A socialist, as opposed to a Green, solution to global warming has to consider floating mini-nuclear power stations. They could be the key to rapid de-carbonisation of power production in developing countries – and even here in NZ if you think about it. The design from this Danish company are apparently a modern Compact Molten Salt Reactor design that removes the threat of a meltdown in the event of an accident – it will simply shut down.
We could easily park one of these up in the Weiti river near Stillwater on the north shore (or where ever) and power 200,000+ homes with just one of these. This plant is 1TW so it would completely free us of any further need for wind or solar development and dramatically cut the cost of electricity for consumers, make NZ a 100% zero-emission energy producer are free up tons of existing capacity to produce Green hydrogen and power a rapid conversion to a completely ICB free vehicle fleet by 2045-50. Crucially, it would ensure the economy remained competitive and thus maintain our standard of living.
Imagine – completely emission free with a mix of nuclear/hydro/wind/solar! Surely it is the best stop gap measure until fusion comes along?
The main reason nukes like this aren't going to come to New Zealand anytime soon is simply cost.
We 're in the very fortunate position of having plenty of hydro available on demand, so we can add as much very cheap wind and solar as we want and we can use the hydro to fill the gaps from the wind and solar. We've also got a decent amount of cheap geothermal providing very steady baseload power.
However, we may need to get used to the idea of nukes kinda like that powering visiting and local ships.
Interestingly, one of my reasons to move to NZ was the close distance to several nuclear power plants in Europe (Germany and France). My neighbour worked in one of them and after hearing his "inside" stories you know that most promises / claims by the nuclear industry are worthless bullshit.
If they really believe they are 100% safe, they wouldn't have the nuclear power plants in limited liability sub-companies and they would be able to properly ensure them.
And there's still the nuclear waste from running and decommissioning the power plants. The German power companies immediately agreed to pay 5 billion Euros to the German government to rid themselves from such problems… similar to other polluting options it's all economical while the pollution is for free.
The CMSR technology that Seaborg (and about a dozen other similar companies) are going to use is completely different to the one your neighbour worked with.
All currently operating reactors are derivatives of the 1940's design that was used on the original Nautilus submarine; and yet despite this design dating from literally the dawn of the nuclear age, it remains by far the safest form of power generation. All the data points to this.
I've been following developments in this space very closely for quite a few years, all the innovation in 4th gen nuclear power leverages decades of science, materials and engineering innovation to deliver clean, abundant and reliable energy using wholly different technologies to existing plants.
The big limitation at present is not improving safety, reducing proliferation risk, nor even waste disposal … these are all solved problems. The critical challenge for nuclear at present is to get it's costs below that of coal and gas while meeting all regulatory expectations; and everyone working in this space is aware of this.
Thanks, RedLogix. At least you don't insult people's intelligence like Sanctuary did below (which obviously doesn't help to argue for nuclear power).
I am fully aware that the new generation reactors are not comparable (I am an engineer and worked mostly for power companies) and clearly understand the energy requirements of our comfortable daily lifestyle. I am not 100% against nuclear power.
I am just a lot more cautious around statements like:
it remains by far the safest form of power generation
Or
all the innovation in 4th gen nuclear power leverages decades of science, materials and engineering innovation to deliver clean, abundant and reliable energy using wholly different technologies to existing plants.
Or
The big limitation at present is not improving safety, reducing proliferation risk, nor even waste disposal … these are all solved problems
As they sound exactly like the ones in the brochures of the original nuclear power plants… And it turned out they didn't meet reality. So excuse my scepticism.
The German power companies immediately agreed to pay 5 billion Euros to the German government to rid themselves from such problems… similar to other polluting options it's all economical while the pollution is for free. [my italics]
If nothing else millsy you never leave anyone in doubt as to where you stand … 🙂
Australia and NZ are rather uniquely positioned in that we can probably delay migrating to nuclear power for quite a few decades yet … we have sufficient renewable resource to lean on so that we don't have to be on the leading edge of any new nuclear tech.
Agreed. NZ has the luxury to see how the new nuclear power plants you mentioned above work out. It will also be interesting to see if there are more efficient or completely new renewable energy sources available in a couple of decades time (we might not require nuclear power by then).
A big design criterion of the latest generations of reactor designs is to make them "walk away safe". This means that the result of loss of control function leads to the reactions stopping and the core cooling purely from the laws of physics. So they can't go boom.
This is a huge contrast to the early reactor designs from the 50s and 60s like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, that all required continuous active control to prevent the heat generation running away. When cooling and control was lost through an operator making the wrong response because of a crap control interface (Three Mile Island), or because of running a badly designed test with the wrong unprepared staff in the control room (Chernobyl) or wiping out the electrical controls and backup with a tsunami (Fukushima), then the old designs allowed the core to heat up from residual decay, eventually leading to superheated water reacting with zirconium to separate into hydrogen and oxygen and then going boom, and/or meltdown.
Newer designs have fixed that conceptual fault of requiring continuous active control for safety. Part of the reason for the dangerous designs in the 50s and 60s is back then there was much less knowledge and concern about what could go wrong. In my opinion, that pendulum has swung too far the other way, where we're now way over-concerned about very very small risks from nuclear, while ignoring much greater continuous harms from other forms of power generation. Especially the harms from coal and gas.
"However, weak driving forces that power many passive safety features can pose significant challenges to effectiveness of a passive system, particularly in the short term following an accident."
… passivity is not synonymous with reliability or availability, even less with assured adequacy of the safety feature, though several factors potentially adverse to performance can be more easily counteracted through passive design (public perception). On the other hand active designs employing variable controls permit much more precise accomplishment of safety functions; this may be particularly desirable under accident management conditions."
That IAEA quote seems absurdly obtuse in the light of modern methods and I note is derived from a document dated 1991.
It entirely focusses on the PWR technology of the day, completely predates any 4th generation designs, and looks irrelevant to any discussion about them.
In practical realistic terms, the choice between nuclear and what we're accepting right now comes down to bedwetting about some hypothetical risks that engineers put massive amounts of effort into eliminating because they know if those risks turns into a disaster, their industry is gone, or there's the tons of mercury and other toxins dumped into the atmosphere and rivers from the likes of Huntly, Wairakei etc.
Personally, if I were offered the choice of having a nuke just around the corner from my place in exchange for eliminating Huntly and eliminating coal use at Glenbrook, I'd jump at it. There's no way I'd live within 200km in the northeast quadrant from either Huntly or Glenbrook, because of their emissions and prevailing winds. Since I'm northwest of them, and winds from the southeast are rare in Auckland, I can somewhat unhappily accept that occasionally I'm downwind of their emissions.
Putting faith in engineers and operators for the next 50-70 years is another thing entirely.
Fukushima wasn't just the result of an engineering boo-boo. It was the result of things like waste fuel mismanagement that would have been dismissed at the time of construction as "hypothetical risks that engineers put massive amounts of effort into eliminating".
Maybe the advertised safety accurately reflects the actual safety under standard human operating conditions this time. But the nuclear industry has been notoriously unreliable in this regard, for decades.
Put simply, this is why all 4th gen designs remove plant operator from any direct control of the core. That's the meaning of the term 'walk away safe'.
And yet, even with the extreme carelessness and obvious flaws of past designs, and the sloppiness of some operators, the actual harms from nuclear generation are tiny. The harms from future designs where safety is taken much more seriously can be expected to be much much less.
Or if you want to just look at individual big disasters, hydro has had the biggest, but there have been plenty of other really big non-nuke energy disasters
Thing about radiation is that it's got a much less demonstrable mechanism of harm than a hydro dam bursting.
But please, keep talking about how the obvious flaws (that were claimed to be completely safe at the time of construction) barely did any harm, in order to make folk feel better about tomorrow's obvious flaws unexpectedly causing another problem that you assure us can't happen.
I fully understand the reaction most people do have around ionising radiation; it's the invisible nature of it that I think spooks most people. Hell I've personally walked around an industrial plant carrying in my bare hands a relatively powerful Kr-85 beta source. I was totally safe, but looking back I couldn't help but feel a strong prickly sense of danger. In no sense can I be dismissive of this natural reaction.
At the same time I sincerely believe that this 'unseeable, unknowable, and insensible' quality has been exploited by various players to push agendas that have little to do with actual safety.
At the same time I sincerely believe that this 'unseeable, unknowable, and insensible' quality has been exploited by various players to push agendas that have little to do with actual safety.
RL, could you list (in your sincere opinion; no need for explanation) the "various players" and their respective "agendas" that have little to do with (actual) safety?
Suppose we’re all players, each with our own sincere beliefs and agendas.
I should have expressed myself more clearly: when a dam bursts, if you find a drowned person in the debris, that's pretty clear.
Estimates for Chernobyl go from only a few dozen directly involved in the incident who died within a few weeks to tens (or even hundreds) of thousands.
The fanbois pick the lowest estimate to claim how safe it is, Greenpeace picks the other end, but actually…? Maybe even Huntly's particulates are competitive against a confidence interval that wide. Maybe not. But the fanbois have been wrong enough that they've had their shot.
@Drowsy: Greenpeace have a clear business model of overhyping fears about unseeable unknowable and insensible threats to drive donations.
Fossil fuel interests have apparently also been active in the shadows, flicking funding to environmental groups whose stances are slanted towards anti-nuclear, rather than having climate change at the front of their concerns.
Fossil oil and industry starting from 50's was engaging into campaigns against nuclear industry which it perceived it as a threat to their commercial interests. Organizations such as American Petroleum Institute, the Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association and Marcellus Shale Coalition were engaged in anti-nuclear lobbying in late 2010's and from 2019 large fossil fuel suppliers started advertising campaigns portraying fossil gas as "perfect partner for renewables" (actual wording from Shell and Statoil advertisements). Fossil fuel companies such as Atlantic Richfield were also donors to environmental organizations with clear anti-nuclear stance such as Friends of the Earth. Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council are receiving grants from other fossil fuel companies. As of 2011 Greenpeace strategy Battle of Grids proposed gradual replacement of nuclear power by fossil gas plants which would provide "flexible backup for wind and solar power".
Greenpeace have a clear business model of overhyping fears about unseeable unknowable and insensible threats to drive donations.
Greenpeace could be "overhyping fears", but surely some threats that they are trying to raise awareness about are real enough – if the organisation was only, or even mostly, motivated by profit (i.e. the business model), then that would be disappointing.
