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' ... 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. ... '
' ... 100 tonnes a year, to be sealed up in molten glass
in
stainless steel containers and buried for no more than a few centuries.
... '
Hope they bury 'em in Antarctica!
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2004 5:16 AM
Subject: Re: Re: [sharechat] neclear
power good or bad by macdunk
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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