There are oil fields in many places and there are perhaps oil fields in Australia that can be induced to greater production by injecting CO2 and water. The CO2 can be obtained by converting coal into jet fuel and the CO2 produced can be injected and re-injected into the oil fields.

Buried pipes can move liquid CO2 to the oil fields. There is a molten iron-tin alloy process for converting water and coal into hydrogen and CO or CO2 and it does not require air separation and produces less CO2. The hydrogen and carbon oxides are then made into jet fuel by long known processes at low cost.

There is much magnesium but less calcium in the oceans, but thorough mixing of CO2 with sea water will capture it forever. The massive amounts of magnesium eliminate the chance of any substantial decrease of the alkaline nature of the oceans. The oceans have an alkaline nature and will not become acid or even neutral with the amount of CO2 humans can put into it which is a very small part of what natural processes put into it.

Much CO2 is converted by the ocean into neutral carbohydrates. The ocean reduces its acid content by releasing oxygen from its single cell and multiple cell plant growth. If ships were converted to burning coal slurry, the ash could provide needed growth elements for oceanic life. The energy efficiency would be less, but the net release of CO2 to the air could be very low and fuel costs would be much lower. Lighter weight steam turbines could be used again, but combustion could be by wet air oxidation which would capture all of the ash and sulphur. Much CO2 could also be combined with the cool ash slurry and all of the sulphur which is needed for plant growth. Super-critical water oxidation can convert all carbon forms to CO2 rapidly, but is only needed for final cleanup of partially oxidized material which is resistant to sub-critical oxidation.

Australia should not export either coal or uranium until it has installed working nuclear power generators. It could get CANDU reactors from its related state of Canada in about five years, and they could be exact duplicates of the ones recently installed in China to save on engineering and construction time and costs.

There are simple and cheap ways to modify reactors identical to the ones which failed in Japan so that they would not overheat after they were turned off even if power were not restored for a long time. One not very expensive way is to have multiple Capstone turbines always operating in Tsunami proof buildings. The power produced is used for reactor cooling or shipped to the power network during ordinary operation. Not one person is known to have been killed by the radiation from the failed reactors, but many people are know to be killed in Japan by automobiles or cigarettes.

Coal fired and even natural gas fired power plants are known to release more radioactive atoms to the surface environment than nuclear reactors for the same amount of power produced. People cannot avoid eating radio-active foods, because the most natural organic foods have always been radioactive and cannot be made non-radioactive. Pure ethanol, a food, can be made without much or any measurable radioactivity from crude oil. It is as safe to drink as that made from corn or other grains or foods, but is illegal to sell for human consumption in the US, because it is deemed to be adulterated because it does not have sufficient radioactivity.

Potassium Iodide pills, that are useful to reduce the intake of radioactive iodine for the first few days of their release but not after a week or so, are radioactive themselves.

There is enough uranium and thorium on the earth to sustain production of any kind of fuel for hundreds of thousands of millions of years from captured CO2 and hydrogen produced from water with nuclear reactor heat. By that time the earth will have long been captured by the expanding sun.

..HG..