Attenborough could also be overhyping fears to sell his latest book:
A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough As a young man, I felt I was out there in the wild, experiencing the untouched natural world – but it was an illusion. The tragedy of our time has been happening all around us, barely noticeable from day to day – the loss of our planet's wild places, its biodiversity.
Greenpeace will be viable only as long as there are still environments to degrade – once those ecosystems are beyond repair, the organisation’s influence will be (even more) negligible, and thanks to the Anthropocene the job's nearly done
Of course you're happy to run with a report at the lower end of the scale.
But my point is that death estimates of a dam collapse would not be so controversial to the same degree. It's difficult to argue that 50k more people drowned from some other cause that coincidentally occurred at the same time the deluge swept through a valley. But calculating cancer or congenital anomalies causes is wildly uncertain.
If you want something badly enough any argument will be augmented until it fits criteria. This maxime has brought us where we are with global warming. We assume that science is conducted impartially, but it isn't.
Apart from the possibility of an accident, however small and not worth the risk, the biggest issue is waste.
That’s Gerald S. Frankel’s matter-of-fact take on the thousands of metric tons of used solid fuel from nuclear power plants worldwide and the millions of liters of radioactive liquid waste from weapons production that sit in temporary storage containers in the US. While these waste materials, which can be harmful to human health and the environment, wait for a more permanent home, their containers age. In some cases, the aging containers have already begun leaking their toxic contents.
“It’s a societal problem that has been handed down to us from our parents’ generation,” says Frankel, who is a materials scientist at the Ohio State University. “And we are—more or less—handing it to our children.”
All these wastes can remain dangerously radioactive for many thousands of years.
Well, of cause NZ also is rated as high risk due to sitting on a fault line. I really cannot even understand that anybody could view nuclear power as a safe option.
How about starting to fit every house with solar panels for heating and hot water for a starter. The power generated through water and other renewables can be used for top up power of larger buildings and supply electric transport. Talking of which, get rail from ports to each larger city on and off load containers. I mean this is not new. What are we waiting for?
Yet another of the flaws of the old reactor designs is that they only extract maybe 1% of the available energy in their input fuel, the rest becomes the high-level dangerous waste. So actually extracting that energy by using the waste as fuel makes good economic sense, as well as vastly reducing the size of the waste problem. A lot of new reactor designs are indeed eyeing up that waste to use as fuel.
Nuclear power is a non renewable. NZ is on a fault line.
Waste:
When the uranium fuel is used up, usually after about 18 months, the spent rods are generally moved to deep pools of circulating water to cool down for about 10 years, though they remain dangerously radioactive for about 10,000 years.
But if the power lobby gets their hands on it….oh well, it is what it is.
The waste fuel rods wouldn't be dangerous waste if they were used for fuel in a different reactor design.
In terms of how much uranium or is available, yeah sure, supplies of land-based uranium for the really wasteful process used now are limited. But the new reactor designs would stretch that out way beyond any foreseeable future. Then the oceans hold another vast reservoir of uranium that only costs about four times as much to extract as land based uranium. In the context of operating a nuclear power plant, the cost of the uranium is negligible, and a 4x increase from USD50/pound to USD200/pound would disappear in the noise.
Then thorium is another viable nuclear fuel that is a lot more abundant. In many respects, it's better than uranium for civilian power generation, but it doesn't have the military side applications that have skewed so much of the nuclear industry's historical developemnt. China and India are working on thorium designs, to take advantage of their resources.
I'm quite confident that any organisation making the claim would be required to prove it to the regulators before approval. Inside a massively over-engineered containment vessel. With all the failure modes anyone could dream up thrown at it.
The fuel mix in a nuclear reactor is totally different to the one in a bomb. The fundamental physics ensures that a reactor simply cannot detonate in the way a bomb is intended to do.
To be fair to wags' concerns, Chernobyl and Fukushima did have some pretty big booms.
It takes somewhat detailed knowledge to understand that those booms came about because of the water used to remove the heat from the reactor, and wasn't actually a nuclear fission explosion
Chernobyl was really the nuclear industry's equivalent of the Titanic. A reactor that should never have been built, completely lacking a containment vessel and had reactivity control shortcomings that were never conveyed to the operators.
Yet despite this dramatic worst possible case failure, very few people remember that the other three reactors located right next door on the same site continued to be operated for many years afterward. As were a number of other RBMK reactors of the same design scattered around the FSU.
But as you say the actual explosion was not a nuclear one. It was a dramatic power surge that generated a massive steam explosion.
Fukushima was again not a nuclear event, but a hydrogen explosion caused when a loss of coolant flow allowed the water in the reactor to turn to steam and react with the fuel rod cladding.
In every major incident, including Three Mile Island, it was the use of water in the core (as both a moderator and coolant) that proved to be the vulnerability. This is why all 4th gen designs engineer it out; making an already very safe technology at least an order of magnitude better.
The absurd thing is this, coal powered power plants cause a huge number of excess deaths globally. The actual numbers are subject to some debate, but there is absolutely no question that they completely dwarf the hazard from all nuclear events combined. Closing nuclear plants while still running coal actually increases deaths quite substantially. For this the extreme anti-nuclear movement has a lot to answer for.
Yeah, I've come to the view that Greenpeace may have been just as harmful to the planet as the traditional villains, just in a different way.
They've been a remarkably successful marketing organisation, fomenting fears about vague undefinable and unprovable harms, and selling themselves as the answer that's fighting the menace. It's a good grift for those at the top creaming themselves a good living. But the world has paid a hefty price in an awful lot of avoidable coal and gas emissions.
As well as the harms they've done to our food supply by demonising GMOs, rather than better targeting the harmful practices of big ag companies.
I know you don't appreciate anecdotes that much, but for what it's worth:
I lived on top of a coal mine and had chronic asthma which saw me hospitalised several times and was constantly on pills, inhalers, injections etc. Within a month of moving away it cleared up and I've never had an attack since.
It was life threatening, and life was a misery, living on top of that mine.
What happens to these floating bombs if they run into a tsunami or a wandering category 5 cyclone?
It's often overlooked that during the Fukushima event, a number of other almost identical nuclear plants on the same coast suffered no damage whatsoever because their seawalls were at the correct height. It's absurdly easy to prevent this kind of loss. Moreover all 4th gen designs simply don't care if they lose coolant flow, which is the vulnerability common to the three major nuclear power plant incidents of the past 70 years.
We have, after Tiwai, enough electricity already to cope with user growth AND shift a third of our combustion vehicles.
And if you encourage RedLogix to warble on about nuclear power one more time I will on behalf of The Standard drive over to your place and strap you to your beehive.
I'd rather the electricity freed up from Tiwai first went to filling the gap from closing Huntly. Then satisfy user growth and electric vehicles from building new renewable generation.
Always happy to read your arguments on 4th gen nuclear plants, RL … both informative & concise … as opposed to Ad who unfortunately tends to warble on a wee bit, occasionally dribbling onto his keyboard.
I could start talking about CBRN Defence training, agent detection, Recon and mapping agent/ nuclear fallout. Or the Dark Art of Machine Gun Gunnery and Direct Fire Support.
Which btw i choose for my professional development instead of the more Gucci/ practical specialisations.
Coulda, woulda, shoulda … talk is cheap, Compadre … get typing on the Dark Arts of Machine Gunnery, Amigo, & get typing now. If nothing else, you'll appall, disgust & scandalise the Chardonnay Greens & assorted Critical Social Justice Theory Cult members… provoking the pompous & pretentious is always an amusing thing to witness in my book.
For anyone interested in getting some kind of perspective on actual radiation doses we all receive from various sources, xkcd (Randall Munroe) has put together this excellent chart:
The radiation hazard from a nuke power station nearby for a year is similar to eating a banana. For a coal station nearby, it's three times that (but the emitted mercury and other toxins are way scarier than the radiation). All three of which are absolutely tiny relative to the normal background radiation we all get just going about our daily lives.
on rnz morning report (link not on site)..grant robertson was most emphatic that they did not even consider a dollop of extra help for the poorest..over Xmas..
saying they already gave them $25 earlier in the year ..
uncaring bastards..that they are..
when are 'labour' people gonna get fucken angry about this..?
is this what they voted for..?
the country awash in corporate/rentier-class welfare..
but nothing for the poorest…
and isn't it such a relief that we have such a kind/caring prime minister/government..?
Labour ran as an election promise to not raise the benefits of any of our beneficiaries, and people saw that, shrugged and thought ' lucky i am not on a benefit ' and then they voted for them.
How much would a double payment of benefits at Xmas actually cost? Be a nice little stimulus for the economy ( well it could be sold as that!) and after all the corporate welfare a welcome rebalancing. To suggest that not raising benefits was a decisive plank in voting behaviour – maybe not.
Is it possible that the Government has decided to be stingy with the beneficiaries so as to starve the wealthy who would be the ultimate beneficiaries of the predictable trickle up? Cynicism and sarcasm know no bounds!
why don't the national party invite ardern and robertson to lead their party..?..
promise them safe electorate seats/multiple board seats..etc..etc..
then maybe some from labour..promising real transformation/the ditching of neoliberalism/to move to a social democracy like the higher taxes on the rich/support/housing for all scandanavian countries…can step up..
basically the sooner ardern..and her promises to do nothing..goes..the better..
(a conclusion she has drawn for herself..after all..)
and if she moved over to lead the tories…peddling a more 'caring'/empathy-drenched version of those bastards..of course..!..
all the neoliberal-incrementalists in labour…could go with her..
and no..we don't want robertson to take her place..
couldn’t the united nations use a global empathy-ambassador..?
Here's an early Xmas present, Phillip, before you get yet another dawn raid late night mod raid and possibly a compulsory 'holiday' – link to Morning Report article on Robertson's interview this morning which contains the link to the audio.
I’d like to acknowledge that you’ve made a real effort with improving the readability of your comments and I think it shows in more and better engagement overall.
My recent moderation notes for you were an attempt to notch you in the direction of using links as you have done in the past. I’m sure that the other readers here would also appreciate it.
Robertson encapsulated his (and the neoliberal) thinking when he talked about the 'housing market.' Houses as commodities to be bought and sold and to profit from, not housing as a basic right. My grandparents bought a house before the Great Depression and lived in the same house until they died in the 1970s. As far as I was aware, they never computed the increase in value of their home.
