sector. Then we need to have a rational sensible discussion on the types of nuclear and massive part of that requires education without vested interests interfering.
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