Forum Archive Index - May 2004

[hugh webber <hugh.webber@clear.net.nz>]

Here's the missing factual knowledge Ralph et al. As a CEN holder and an 
environmental solution I
look forward to CEN proceeding with a nuclear power plant.

NUCLEAR  POWER TO THE PEOPLE – IT IS TIME THE GREENIES GAVE WAY
(Frank Haden – Sunday Star Times May 10 2004).

"The abandonment of the Waitaki River's Project Aqua, our forlorn hope of 
fending off power
shortages, was the last straw.
We must tell the  silly environmentalists to shut up so we can talk seriously 
about modern safe
nuclear energy as the only way out of our power crisis. 
We've run out of options as our power needs inexorably increase at 2.5% a year. 
With no effective
generation prospects in sight, we face an increase of around 60% in demand by 
2024.
If our situation were not so serious you'd have to laugh about the pickle the 
environmentalists
have helped get us into.
They insist New Zealand must stop burning coal, gas and other fossil fuels to 
produce electricity.
They gather Kyoto courage from Doomsdaying scientists such as Britain's Sir 
David King, who
predicted last week global warming will heat the planet up so fast we'll all 
have to live in the
Antarctic by the end of this century – it will be the only place on earth cool 
enough to sustain
life.
They helped undermine Project Aqua, calling it desecration of our sacred 
inheritance of unspoiled
natural environment. For the same reason they oppose polluting our skylines and 
quiet suburban
lifestyle by putting windmills on the ridge lines.
Their latest idiocy is their support of hydrogen fuel cells for vehicles, 
ignoring the fact vast
quantities of electricity have to be generated to separate hydrogen from water 
to pump into the
cells. 
They won't face the fact we have reached the end of the road, with nuclear 
power the only remaining
viable option. Listen to them when anyone suggests what they see as the Devil's 
Alternative. We
won't give up New Zealand's clean, green nuclear-free image, they shout.
Remember Chernobyl , they gibber.
They won't listen when they are told Chernobyl was a one-off, never to be 
repeated freak event.
They don't want to hear the Chernobyl reactors were built to an old fashioned, 
inherently dangerous
design other countries wouldn't touch with a barge pole.
They don't want to know nuclear power experts around the world had warned the 
Russians not to use
thedesign, and were not surprised when what was almost inevitable, given 
Murphy's Law and a bunch
of lunatics ignoring the most basic safety procedures, finally happened.
When a series of human errors piled on one another and the plant blew up, the 
opponents of nuclear
power got what they needed. They had a mystical, almost religious catch-phrase 
for those who fear
what they don't understand: Remember Chernobyl!
I found out just how strong is the unwillingness to face the nuclear facts more 
years ago than I
care to remember, long before Chernobyl, when I visited three overseas nuclear 
power stations and
returned home to write a full page national newspaper article headlined "Time 
to Go Nuclear".
The Prime Minister of the time, Norman Kirk, was furious. This was not the sort 
of thing he would
expect any decent journalist to write, he expostulated when he rang me at home 
the morning it
appeared.
But now we're in the 21st century. We have to work past Chernobyl and face our 
urgent need for
nuclear power as the only way out of our dilemma. The government must recognise 
the need, and, act
with resolution to put the uninformed environmentalists in their place.
The facts can't be disputed. Modern third generation nuclear power plants of 
the size New Zealand
would need, say 500 megawatts, the same as Benmore or Project Aqua, will soon 
be available. They
will be much more efficient than today's plants.
Several competing designs are planned or being built in Japan, Taiwan, and 
South Korea. Their
automatic safety systems include passive energy dissipation or natural 
processes so they can
correct their own malfunctions without human intervention. 
Another important advance is they will burn up most of their fuel. This means 
they will produce
only a small amount of waste, around 100 tonnes a year, to be sealed up in 
molten glass in
stainless steel containers and buried for no more than a few centuries.
They can be built anywhere, so slotting a couple in 50 or 100 km from Auckland 
would end at a
stroke the North Island's dependence on South Island power, and the losses 
involved in transmission
across Cook Strait.
The third generation designs have evolved from decades of safe generation by 
older plants in many
countries. The experience of these countries can teach us useful lessons.  
France, for example, now gets 75% of its power from nuclear plants. The demand 
for French exports
of food grown under their shadow is not affected. They are huge plants – two in 
the wine producing
Rhone Valley generate between them more power than all of New Zealand's power 
stations put
together. 
We should remind our nail biting environmentalists that nuclear power plants, 
among their many
advantages, produce no greenhouse gases and are economical, costing no more 
than fossil
fuel-burning plants to run." 


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