Robertson's language sums up this 'third way' centrist, do sfa Labour government.
Three major issues are prominent in this country: a meaningful response to climate change, the housing crisis and poverty (let’s not dress it up as ‘child poverty – poverty is poverty).
On all three this government has a mandate to act and to be decisive. They could easily take the country with them with radical actions to get on top of two of these and at least do something positive about the first.
As a long time leftie, [I tore up my Labour Party membership card in 1987 and have never rejoined] this period takes me back to the honeymoon period of 1984 when the Lange government, so apparently full of talent, had a mandate to act, and the imperative need to do a lot to counter the crisis inherited from Muldoon.
Perhaps I should be careful what I wish for – we all know and still suffer from how the ‘radicals’ of ’84 shook up the country.
But these days incremental change is not what is needed in the face of climate change.
However, much as I might wish for radical policies, I can’t see them coming from this ‘third way’ Labour government.
Labour is a centerist party, they only have to worry about their Center and right leaning block, the left will vote for them no matter what or won’t vote at all In this regard forget about a socialist lurch beyond the status quo that the Center and Center leaning right can just stomach
Without being rude to “Satty” and "Foreign Waka" an objection based on a perception NZ is the latter day bucolic Jerusalem of William Blake's poem is, well, a bit colonising. I think you need a better reason not to want nuclear than just "but I never saw a nuclear power plant in the background of any of the LOTR movies so I moved there".
I will not argue with you over my point of being against nuclear power. I have said more than enough and all I can do is as much as possible to mitigate any impact on the environment with what's available and affordable.
With that I shrug my shoulders and walk away. Its not worth getting agitated over.
I haven't read Blake or know his poem, my great grandparents were born here as was I.
I don't want nuclear power here.
I was persuaded a bit with James Lovelock's argument for nukes.
The idea that we are opposed to nuclear because the waste but conveniently ignore the invisible CO2 waste from gas and coal. The waste from gas and coal burning can kill immediately whereas the waste from nuclear will merely take years off your life.
Lovelock opined that he would happily store a lifetimes waste from nuclear on his verandah.
That was in the context of the UK, here not so much.
Bring on more geothermal and solar. Build resilience into the housing stock with good design and solar panels in every new build. Incentives for retro fitting solar….
from a conversation happening elsewhere, what do people think the value of having biological sex (not gender) recorded on birth certificates is? Would it matter if the state no longer recorded sex at birth?
Before too terribly long, the state may be sampling Dna at birth – which will render the question moot. But, with the reservation that it is observed phenotype, it is a useful element of personal identification.
Birth registrations are just an administrative tool. If changing details affects population-level equity discussions, then we need a conversation about why such a large proportion of the population does not seem to be adequately documented from day one.
At an individual level, the ability to change such bureaucratic details can prevent discrimination by authorities or anyone using that bureaucratic information.
Medical records are more interesting, but they also store data with much greater granularity so any relevant information would still be available.
If changing details affects population-level equity discussions, then we need a conversation about why such a large proportion of the population does not seem to be adequately documented from day one.
What large proportion of the population are you meaning?
It's not a changing details issue, but removing the category altogether i.e. no birth cert would record biological sex (data would still be collected by the state, but wouldn't be on the front end cert).
Oh, ok – interesting about the line of demarcation. So the specific proposal is not even taking sex off, just removing it from the public copy and putting it in with the rest of the administrative side. NZ possibly has a similar format, I wonder? That would sort out the generation of population pyramids and so on.
Anyhoo, if the information is still kept and simply not released publicly, I can't see a downside. I genuinely doubt it gets used from the public form very often at all, even as a transfer to other ID.
I was hoping someone might be able to provide a list of things that do require known biological sex. I'm guessing insurance is one of them, and I don't think a reasonable work around to not having sex on a BC is for insurance companies to access a govt database.
However I don't quite get the demarcation line thing (which was in reference to US certs and data collection).
I also don't have a good sense of how different parts of society determine biological sex now. Do insurance companies require a copy of a birth certificate or do they take people's word?
What about organisations offering something specific to being female? eg scholarships or positions?
The content of a birth registration form people fill in includes data for adminstrative use only (e.g. other children from the same parents). The birth certificate only lists some of that information (pretty sure my siblings aren't on my birth certificate, not that I've read it in years).
It looks like in the USA the form has a line labelled "everything above this line goes on the birth certificate" or somesuch.
Insurance is interesting. If a claimant was male and got ovarian cancer, might be an excuse to decline payout. But that's down to their application forms, not a birth certificate.
Gender is up to the individual and they can't make that decision at birth. Record biological sex at birth and then add gender if the individual so desires.
Recording the biological sex of a newborn on their birth certificate has (presumably) been considered 'useful' for hundreds of years, but maybe it was never actually useful, or maybe it is now less useful than it once was.
Making the case that such a record is not useful would be good. Not recording the biological sex of a newborn on their birth certificate would obviate the need for the state to consider applications to change the sex registered on a birth certificate, even if the biological sex of an individual cannot be changed (yet.) But maybe adults who wanted to have their biological sex added to their birth certificate could apply for their birth certificate to be amended accordingly.
I don't really understand why, but I remain uneasy that a (sizeable?) proportion of parents might be uneasy about having the biological sex of their child(ren) recorded on birth certificate(s).
Birth names are recorded – they can be changed later. One's birth date is, however, fixed – doesn't stop a sizeable proportion of the population from wanting to appear younger than their biological age. Not sure about the value of that 'want' – seems like a potential source of frustration and misery to me.
Thing is, birth certificates are a primary source for other forms of ID, some of which are used to confirm legislative requirements around age eligibility – drinking, guns, porn, smoking, prostitution, and so on. I only listed those because they sound like a hell of a night out.
I'm not sure there's any similar legislatively-required references to sex/gender that someone on the door needs to know right then and there for fear of breaking the law.
Thanks MF, sensible point about circumstances where proof of age is required; guess that's why DoB is on driver licences, and useful for more than just driving.
Still wonder if the 'Silver Tsunami' is (sometimes) up against more than just a lack of 'tech savvy' and general decrepitude – if one's (biological) sex is to be supplied only on a need-to-know basis, then how about age?
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The Fast-Track Approvals Bill enables cabinet ministers to circumvent key environmental planning and protection processes for infrastructure projects. Its difficulties have been well canvassed. This column suggests a different way of thinking about the proposal. I am going to explore the Bill from the perspective of its proponents with their ...
New Zealand First Cabinet Minister Shane Jones has become the best advertisement against the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill. In selling the radical new resource consenting processes, in which ministers can green light any mine, dam, or other major development, Jones seems to be shooting the proposal in the foot. ...
Buzz from the Beehive Associate Education Minister David Seymour is urging the PostPrimary Teachers Association to put learning ahead of ideology. He wants the union leaders to call off their teachers meetings around the country where they hope to muster the strength to undo the government’s plans to establish several ...
What are police for? "Fighting crime" is the obvious answer. If there's a burglary, they should show up and investigate. Ditto if there's a murder or sexual assault. Speeding or drunk or dangerous driving is a crime, so obviously they should respond to that. And obviously, they should respond to ...
Michael Reddell writes – I got curious yesterday about how the Australia/New Zealand real exchange rate had changed over the last decade, and so dug out the data on the changes in the two countries’ CPIs. Over the 10 years from March 2014 to March 2024, New Zealand’s ...
Graham Adams writes that 20 years after the land march, judges are quietly awarding a swathe of coastal rights to iwi. Early this month, an hour-long documentary was released by TVNZ to mark the 20th anniversary of the land-rights march to oppose Helen Clark’s Foreshore and Seabed Act. The account ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: Suspended Green MP Darleen Tana has passed an unpleasant milestone: she has now been absent for as many parliamentary sitting days as she has been present for this year. Tana is on full pay while she is suspended, and will benefit from a ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is no coincidence that two Labour should-have-been MPs are making the most noise about public sector cuts. As assistant general secretary of the Public Service Association, Fleur Fitzsimons has been at the forefront of revealing where the next round of state sector job ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s becoming a classic case study for why lobbying deals with politicians need greater scrutiny. Former National Minister Steven Joyce runs a lobbying company with a major client – the University of Waikato. The University desperately wants $300m+ of taxpayer funding to establish a ...
This is one of the (extra) weekly columns on music or movies. Plenty of solid analyses of Possession exist online and most of them – inevitably – contain spoilers. This column is more in the way of a first-timer’s aid to getting your initial bearings. You don’t need to have ...
I am painting in oil, a portrait of a manWho has taken all the heart aches,And all the pain he can stand.I am using all the colors of blue,I have here on my stand.I am painting in oil, a portrait of a man.This has been an interesting week for me. ...
Helen Clark joins the Hoon as a special guest talking whether Aotearoa should join Aukus II, and her views on the fast track legislation and how Luxon and the new Government are performing. File Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts ...
With an election due in less than nine months, Britain’s embattled PM, Rishi Sunak, gave a useful speech earlier this week. He made a substantial case for his government, perhaps as compelling as is possible in the current environment. Quite an achievement. His overall theme was security, first pulling ...
Open access notablesPublicly expressed climate scepticism is greatest in regions with high CO2 emissions, Pearson et al., Climatic Change:We analysed a recently released corpus of climate-related tweets to examine the macro-level factors associated with public declarations of climate change scepticism. Analyses of over 2 million geo-located tweets in the U.S. showed that climate ...
You can be all negative about these charter schools if you want, but I’m here to accentuate the positive. You can get all worked up, if you want to, by the contradiction of Luxon saying We’re going to make sure that every school in the country is teaching exactly the same ...
Losing The Room: One can only speculate about what has persuaded the Coalition Government that it will pay no electoral price for unreasonably pushing ahead with policies that are so clearly against the national interest. They seem quite oblivious to the risk that by doing so they will convince an increasing ...
Name suppression decisions can be tough sometimes. No matter your views on free speech, you have to be hard-hearted not to be torn by the tug of the competing arguments. I think you can feel the Supreme Court wrestling with that in M v The King. The case for ...
The Merchants of Menace: The Coalition Government has convinced itself that the “Brahmins’” emollient functions have become much too irksome and expensive. Those who see themselves as the best hope of rebuilding New Zealand’s ailing capitalist system, appear to have convinced themselves that a little bit of blunt trauma is what their mollycoddled ...
