Nuke power for NZ?

[Jeremy]

New Zealand has Uranium supplies (around Nelson). But there's no need for a nuclear power plant here, plus the risk due to earth quakes is too high. However we do have one advantage over many other countries when commerical fusion reactors are running (which will be pretty soon, with the first medium scale viable reactor having allready been planned out, all that has to happen is that they decide where to build it). We have large areas of land which don't have people living anywhere near them. Thus in the event of a reactor malfunction the 30km wide crater wouldn't be a problem. And there's nothing wrong with having more power than your needs, asit helps out industry which love cheap power.

[sAsLEX]

You still get charged the basic fees.

even if your property has no connection to the main grid, ie subdivide off a corner of your farm and run a small house on renewable energy only and you will be charged a line fee even though the place has no electrical service? I know I wouldn't pay for something I wasn't recieving

[pete376403]

http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/030305EC.shtml on more nuclear powerplants for Gt Britain.

[James Deuce]

even if your property has no connection to the main grid, ie subdivide off a corner of your farm and run a small house on renewable energy only and you will be charged a line fee even though the place has no electrical service? I know I wouldn't pay for something I wasn't recieving

I'll find out, though I think that it is unlikely that you'd get planning consent for section with no power feed.

[Hitcher]

Well, I hope all of the NIMBYs freeze to death.

New Zealand is about to pay the price for a decade of no national energy strategy and for failing to encourage sensible public debate on energy options.

Auckland will be the first to suffer. The new high-tension supply from Whakamaru to Auckland is unlikely to happen. Why? Resource Management Act (RMA), 1,000 individual land owners -- you do the math. Plan B? A coal-fired plant on the site of the Marsden B generator at Marsden Point. Economically feasible? You betcha. Environmentally "friendly"? Absolutely. Likely to happen? Possibly, but there's a big sales job required on modern coal-fired generation systems first. Other options for Auckland? Move now, while your latte's still warm...

As for the rest of New Zealand?

Renewables: geothermal? Possible, but could cause major subsidence issues. Hydro? No. Bugger-all damable rivers left, and then there's the RMA. Wind? Good for keeping the GM-free macrame weavers happy, but not able to cost-effectively produce the sorts of numbers we need. Tides and rivers? Possible, but the capital investment required is huge. Solar? 20 years away, at least.

Nuclear? The arguments have been well run earlier. Not a goer for a whole bunch of reasons.

Coal? Absolutely. Unfortunately New Zealand is not an industrialised nation and one outcome of this is that there is no "coal culture" here. When most kiwis hear the word "coal" they think of kids up chimneys, ponies and budgies down mines, palls of sooty smoke, etc. Modern coal combustion is significantly more sophisticated than that -- it has to be to pass muster in affluent and discerning economies like Europe. And New Zealand has squillions of tonnes of coal that can either be mined or "harvested" for its methane. And we only have to use it for the next 30 or so years until the "next generation" of electricity sources are proven and commercialised -- fuel cells, solar, fusion, etc.

And then there's the Kyoto Protocol. This is a tough ask for New Zealand that on one had pretends to be part of the developed world but has the energy consumption profile of a developing nation. This agreement will act as a dead hand on any form of combustion -- including motor vehicles.

Brown-outs will become pretty much a reality for New Zealand within the next five to 10 years, and worse for Aucklanders because of a combination of population growth and poor electricity distributing infrastructure (there are no remaining corridors to run pylons across the city).

And on that happy note, it's back to the cricket...

[Blakamin]

Well, I hope all of the NIMBYs freeze to death.
.......

And on that happy note, it's back to the cricket...

cool... time to move again.... if I can get the mrs to bundaberg.....

[sedge]

Coal? Absolutely. Unfortunately New Zealand is not an industrialised nation and one outcome of this is that there is no "coal culture" here. When most kiwis hear the word "coal" they think of kids up chimneys, ponies and budgies down mines, palls of sooty smoke, etc. Modern coal combustion is significantly more sophisticated than that -- it has to be to pass muster in affluent and discerning economies like Europe. And New Zealand has squillions of tonnes of coal that can either be mined or "harvested" for its methane. And we only have to use it for the next 30 or so years until the "next generation" of electricity sources are proven and commercialised -- fuel cells, solar, fusion, etc.

This message bought to you by the NZ coal mining association - 'putting kids in chimneys since 1845'

Sedge.

[inlinefour]

What say you?

NZ needs more and more power all the time and the fact is that we cant keep damming rivers forever. (beisides, rivers are great.)
Coal and oil in my opinion is a no go, its expensive to keep going and does more damage than a kx500 on a golf green.
Geothermal is good but there is only so much we can harness.
Solar.......kinda like using a harley powerplant to break the sound barrier.
Wind. Great, windmills are pretty if theres one on a hill. But when you have a few thousand of them all over the countryside and coastline like you see in some places overseas, the appeal is lost very quickly. Not to mention how lovely they become when theres no wind.

Now according to some guys on here you could put 3 4stroke 250's together on a generator and make more power than the national grid could handle.

Which leaves Nuke power......okay we dont like it but its safer and environmentally less harmful that the others (as long as its serviced by people a little more skilled than 3rd world dollar a day technicians). Even some of the big international environmentalists are saying its the best choice.

What do you guys think?

No matter what they actually decide there is going to allways be people who are unhappy with whatever is decided.