When National first proposed its Muldoonist "fast-track" law, they were warned that it would inevitably lead to corruption. And that is exactly what has happened, with Resources Minister Shane Jones taking secret meetings with potential applicants:On Tuesday, in a Newsroom story, questions were raised about a dinner Jones ...
Buzz from the Beehive One day – hopefully – we will push that Russian rascal, Vladimir Putin, beyond breaking point. Perhaps it will happen today, when he learns that Foreign Minister Winston Peters is again tightening the thumbscrews. Peters announced further sanctions, this time on 28 individuals and 14 entities ...
How Labour’s and National’s failure to move beyond neoliberalism has brought New Zealand to the brink of economic and cultural chaos.TO START LOSING, so soon after you won, requires a special kind of political incompetence. At the heart of this Coalition Government’s failure to retain, and build upon, the public ...
“Members of Parliament don’t work for us, they represent us, an entirely different thing. As with so much that has turned out badly, the re-organising of MPs’ responsibilities began with the Fourth Labour Government. That’s when they began to be treated like employees – public servants – whose diaries had ...
It’s becoming a classic case study for why lobbying deals with politicians need greater scrutiny. Former National Minister Steven Joyce runs a lobbying company with a major client – the University of Waikato. The University desperately wants $300m+ of taxpayer funding to establish a third medical school in New Zealand, ...
Time To Choose: Like it or not, the Kiwis are either going into AUKUS’s “Pillar 2” – or they are going to China.HAD ZHENG HE’S FLEET sailed east, not west, in the early Fifteenth Century, how different our world would be. There is little reason to suppose that the sea-going junks ...
Henry Ergas writes – When in Randall Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution, a college president is accused of being a hypocrite, the novel’s narrator retorts that the description is grossly unfair. After all, the man is still far from the stage of moral development at which the charge ...
David Farrar writes – Radio NZ reports: The Education Review Office says too many new teachers feel poorly prepared for their jobs. In a report published on Monday, the review office said 60 percent of the principals it interviewed said their new teachers were not ready. ...
New Zealand’s economic performance and the PM’s vision Michael Reddell writes – When I wrote yesterday morning’s post, highlighting how poorly both New Zealand and its Anglo peer countries have been doing in respect of productivity in recent times (ie, in the case of New ...
Hi all,Firstly - thank you! You guys are awesome. The response I’ve received to last night’s mail has been quite overwhelming. It’s a ghastly day outside, but there are no clouds in here.In case you didn’t read my email and are wondering what on earth I’m talking about you can ...
If there was still any doubt as to who is actually running this government – and it isn’t the buffoon from Botany – then this week’s announcement of a huge spend up on charter schools has settled the matter. While jobs and public services continue to be cut in the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gaye Taylor As widespread drought raises expectations for a repeat of last year’s ferocious wildfire season, response teams across Canada are grappling with the rapidly changing face of fire in a warming climate. No longer quenched by winter, nor quelled by the ...
Half of Christchurch City Holdings Ltd’s directors and its chair resigned en masse last night in protest at Christchurch City Council’s demand to front-load dividends File Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The chair of Christchurch City Council’s investment company and four of its independent directors resigned in protest last ...
The University of Waikato has reworded an advertisement that begins the tender process for its new $300 million-plus medical school even though the Government still needs to approve it. However, even the reworded ad contains an architect’s visualisations of what the school might look like. ACT leader David Seymour told ...
As a follow-up to the Rings of Power trailer discussion, I thought I needed to add something. There has been some online mockery about the use of the same actor for both the Halbrand and Annatar incarnations of Sauron. The reasoning is that Halbrand with a shave and a new ...
This isn’t quite as dramatic as the title might suggest. I’m not going anywhere, but there is something I wanted to talk to you about.Let’s start with a typical day.Most days I send out a newsletter in the morning. If I’ve written a lot the previous evening it might be ...
Buzz from the Beehive The promise of tax relief loomed large in his considerations when the PM delivered a pre-Budget speech to the Auckland Business Chamber. The job back in Wellington is getting government spending back under control, he said, bandying figures which show that in per capita terms, the ...
Yesterday de facto Prime Minister David Seymour announced that his glove puppet government would be re-introducing charter schools, throwing $150 million at his pet quacks, donors and cronies and introducing an entire new government agency to oversee them (the existing Education Review Office, which actually knows how to review schools, ...
Seeing that, in order to discredit the figures and achieve moral superiority while attempting to deflect attention away from the military assault on Rafa, Israel supporters in NZ have seized on reports that casualty numbers in Gaza may be inflated … Continue reading → ...
David Farrar writes – Newstalk ZB report: The man responsible for a horror hit and run in central Wellington last year was on a suspended licence and was so drunk he later asked police, “Did I kill someone?” Jason Tuitama injured two women when he ran a red ...
Muriel Newman writes – Former US President Ronald Reagan once said, “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation.” The fight for ...
Why Courts should have said Waitangi Tribunal could not summons Karen Chhour Gary Judd writes – In the High Court, Justice Isacs declined to uphold the witness summons issued by the Waitangi Tribunal to compel Minister for Children, Karen Chhour, to appear before it to be ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The number of voices raising concerns about the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill is rapidly growing. This is especially apparent now that Parliament’s select committee is listening to submissions from the public to evaluate the proposed legislation. Twenty-seven thousand submissions have been made to Parliament ...
An average of 166 New Zealand citizens left the country every day during the March quarter, up 54% from a year ago.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The economy and housing market is sinking into a longer recession through the winter after a slump in business and consumer confidence in ...
The government has made it abundantly clear they’re addicted to the smell of new asphalt. On Tuesday they introduced a new term to the country’s roading lexicon, the Roads of Regional Significance (RoRS), a little brother for the Roads of National (Party) Significance (RoNS). Driving ahead with Roads of Regional ...
School is outAnd I walk the empty hallwaysI walk aloneAlone as alwaysThere's so many lucky penniesLying on the floorBut where the hell are all the lucky peopleI can't see them any moreYesterday morning, I’d just sent out my newsletter on Tama Potaka, and I was struggling to make the coffee. ...
Hi,I wanted to check in and ask how you’re doing.This is perhaps a selfish act, of attempting to find others feeling a similar way to me — that is to say, a little hopeless at the moment.Misery loves company, that sort of deal.Some context.I wish I could say I got ...
I have hitherto been fairly quiet on the new season of Rings of Power, on the basis that the underwhelming first season did not exactly build excitement – and the rumours were fairly daft. The only real thing of substance to come out has been that they have re-cast Adar ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
“The thing is,” Chris Luxon says, leaning forward to make his point, “this has always been my thing.”“This goes all the way back to the first multinational I worked for. I was saying exactly the same thing back then. The name of our business needs to be more clear; people ...
Buzz from the Beehive It’s been a momentous few days for Children’s Minister Karen Chhour. The Court of Appeal has overturned a High Court decision which blocked a summons order from the Waitangi Tribunal for her. And today she has announced the Government is putting children first by introducing to ...
In 2014 former Australian army lawyer David McBride leaked classified military documents about Australian war crimes to the ABC. Dubbed "The Afghan Files", the documents led to an explosive report on Australian war crimes, the disbanding of an entire SAS unit, and multiple ongoing prosecutions. The journalist who wrote the ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – According to the respected Pew Research Centre, “In seven of eight [European] countries surveyed, the most trusted news outlet asked about is the public news organization in each country”. For example, “in Sweden, an overwhelming majority (90%) say they trust the public broadcaster SVT”. ...
David Farrar writes – Kata MacNamara reports: Details of Tony Blakely’s involvement in the New Zealand Government’s response to the pandemic raise serious questions about the work of the Covid-19 Royal Commission of Inquiry over which he presides. It has long been clear that Blakely, a ...
Chris Trotter writes – Are you a Brahmin or a Merchant? Or, are you merely one of those whose lives are profoundly influenced by the decisions of Brahmins and Merchants? Those are the questions that are currently shaping the politics of New Zealand and the entire West. ...
RNZ reports – It’s supposed to be a haven of healing and spiritual awakening but residents of the Kawai Purapura community say they’ve been hurt and deceived. It’s the successor to the former Centrepoint commune, and has been on the bush block opposite Albany shopping centre since 2008. It ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. Usually we have a video chat to go with this wrap, but were unable to do one this week. We’ll be back next week.Several reports ...
The Transport Minister has set a hard 'fiscal envelope' of $6.54 billion for transport capital spending. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The economy is settling into a state of suspended animation as the Government’s funding freezes and job cuts chill confidence and combine with stubbornly high interest rates to ...
To be precise, the term “anti- Zionism” refers to (a) criticism of the political movement that created a modern Jewish state on the historical land of Israel, and to (b)the subjugation of Palestinians by the Israeli state. By contrast, the term “anti-Semitism” means bigotry and racism directed at Jewish people, ...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler Because hurricanes are one of the big-ticket weather disasters that humanity has to face, climate misinformers spend a lot of effort muddying the waters on whether climate change is making hurricanes more damaging. With the official start to the hurricane ...
Yesterday the Mayor released what he calls his “plan to save public transport” which is part of his final proposal for the Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP). This comes following consultation on the draft version that occurred in March which showed, once again, that people want more done on transport, especially ...
And it's a pleasure that I have knownAnd it's a treasure that I have gainedAotearoa’s coalition government is fragile. It’s held together by the obsequious sycophancy of Christopher Luxon, who willingly contorts his party into the fringe positions of his junior coalition partners and is unwilling to contradict them. The ...
The Select Committee hearing submissions on the fast-track consenting legislation is starting to become a beat-up of regional councils. The inflexibility and slow workings of the Councils were prominent in two submissions yesterday. One, from the Coromandel Marine Farmers Association, simply said that the Waikato Regional Council’s planning decisions were ...
Back in April, the High Court surprised everyone by ruling that Ministers are above the law, at least as far as the Waitangi Tribunal is concerned. The reason for this ruling was "comity" - the idea that the different branches of government shouldn't interfere with each other's functions. Which makes ...
Buzz from the BeehiveTolling was mentioned when Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced the government was re-introducing the Roads of National Significance (RoNS) programme, with 15 “crucial” projects to support economic growth and regional development across New Zealand. All RoNS would be four-laned, grade-separated highways, and all funding, financing, and ...
or the past 14 years, ever since the Spanish government cheated on an autonomy deal, Catalonia has reliably given pro-independence parties a majority of seats in their regional parliament. But now that seems to be over. Catalans went to the polls yesterday, and stripped the Catalan parties of their majority. ...
David Farrar writes – Radio NZ report: Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins said the Electoral Commission should make sure the system ran smoothly and “taking away the right of thousands of people to vote” was not the answer. “Thousands of people enroled and voted on the day. If ...
The Government’s introduction of legislation that would enable landlords to end tenancies with no reason marks a dark day for the 1.4 million people who rent their home in Aotearoa. ...
The Minister for Mental Health has found the Suicide Prevention Office and mental health support for 111 calls slipping through his fingers, says Labour spokesperson for Mental Health Ingrid Leary. ...
Today’s justification from the Minister for Children for scrapping protections for our tamariki was either a case of ignorance or deliberate deception. ...
The Green Party says the Government’s misguided policy on gangs will fail, following the announcement of the establishment of a national gang unit and district gang disruption units to target gang activities. ...
“With Police pay negotiations still unresolved after six months in Government, Mark Mitchell has today rolled the Commissioner out for a rebrand of their approach to gang crime,” Labour police spokesperson Ginny Andersen said. ...
The Government bringing back 50 charter schools will not increase achievement and is a distraction from the core mission of the education system, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Te Pāti Māori is showing extreme concern over the Environment Select Committees adoption of a lucky dip draw to determine hearings for the Fast Track Approvals bill. Of the 27,000 submissions, 2,900 requested to present. All organisations will be heard; however, the remaining 2,350 submitters will be subject to a ...
Today New Zealand First will introduce a Member’s Bill that will protect women’s spaces. The ‘Fair Access to Bathrooms Bill’ will require, primarily in the interest and safety of women and girls, that all new non-domestic publicly accessible buildings provide separate, clearly demarcated, unisex and single sex bathrooms. This Bill ...
The Green Party is welcoming Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ continuation of Hon. James Shaw’s cross-party work on climate adaptation, now in the form of a Finance and Expenditure Committee Inquiry. ...
The National Government plans to cut 390 jobs at ACC, including roles in the areas of prevention of sexual violence, road safety and workplace safety. ...
The Government has been caught in opposition to evidence once again as it looks to usher in tried, tested and failed work seminar obligations for job-seeking beneficiaries. ...
The Green Party is welcoming the announcement by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop to approve most of the Wellington City Council’s District Plan recommendations. ...
David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced that the Government will make it easier for lines firms to take action to remove vegetation from obstructing local powerlines. The change will ensure greater security of electricity supply in local communities, particularly during severe weather events. “Trees or parts of trees falling on ...
Wairarapa Moana ki Pouakani were the top winners at this year’s Ahuwhenua Trophy awards recognising the best in Māori dairy farming. Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka announced the winners and congratulated runners-up, Whakatōhea Māori Trust Board, at an awards celebration also attended by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Finance Minister ...
"On the 27th of March, I sought assurances from the Chief Executive, Department of Internal Affairs, that the Department’s correct processes and policies had been followed in regards to a passport application which received media attention,” says Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden. “I raised my concerns after being ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins has announced the appointment of three new District Court Judges, to replace Judges who have recently retired. Peter James Davey of Auckland has been appointed a District Court Judge with a jury jurisdiction to be based at Whangarei. Mr Davey initially started work as a law clerk/solicitor with ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour is calling on the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) to put ideology to the side and focus on students’ learning, in reaction to the union holding paid teacher meetings across New Zealand about charter schools. “The PPTA is disrupting schools up and down the ...
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly today announced the appointment of Craig Stobo as the new chair of the Financial Markets Authority (FMA). Mr Stobo takes over from Mark Todd, whose term expired at the end of April. Mr Stobo’s appointment is for a five-year term. “The FMA plays ...
Surf Life Saving New Zealand and Coastguard New Zealand will continue to be able to keep people safe in, on, and around the water following a funding boost of $63.644 million over four years, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Associate Transport Minister Matt Doocey say. “Heading to the beach for ...
New Zealand and Tuvalu have reaffirmed their close relationship, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand is committed to working with Tuvalu on a shared vision of resilience, prosperity and security, in close concert with Australia,” says Mr Peters, who last visited Tuvalu in 2019. “It is my pleasure ...
New Zealand is gravely concerned about the situation in New Caledonia, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The escalating situation and violent protests in Nouméa are of serious concern across the Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “The immediate priority must be for all sides to take steps to de-escalate the ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon met today with Samoa’s O le Ao o le Malo, Afioga Tuimalealiifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi II, who is making a State Visit to New Zealand. “His Highness and I reflected on our two countries’ extensive community links, with Samoan–New Zealanders contributing to all areas of our national ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has announced that he has approved Waiheke Island ferry operator Island Direct to be eligible for SuperGold Card funding, paving the way for a commercial agreement to bring the operator into the scheme. “Island Direct started operating in November 2023, offering an additional option for people ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters today announced further sanctions on 28 individuals and 14 entities providing military and strategic support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Russia is directly supported by its military-industrial complex in its illegal aggression against Ukraine, attacking its sovereignty and territorial integrity. New Zealand condemns all entities and ...
A year on from the tragedy at Loafers Lodge, the Government is working hard to improve building fire safety, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “I want to share my sincere condolences with the families and friends of the victims on the anniversary of the tragic fire at Loafers ...
Ka nui te mihi kia koutou. Kia ora and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for having me here in the lead up to my Government’s first Budget. Before I get started can I acknowledge: Simon Bridges – Auckland Business Chamber CEO. Steve Jurkovich – Kiwibank CEO. Kids born ...
New Zealand and Vanuatu will enhance collaboration on issues of mutual interest, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “It is important to return to Port Vila this week with a broad, high-level political delegation which demonstrates our deep commitment to New Zealand’s relationship with Vanuatu,” Mr Peters says. “This ...
Minister for Land Information, Chris Penk will travel to Peru this week to represent New Zealand at a meeting of trade ministers from the Asia-Pacific region on behalf of Trade Minister Todd McClay. The annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Ministers Responsible for Trade meeting will be held on 17-18 May ...
Minister of Education Erica Stanford will head to the United Kingdom this week to participate in the 22nd Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM) and the 2024 Education World Forum (EWF). “I am looking forward to sharing this Government’s education priorities, such as introducing a knowledge-rich curriculum, implementing an evidence-based ...
Minister of Education Erica Stanford has today thanked outgoing New Zealand Qualifications Authority Chair, Hon Tracey Martin. “Tracey Martin tendered her resignation late last month in order to take up a new role,” Ms Stanford says. Ms Martin will relinquish the role of Chair on 10 May and current Deputy ...
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and President Emmanuel Macron of France today announced a new non-governmental organisation, the Christchurch Call Foundation, to coordinate the Christchurch Call’s work to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. This change gives effect to the outcomes of the November 2023 Call Leaders’ Summit, ...
Distinguished public servant and former diplomat Sir Maarten Wevers will lead the independent review into the disability support services administered by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. The review was announced by Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston a fortnight ago to examine what could be done to strengthen the ...
Today’s announcement by Police Commissioner Andrew Coster of a National Gang Unit and district Gang Disruption Units will help deliver on the coalition Government’s pledge to restore law and order and crack down on criminal gangs, Police Minister Mark Mitchell says. “The National Gang Unit and Gang Disruption Units will ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today expressed regret at North Korea’s aggressive rhetoric towards New Zealand and its international partners. “New Zealand proudly stands with the international community in upholding the rules-based order through its monitoring and surveillance deployments, which it has been regularly doing alongside partners since 2018,” Mr ...
Air Vice-Marshal Tony Davies MNZM is the new Chief of Defence Force, Defence Minister Judith Collins announced today. The Chief of Defence Force commands the Navy, Army and Air Force and is the principal military advisor to the Defence Minister and other Ministers with relevant portfolio responsibilities in the defence ...
Legislation to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act has been introduced to Parliament. The Bill’s introduction reaffirms the Coalition Government’s commitment to the safety of children in care, says Minister for Children, Karen Chhour. “While section 7AA was introduced with good intentions, it creates a conflict for Oranga ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins will this week travel to the UK and Italy to meet with her defence counterparts, and to attend Battles of Cassino commemorations. “I am humbled to be able to represent the New Zealand Government in Italy at the commemorations for the 80th anniversary of what was ...
The upcoming Budget will include funding for up to 50 charter schools to help lift declining educational performance, Associate Education Minister David Seymour announced today. $153 million in new funding will be provided over four years to establish and operate up to 15 new charter schools and convert 35 state ...
“The results of the public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has now been received, with results indicating over 13,000 submissions were made from members of the public,” Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “We heard feedback about the extended lockdowns in ...
Foreign Minister, Defence Minister, other Members of Parliament Acting Chief of Defence Force, Secretary of Defence Distinguished Guests Defence and Diplomatic Colleagues Ladies and Gentlemen, Good afternoon, tēna koutou, apinun tru It’s a pleasure to be back in Port Moresby today, and to speak here at the Kumul Leadership ...
Health, infrastructure, renewable energy, and stability are among the themes of the current visit to Papua New Guinea by a New Zealand political delegation, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Papua New Guinea carries serious weight in the Pacific, and New Zealand deeply values our relationship with it,” Mr Peters ...
The coalition Government is launching Roads of Regional Significance to sit alongside Roads of National Significance as part of its plan to deliver priority roading projects across the country, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The Roads of National Significance (RoNS) built by the previous National Government are some of New Zealand’s ...
A high-level New Zealand political delegation in Honiara today congratulated the new Government of Solomon Islands, led by Jeremiah Manele, on taking office. “We are privileged to meet the new Prime Minister and members of his Cabinet during his government’s first ten days in office,” Deputy Prime Minister and ...
New Zealand voted in favour of a resolution broadening Palestine’s participation at the United Nations General Assembly overnight, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The resolution enhances the rights of Palestine to participate in the work of the UN General Assembly while stopping short of admitting Palestine as a full ...
Introduction Good morning. It’s a great privilege to be here at the 2024 Infrastructure Symposium. I was extremely happy when the Prime Minister asked me to be his Minister for Infrastructure. It is one of the great barriers holding the New Zealand economy back from achieving its potential. Building high ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced the upcoming Budget will include new funding of $571 million for Defence Force pay and projects. “Our servicemen and women do New Zealand proud throughout the world and this funding will help ensure we retain their services and expertise as we navigate an increasingly ...