[Timber020]

[QUOTE=Jim2]That particular dual usage was Political in nature and outcome. There was no Military need to use it. From a Logistics perspective Japan had lost the war 12 months previously. The US and allies could have sat back and let the Japanese home islands starve, but the war in China would have continued, and the Soviet Union had huge forces gathering on the Sino-Soviet border. A Soviet victory in Northern China with an increasingly belligerent Stalin in charge of the USSR would have created an even bigger united Communist Bloc for the "Western" allies to deal with.

Plus any US government that let conscript troops invade a country with a fight to the death mentality, and the subsequent number of casualties, wouldn't be voted back into power. You'll note that Truman was voted back in to office, and the US/USSR standoff was mainly performed in Europe with "sideshows" in Asia.



QUOTE]

Not using the atoms would have resulted in many more deaths than the use of them. If not in the starvation of japanese and deaths of chinese then an allied attempt at invasion would have been a massacre for both sides. (look what happened at IwoJima). The japanese were ready to fight to the very last, it was only the big two that convinced them otherwise.

[Skyryder]

I am no expert at all on this (I'm a fencer for fucks sake) but whenever I drive over that little bridge on the motorway between takanini and papakura and see that water flowing under it hard out from the tidal basin on the east I am sure that we could harness that enegy.
I mentioned this to my girlfriend and my brother but the both laughed, does anyone know anything about this or maybe creating power from waves and stuff?

If memory serves me correctly I think there is a tidal gernerator in Italy. Think I read about it some time ago.

Skyryder

[Skyryder]

http://www.hie.co.uk/aie/tidal_power.html This is better than Nuke power.

Skyryder

[James Deuce]

Not using the atoms would have resulted in many more deaths than the use of them. If not in the starvation of japanese and deaths of chinese then an allied attempt at invasion would have been a massacre for both sides. (look what happened at IwoJima). The japanese were ready to fight to the very last, it was only the big two that convinced them otherwise.

You've heard how the victor gets to write history? You've popped out the standard argument that the victors have pushed as justification for using nukes against Japan for more than half a century. They were a political tool and the Japanese were a convenient target. The Cold War political climate began almost immediately after VE day, and the resolve of both sides was sealed by the Berlin airlift of 1949. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a demonstration to prevent Stalin from even thinking about invading Western Europe. The last thing the "Imperial" Western powers wanted was another fight in Europe. US casualty rates at Iwo Jima were down more to the terrain and the fact that it was a heavily defended, and defensible theatre. The Japanese had the high ground and were able to shelter from the prolonged preceding ship to shore bombardment. I think you'll find Okinawa was much, much worse than Iwo Jima.

The "Fire Bombing" of Tokyo was far worse than Hiroshima or Nagasaki. "Strategic" bombing, either conventional or Nuclear is entirely about removing a society's ability to function by killing workers and breaking logistics chains, as well as the nebulous stuff like reducing morale.

"A successful incendiary raid required ideal weather that included dry air and significant wind. Weather reports predicted these conditions over Tokyo on the night of March 9-10, 1945. A force of 334 B-29s was unleashed - each plane stripped of ammunition for its machine guns to allow it to carry more fire-bombs. The lead attackers arrived over the city just after dark and were followed by a procession of death that lasted until dawn. The fires started by the initial raiders could be seen from 150 miles away. The results were devastating: almost 17 square miles of the city were reduced to ashes. Estimates of the number killed range between 80,000 and 200,000, a higher death toll than that produced by the dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima or Nagasaki six months later." (http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/tokyo.htm)

The Japanese government was in a state of turmoil when the Emperor, not the Japanese Military Government, surrendered.

The tone I always get from the "projected number of deaths" argument is how much more valuable a "Western" life is than an "Asian" one.

[Wonko]

Auckland will be the first to suffer. The new high-tension supply from Whakamaru to Auckland is unlikely to happen. Why? Resource Management Act (RMA), 1,000 individual land owners -- you do the math.

Not quite true. Transpower can aquire the land through the government as a buy out and the land owner gets compensation at the GV price(or there abouts) and the land owner has no say in the matter. This was a condition of the privitisation of power and safegaurded the power companies from being at the complette mercy of overzealious land owners. Transpower is going through with the consoltation phase now because it would be even worse PR for them if they applied directly to the government to purchase the required land.(image the headlines "Transpower stole my land" bet the article would not mention the compensation)

[Wonko]

Problem with tidal is that 4 times a day your power output drops off to zero when the tides change. If this is during peak useage time you need to have production available to supply peak power demands. Wave power wouldn't have this limitation, but I image that power supply would still change with the tides, not a great amount.

[Gen]

50's technology with a hell of a lot of human error...

my laptop could run 5 chernobyls with a "blue screen of death"!!!
my watch could probably run chernobyl... and its analogue....

would you let 20 year olds run a nightshift in a nuclear powerplant????


shit, they didnt even tell each other what they were doing!!!! (guy removing rods, another removing water)

sorry Gen, but I have a fascination with energy and the digging of big holes... if we were to rely on 1 disaster to stop people doing what they do, we'd have no brigdes, tunnels or coal and hydro power plants....

ps... I dunno where you'd move to??????

A remote island of course, well away from the immenant disasters of mankind.....sit back on the white sand with my ice cold drink, and let the rest of you debate this issue further