New Zealand’s ability to cope with climate change will be strengthened as part of the Government’s focus to build resilience as we rebuild the economy, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “An enduring and long-term approach is needed to provide New Zealanders and the economy with certainty as the climate ...
Jobseeker beneficiaries who have work obligations must now meet with MSD within two weeks of their benefit starting to determine their next step towards finding a job, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “A key part of the coalition Government’s plan to have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker ...
A new standalone Social Investment Agency will power-up the social investment approach, driving positive change for our most vulnerable New Zealanders, Social Investment Minister Nicola Willis says. “Despite the Government currently investing more than $70 billion every year into social services, we are not seeing the outcomes we want for ...
Check against delivery Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you to outline the Coalition Government’s approach to our first Budget. Thank you Mark Skelly, President of the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce, together with your Board and team, for hosting me. I’d like to acknowledge His Worship ...
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The news from Sydney is concerning.
‘Covid 19 coronavirus: Sydney's Northern Beaches cluster explodes to 17 cases’
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/covid-19-coronavirus-sydneys-northern-beaches-cluster-explodes-to-17-cases/CMAWZSN6FNO3OHZCFV4KGDCGYQ/
[Fixed error with e-mail address]
Covid exploits crowds. Yes news is concerning.
A socialist, as opposed to a Green, solution to global warming has to consider floating mini-nuclear power stations. They could be the key to rapid de-carbonisation of power production in developing countries – and even here in NZ if you think about it. The design from this Danish company are apparently a modern Compact Molten Salt Reactor design that removes the threat of a meltdown in the event of an accident – it will simply shut down.
We could easily park one of these up in the Weiti river near Stillwater on the north shore (or where ever) and power 200,000+ homes with just one of these. This plant is 1TW so it would completely free us of any further need for wind or solar development and dramatically cut the cost of electricity for consumers, make NZ a 100% zero-emission energy producer are free up tons of existing capacity to produce Green hydrogen and power a rapid conversion to a completely ICB free vehicle fleet by 2045-50. Crucially, it would ensure the economy remained competitive and thus maintain our standard of living.
Imagine – completely emission free with a mix of nuclear/hydro/wind/solar! Surely it is the best stop gap measure until fusion comes along?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/17/floating-mini-nukes-could-power-countries-by-2025-says-startup
That technology would be be hugely transformational Sanctuary! If it isa as safe as they claim then why not?
The main reason nukes like this aren't going to come to New Zealand anytime soon is simply cost.
We 're in the very fortunate position of having plenty of hydro available on demand, so we can add as much very cheap wind and solar as we want and we can use the hydro to fill the gaps from the wind and solar. We've also got a decent amount of cheap geothermal providing very steady baseload power.
However, we may need to get used to the idea of nukes kinda like that powering visiting and local ships.
??? Really…. I have moved from the contaminated Northern Hemisphere. Thanks but no thanks.
Interestingly, one of my reasons to move to NZ was the close distance to several nuclear power plants in Europe (Germany and France). My neighbour worked in one of them and after hearing his "inside" stories you know that most promises / claims by the nuclear industry are worthless bullshit.
If they really believe they are 100% safe, they wouldn't have the nuclear power plants in limited liability sub-companies and they would be able to properly ensure them.
And there's still the nuclear waste from running and decommissioning the power plants. The German power companies immediately agreed to pay 5 billion Euros to the German government to rid themselves from such problems… similar to other polluting options it's all economical while the pollution is for free.
The CMSR technology that Seaborg (and about a dozen other similar companies) are going to use is completely different to the one your neighbour worked with.
All currently operating reactors are derivatives of the 1940's design that was used on the original Nautilus submarine; and yet despite this design dating from literally the dawn of the nuclear age, it remains by far the safest form of power generation. All the data points to this.
I've been following developments in this space very closely for quite a few years, all the innovation in 4th gen nuclear power leverages decades of science, materials and engineering innovation to deliver clean, abundant and reliable energy using wholly different technologies to existing plants.
The big limitation at present is not improving safety, reducing proliferation risk, nor even waste disposal … these are all solved problems. The critical challenge for nuclear at present is to get it's costs below that of coal and gas while meeting all regulatory expectations; and everyone working in this space is aware of this.
Thanks, RedLogix. At least you don't insult people's intelligence like Sanctuary did below (which obviously doesn't help to argue for nuclear power).
I am fully aware that the new generation reactors are not comparable (I am an engineer and worked mostly for power companies) and clearly understand the energy requirements of our comfortable daily lifestyle. I am not 100% against nuclear power.
I am just a lot more cautious around statements like:
Or
Or
As they sound exactly like the ones in the brochures of the original nuclear power plants… And it turned out they didn't meet reality. So excuse my scepticism.
Ad says I'm not allowed to waffle anymore 😄
Aren’t you contradicting yourself there?
I have recently come around to the conclusion that we are going to have to bite the bullet and adopt some form of nuclear energy in this country.
If nothing else millsy you never leave anyone in doubt as to where you stand … 🙂
Australia and NZ are rather uniquely positioned in that we can probably delay migrating to nuclear power for quite a few decades yet … we have sufficient renewable resource to lean on so that we don't have to be on the leading edge of any new nuclear tech.
Agreed. NZ has the luxury to see how the new nuclear power plants you mentioned above work out. It will also be interesting to see if there are more efficient or completely new renewable energy sources available in a couple of decades time (we might not require nuclear power by then).
What happens to these floating bombs if they run into a tsunami or a wandering category 5 cyclone?
A big design criterion of the latest generations of reactor designs is to make them "walk away safe". This means that the result of loss of control function leads to the reactions stopping and the core cooling purely from the laws of physics. So they can't go boom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety
This is a huge contrast to the early reactor designs from the 50s and 60s like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, that all required continuous active control to prevent the heat generation running away. When cooling and control was lost through an operator making the wrong response because of a crap control interface (Three Mile Island), or because of running a badly designed test with the wrong unprepared staff in the control room (Chernobyl) or wiping out the electrical controls and backup with a tsunami (Fukushima), then the old designs allowed the core to heat up from residual decay, eventually leading to superheated water reacting with zirconium to separate into hydrogen and oxygen and then going boom, and/or meltdown.
Newer designs have fixed that conceptual fault of requiring continuous active control for safety. Part of the reason for the dangerous designs in the 50s and 60s is back then there was much less knowledge and concern about what could go wrong. In my opinion, that pendulum has swung too far the other way, where we're now way over-concerned about very very small risks from nuclear, while ignoring much greater continuous harms from other forms of power generation. Especially the harms from coal and gas.
"However, weak driving forces that power many passive safety features can pose significant challenges to effectiveness of a passive system, particularly in the short term following an accident."
"IAEA explicitly uses the following caveat:[2]
Ah, blind optimism….that origin of so many disasters.
That IAEA quote seems absurdly obtuse in the light of modern methods and I note is derived from a document dated 1991.
It entirely focusses on the PWR technology of the day, completely predates any 4th generation designs, and looks irrelevant to any discussion about them.
In practical realistic terms, the choice between nuclear and what we're accepting right now comes down to bedwetting about some hypothetical risks that engineers put massive amounts of effort into eliminating because they know if those risks turns into a disaster, their industry is gone, or there's the tons of mercury and other toxins dumped into the atmosphere and rivers from the likes of Huntly, Wairakei etc.
Personally, if I were offered the choice of having a nuke just around the corner from my place in exchange for eliminating Huntly and eliminating coal use at Glenbrook, I'd jump at it. There's no way I'd live within 200km in the northeast quadrant from either Huntly or Glenbrook, because of their emissions and prevailing winds. Since I'm northwest of them, and winds from the southeast are rare in Auckland, I can somewhat unhappily accept that occasionally I'm downwind of their emissions.
Putting faith in engineers is one thing.
Putting faith in engineers and operators for the next 50-70 years is another thing entirely.
Fukushima wasn't just the result of an engineering boo-boo. It was the result of things like waste fuel mismanagement that would have been dismissed at the time of construction as "hypothetical risks that engineers put massive amounts of effort into eliminating".
Maybe the advertised safety accurately reflects the actual safety under standard human operating conditions this time. But the nuclear industry has been notoriously unreliable in this regard, for decades.
Put simply, this is why all 4th gen designs remove plant operator from any direct control of the core. That's the meaning of the term 'walk away safe'.
Yeah, until someone stockpiles 30 years of old fuel rods or some equivalent bs.
Keep using the same basic script for long enough, one day it might be true.
And yet, even with the extreme carelessness and obvious flaws of past designs, and the sloppiness of some operators, the actual harms from nuclear generation are tiny. The harms from future designs where safety is taken much more seriously can be expected to be much much less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll
In comparison, look at the harms from other forms of generation:
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/?sh=2d942cc4709b
Or if you want to just look at individual big disasters, hydro has had the biggest, but there have been plenty of other really big non-nuke energy disasters
https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/04/11/what-about-chernobyl-worlds-deadliest-energy-accidents-in-perspective/
Thing about radiation is that it's got a much less demonstrable mechanism of harm than a hydro dam bursting.
But please, keep talking about how the obvious flaws (that were claimed to be completely safe at the time of construction) barely did any harm, in order to make folk feel better about tomorrow's obvious flaws unexpectedly causing another problem that you assure us can't happen.
I fully understand the reaction most people do have around ionising radiation; it's the invisible nature of it that I think spooks most people. Hell I've personally walked around an industrial plant carrying in my bare hands a relatively powerful Kr-85 beta source. I was totally safe, but looking back I couldn't help but feel a strong prickly sense of danger. In no sense can I be dismissive of this natural reaction.
At the same time I sincerely believe that this 'unseeable, unknowable, and insensible' quality has been exploited by various players to push agendas that have little to do with actual safety.
This is longer than I'd like to suggest at 54min, but it's an excellent presentation on the history of the LNT (Linear No Threshold) hypothesis, that has been frequently misused by scaremongers.
I hope this conveys a better sense of perspective on the nature of radiation, why it must be respected, but not necessarily feared.
RL, could you list (in your sincere opinion; no need for explanation) the "various players" and their respective "agendas" that have little to do with (actual) safety?
Suppose we’re all players, each with our own sincere beliefs and agendas.
I should have expressed myself more clearly: when a dam bursts, if you find a drowned person in the debris, that's pretty clear.
Estimates for Chernobyl go from only a few dozen directly involved in the incident who died within a few weeks to tens (or even hundreds) of thousands.
The fanbois pick the lowest estimate to claim how safe it is, Greenpeace picks the other end, but actually…? Maybe even Huntly's particulates are competitive against a confidence interval that wide. Maybe not. But the fanbois have been wrong enough that they've had their shot.
Chernobyl has been very thoroughly studied by a UN task force. Hundreds of experts from dozens of institutions, no cover up was possible.
I'm happy to run with that report.
@Drowsy: Greenpeace have a clear business model of overhyping fears about unseeable unknowable and insensible threats to drive donations.
Fossil fuel interests have apparently also been active in the shadows, flicking funding to environmental groups whose stances are slanted towards anti-nuclear, rather than having climate change at the front of their concerns.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-fossil-fuel-interests-bankrolling-the-anti-nuclear-energy-movement/?sh=7f4a19a07453
@Andre
Greenpeace could be "overhyping fears", but surely some threats that they are trying to raise awareness about are real enough – if the organisation was only, or even mostly, motivated by profit (i.e. the business model), then that would be disappointing.
Attenborough could also be overhyping fears to sell his latest book:
You may be on to something regarding the shadowy influence of fossil fuel businesses – their real political influence (via 'lobbying') dwarfs that of Greenpeace and/or Attenborough, again IMHO.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/fossil-fuel-industry-doubles-donations-to-major-parties-in-four-years-report-shows
Greenpeace will be viable only as long as there are still environments to degrade – once those ecosystems are beyond repair, the organisation’s influence will be (even more) negligible, and thanks to the Anthropocene the job's nearly done
Krypton is a gas!?
Of course you're happy to run with a report at the lower end of the scale.
But my point is that death estimates of a dam collapse would not be so controversial to the same degree. It's difficult to argue that 50k more people drowned from some other cause that coincidentally occurred at the same time the deluge swept through a valley. But calculating cancer or congenital anomalies causes is wildly uncertain.
If you want something badly enough any argument will be augmented until it fits criteria. This maxime has brought us where we are with global warming. We assume that science is conducted impartially, but it isn't.
Apart from the possibility of an accident, however small and not worth the risk, the biggest issue is waste.
On nuclear waste:
https://cen.acs.org/environment/pollution/nuclear-waste-pilesscientists-seek-best/98/i12
That’s Gerald S. Frankel’s matter-of-fact take on the thousands of metric tons of used solid fuel from nuclear power plants worldwide and the millions of liters of radioactive liquid waste from weapons production that sit in temporary storage containers in the US. While these waste materials, which can be harmful to human health and the environment, wait for a more permanent home, their containers age. In some cases, the aging containers have already begun leaking their toxic contents.
“It’s a societal problem that has been handed down to us from our parents’ generation,” says Frankel, who is a materials scientist at the Ohio State University. “And we are—more or less—handing it to our children.”
All these wastes can remain dangerously radioactive for many thousands of years.
Well, of cause NZ also is rated as high risk due to sitting on a fault line. I really cannot even understand that anybody could view nuclear power as a safe option.
How about starting to fit every house with solar panels for heating and hot water for a starter. The power generated through water and other renewables can be used for top up power of larger buildings and supply electric transport. Talking of which, get rail from ports to each larger city on and off load containers. I mean this is not new. What are we waiting for?
Yet another of the flaws of the old reactor designs is that they only extract maybe 1% of the available energy in their input fuel, the rest becomes the high-level dangerous waste. So actually extracting that energy by using the waste as fuel makes good economic sense, as well as vastly reducing the size of the waste problem. A lot of new reactor designs are indeed eyeing up that waste to use as fuel.
https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/90546-radioactive-waste-fuels-nextgeneration-reactors
Andre
Nuclear power is a non renewable. NZ is on a fault line.
Waste:
When the uranium fuel is used up, usually after about 18 months, the spent rods are generally moved to deep pools of circulating water to cool down for about 10 years, though they remain dangerously radioactive for about 10,000 years.
But if the power lobby gets their hands on it….oh well, it is what it is.
The waste fuel rods wouldn't be dangerous waste if they were used for fuel in a different reactor design.
In terms of how much uranium or is available, yeah sure, supplies of land-based uranium for the really wasteful process used now are limited. But the new reactor designs would stretch that out way beyond any foreseeable future. Then the oceans hold another vast reservoir of uranium that only costs about four times as much to extract as land based uranium. In the context of operating a nuclear power plant, the cost of the uranium is negligible, and a 4x increase from USD50/pound to USD200/pound would disappear in the noise.
Then thorium is another viable nuclear fuel that is a lot more abundant. In many respects, it's better than uranium for civilian power generation, but it doesn't have the military side applications that have skewed so much of the nuclear industry's historical developemnt. China and India are working on thorium designs, to take advantage of their resources.
Yep, money, resources etc… as expected. Lets just do more of the same just a tad more risky.
Innovation is not imitation.
'walk away safe' ..
..must be on the shortlist for a gold-spin award..
surely..?
It's a design objective.
I'm quite confident that any organisation making the claim would be required to prove it to the regulators before approval. Inside a massively over-engineered containment vessel. With all the failure modes anyone could dream up thrown at it.
floating bombs
The fuel mix in a nuclear reactor is totally different to the one in a bomb. The fundamental physics ensures that a reactor simply cannot detonate in the way a bomb is intended to do.
To be fair to wags' concerns, Chernobyl and Fukushima did have some pretty big booms.
It takes somewhat detailed knowledge to understand that those booms came about because of the water used to remove the heat from the reactor, and wasn't actually a nuclear fission explosion
Yup.
Chernobyl was really the nuclear industry's equivalent of the Titanic. A reactor that should never have been built, completely lacking a containment vessel and had reactivity control shortcomings that were never conveyed to the operators.
Yet despite this dramatic worst possible case failure, very few people remember that the other three reactors located right next door on the same site continued to be operated for many years afterward. As were a number of other RBMK reactors of the same design scattered around the FSU.
But as you say the actual explosion was not a nuclear one. It was a dramatic power surge that generated a massive steam explosion.
Fukushima was again not a nuclear event, but a hydrogen explosion caused when a loss of coolant flow allowed the water in the reactor to turn to steam and react with the fuel rod cladding.
In every major incident, including Three Mile Island, it was the use of water in the core (as both a moderator and coolant) that proved to be the vulnerability. This is why all 4th gen designs engineer it out; making an already very safe technology at least an order of magnitude better.
The absurd thing is this, coal powered power plants cause a huge number of excess deaths globally. The actual numbers are subject to some debate, but there is absolutely no question that they completely dwarf the hazard from all nuclear events combined. Closing nuclear plants while still running coal actually increases deaths quite substantially. For this the extreme anti-nuclear movement has a lot to answer for.
Yeah, I've come to the view that Greenpeace may have been just as harmful to the planet as the traditional villains, just in a different way.
They've been a remarkably successful marketing organisation, fomenting fears about vague undefinable and unprovable harms, and selling themselves as the answer that's fighting the menace. It's a good grift for those at the top creaming themselves a good living. But the world has paid a hefty price in an awful lot of avoidable coal and gas emissions.
As well as the harms they've done to our food supply by demonising GMOs, rather than better targeting the harmful practices of big ag companies.
I know you don't appreciate anecdotes that much, but for what it's worth:
I lived on top of a coal mine and had chronic asthma which saw me hospitalised several times and was constantly on pills, inhalers, injections etc. Within a month of moving away it cleared up and I've never had an attack since.
It was life threatening, and life was a misery, living on top of that mine.
I didnt actually think they go boom I did realise they just melt down and leave a hot sticky patch.
What happens to these floating bombs if they run into a tsunami or a wandering category 5 cyclone?
It's often overlooked that during the Fukushima event, a number of other almost identical nuclear plants on the same coast suffered no damage whatsoever because their seawalls were at the correct height. It's absurdly easy to prevent this kind of loss. Moreover all 4th gen designs simply don't care if they lose coolant flow, which is the vulnerability common to the three major nuclear power plant incidents of the past 70 years.
As for Cat 5 cyclones, again these are large robust steel structures, with massive ballast. All the designers I've listened to are acutely aware of the need to protect from this kind of obvious threat.
We have, after Tiwai, enough electricity already to cope with user growth AND shift a third of our combustion vehicles.
And if you encourage RedLogix to warble on about nuclear power one more time I will on behalf of The Standard drive over to your place and strap you to your beehive.
I'd rather the electricity freed up from Tiwai first went to filling the gap from closing Huntly. Then satisfy user growth and electric vehicles from building new renewable generation.
the nuke-pimps are out in force today…
best to just chant the wind/solar mantra at them…
No argument from me, I'm quite happy to see how far the Solar/Wind/Battery tech can be taken. I'm not here to throw rocks at it.
But be aware it has it's own fundamental limitations too.
Andre – that's exactly what's gonna happen…
Honestly I do my best to avoid the n-word much of the time. It wasn't me who started it this time …
And yes you are perfectly correct, the NZ context for nuclear is quite different to the global one.
🙂
Always happy to read your arguments on 4th gen nuclear plants, RL … both informative & concise … as opposed to Ad who unfortunately tends to warble on a wee bit, occasionally dribbling onto his keyboard.
I could start talking about CBRN Defence training, agent detection, Recon and mapping agent/ nuclear fallout. Or the Dark Art of Machine Gun Gunnery and Direct Fire Support.
Which btw i choose for my professional development instead of the more Gucci/ practical specialisations.
Coulda, woulda, shoulda … talk is cheap, Compadre … get typing on the Dark Arts of Machine Gunnery, Amigo, & get typing now. If nothing else, you'll appall, disgust & scandalise the Chardonnay Greens & assorted Critical Social Justice Theory Cult members… provoking the pompous & pretentious is always an amusing thing to witness in my book.
For anyone interested in getting some kind of perspective on actual radiation doses we all receive from various sources, xkcd (Randall Munroe) has put together this excellent chart:
https://xkcd.com/radiation/
The radiation hazard from a nuke power station nearby for a year is similar to eating a banana. For a coal station nearby, it's three times that (but the emitted mercury and other toxins are way scarier than the radiation). All three of which are absolutely tiny relative to the normal background radiation we all get just going about our daily lives.
on rnz morning report (link not on site)..grant robertson was most emphatic that they did not even consider a dollop of extra help for the poorest..over Xmas..
saying they already gave them $25 earlier in the year ..
uncaring bastards..that they are..
when are 'labour' people gonna get fucken angry about this..?
is this what they voted for..?
the country awash in corporate/rentier-class welfare..
but nothing for the poorest…
and isn't it such a relief that we have such a kind/caring prime minister/government..?
Labour ran as an election promise to not raise the benefits of any of our beneficiaries, and people saw that, shrugged and thought ' lucky i am not on a benefit ' and then they voted for them.
pretty much. Well done NZ.
How much would a double payment of benefits at Xmas actually cost? Be a nice little stimulus for the economy ( well it could be sold as that!) and after all the corporate welfare a welcome rebalancing. To suggest that not raising benefits was a decisive plank in voting behaviour – maybe not.
Is it possible that the Government has decided to be stingy with the beneficiaries so as to starve the wealthy who would be the ultimate beneficiaries of the predictable trickle up? Cynicism and sarcasm know no bounds!
why don't the national party invite ardern and robertson to lead their party..?..
promise them safe electorate seats/multiple board seats..etc..etc..
then maybe some from labour..promising real transformation/the ditching of neoliberalism/to move to a social democracy like the higher taxes on the rich/support/housing for all scandanavian countries…can step up..
basically the sooner ardern..and her promises to do nothing..goes..the better..
(a conclusion she has drawn for herself..after all..)
and if she moved over to lead the tories…peddling a more 'caring'/empathy-drenched version of those bastards..of course..!..
all the neoliberal-incrementalists in labour…could go with her..
and no..we don't want robertson to take her place..
couldn’t the united nations use a global empathy-ambassador..?
Here's an early Xmas present, Phillip, before you get yet another
dawn raidlate night mod raid and possibly a compulsory 'holiday' – link to Morning Report article on Robertson's interview this morning which contains the link to the audio.First half of the audio to about 4.30 mins is re Ihumatao, then a general discussion about housing etc with a specific question re giving beneficiaries a boost for Xmas at about 7 mins with Robertson then going into the usual spin as to what they have done with the $25, etc …https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018777733/ihumatao-land-will-be-used-for-housing-grant-robertson
thanks..
I’d like to acknowledge that you’ve made a real effort with improving the readability of your comments and I think it shows in more and better engagement overall.
My recent moderation notes for you were an attempt to notch you in the direction of using links as you have done in the past. I’m sure that the other readers here would also appreciate it.
FWIW, I respect you for that.
chrs..
Robertson encapsulated his (and the neoliberal) thinking when he talked about the 'housing market.' Houses as commodities to be bought and sold and to profit from, not housing as a basic right. My grandparents bought a house before the Great Depression and lived in the same house until they died in the 1970s. As far as I was aware, they never computed the increase in value of their home.
Robertson's language sums up this 'third way' centrist, do sfa Labour government.
If David Parker were Finance Minister he would be better on policy; less neo liberal.
yes..but..how 'less neoliberal'..?
I had him down as a apologist for the whole sorry mess..
I think he will listen/is more biddable than the current incumbent.
Three major issues are prominent in this country: a meaningful response to climate change, the housing crisis and poverty (let’s not dress it up as ‘child poverty – poverty is poverty).
On all three this government has a mandate to act and to be decisive. They could easily take the country with them with radical actions to get on top of two of these and at least do something positive about the first.
As a long time leftie, [I tore up my Labour Party membership card in 1987 and have never rejoined] this period takes me back to the honeymoon period of 1984 when the Lange government, so apparently full of talent, had a mandate to act, and the imperative need to do a lot to counter the crisis inherited from Muldoon.
Perhaps I should be careful what I wish for – we all know and still suffer from how the ‘radicals’ of ’84 shook up the country.
But these days incremental change is not what is needed in the face of climate change.
However, much as I might wish for radical policies, I can’t see them coming from this ‘third way’ Labour government.
Labour is a centerist party, they only have to worry about their Center and right leaning block, the left will vote for them no matter what or won’t vote at all In this regard forget about a socialist lurch beyond the status quo that the Center and Center leaning right can just stomach
Red-where "Centrist" is code for not rocking the neo-liberal order?
Without being rude to “Satty” and "Foreign Waka" an objection based on a perception NZ is the latter day bucolic Jerusalem of William Blake's poem is, well, a bit colonising. I think you need a better reason not to want nuclear than just "but I never saw a nuclear power plant in the background of any of the LOTR movies so I moved there".
where is that lotr quote from..?
I will not argue with you over my point of being against nuclear power. I have said more than enough and all I can do is as much as possible to mitigate any impact on the environment with what's available and affordable.
With that I shrug my shoulders and walk away. Its not worth getting agitated over.
I haven't read Blake or know his poem, my great grandparents were born here as was I.
I don't want nuclear power here.
I was persuaded a bit with James Lovelock's argument for nukes.
The idea that we are opposed to nuclear because the waste but conveniently ignore the invisible CO2 waste from gas and coal. The waste from gas and coal burning can kill immediately whereas the waste from nuclear will merely take years off your life.
Lovelock opined that he would happily store a lifetimes waste from nuclear on his verandah.
That was in the context of the UK, here not so much.
Bring on more geothermal and solar. Build resilience into the housing stock with good design and solar panels in every new build. Incentives for retro fitting solar….
I shall not cease from mental fight
Nor shall my sword slip from my hand
Until we see Jerusalem
On England's green and pleasant land.
(singalong together)
from a conversation happening elsewhere, what do people think the value of having biological sex (not gender) recorded on birth certificates is? Would it matter if the state no longer recorded sex at birth?
wouldn't they get messed-up/all crinkly..?
from all the thrashing about..?
Yes, Phil. My thoughts exactly!
the set-up for my 'boom!-boom!' one-liner has seen an edit..
I wonder why..?
I thought it was funny to do so.
no…you leached the funny out of it..
for late arrivals..the original set-up was:
'what do people see the value in having sex on birth certificates..?'
(there..!..fixed it..!.. the gods of comedy will be pleased..)
you thought yours was funny, I thought mine was /shrug.
Isn't "having sex on birth certificates" kinda … kinky?
Nope, birth certificates can be almost as effective as condoms or as much a mood killer as listening to Kanye; not kinky at all.
Before too terribly long, the state may be sampling Dna at birth – which will render the question moot. But, with the reservation that it is observed phenotype, it is a useful element of personal identification.
Useful how?
It rapidly determines that half of the population is not you.
what situations is it necessary for the state to do this?
Birth registrations are just an administrative tool. If changing details affects population-level equity discussions, then we need a conversation about why such a large proportion of the population does not seem to be adequately documented from day one.
At an individual level, the ability to change such bureaucratic details can prevent discrimination by authorities or anyone using that bureaucratic information.
Medical records are more interesting, but they also store data with much greater granularity so any relevant information would still be available.
What large proportion of the population are you meaning?
It's not a changing details issue, but removing the category altogether i.e. no birth cert would record biological sex (data would still be collected by the state, but wouldn't be on the front end cert).
https://sci-hub.se/10.1056/NEJMp2025974
Oh, ok – interesting about the line of demarcation. So the specific proposal is not even taking sex off, just removing it from the public copy and putting it in with the rest of the administrative side. NZ possibly has a similar format, I wonder? That would sort out the generation of population pyramids and so on.
Anyhoo, if the information is still kept and simply not released publicly, I can't see a downside. I genuinely doubt it gets used from the public form very often at all, even as a transfer to other ID.
I was hoping someone might be able to provide a list of things that do require known biological sex. I'm guessing insurance is one of them, and I don't think a reasonable work around to not having sex on a BC is for insurance companies to access a govt database.
However I don't quite get the demarcation line thing (which was in reference to US certs and data collection).
I also don't have a good sense of how different parts of society determine biological sex now. Do insurance companies require a copy of a birth certificate or do they take people's word?
What about organisations offering something specific to being female? eg scholarships or positions?
The content of a birth registration form people fill in includes data for adminstrative use only (e.g. other children from the same parents). The birth certificate only lists some of that information (pretty sure my siblings aren't on my birth certificate, not that I've read it in years).
It looks like in the USA the form has a line labelled "everything above this line goes on the birth certificate" or somesuch.
Insurance is interesting. If a claimant was male and got ovarian cancer, might be an excuse to decline payout. But that's down to their application forms, not a birth certificate.
Gender is up to the individual and they can't make that decision at birth. Record biological sex at birth and then add gender if the individual so desires.
that doesn't answer the question.
Recording the biological sex of a newborn on their birth certificate has (presumably) been considered 'useful' for hundreds of years, but maybe it was never actually useful, or maybe it is now less useful than it once was.
Making the case that such a record is not useful would be good. Not recording the biological sex of a newborn on their birth certificate would obviate the need for the state to consider applications to change the sex registered on a birth certificate, even if the biological sex of an individual cannot be changed (yet.) But maybe adults who wanted to have their biological sex added to their birth certificate could apply for their birth certificate to be amended accordingly.
https://www.justice.govt.nz/family/change-sex-on-your-birth-certificate/
I don't really understand why, but I remain uneasy that a (sizeable?) proportion of parents might be uneasy about having the biological sex of their child(ren) recorded on birth certificate(s).
Birth names are recorded – they can be changed later. One's birth date is, however, fixed – doesn't stop a sizeable proportion of the population from wanting to appear younger than their biological age. Not sure about the value of that 'want' – seems like a potential source of frustration and misery to me.
Good-oh; maybe we should be removing birth dates from birth certificates to combat ageism? After all, you're only as old as you feel.
Thing is, birth certificates are a primary source for other forms of ID, some of which are used to confirm legislative requirements around age eligibility – drinking, guns, porn, smoking, prostitution, and so on. I only listed those because they sound like a hell of a night out.
I'm not sure there's any similar legislatively-required references to sex/gender that someone on the door needs to know right then and there for fear of breaking the law.
That's Hamilton for ya 😆
Thanks MF, sensible point about circumstances where proof of age is required; guess that's why DoB is on driver licences, and useful for more than just driving.
Still wonder if the 'Silver Tsunami' is (sometimes) up against more than just a lack of 'tech savvy' and general decrepitude – if one's (biological) sex is to be supplied only on a need-to-know basis, then how about age?
https://www.hrdive.com/news/ageism-the-last-acceptable-bias-is-rampant-at-work-aarp-says/569649/